Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [12]
She thought back then that she probably would never see the sheriff again. How many times in life do you have to see the local authorities?
She took the facial tissue he offered, and wiped her eyes. Her vision came back into focus. She felt a boundless happiness for that moment, and a distant sorrow for this murder victim. She looked at the face. She didn’t recognize him at all. She could see why the mistake had been made. Hut had floppy auburn hair, too, and he had that kind of squarish jaw that reminded her of the Midwest and cornfields for some reason. But that was really it. This corpse in front of her was pale, and the lips and nose were all wrong. “It’s a mistake,” she said. “It’s not him.”
“This is Homicide Detective McGuane, from Manhattan,” the sheriff said too formally.
Julie didn’t glance up at any of them. People make mistakes all the time. Errors in judgment. This is why they need someone to identify bodies. Human error is the norm in life. Of course that’s true. Of course.
“Mrs. Hutchinson, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. Perhaps not right now. Not today. But soon. The sooner the better,” the stranger said.
She couldn’t look up at his face.
She kept watching the dead man. She was aware of the wounds and knew that whoever had killed the man on the table had a knowledge of where to strike—there were knife entry wounds at the arm, the lungs, the neck, and the heart. Lacerations on the shoulders and hands, where there might’ve been a struggle. She had worked in the city, and had seen murder victims before, years ago, when she had been a newly minted RN, and had often worked the graveyard shift in the ER. She’d seen the victims of gang killings then, of domestic homicide, of any number of ways that a human being could be killed.
She had been able, quickly, to separate herself from the dead, even in her mid-twenties, by viewing them as having gone on—as being empty shells. It was as she’d been taught in church, and although she only believed sporadically, it helped to think of death that way, particularly a violent death: their suffering is over. They’re in heaven now. They’re in some afterlife that was somehow better than the raw deal they’d gotten in this world.
“It can’t be him.”
“He’s your husband,” McGuane said. “We have his personal effects. Wallet, keys, and so on. Mrs. Hutchinson. This is Dr. Jeffrey ‘Hut’ Hutchinson. I know this is a tremendous shock.”
She had thought of him so much as Hut that she had nearly forgotten his real first name: Jeff. It’s not him. Why do they keep insisting it’s Hut? It’s not Hut.
She looked at the wounds, at the arms, the belly, and it wasn’t until she saw the small circular tattoo on the dead man’s left shoulder that it hit her too hard. She felt nausea in her stomach, and a distant, shrill ringing in her ears.
Someone wrapped his arms around her, holding her up. Had she been falling? She tugged away from the arms and stumbled toward the wall, pressing her forehead into the coolness of the wall itself, as if she could press herself through it.
And then, she knew that she was going to fall. She was going to fall, and it seemed in slow motion that she would hit the edge of a small metal cabinet on her way down, and then her head would hit the floor.
3
She awoke in a darkened room, the only light coming from beneath a door. The smell of fresh coffee somewhere, beyond the darkness. Gradually, as her eyes focused, she saw more: it was simply an office, probably at the sheriff’s station. She felt achy and nauseated, but gradually, perhaps a half-hour after opening her eyes, she pushed herself up from the cot. Her head ached, and she reached to touch the back of her skull. Someone had already taped some gauze just under her hairline at the nape of her neck. She remembered the fall, and winced with pain when she moved her jaw a little. She heard voices beyond the small room. She stepped out into a too-bright