by A W Hartoin
“Did the light change?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Did it get dark like an eclipse or something?”
“Nope,” said Aaron.
“And the music didn’t get louder?”
“Nope.”
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“Nope.”
It was good to drive, to move and be away from that place. I thought of going to the local police, but what would they make of me? A crackpot, a loon. They didn’t know me and would never believe.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
“Yep.”
But Aaron didn’t take me home. I don’t know why I thought he would. He never listened to me. My name wasn’t Morty or Tommy Watts. Before I realized how long it’d been, Aaron was parking at my Cousin Chuck’s precinct. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t go to Chuck for a Kleenex, but you know what they say about strange bedfellows. Chuck was by all accounts a great cop. He was the son my father never had. Chuck was known in cop circles as ‘Tommy’s boy.’ That helped out quite a bit in his rise in rank, but I imagined it had its drawbacks, too. Chuck had to prove he wasn’t riding Dad’s coat tails and he worked twenty-hour days as a result. It didn’t occur to me that Chuck wouldn’t be at work. He might not be at the house, but he’d be on the job. They’d find him for me, for better or worse, I had a reputation, too.
I walked into Chuck’s office with Aaron trotting along behind me. There were a couple of plainclothes at their desks and a couple of uniforms, too. Chuck wasn’t among them. It took a second for someone to acknowledge me.
Chris Nazir stood up and recognized me before he got halfway across the room. “Mercy, what happened?”
At the mention of my name, the room came alive and they all came forward.
“I need Chuck.” I said and the tears welled in my eyes. Janet was buried in that lake. I couldn’t believe she was there. I thought I could scrub my skin for a hundred years and never feel fresh again.
Greg yelled for someone to find Chuck and handed me tissues. He asked me questions. They buzzed in my ears and I flicked them away. I wanted Chuck. I wanted family and he sort of qualified. Then Chuck was there, kneeling in front of me, and then leading me to the break room. He sat me in a chair and got me a cup of coffee. His long fingers wrapped around the Styrofoam cup. It was a permanent oval when he handed it over. He sat down next to me and began to rub my back in slow circles. I told him and he listened. At the end, he leaned forward and kissed my dirty cheek. For once, there was nothing implied and I was grateful.
He said he had to make a call and left. I put my head on the rickety Formica table and I might’ve gone to sleep. I was so relieved to hand Janet off.
The smell of Chuck’s cologne mixed with sweat and stale coffee woke me. He put a basin of cloudy water on the table. “I called it in. There’s a crime scene unit on the way. And the local cops are cordoning off the area as we speak.”
“What in the world did you tell them?”
“Anonymous tip. Happens all the time.”
“But they all know.” I gestured to the door.
“They don’t know anything.”
I had to think about that, so I went to the bathroom and washed my hands and face. With the blood and dirt gone, I was myself again. The fear went down the drain with dirt. Chuck was right. The guys wouldn’t say anything. If not for me, they’d stay quiet for Dad. I picked out my splinter and went back to the break room. It was filled with cops. They all seemed to know and not know at the same time. No one spoke of why I was there and we lapsed into stories of my dad. Chuck put my hands in the basin. Epsom salts. The warm water eased the pain and the stories of my dad’s exploits became an easier distraction. An hour later, Chuck offered to take me home, but I wanted to stay. What would I do at home anyway? The bathroom was already clean.
At one, Chuck got a call. “They recovered a body buried in the lake bed. Looks like a little girl,” he said.
The rest of the guys got up and walked out of the room.
“I guess Janine knew what she was talking about,” I said.
“Guess so. You alright?”
“Yeah. How long has she been there?”
“Probably the whole time. I checked. There was a dry spell in the summer of 1999. After that the lake was full up until this year.”
“Was everything like Janine said? Pink shirt, bike?”
“Yeah, she was buried under the bike and wearing the shirt. I’d say it’s definitely Janet Lee Fine, but we’ll have to wait for the coroner to make a positive ID.”
“Was she molested?”
“We’ll probably never know for sure.” He looked away from me and rubbed his eyes.
“But?”
“But nothing.”
“It can’t be any worse than the nightmares I’ve already got.”
“She didn’t have on any pants or underwear.”
“Oh, God.” I thought I might cry again, but I didn’t. Nothing would change things for Janet. “Will you tell the parents?”
“If they want to know. Sometimes they don’t,” said Chuck, looking far away.
“Would you want to know?” I asked.
“I don’t go there.”
“He’s a sick bastard.”
“Aren’t they all?”
I took my hands out of the basin and Chuck wrapped them in a soft towel. I didn’t know he could be so gentle.
“You know you could’ve looked like a real idiot for sending a unit out to that lake,” I said.
“I believed you.”
“Why? Isn’t it all about the evidence?”
Chuck held onto my hands and glanced at the closed door before he answered. “You weren’t that hard to believe. What has your dad told you?”
I snorted. “Nothing.”
Then Chuck told me a story about his rookie year. A woman had been beaten to death by her husband. It was Chuck’s sixth homicide, so he was already in the groove and not as shocked as he might’ve been. He was standing next to his squad car when the woman walked out her front door, down the steps, and climbed into the ambulance. She sat on the gurney with her body, patiently waiting for the back doors to be closed.
“We all saw it,” said Chuck. “EMTs, my sergeant, and your dad’s partner, Gavin.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Nothing. They closed the doors and when they opened them at the morgue, she was gone.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
He leaned in and I could smell the Altoids on his breath. “Not even a little. Stuff happens. You’re a nurse. You never saw anything freaky?”
I bit my lip.
“Mercy, why did you believe Janine? I would’ve thought you’d look for a medical explanation, not a body.”
“David,” I said.
Chuck opened up the towel and applied some triple antibiotic lotion to my gnarly fingertips. “What about him?”
David was my boyfriend who disappeared on the way to a football game when I was sixteen. He was never seen again.
“You remember when I was in the hospital after the whole funeral home incident?”
He grinned. “How can I forget? These hands are nothing compared to that.”
“Well, I was in pretty rough shape and I had to go to the bathroom. Nobody was answering my call button, so I decided to try to go by myself.”
Chuck frowned. “Yeah?”
“Well…someone helped me.”
“Who?”
“I think it was David. I think he helped me to the bathroom and then back to bed.”
Chuck continued to squeeze out lotion and dap it on my fingers.
“I never told anyone. It was so strange, like a dream, but I was awake. I could feel him there, smell him. There was body heat and I could almost see him out of the corner of my eye, but not quite. I tried not to think about it. I told myself I was on a lot of meds. But it wasn’t the meds. It was
just as real as today.”
“You think David’s dead then,” said Chuck softly.
I looked into his eyes. “I think I do. I didn’t before, but now I do.”
Chuck finished with my last pinkie and screwed the top on the tube. “Why’d you tell me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I wanted someone to hear it, I guess.”
He squeezed my hands. “Good enough.”
Chuck didn’t drive me home. Aaron did. Actually, we didn’t go home. We went to Ellen’s. I rode with the windows rolled down. The hot air wrapped around me like a security blanket. I felt nothing but peace and sadness.
Aaron parked in the driveway. Janine and Jilly came running, their arms full of dolls and their faces wreathed in smiles. They tackled Aaron and demanded to know what food he had brought. In five minutes, they were having a picnic under the oak tree. Janine looked fine. Same old Janine. Giggly and silly, the best kind of little girl.
The front door swung open and Ellen came out. Now she was different. My best friend bounced down the steps and ran across the lawn. She hooked her arm around my waist and whispered in my ear, “She says he’s gone. The brown man’s gone. Just like that.”
I smiled. “That’s great news.”
Ellen lifted up my hand. “Oh my God, Mercy. What happened to your hands?”
“There was a situation,” I said.
“You have to stop getting yourself into these things?”
I laughed. “Let’s have some chocolate and I’ll tell you all about it.”
But I didn’t tell her about it. I didn’t mention St. Sebastian, the lake, or Janet Lee Fine. I told her about gardening or something like that. And the brown man drifted out of her memory never to touch her or Janine again. Just the way I wanted it.
The End
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