Criminal

  Amanda asked Roz, “Do you have any more photos?”

  The older woman smiled. One of her upper teeth was missing. “Look at the bloodlust. Who would’ve guessed it?”

  Amanda made her request more specific. “Do you have any close-ups of her wrists?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Does that look like a scar to you? There, along her wrist?” She showed Evelyn the photo.

  Evelyn squinted, then shook her head. “I can’t tell. What are you getting at?”

  “Jane had scars on her wrist.”

  “I remember.” Evelyn studied the photo more carefully. “If this is Lucy Bennett, why would she have scars on her wrists like Jane Delray?”

  “Whoring’s not exactly something to live for.” Still, Roz opened one of her desk drawers and found a magnifying glass. Each woman took turns holding the glass to the picture.

  Finally, Evelyn said, “I still can’t tell. It looks like a scar, but maybe it’s the light?”

  “That’s my fault.” Roz sounded uncharacteristically apologetic. “My flash was acting up and Landry was pushing me to hurry so he could clock in to his other job.”

  Amanda supplied, “Butch didn’t say anything in his notes about scars.”

  “That idiot wouldn’t.” Contrary to her words, Roz Levy seemed delighted. “All right, Wag. Time to see what you’re really made of.”

  Another wave of dread washed over Amanda. She felt as if she was on a roller coaster.

  Evelyn said, “Roz, there’s no need to—”

  “Shut your pie hole, blondie.” Roz cackled like a witch. “Pete’s cutting up your dead whore this afternoon. You hotshot lady dicks want, I can make a call and get you a ringside seat to the autopsy.”

  Amanda knew some of the patrolmen used the morgue as their crack, or on-duty hiding place, especially during the summer. It was easier to sleep in an air-conditioned building, so long as you didn’t mind laying up next to a dead body.

  She’d been to the Decatur Street building many times to pick up reports and drop off evidence, but she’d never before been into the back. Just the thought of what went on there gave Amanda the heebie-jeebies. Still, she kept her mouth closed as Evelyn led her deep inside the building, even though every step felt as if it was ratcheting down a clamp around her rib cage.

  The two beers Amanda drank on the drive over were not helping matters. Instead of relaxed, she felt both lightheaded and extremely focused. It was a miracle she hadn’t driven her Plymouth up a telephone pole.

  “Do you know Deena?” Evelyn asked, pushing open a swinging door. They were in a small lab. Two tables were shoved into opposite corners in the back of the room. There was a microscope on each. Various medical tools were laid out beside them. A large window took up the back wall. The hospital-green curtains were pulled back to show what must be the autopsy room. Yellow tile ran along the floor and up to the ceiling. There were two metal sinks. Two scales that seemed more appropriate for a grocer’s produce section.

  And a body. A green drape covered the figure. A large light like a dentist used was overhead. One hand dropped down beside the table. The fingernails were bright red. The hand was turned inward. The wrist did not show.

  Evelyn said, “I hate autopsies.”

  “How many have you seen?”

  “I don’t actually look at them,” she confessed. “You know how you can blur your eyes on purpose?”

  Amanda nodded.

  “That’s what I do. I just blur my eyes and say ‘mm’ and ‘yes’ when they ask questions or point out something interesting, and then I go to the bathroom afterward and throw up.”

  That seemed like as good a plan as any. They heard footsteps in the hallway behind them.

  Evelyn said, “Deena’s got a bad scar on her neck. Try not to stare.”

  “A what?” Evelyn’s words got jumbled up in Amanda’s brain, so they didn’t make sense until a striking black woman came through the door. She was wearing a white lab coat over blue jeans and a flowing orange blouse. Her hair was in full Afro. Blue eye shadow adorned her eyelids. The skin around her neck was marred as if by a noose.

  “Hey, Miss Lady,” Deena said, setting down a tray on one of the tables. There were slides laid out, splatters of white and red sandwiched between the glass. “What are you doing here?”

  Evelyn said, “Roz called in a favor for me.”

  “Why you still talkin’ to that nasty old Jew?” She smiled warmly at Amanda. “Who’s your pretty friend?”

  Evelyn looped her arm through Amanda’s. “This is Amanda Wagner. She’s my partner now.”

  The smile dropped. “Any relation to Duke?”

  For the first time in her life, Amanda felt the compulsion to lie about her father. Maybe if they’d been alone, she would have, but she confessed, “Yes. I’m his daughter.”

  “Hm.” She shot Evelyn a look and turned back around to her slides.

  “She’s all right,” Evelyn said. “Come on, Dee. Do you think I’d bring someone here who’d—”

  The woman spun back around. Her lip trembled with rage. “You know how I got this?” She pointed to the ugly scar on her neck. “Working at the cleaners down on Ponce, pressing Klan robes nice and stiff for people like your daddy.”

  Evelyn tried, “That’s hardly her fault. You can’t blame her for her father’s—”

  Deena held up a hand to stop her. “One day, my mama got her arm caught in one’a the machines. Ain’t no way to turn ’em off. Mr. Guntherson’s too cheap to pay for an electrician. I grab the cord and it swings back on my neck. Live wires. Boom, there’s an explosion—one’a them transformers gives out. Shut down the whole block for two days. Saved my life, but not my mama’s.”

  Amanda didn’t know what to say. She’d been to that same dry cleaners many times, had never given a thought to the black women working in the back. “I’m sorry.”

  Evelyn said, “She can’t control what her father does.”

  Deena leaned back against the table. She crossed her arms. “You remember what I told you about my scar, Ev? I said I’d cover it up the day it don’t matter anymore.” She glared at Amanda. “It still matters.”

  Evelyn stroked Amanda’s back. “This is my friend, Deena. We’re working a case together, trying to find some missing women.” Her words were rushed. “Kitty Treadwell. Someone named Mary. They might be connected to Lucy Bennett.”

  “You check the dead nigger file?” She was talking to Amanda. “That’s what y’all call it, right? The DNF? Got one at every station house. Ain’t that right, Wag?”

  Amanda was too embarrassed to look at her. She told Deena, “I think you probably know that I lost my mother, too.” What had happened to Miriam Wagner was common knowledge around the force. With enough whiskey in him, Duke relayed the story with a heady machismo. Amanda said, “You’re not the only one here with scars.”

  Deena tapped her fingers on the table. The staccato started strong, then died down to nothing. “Look at me.”

  Amanda forced herself to look up. It had been so easy with Roz, but with the old Jew, there had been a sense of righteousness. Now, there was only guilt.

  Deena studied her for a bit longer. The anger that had burned so hotly in her eyes started to fade. Finally, she nodded. “All right,” she said. “All right.”

  Evelyn slowly exhaled. She had a tight smile on her face. As usual, she tried to smooth things over. “Dee, did I tell you what Zeke did the other day?”

  Deena turned back to the trays. “No, what’d he do?”

  Amanda didn’t listen to the story. She stared back into the morgue. Her mind was still clouded from the beer, or maybe just the traumas of the day. She felt as if something was shifting inside of her. The last few days had called into question the previous twenty-five years of her life. Amanda wasn’t sure whether or not this was a good thing. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

  “Hello-hello!” a man’s voice boomed from inside the morgue. r />
  “That’s Pete,” Evelyn supplied.

  The coroner was pudgy, with a ponytail and beard that looked days past washing—as did his tie-dyed T-shirt and faded, torn blue jeans. His white lab coat was tight through the sleeves. A cigarette dangled from his lip. He stood at the window, showing his yellow teeth. Amanda was not one to believe in vibes, but even with a thick piece of glass between them, she could almost feel the creepiness radiating off Pete Hanson’s body.

  He said, “Deena, my love, you’re looking beautiful as ever this afternoon.”

  Deena laughed even as she rolled her eyes. “Shut up, fool.”

  “Only a fool for you, my dear.”

  Evelyn supplied, “They do this all the time.”

  “Oh.” Amanda tried to pretend she heard white men flirting with black women every day.

  “Come on, Dee.” Pete tapped on the window. “You gonna let me buy you that drink?”

  “Meet me outside at ten-after-never.” She snatched the drapes closed. “Y’all go on in.” She told Amanda, “When you throw up, aim for the floor drain. It’s easier to hose down that way.”

  “Thank you,” Amanda managed.

  She followed Evelyn into the autopsy room. The temperature was as cold as expected, but it was the odor that caught Amanda off guard. It was clean, like Clorox and Pine-Sol mixed with apples; nothing like what she expected.

  There had been two calls during her uniform days wherein she was sent out to take a missing persons report and found that person not far from the house. One had been a man who’d been locked in his trunk. The other had been a child who’d gotten trapped inside an old refrigerator on the family’s shed porch. Each time, Amanda had taken one whiff and called for backup. She did not know what happened to the cases. She was at the station filling out reports by the time the bodies were removed.

  “Who is this elegant lady?” Pete Hanson asked, his eyes on Amanda.

  “This is—”

  “Amanda Wagner,” Amanda told him. “I’m Duke Wagner’s daughter.”

  He paused a beat. “So you are,” he finally said. “Duke’s quite a character, isn’t he?”

  Amanda shrugged. She was bruised enough about her father for one day.

  “Pete.” Evelyn put on her cheery voice again, but her fingers snaked into her hair, giving a telltale sign of her discomfort. “Thanks so much for letting us watch. We were in Lucy’s apartment last Monday. We never met her, but it was quite a shock to learn about the suicide.”

  “Lucy?” Pete’s brow furrowed. “Where did you get that?”

  “It was in Butch’s report,” Amanda supplied. “He ID’d her off her license.”

  Pete walked over to a large, cluttered desk underneath the window. There were piles of papers stacked in a hodgepodge, but he somehow found the right one.

  Smoke drifted from his cigarette as he read the preliminary report. The paper was thin. Amanda recognized Butch Bonnie’s scrawl reversed on the back where he’d turned the carbon paper the wrong way.

  “Bonnie. Not the sharpest tack in the box, but at least it wasn’t that jackass Landry.” Pete put the report back on his desk. “In a case like this, the license ID is a last resort. I generally prefer dental records, fingerprints, or a family member coming in before I feel comfortable signing off on the identity.” He explained, “Learned my lesson in Nam. You don’t send someone home in a body bag unless you know the right family’s waiting on the other end.”

  Amanda found relief in his words. For all his eccentricities, the man was at least good at his job.

  “So.” Pete flicked ash off his cigarette. “What’s Kenny been up to? I haven’t seen him around.”

  “This and that,” Evelyn said. She was watching Pete’s every move—the way he wiped his nose with a tissue from his pocket, the bobbing of his cigarette as he talked. Meanwhile, she pulled so hard at her hair that Amanda was certain she was going to yank some out. “He’s working with Bill on a shed at the house today.” She chewed her lip for a few seconds. “We’re having a barbecue later. You should come.”

  Pete smiled at Amanda. “Will you be there?”

  She got a sinking feeling. It was her lot in life to be attracted to the Kenny Mitchells of the world while the Pete Hansons were the only ones who ever bothered to ask her out. “Maybe,” she managed.

  “Excellent.” He rolled over a metal tray. There were scalpels, scissors, a saw.

  Evelyn stared at the instruments. Her face was pale. “You know, maybe I should give Bill a call. We dashed out without telling him when we’d be back.”

  This wasn’t actually the truth. Evelyn had been clear that they weren’t sure what time they would return. Bill, unsurprisingly, had been very accommodating to his beautiful wife.

  “I should go call,” Evelyn repeated. She practically ran out of the room.

  Which left Amanda alone with Pete.

  He was looking at her, but this time she saw the kindness in his eyes. “She’s a great lady, but this is one of the more challenging spectator sports.”

  Amanda swallowed.

  “Would you like me to take you through the process?”

  “I—” She felt her throat tighten. “Why do you have to do an autopsy if it’s a suicide?”

  Pete considered her question before walking across the room. There was a light box mounted on the wall. He flipped the toggle, and the lights flickered on. “The word ‘autopsy’ means, literally, ‘to see for oneself.’ ” He waved her over. “Come, my dear. Contrary to rumor, I don’t bite.”

  Amanda tried to conceal her trepidation as she joined him. The X-ray showed a skull. The holes where the eyes and nose were supposed to go looked eerily empty.

  “Do you see here?” he asked, pointing to the neck on the X-ray. Pieces of vertebrae flexed apart the way a cat’s paw opened when you pressed the pad. “This bone here is called the hyoid. That’s pronounced ‘hi-oid.’ It’s horseshoe shaped, and free-floats at the anterior midline between the chin and thyroid.” He showed on his own neck. “Here.”

  Amanda nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure she grasped the point of his lecture.

  “The wonderful thing about your neck is that you can move it up and down and side to side. The cartilage helps make that possible. The hyoid itself is fairly fascinating. It’s the only jointless bone in your entire body. Supports your tongue. Jiggles when you move it. Now, as I said, it’s right here—” He pointed to his neck again. “So, if someone is choked with a ligature, you’ll generally find bruising around the hyoid. But here”—he moved his fingers up—“is where you’ll find bruising if someone is hanged, above the hyoid. That’s a classic sign of hanging, actually. I’m sure you’ll see it more than once in your career.”

  “You’re saying she tried to hang herself first?”

  “No.” He pointed to the X-ray of the neck. “See this darker line here that bisects the hyoid?” Amanda nodded. “That indicates a fracture, which tells me she was choked, probably with great force.”

  “Why great force?”

  “Because she’s a young woman. Your hyoid starts out as two pieces. The bone doesn’t fully fuse until around the age of thirty. Feel for yourself.”

  She thought he meant for her to touch his neck. Amanda desperately did not want to touch him. Still, she started to reach out.

  Pete smiled, saying, “I believe you have your own neck.”

  “Oh. Right.” Amanda laughed through her discomfort. She gently touched her fingers to her throat. She palpated the area, feeling things shift back and forth. The noise clicked in her ears.

  Pete said, “You can feel there’s a lot of movement in there. So, you’d have to have significant pressure to fracture the hyoid.”

  He motioned her to follow him over to the body. He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the table. Without preamble, he pulled back the sheet, exposing Lucy Bennett’s head and shoulders. “See these bruises here?”

  Amanda felt her eyes blur, but not on purpos
e. She blinked, focusing only on the neck. There were deep purple and red marks around the woman’s throat. They reminded her of Roz Levy. “She was choked.”

  “Correct,” Pete agreed. “Her attacker wrapped his hands around her neck and strangled her. See the fingerprints here?”

  Amanda leaned in for a closer look. Now that he’d put the thought into her head, she could see the individual strands of bruises that formed the fingers of a hand.

  “Carotids,” Pete explained. “Arteries. One on each side of the neck. They deliver oxygenated blood to the brain. Very important. No oxygen, no brain.”

  “Right.” Amanda remembered the lesson from her police academy days. They got to watch the men learn how to do choke holds one morning.

  “Now.” Pete wrapped both his hands loosely around the woman’s neck. “See where my hands are?” Amanda nodded again. “See how pressing her carotid arteries in order to strangle her exerts enough force on the front of the neck to fracture the hyoid?” Again, she nodded. “Which tells me that this woman was strangled into unconsciousness.”

  Amanda looked back at the X-ray. “The fall from the roof wouldn’t break the bone?”

  “You’ll see when I open the neck that it’s highly improbable.”

  Amanda could not suppress the shudder that came.

  “You’re really doing quite well.”

  Amanda ignored the compliment. “Could she live with a broken Hy …”

  “Hyoid.”

  “Right. Could she live with that?”

  “Most certainly. A hyoid fracture or break isn’t necessarily fatal. I saw it often in Nam. The officers were trained in hand-to-hand combat, which of course they loved showing off. You hit a man here—” he chopped at his own neck—“with your elbow or even an open hand, and you can stun him or, with enough force, break the bone.” He cupped his hand to his chin like a tweedy college professor. “You feel a very distinctive sensation when you run your fingers along the neck, as if hundreds of bubbles are bursting under the skin. This comes from the air leaking out of the larynx into the tissue planes. In addition to the obvious panic, there’s tremendous pain, bleeding, bruising.” He smiled. “It’s a nasty little injury. Almost totally incapacitating. They’ll just lay there wheezing high up in their throats, praying for someone to help them.”