White Oleander - Janet Fitch [194]
Josie lifted a shaking hand to her lips, toked on her cigarette. If he didn’t like her smoking, he didn’t say anything.
“When was the last time you saw your boyfriend, Miss Tyrell?”
She saw the standing ashtray, flicked ash into it, her upper lip stiff and bowed and frozen in its downturned U. “Five days ago. Wednesday.”
“And when did you realize he was missing?”
Josie just stared at the lit tip of her cigarette. How long was he missing? She hadn’t known he was missing at all. She had just let him go. “I didn’t. I still don’t.”
The man pursed his full lips together and pulled out some white cardboard. “I’m going to have you look at some photographs,” Inspector Brooks said. “I want to warn you, they’re pretty disturbing. But it’s important to know, for everyone.”
White squares in his hands, the backs of two photographs, as he went on talking, talking, explaining about what she would see, the bullet entered the mouth and exited the back of the head, effect of the gunshot wound . . . She nodded, not listening. She wanted to rip those pictures out of his hands. Finally he laid them in front of her on the metal desk.
A face. Black eyes, like they’d been in a terrible fight. Swollen closed, though they weren’t completely closed, God, they should have closed the eyes. Whoever’s eyes they were. Not his. It couldn’t be. She could only see a little of the hair, there was a sheet all around the head, and those black eyes, a slight rim of blood around the nostrils, the mouth, no, she didn’t recognize him, it wasn’t Michael, and yet, how could she be sure? How could she know? He was alive the last time she saw him. “I can’t tell. I just don’t know,” she whispered.
The inspector gathered his Polaroids and put them aside with a folder, John Doe. “Does he have living parents?” Inspector Brooks asked.
“His father’s Calvin Faraday, the writer. He lives in New York.” Inspector Brooks wrote it on a legal pad, with the case number at the top, Michael’s name, and notes from their phone call. “His mother is Meredith Loewy.” She spelled it for him. “She’s in South America. On tour.”
“Well, first let’s see if it’s him.” He dialed his pea green phone. “Yes, we’re ready,” he said into the receiver, and stood up. Josie crushed her cigarette in the ashtray and they stood and walked back across the breezeway. She clung to Pen, using her like a Seeing Eye dog, all she could see was the image from the Polaroid, the black eyes, she hadn’t even thought to look for the little scar on his upper lip. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Michael was alive. He was up at his mother’s house, painting in the room off his childhood bedroom. She pictured him painting there in all the detail she could muster. The oaks outside the windows. The brightness of the winter sun. How they would laugh about this later. Imagine, for a split second I thought you were dead. If only she could see it clearly enough, it would be true.
Pen never let go of her hand, let her crush the hell out of it. She could smell the leather of Pen’s jacket.
“Whatever this is, we ’ll get you the fuck through it,” Pen said. “You hear me?”
Inspector Brooks came across from the other building and let himself through a doorway in the brown marble, held it for them. They walked down a dirty hall, pinkish beige, the doors all had black kickmarks at the bottom. They came to an elevator, Inspector Brooks held it for them, got in and turned a key in the operating panel, the door shut and the elevator descended. Josie stared down at the streaky linoleum. Please God. Let this not be happening.
The doors opened, and right there, against the gray wall, against a busted water fountain, on a gurney, lay a human form under a white sheet. She held Pen’s arm, or was Pen holding hers, the smell was different from anything she had ever smelled before, dirty, like old meat, and Inspector Brooks was saying, “He’s not going to look like they do in the funeral home, they’ve cleaned him up some but he