It isn’t a question; there is no rise at the end of the sentence.
“I see her all day at work and then on the weekends and sometimes on Wednesday nights for bridge,” I point out. “How can you see that as neglect.”
“It’s just she feels you don’t confide in her like you did. Girl talk, I guess.”
“We never did that,” I say, resting my head on the heel of my hand and looking out the window. “She’s my sister-in-law.”
“Your sister, really. The most family we have.”
“I know. Okay.” It is like saying, Point taken. But it is no commitment. No commitment.
“She doesn’t have many friends, and you were her friend.”
“Let’s get some flowers on the way.” I point to a store.
I can’t tell him—not with what I’ve seen, not even with this feeling of sickly dread vibrating in me.
There are things Bill can’t hear. Things about her. He just can’t. All I can do is find out everything I can, know everything there is to know, all she’s laid her fine white hands on. It is the only way.
Looking back, I see that it was all such happenstance.
Maybe if I hadn’t seen it, I would eventually have let go of the things I had seen and learned in those past few months. If I hadn’t been waiting so long for Alice to show up for our ride home, I might never have picked up the newspaper’s metropolitan section, sitting harmlessly on the coffee table in the teachers’ lounge. And I might so easily have missed the first article, which struck me only as very sad and somehow closer than it might have a year or two ago.
Kansas Honeymooners Find Body in Canyon
LAPD Work to I.D. Jane Doe, Dead Three Days
(HOLLYWOOD)—A pair of newlyweds on vacation from Wichita, Kansas, were in for a grim welcome from the City of Angels Saturday when they discovered the body of a dead woman in Bronson Canyon.
Fred and Lorraine Twitchett, married less than a week ago, were on a morning stroll by the Hollywood Reservoir when they noticed what Mr. Twitchett described as “something satiny” in the brush. Closer inspection revealed it to be a torn green dress. A few yards from the dress, they came upon the corpse of a young woman wrapped in what they described as a silver shawl and naked from the waist down, except for shoes and stockings.
The woman, estimated to be between the ages of 25 and 35, was shot in the face and apparently dealt a blow to the back of the head. About five feet one and 100 pounds, the woman had dark, shoulder-length hair. Detectives will search dental records and fingerprints to determine her identity.
The corpse also had several scars of different sizes on her arms and legs that are believed to have been premortem, some weeks or more old. Several appeared to be cigarette burns, others looked to be caused by use of intravenous needles.
Police urge the public to contact them with any knowledge of a missing woman matching this general description, possibly mistreated by a husband or boyfriend, and with a possible history of narcotics use.
The next day, however, I find myself looking through the newspaper to see if there is any further information. If I hadn’t seen the second article, I don’t even know if I would have thought any more about it—after all, there were thousands of Hollywood girls fitting that forlorn description.
But there it is on page two.
(HOLLYWOOD)—Police have identified the Jane Doe found in Bronson Canyon just above Hollywood two days ago. A fingerprint check identified the body as that of Linda Tattersal, 27 years old, most recently of Rosecourt.
Detectives matched the victim’s fingerprints through police records showing three past arrests for shoplifting, public drunkenness, and solicitation, and one conviction, last February, for resisting arrest at a roadhouse in El Segundo.
Ms. Tattersal was a member of the Screen Actors Guild from June 1953 until four months ago, when her membership was revoked for nonpayment of dues. Her last known address was at Locust Arms Apartments on Rosecourt Boulevard in Rosecourt.
“She was a nice girl,” said a neighbor in the building, who did not wish to be identified. “But she kept bad company.”
There it is, building through paragraph one, through paragraph two, and then, my heart in my throat by the time I reach the name Locust Arms. In a flash, I see the dark tangle of pepper trees swaying out front like a warning.
I spent only ten minutes there, months ago, and yet I suddenly can see myself walking with Alice along its cracked pavement. The door of Lois’s room hanging partly open and her quavery singing voice calling us closer, beckoning us in.
Alice didn’t even blink. Alice had been there many times. Alice, it struck me, had lived in dozens of places like this all her life, and for her, it was like going home.
I spread my hand over the article in the paper. I push my fingertips into the smudgy print. I wonder what I would do. I don’t know anything for certain, after all.
Could Linda be Lois? Surely, Lois wasn’t the only wayward girl lost in the Locust Arms, the only girl who seemed doomed to end up in Bronson Canyon or some other desolate place.
I try calling the Locust Arms, but no one will speak to me.
—Our tenants like to keep to themselves.
Or
—I don’t know who you’re talking about, honey.
Or
—Try Missing Persons, lady.
The next morning, I drive by the courtyard. I can’t get out of the car. I stare at the row of wan doors. I wait for signs of life.
I realize I should be talking to Alice. If the girl in the paper isn’t Lois, Alice could assure me that she’d just seen her friend, just got off the phone with her not the night before. Talked together confidentially just that day about the sad fate of the girl who lived across the courtyard in, say, Number 8.
That afternoon, having promised Bill, I find myself helping Alice bake cakes for the Rotary Club bake sale. As she frantically prepares three cakes for the sale and one for dessert that night, I take a seat at the kitchen table and begin peeling apples.
“Oh, Lora, I feel like we haven’t talked in weeks. And first with the Beauvaises and . . . Well, we both get so caught up with the rest of our lives,” she says. Then, smiling, “You with your big romance—”
She must see me bristle at the characterization because she quickly adds, “—your busy life, and we haven’t made time enough lately. I want to hear everything that’s been going on.”
“How’s Lois?” I ask it. I ask it abruptly, like a shot to the heart.
Alice stops for just a split second, almost unnoticeably, but I see it. She stops for a hairsbreadth of a second in folding the cake batter.
“Oh, you know Lois.”
“I do,” I say, watching. Then I wait, still watching, until she has to say more. She sees I will keep waiting.
“Funny you should ask.” Alice shakes her head like a vaguely disapproving older sister. “I guess she’s gone off on another one of her tears. From what I hear, she’s headed off to San Francisco without so much as a forwarding address.” Her voice, the words she chooses, seem unreal, like dialogue from a movie.
“She told you she was going to San Francisco?”
“No, not even that. A friend of hers told me. I wonder if I should put a little nutmeg in this. Do you think Bill would like that, or would it be too strong.”
“Gee, Alice, I don’t know. So who told you?”
“This girl who used to work at the studio.” She puts the nutmeg back in the spice cabinet unopened. Then turns to me and smiles.
“Oh, how did you happen upon her?”
“We ran into each other at the Apple Pan.”
I look at her. Look at her and can’t figure out a thing.
“With Bill,” she adds. “We went to get a quick sandwich, and she was leaving as we were arriving.”
Just daring me to ask still more.
“What’s her name?”
“I can see you’re a cop’s sister.” She laughs, the sound like an unbearable
silver bell. “Ina. Her name’s Ina. Now do your sister-in-law a favor and hold that pan for me while I pour.”
I hold the cake pan steadily, watching her coolly, watching her watch me, wondering what I know or what I think I know. She empties the batter with great precision, twisting the bowl, shaking it just right to dispense everything evenly. Not a drop is left when she finishes. It is all very simple for her, and for every shake of my hands, hers become steadier still. I have nothing on her.
• • •
The next day, I stop by Bill’s office with a surprise box of gingerbread and the excuse of needing to renew my driver’s license nearby.
“So I heard you ran into an old friend of Alice’s.”
He turns and looks at me.
“She told me you ran into a friend of hers.”
“She’s got old friends everywhere,” Bill says, wiping his fork off with a napkin. I can see him thinking, but I’m not sure about what.
“Hmm. But this one you ran into together.”
“Yeah?”
“Ina. Her name’s Ina.”
“Ina?”
“At the Apple Pan.”
“Right. That’s right. Ina,” he says. I can’t read him—can’t read Bill, whom I always, forever could read. But I think I detect a whiff of confusion.
“So I guess she told you that Lois Slattery took off for San Francisco.”
“I don’t know.” Bill swipes a large forkful into his mouth. “They were talking while I was paying the bill. They went to the ladies’ room together.”
“Did you know Lois had left town?”
“I don’t really keep tabs on Lois Slattery,” he says, shaking his head. “I leave that to her probation officer.”
He hooks an arm around me. “Just between you and me, I’m kind of glad she’s not around, needing Alice to take care of her all the time.”
“Was Alice giving her money?” I blurt out.
“Money? No, I don’t think so. No.” He wipes his hands with his napkin.
His brow furrows ever so slightly, and my heart rises in my chest.
I struggle with the urge to put my arms around him and comfort him as I see cracks appearing all around him, spreading. He does see them spreading, doesn’t he? How can he not?
Two days after seeing the second newspaper article, I determine to carry out an idea that I’ve formulated all night long, lying in bed, unable to sleep, hoping against all reason that Lois will call, her voice sizzling in my ear.
Was it all about Joe Avalon? Was he the center of this ugly story? He was in my brother’s home, maybe in his bed. Edie Beauvais gone. And now, maybe Lois, too. Of course, Alice was the one everyone had in common. Everyone.
Remembering now, at parties, Alice and Edie huddled in a corner, smoking conspiratorially, giggling and flashing glances, legs swinging, rocking as they shared an ottoman, so close they were like one grinning, dangerous thing. Alice in common.
And there was mostly this: a D.A.’s investigator with a wife caught in the middle of something so lurid? However peripheral her role, it wouldn’t matter. In the papers, in City Hall, it wouldn’t matter. Years of hard work shot through.
As I leave my apartment that evening, I put on an old hat with a veil that hangs over my face, cobweb thick. When I arrive at the police station, I remind myself that this is not Bill’s precinct, is a world away. No one will recognize me, I tell myself. Nevertheless, the dove gray veil hangs low and I try not to make eye contact with anyone as I walk into the dingy, sticky-walled station house.
I ask to speak with the detective assigned to the Linda Tattersal case, and the squinty-eyed deputy at the desk gives me a long look.
“That’d be Detective Cudahy, Miss. Can I tell him what it’s about?” His finger is poised on a button on the control board.
“It’s private,” I say quietly, through the veil. “Is he in?”
The deputy looks at me again, then pushes the button, speaking into the microphone: “Cudahy . . . someone to see you.”
I sit on the adjacent bench to wait. It is several minutes before a shiny-faced man with a gritty scrub of red-blond hair walks toward me, sleeves rolled up over his red forearms. He pauses at the station desk for a moment, conferring with the deputy.
“Miss? Come with me,” he says at last, waving his arm.
He lets me pass in front of him, then guides me into a small office that smells of burnt coffee and Lysol.
He leans against the front of the desk as I sit down across from him.
“So . . . ?” he says.
“I’m not sure . . . I hope I’m not wasting your time.”
“Not yet,” he says with a faint smile.
“This Linda Tattersal. From the papers. I may . . . may know her.”
“But you’re not sure,” he says, pushing the door shut with his outstretched leg.
“I know a woman named Lois who lived in Rosecourt.”
“That so?”
“At the Locust Arms.”
“I see,” he says, arms folded across his chest. “You always wear a veil like that in this heat?”
I feel my face turn warm. I try to lift the veil, catching it on my eyelashes.
“Let me help,” he says, reaching out and pushing the veil up. My hand wavers.
“So you know a Lois in Rosecourt, huh?”
“I do. I mean, she did live there, at those apartments. And she fits the physical description.”
“She’s a friend of yours.”
I pause, looking at him. “Listen. All I’m suggesting is that I think it may be her. They may be the same person.”
“How do you know this Lois?”
“I’m sorry, I . . .” I tug at my skirt. “I guess I don’t see how that matters. Don’t you want to find out if it’s the same girl?”
“Why? Did someone want to hurt your friend?” He cocks his head.
“I just . . . if it’s Lois, my Lois, she . . . she had scars.”
“Lots of people have scars, Miss . . . I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Okay, she’d have specific scars. She’d have lots of them. On her arms. Needle marks.”
“That was in the papers, yeah.”
I twist in my seat. “She’d also have them other places.”
“Yeah?”
“She’d have them all kinds of places. Behind her knees. Between her toes. On her neck.” I find myself pointing two fingers to my own neck.
“She’d have them everywhere,” I finish.
His arms drop a little.
“And she’d have a cigarette burn, right here.” I touch my collarbone lightly.
“And dermatitis on her legs. Maybe old burns on her thighs from a fire.”
His arms fall, and he reaches out for a pad of paper and pen.
“And she’d have scar tissue from . . . from several abortions.” This is little more than a guess but a confident one (“I’ve had my insides scooped out clean after four bad turns . . .”).
He meets my eyes.
“Okay, Miss, we’d better start here,” he says as he grabs the phone, barking into the receiver, “Get me the morgue.”
• • •
And it’s this. It’s this:
Could that thing there, that block of graying flesh, be Lois? Could it be a woman at all? The morgue attendant picks pieces of dust and gravel from the place her face had been. He’s trying to get a footprint.
“I think after he does her, he kicks her over on her face with his foot,” the attendant says.
He says this to Detective Cudahy.
I’m standing in the corner.
“I didn’t know you were working on her right now,” says Cudahy. He looks at me.
From the side, from where I’ve backed up, nearly to the far wall, it looks like she has a big flower in her hair, like Dorothy Lamour. A big blossom, dark and blooming.
If I don’t focus, don’t squint, I can pretend it’s a flower and not a hole, a gaping cavity.
&
nbsp; “It’s going to be hard to tell,” he says. “But try your best.”
He reaches his hand out, summoning me over with lowered eyes.
“She was a mess even before,” the attendant notes, tilting his head. “Her skin . . .”
I touch my fingertips to my mouth as I walk over. I wonder if there’s any way at all that I will be able to look long enough to tell.
“There’s no . . .” What I want to say is that there’s no face there. There’s nothing there at all. But I can’t quite get the words out. Instead, I just stare down into the shiny, blackened pit before me.
“You want to focus on the rest of her,” Cudahy says quietly. “Body size, shape. The places you remember scars.”
I look at the stippled body, I look at its pocks and wounds. I look—knowing this will be it for me—at the hands. Lois’s stubby little hands, her doll fingers with her strangely square fingertips. They’re there, right in front of me. They’re little doll hands, and they’re covered with ink, torn at the tips in places, ragged and stringy at the edges but definitely hers. They’re Lois’s hands.
I teeter back slightly on my heels. Cudahy’s hand is pressed on my back, holding me up. My head swims and then I see the welts on her breasts and below her belly. I see them and I remember the Rest E-Z Motel. I remember everything.
“So it’s her, huh?” A voice sounds out.
“It’s her,” another voice answers.
It’s my own.
• • •
“We’ll need to start at the top,” Detective Cudahy says, uncapping his pen and smoothing a rough hand over a pad of lined paper.
“Right.”
“What’s your full name?”
This is when I realize the extent of what I have done. And this is when I find myself not knowing why I feel the need to lie. But I do feel I need to lie.
“Susan. Willa. Morgan,” I say slowly, pulling each part from my class roster. Susan Wiggins, Willa Johnston, and Eleanor Morgan will never know the dark tunnels into which their names have been thrown.
“Age?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Married?”
“No.”
“How did you know the victim?”
“She used to come into a nightclub I go to sometimes.” I am on eerie autopilot, unsure from where I am getting the words coming out of my mouth. My voice even sounds different: vaguely brittle and with a slight lilt.