Code 61 - Donald Harstad [28]
He moved toward the window with me. “The girl raking the leaves?”
There was only one person in the huge, manicured yard.
I nodded. “Yep. That's the one.” It was difficult to tell what gender, really, as she was wearing navy blue sweatpants, a long-sleeved dark blue hooded sweatshirt, fawn-yellow work gloves, red tennis shoes, and a purple baseball cap. A riot of color, as they say.
“Melissa Corey,” he said. “I call her Doom Girl.”
I looked down and to my right, into his unwavering gaze. “You do? Why's that?”
“Oh, she's probably the most depressed of any of us here. One of the really convinced 'life sucks' people. You know? One of those.”
I chuckled. I couldn't help it. “Yeah, I think I do.” I turned back to Borman. “You haven't managed to get her in for the basic questions?”
Of course he hadn't. He'd been distracted by his little tiff with Toby. Under other circumstances, the laboring Doom Girl could have made a clean getaway. My tone told him that, and a little more.
“I was just about to—”
I cut him off before he could reward Toby by saying that he'd been successfully distracted. “I'll talk with her for a sec. Why don't you just finish up with Toby, here.” Besides, it looked so nice out in that yard.
It was. I went out the front door, and around to the south side of the house, to my left. The majority of the leaves that had fallen onto the bright green lawn were intense yellow, translucent when the bright sunlight was behind them. The largest tree was in the middle of a grassy expanse that had to be at least a hundred feet wide, forming a green rectangle around the house. Melissa's wooden rake was making diligent scraping sounds as she methodically herded the leaves into one of a series of yellow piles that showed her progress around the yard. The sunlight was filtering through the leaves, picking up the faint swirls of dust she was stirring up as she worked.
“You're Melissa?” I asked as I approached.
She looked up at me, continuing to rake. She had a pale face, big dark eyes, with purplishred hair sticking out from under her ball cap, and a piercing with a small cube in her left eyebrow. “And you'd be?” A soft voice.
“Deputy Houseman, Sheriff's Department.” I fished out my badge again. She stopped raking, and examined it and the ID card I was displaying. She looked up. Eyes red-rimmed, I noticed. Whether from crying, or from the dust, I couldn't tell.
“So?” She was trying to be blasé, but there was a little hesitation in her tone. She looked to be about twenty-three or twenty-four, I'd guess. I didn't remember seeing her around before.
“What can you tell me about what's happened to Edie?”
“I hear she's dead.” She started to rake again.
“You hear right.”
“Well, it happens to all of us, now, doesn't it?” Her voice was soft, and my hearing is a little old. Throw in the sounds of her rake, and the crinkling noise of the leaves …
“Pardon? I didn't quite get that?”
“It happens to all of us,” she said, louder. “All right?” When she got louder, she enunciated harder, as it were. I could see a little, blue metallic stud in her tongue.
She started raking more rapidly, the only real effect being more dust. The leaves were starting to swirl away from her rake as her speed increased.
“Well,” I said, “we all do die, all right. But most of us don't bleed to death.”
She slapped the rake into the grass. “Fuck!” She took a deep breath, and looked up at me again. “Fuck.”
“You got that right.”
“So what do you want me to say?” She looked like she could hit me with the rake at any second.
“You could tell what you know.”
“You want me to tell you she was my friend? All right, she was my friend. But it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean fuck.” Her voice was quite calm. But she started to cry. “It just doesn't mean fuck at all. It just doesn't,” and she turned her back, shoulders shaking a little.
I just hate that.
I gave her a few seconds, wishing I had something like a Kleenex to offer her, and then said, “Mind coming into the house for a few minutes? I'm afraid I have some routine questions.”
She took a deep