White Oleander - Janet Fitch [193]
There was a pause. “Is there someone who can come with you? We’ll need to see you downtown.”
JOSIE STOOD on the sidewalk holding herself together with both arms, as if her body would spill out onto the concrete if she let go, watching for Pen’s red Impala. Her friend slammed to a stop in front of the house, her purple hair a flag in that old convertible, threw open the passenger door. “I got here as fast as I could. Oh, Josie, don’t think anything yet. It could be anyone.”
She was still closing the door as Pen peeled out. It was deep rush hour, they skipped the freeway and took Riverside Drive, the back way along the river and past the Brewery where she’d just modeled for Tim Delauney the week before last. Don’t think anything. It could be anyone. She hoped it fucking was. Anyone else.
Macy to Mission, the foot of the concrete mountain that was LA County General. The coroner’s office wasn’t up at the hos-pital, it was down at the bottom, with the trucks and light industrial, a boxy two-story government building, the lettering painted right on the side of the building, LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CORONER, MEDICAL EXAMINER, FORENSIC LABORATORIES, PUBLIC SERVICES.
Pen left the Impala parked sideways across two spaces and they dashed into the lobby, all brown marble and beige linoleum and patched acoustic ceiling, like the lobby in a building full of cheap dentists. At the counter, a heavy black woman looked them up and down, Pen’s purple hair and black lipstick, Josie’s punked-out bleach job, her yellow fake fur. Like they were a sideshow act.
“I got a call,” Josie said.
The woman just stared.
“From some Inspectorman —,” Pen said.
“Brooks —,” Josie said.
“Across the breezeway.” The woman pointed to the twin building out the smudged glass doors. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
They waited on cloth chairs in a smaller lobby, Josie ’s hands crammed deep into the pockets of her coat, her whole being reduced to a pinpoint of fear, like the nucleus of an atom about to be split and blow up the world. She had no mind at all, just the tremor in her right foot, that would not stop shaking.
“You’re okay,” Pen said, stroking her hair, her neck. “You’re breathing, you’re okay. What’s taking this fucking creep so long anyway?” She got up, shook the locked knob, kicked the metal door with her Doc Marten, sat back down next to Josie.
“Light me a ciggie,” Josie said, her hands in tight balls in her pockets. She could feel every hair follicle in her scalp.
Pen dug around in Josie ’s schoolbag purse, found her cigarettes, Gauloises Bleues, lit her one, put it between her lips. Josie forced smoke into her lungs, the cigarette helping her remember how to breathe, she removed a hand from her pocket to take it on exhaling. Her mind was a fist, no thought would enter, except no, no no. It was the longest five minutes in history.
“You’re going to be okay, you’re going to get through,” Pen said, lighting one of her own Camel straights, and their smoke filled the small waiting room. Outside the winter sky turned to rose. If I finish this cigarette before the guy comes, it won’t be Michael.
“I hate places like this,” Pen said. “I’d like to blow this place up.”
They watched the heavy door into the hall, a little caged window. Before she was even halfway done with her cigarette, a black man in a blue blazer opened the door and stepped into the lobby. “Miss Tyrell?”
Josie stood up.
“Can you come with me? Both of you.”
They walked down the hall, the fluorescent light bathing them in its weird green glow. Inspector Brooks’s office was windowless, small, vomiting books, papers, folders, the walls covered with charts and a list on a blackboard, initials and magnets. They sat in two metal chairs, and he took a seat at his desk. “Are you all right, Miss Tyrell?” he asked.
“No, she’s