The officer in charge signs us in and Davis, Ainsley, and I snake between the multiple rows lit with buzzy tubes of overhead lighting. Tall metal shelves flank us, stacked high with banker’s boxes, each sealed and labeled in black marker with the victim’s last name and the date of the crime. The boxes are supposed to be filed by date, but we’re cops, not professional organizers. Sometimes it takes days to locate the exact box needed. The enormous volume of cold case evidence can be maddening. I stop for a second and look up. Towers of stacked legal boxes rise all the way to the ceiling. My breath catches when the truth smacks me in the face: each and every box represents a life. Some of these boxes are lives that were taken, others who were raped, beaten, or kidnapped. Every single box stands for people whose lives have been unfairly disrupted through an act of undeserved violence.
After a few misread dates and an hour with the three of us searching, Ainsley calls out from the far back corner, “Got it!” The Tucker box is on an upper tier shelved between the inaccurate dates of May 1997 and January 1976. The officer in charge climbs up a rig and brings the box down, then sets it on a table at the front of the room, in plain sight of his desk.
The edges of the cardboard have settled together over time and it takes a stronger tug than Ainsley expects to remove the lid. Davis and I glove up. No one speaks. We peer over the edges. I let Ainsley dig through the sealed bags holding artifacts of Marci’s belongings, every object that he excavates is something she’d worn or had in her pockets that day. He lifts out a bag with a faded yellow T-shirt, one of her favorites, the one with the iron-on Mork and Mindy, now cracked and blanched. The aged cotton tee has deteriorated in places, the color faded from its original canary yellow to a weak, bleachy pastel. Was this really the shirt Marci had been wearing when I found her? All this time I’ve remembered finding her in the short-sleeved button-up, the blue and purple faded plaid that she had worn the first day I met her. Perhaps she’d been wearing the T-shirt under it. If that’s the case, where’s the button-up plaid?
Ainsley’s fingers dig into the plastic crinkle of evidence bags, and one by one he unearths Marci’s bloodstained jean shorts, two plastic flip-flops well-worn into dark, curved Cs, and her blue-striped cotton panties rolled in a tight ball, as if the box was a laundry hamper rather than a forgotten resting place.
“There should be one more shirt,” I tell him and tug at the edge of the box. It rattles on the metal table with only a few items left.
Ainsley opens up the log. “Only shirt listed is the Mork and Mindy tee.”
I step back and cross my arms. It’s possible I only wanted to remember her in that shirt. It had been my favorite on her—the one that heightened the navy in her eyes so much. It had been the shirt she’d worn on our first date. At least, I called it a date.
I sat on a parking stump painted bright yellow outside Michael’s Mini-Mart, in the back of the lot. It was one of the very first sunny days of spring and I stretched my legs out long to feel the warmth through my jeans. It was the first time my dad let me take the truck alone to Willow’s Ridge and I spun the keys round and round on my finger as I waited. A few cars passed by and one pulled into the lot, but it was an older man who pushed inside the store. My racing heart settled.
I was early, at least fifteen minutes, but I had this horrible fear that Marci wasn’t going to show up. It had been her idea to meet an hour before our One True Path group. She mentioned in that breezy way of hers that she had some books from the program to lend me. So it wasn’t technically a date. Not even close. But no one else from the group had been invited. When I thought of being alone with Marci my heart skipped a few beats and everything inside me got warm. Most likely Marci meant nothing by the invitation, I cautioned myself. Even then I had already learned it was dangerous to get my hopes up.
I slid out of my jean jacket and let the sun hit my winter-white arms. I thought about Marci and that college girl from the soccer team. Her mother had told the pastor that something was going on between them. She’d been forced to quit soccer and join One True Path. Sure, Marci said she no longer saw the soccer girl, but that could have been a lie to appease the pastor. Every time I thought of the college soccer girl, I got an acidic and bitter burn on the back of my tongue. I couldn’t let myself read too much into this meeting with Marci or allow myself to overthink her intentions. Sometimes lending a book really was just about lending a book.
When Marci finally pulled into the space beside my truck in that navy blue Grand Am her brother was fixing up for her, a car that matched her eyes, my breath caught and the world spun before me. She stepped out, one long and lean leg after another. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, still damp from the shower. Her worn Def Leppard T-shirt was cinched at the waist with her favorite plaid long-sleeved button-up, the arms tied in a knot. She looked down at me on the parking stump and smiled. “Hey.”
I nodded because I couldn’t trust my voice. My heartbeat roared in my ears as she stepped closer.
“Want to get something?”
Inside the Mini-Mart we loaded up with forty-four-ounce Mountain Dew fountain drinks and Marci grabbed a bag of those little round peppermint candies.
“Where you been keeping yourself, sweetheart?” The cashier, Doug, an older guy with a greasy, thinning ponytail took in Marci beside me. He did nothing to hide his admiring gaze as it eased over her strong body and up to her face. Since I’d been around Marci, I realized everyone noticed her attractiveness. I dug change out of my pocket and wondered if she ever got tired of men looking at her like that.
Marci didn’t skip a beat. She gave him that easy grin of hers. “Hey, Doug.”
He rang me up but kept his eyes on Marci until it was her turn. He wore a pendant on his blue work vest that said: Thank me! I’m a Vietnam Vet.
She slipped a ten dollar bill across the counter. “Marlboro Reds, please.” Leaning into the counter, she bent over so she could look up at him with those irresistible navy eyes. I watched Doug melt under her gaze. He didn’t even question her age.
“You’re my man!” she told Doug as we pushed out the door and she left him the change.
Marci smiled at me as the door swung shut behind us. “I’m a regular,” she explained. “Gotta have my smokes.”
We sat side by side on the parking stump and I watched her unwrap the cellophane from the cigarette pack and pull a smoke out. Marci’s fingers were short like mine, but her nails had those tall, white half-moons that I always wished I had. She lit the cigarette and took a deep pull.
“How did you get caught?” A trail of smoke spilled from her mouth. She handed me the cigarette. When I closed my lips around the butt, I thought about her lips that were just there and how it was kind of like a very distant kiss. Just thinking the word kiss around Marci made my insides turn to jelly.
“My journal. You?”
“The college girl from soccer.” Marci shrugged. “Everyone talks.”
I took another long drag from the cigarette before I handed it back. I hated this soccer girl and I didn’t even know her name. “Do you still see her?”
She shook her head. I could tell by the way she looked out at the main road that talking about the girl still hurt. After a moment, she came back to me. “What about you? You have a girlfriend?” She handed me the near-gone cigarette, and this time our fingers brushed. It was like one of those huge, color-filled fireworks went off in my heart, the trails of burning smoke sinking low into my belly.
“Nope.”
“Nope for now or nope you never did?”
At first I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t believe Marci asked me so directly about my experience with another girl. No one other than the pastor ever had. I was sitting beside a girl I liked a whole lot and who I was pretty sure wasn’t a virgin, given the whole college soccer girl thing. I wanted to look cool, not like the novice I was. But somehow lying to someone you hold hands with in a prayer circle once a week seemed so pathetic. I looked down at my w
orn Chuck Taylors and ground the cigarette out with the ball of my foot. “Nope. I never did.”
I waited for Marci to laugh or say something snide because sometimes she could be that way. I waited for her to say, How pathetic! They got you before you ever even got a chance to commit this sin. But she didn’t. We were quiet beside one another for a long time, watching the occasional car pull into the lot. She lit another cigarette.
“The pastor’s full of shit,” she finally said. There was something about the way she spoke that made her seem so much older than me. There was never a lilt of doubt in her words, never an intonation of questioning. Even her movements were full of confidence.
“Why do you go to the meetings?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear her say it.
“My mom.” A stream of smoke sailed out through her front teeth. “She’s afraid I’ll go to hell.”
I thought of my dad then, the intervention and the way he’d had tears in his eyes most of the meeting. I didn’t want to disappoint my parent either.
“Loving another girl isn’t bad,” Marci said.
“No? They all say it is.”
“How can love be wrong?” Marci looked at me with those huge eyes of hers practically seeing right through me, and a chill scattered along my spine when I recognized that I probably already loved her.
Marci threw back her head and sang out.
I laughed. I never expected Beatles lyrics from her.
She smacked her open hand against her thigh and sang again, then handed me the cigarette. “John Lennon never said that love had to be with somebody of the opposite sex.”
My dad had always seen John Lennon as some sort of sage. I wondered what he’d think of this conversation. When I looked up, Marci’s eyes were on me again and her face was no more than a few inches from mine.
“You’ve got a great smile,” she said.
Neither of us moved a muscle. I didn’t dare to breathe. Marci was so close to me. So very close…
Suddenly she stood up and headed for her car. The whistled Beatles song trailed after her. I finally took a breath. She reached into her car and pulled out two books for me: The Truth—Leviticus, and Healing Your Sexuality with God.
“Enjoy,” she said with dripping sarcasm. “I had to get those things out of my bedroom.” She reached down and opened the bag of peppermints. “We got a few minutes before we have to be at the pastor’s.” She handed me a wrapped candy.
I took one last pull on the cigarette and ground it out. The candy tasted cool against my warm, smoky tongue.
Marci kicked out a long leg and put her hands on her hips. She looked like she hadn’t a care in the world. “Want to meet here again before next week’s meeting?”
I shrugged and did my best to look nonchalant as well. Inside, though, everything was jumping up and down. She wanted to see me again! “Sure.”
I watched her climb back into the car that her brother would soon turn into a convertible for her, and a little soccer ball dangled from the rearview mirror.
“It’s our secret,” she said out the car window. “Give me a few minutes’ head start.”
I nodded. When she pulled away, I thought, This is May and I have all summer with Marci. Those warm months stretched out before me and I imagined lazy days with Marci, those eyes never far from me. In that moment, everything seemed so freaking hope filled. As she drove off I couldn’t help but sing that John Lennon lyric. I was convinced as I tossed those books in the bed of the truck, all I really did need was love. Marci’s love.
*
In the evidence room, we gather around the silver table and Ainsley lifts the panties from a sealed bag with the end of a pen. Small sections have already been cut out of the fabric, particularly in the blood-soaked area, pencil-eraser-sized circles missing from the decayed fabric.
“Here.” I point out a bloody section along the waistband. The UNSUB would have had to grip the cloth here in order to pull them down.
Beside me, Davis twists off the sealed cap of the glass test tube and hands me the bottom. With Ainsley documenting every step with both photographs and voice recording, Davis cuts a swatch, collects the bloody cloth with a pair of tweezers, and drops the sample into the vial. I seal it quickly and sign the seal.
“Let’s take a few more,” Davis says. “It’s a long shot, and we may as well go all in.” What he doesn’t say is this is the last time anyone will test this evidence, so there’s nothing to lose.
Ainsley talks to me as he and Davis work. “The limestone cave area where Marci’s body was found? It’s become a local legend. It’s rumored that her ghost still lurks down inside the caves of the ravine. Kids from all over try to hike down the ravine at night, and most do it on some sort of dare from other kids. Dumb-asses always end up scaring the shit out of themselves.” He chuckles and looks over at me. “Halloween week is when the real fun gets started. Davis can tell you—we always get at least two phone calls about the ghost in the quarry.”
“Let that ghost haunt you and you only,” Davis says, elbowing Ainsley. “I want nothing to do with those things.”
“Try the waistband of the shorts,” I say. While Ainsley packages away the panties, I reach into the box for the cutoffs. I pull out two bags: one with the shorts and another with a simple gold necklace with a tiny Celtic cross pendant. Marci’s necklace.
I hold the bag up to the overhead light to get a better look at the small cross Marci never took off. The chain is broken, most likely in the struggle she had with her attacker. Both halves of the chain, though, are in the bag. My gloved fingers push away the edges of the chain to better reveal the cross that’s still shiny. Suddenly that familiar sensation of water rising over my head begins, the bubbles of oxygen escaping through my nostrils as I sink farther and farther toward the ocean’s floor and slip back into a memory.
We surrounded Pastor Jameson, all of us sitting cross-legged on the warm grass, while he stood in the center of our circle. In order to avoid his beady eyes, we picked at our fingernails, carefully shredded blades of grass, or tied our shoelaces in knot after knot—we’d do anything not to meet those accusatory eyes with our own. Our avoidance might have been comical to an outsider, but the terror we felt of this man who slicked his hair to the side as if it were oiled was all too real.
“Marci.” The pastor walked over to our section of the circle. His enormous shadow hovered over the two of us. “Let’s hear what you’ve got so far.”
All around us, the other group members let out an audible collective gasp of relief. The edges of Marci’s notebook curled with the moisture in the air. Her hair that was usually straight and came to just below her shoulders was now lying in waves from the humidity. Our weeklong One True Path retreat was held at Camp Jesus in the Hills beside Lake Erie. For the first time in five days, the sun had finally decided to join us.
One True Path retreats were never about fun. They were all about purging ourselves of the homosexual demon that festered inside us all and paying homage to the ex-gay movement. They were about studying the word of God to gain his true meaning through meditation. They were about finding salvation through heterosexuality. Never once did we consider what others did during retreats, fun stuff like swimming, boating, and songs around campfires.
It was the end of the retreat and we were all faced with the duty of writing the letter. This was the culminating activity that we’d all heard so much about and dreaded. According to the pastor, homosexuality was not our fault, but something caused by our early childhood experiences and upbringing. We’d been infected with the sin. We’d become damaged goods somewhere along the line and it was not our God-given nature to feel this way. Therefore, each of us was required to write and deliver a letter that laid the blame on the person who was most responsible for raising us. For Marci, this was her mother.
From the corner of my eye, I watched Marci’s hand shoot up to her neck, to grasp hold of the silver Celtic cross on the chain she never removed. Her mother
had given it to her when she joined the chorus at church. Marci hadn’t wanted to sing in the choir, but she wanted to make her mother happy. The church was her mother’s life—endless hours of church duties like Bible study, food preparation and delivery to the sick, and organizing the chorus. The cross represented a door for Marci to enter her mother’s world, a door that Marci wasn’t willing to close.
Around us, the sweet odor of sunscreen filled the air while birds cawed and squawked as they flew around the water. Marci was beside me, all knees and summer-tanned skin. No one spoke. I folded down the edges of the letter to my father. I wanted to hide the letter, ashamed I’d even written down the words, let alone thought those blame-filled words. Would he understand I’d been pressured to do it? Would he still love me? I sat and stewed quietly. One thing I knew for certain was that my turn to read what I had written would come soon enough. No one was ever spared in the pastor’s retreats.
“Marci, read it.”
“I don’t see how this will help, Pastor. My mom…it isn’t her fault.”
The pastor’s hand shot up. Enough. “We’ve been through this. You must determine what went wrong in the past in order to heal. For you it was your smother-mother.” He stopped just as his voice reached a crescendo. With a deep breath, he softened as much as he was capable of and turned back to Marci. He looked down on her and the sunlight behind him was so bright she had to shield her eyes with her hand to look up at him. He looked as though a halo shone from his head.
“You’re doing her a favor, Marci! Your mother doesn’t realize what she’s done wrong. She needs to know that her smothering behavior caused your sexual deviancy. Read. Now.”
Marci took a deep breath. Her hand never left her neck, holding tight to that small cross like it might actually save her.
*
The empty glass vial slips from my fingers and smashes against the steel table and I break through the water’s surface. For the second time today, I’m scrambling on my knees to pick up shards of glass.
Crossed Page 11
