The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [1]
This stillness was why Joe was here.
At the far end of the row of windows, a shadow appeared in a narrow doorway.
“Joe?”
Gunther nodded. “Hey, Doug. Good to see you.” Watching where he placed his feet, he approached his state police counterpart, Doug Matthews, the detective assigned to this region. Younger by several years, but a veteran like Joe, Matthews was experienced, low-key, and easygoing. Unlike many cops, he kept his opinions to himself, did the job, and maintained a low profile. To Joe, in a state with only a thousand full-time officers—an oversize family compared with some places—such self-effacement was highly valued.
Joe stuck his hand out as he drew near. “How’ve you been?”
“Pretty good,” Doug replied, accepting the handshake with a smile, his eyes remaining watchful. “Better than some. Come on in. I’ll introduce you.”
They entered a much smaller room, tacked onto the building later in life and on the cheap. It didn’t have the bearing of its mother ship—the windows were cramped and few, the plywood floor covered with thin wall-to-wall carpeting. Low-ceilinged and dim, it was paneled in fake oak, chipped and cracked.
But the furniture, also battered and old, was of the same ilk as its brethren, supplying a comforting familiarity. The dresser, the heavy desk, and the solid four-poster bed were of dark hardwood, and the dents and scars appearing on them spoke not of neglect but of simple domestic history, the passage of generations.
This feeling of simmering life was echoed by the postcards and photographs adorning the walls and horizontal surfaces. Some inexpensively framed, others merely attached by tape or thumbtack, these pictures displayed vacation spots or loved ones, sun-drenched or laughing, and gave to the room, along with its furnishings, a warmth and intimacy it lacked utterly in its bare bones.
Lying across the broad bed, as if she’d been sitting on its edge in a moment of contemplation before falling back in repose, was an attractive dead woman.
Matthews kept to his word about the promised formalities. “Joe Gunther,” he said, “Michelle Fisher.”
Joe nodded silently in her direction, and Matthews, knowing the older man’s habits, kept quiet, letting him get his bearings.
Dead bodies don’t usually present themselves as they’re portrayed in the movies or on TV. In the older shows, they look like live actors with their eyes shut; in the modern, forensically sensitive dramas, it’s just the opposite—corpses are covered with enough wounds or artificial pallor to make Frankenstein swoon.
The truth is more elusive. And more poignant. In his decades as a police officer, Joe had gazed upon hundreds of bodies—the young, the old, the frail, and the strong. What he’d discovered, blandly enough, was that the only trait they shared was stillness. They displayed all the variety that they had in life, but in none of the same ways. In silent pantomime of their former selves, instead of quiet or talkative, gloomy or upbeat, they were now mottled or ghostly white, bloated or emaciated, transfixed into grimace or peaceful as if sleeping. Nevertheless, for those willing to watch and study, the dead, as if trying to slip free of their muted condition, still seemed capable of a kind of frozen, extraordinarily subtle form of sign language.
That limited communication worked both ways. Everyone Joe knew, including himself, began their interviews with the deceased by simply staring at them searchingly, awaiting a signal. He asked himself sometimes how many of the dead might have struggled fruitlessly to be heard in life, only to be scrutinized too late by total strangers anxious to see or hear even the slightest twitch or murmur.
So it was that Joe now watched Michelle Fisher, wondering who she’d been and what she might be able to tell him.
In fact, she was one of the rare ones who did look merely asleep, if unnaturally pale. She was dressed in a short, thin robe, untied at the middle and draped open to reveal her underwear. Her feet weren’t quite touching