LITMIR.BIZ

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a dead body. It just didn’t happen and the sooner we all got that, the sooner I could get on with my life.

      We stood in the kitchen, or what would be the kitchen, and stared out the back window into the yard where Gray Evans and his squad of officers toiled. It was a close-up view of things we probably shouldn’t have seen.

      A technician nodded to a question asked by Gray’s partner, the tall older man with a permanent look of sorrow on his well-worn face. With a quick nod to Gray, the senior detective leaned forward, pinched the edge of the plastic between two latex covered fingers and slowly tugged the wrapping away from her body.

      Joe and I crossed ourselves, with him saying the Rosary softly and Darlene on my other side murmuring an incantation that sounded like “Now I lay me down to sleep.” As the police officers moved and the technicians snapped pictures, we had a pretty good view of the victim. She was young and had worked hard to disguise any natural beauty that might have been evident. Her hair was black, cut into a scalp-hugging cap of short, shaggy layers.

      Joe whistled softly, cutting off his prayer at the sight of this poor dead thing. She was wearing a black leather halter top, complete with bright chrome studs, cutoff jeans and heavy black boots. Her skin, pasty in death, was covered with a number of intricate tattoos.

      I watched the police officers exchange glances, a couple of them seeming to snicker. I looked back at the dead girl. She looked more like she was sleeping than dead. Her eyes were closed and her body wasn’t contorted into any of the anguished positions I’d expected of a violent death.

      Darlene studied her. “Would you look at her boobs?” she said finally. “You think those are real?”

      “Darlene!” Joe and I both yelled at her. “Have a little respect for the dead,” Joe added.

      “I am respectful,” Darlene said. “I don’t have tits like that. I mean look at them. They have to be a triple D cup. Do you think they’re real?”

      Joe was rolling his eyes, but I looked at the dead woman again. Darlene did have a point. Whatever she’d packed into that halter top, real or otherwise, was a pretty full load.

      Darlene was entranced for another minute, and then she sighed and turned to look at me. “Bet she had back problems.”

      “You think?”

      Darlene, not sensing the sarcasm, nodded wisely. “I am a trained therapist, you know. I should be in a position here to judge.” Then, as if having another thought, she stopped, looked back at the victim and said, “You think she got shot there? I don’t see any blood, but then if the bullet hit a saline bag and it ruptured—”

      “Darlene!” The image was too gruesome to imagine.

      Darlene held up her hands and backed up a step. “Professional curiosity, that’s all. I mean, do they deflate if you hit one? You know, if they’re implants? It would answer a lot of questions if we knew that.”

      “Darlene.” Joe’s tone was ominous. “Enough.”

      I had no idea what kinds of questions would be answered for Darlene if she knew that, and I didn’t want to know, either. Somehow, though, I was sure we hadn’t heard the end of it from her. As soon as Gray Evans hit the doorstep, Darlene would be on him, relentless with her need to know. Let her tell Gray she was a professional therapist and see what that got her. I was betting he’d brush her off like a speck of dust.

      Joe didn’t want to see any more. He started wandering around the kitchen, inspecting the wiring, looking at the pipes that were poking out of the subflooring, waiting for their sink.

      “What’s the plan here?” he asked, indicating the entire room and all the details.

      I sighed and pulled myself away from the window, turning my back on Gray Evans and the dead girl.

      My dream house was a shamble of renovations and un-checked deterioration. What had been advertised as “partially renovated” was actually the equivalent of saying “We’ve stopped the bleeding, now you can try and put the pieces back together.” The major systems, the heat and air, the electrical wiring, had been replaced, but the lathe in some rooms lay naked and exposed, while a few others had new Sheetrock, unprimed and unpainted, waiting like empty canvases.

      I’d moved in anyway. I’d made the offer, closed quickly and hauled my belongings from Philly to New Bern before I could have regrets, before I could change my mind. Did it matter that the kitchen was basically a gutted shell? No. That’s why God made microwaves.

      Did I care that my bedroom was the intended dining room, while the master bedroom was yet to be reclaimed from years of neglect and trash? Absolutely not—it beat living with Ma and Pa and knowing that no matter what I did, it wouldn’t be right by their standards. Parenting to Ma is like redoing an old house; you don’t ever declare it done because there is always room for improvement.

      “The plan is to finish the walls first,” I told Joe. I was attempting to go along with his distraction, but the scene in the backyard tugged at me and I found myself looking over my shoulder. “I can’t afford plaster. Besides, the owners who started the work were using Sheetrock anyway, so that’ll come next, then the floors. I’m going to refinish what I can and try to match up the rest with new wood.”

      Joe nodded. “Wood everywhere then?” he asked, but his eyes followed my gaze into the backyard.

      “Yeah. I want to keep the house as close to original as possible. Maybe not the fixtures so much, maybe reproductions there, but you know, an old-timey feel.”

      “Here he comes,” said Darlene, and no one had to ask who.

      Joe walked to the back door and pulled it open. Darlene looked over at me and smirked, as if this was a social call and not a death scene investigation. I was once again frozen, standing rooted to the middle of my kitchen floor like a big dummy.

      Gray was peeling off his gloves as he stepped onto the enclosed porch, stuffing them in his pockets and talking to Joe in a low voice. When they entered the kitchen, Joe looked at Darlene and said, “Come on.”

      “But I want to—”

      “Come on, Darlene.” Joe wasn’t giving her an option. As she approached the two men, he reached out, grabbed her arm and pulled her out the door. Darlene let out a high-pitched squawk and was gone without further ado. That left me alone with Detective Evans.

      “Wish I had that lemonade now,” he said, his voice soft and easy.

      “I’ve got bottled water,” I said, flying into a fluster of activity, opening cabinet doors, overlooking the cooler on the counter and finally realizing it was right in front of me.

      Gray Evans moved across the room, took the cooler lid from my hand and set it down on the counter. Then he took the dripping water bottle that I handed him and put that down, too. He was inches away from me, so close I could feel the heat that radiated from his body, and smell the scent of musk.

      “You know, it’s all right,” he said. The words brushed against me like a quiet breeze. “It’s all right to be scared and upset. Just try to relax a little bit, okay?”

      I nodded and swallowed hard.

      “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” I said.

      That brought a smile. “Me, either.”

      “You never found a dead body?”

      He shook his head. “Nope. I get called in after the body’s been found. I know what to expect. It’s not a shock when I show up—not like it was for you.”

      I looked away and turned my attention to fitting the lid onto the cooler.

      “I…it was so…she was… When that blade hit her and I looked down and saw her arm, I thought, my God, she was sleeping here and I killed her.”

      Gray was watching me, the water bottle unopened in his hand. “She was probably dead maybe six hours before

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