At the sink, I debate splashing water on my face, but I’m wearing too much makeup. The black around my eyes will smudge—it will look like I’ve been crying, and I can’t cry today. My eyeliner is extra dense, just the way Ma hates it.
Usually, I avoid mirrors. But today I’m hoping that the sight of my own body will help me place myself in the newly shifted universe. My arms are still doughy. My skin is still sickly white. Pustules burst from every surface, despite Ma’s prescription medication and my monthly trips to the dermatologist. Stop picking, Ma always says, but I like the way my skin peels. I like exposing the red, glistening part underneath.
Russ
Why did you become a cop?
It happened when Russ was a child, he says. An incredible act of violence. He refuses the details. People nod sympathetically, but Russ takes no satisfaction in that head shake—awe, respect, the necessary driblet of pity.
In truth, Russ became a cop because he couldn’t afford college and he had been told about the benefits of carrying a gun.
Russ gets the call at 5:41 a.m.
Hello? he says.
His teeth are fuzzy with sleep’s film.
Russ, the lieutenant says, crackly in the speaker, we’ve got a body.
Russ picks yesterday’s boxer shorts off the floor. Wriggles them on. Usually, he would roll over Ines on the way to the bathroom—he allows himself three seconds of that familiar warmth, hot salt skin beneath her ratty cotton nightshirt. Ines always sleeps through this, so Russ takes some time to hate himself in the shower as he lathers his body with dollar soap.
Today, Russ rolls out of bed on his own side.
We’ve got a body. Russ has never heard these words before. Well—in cop shows. Thriller movies. And of course, he heard these words in his head all through recruitment, through his time at the department’s local academy, and all through training for the Broomsville police force. Back when his job still glimmered with potential, before he knew he’d be spending ninety percent of it watching cars whiz past at five over the speed limit.
By 5:54, Russ is in his squad car, radio stuttering. It’s still night. His hands are numb and the steering wheel is icy leather.
Russ runs his tongue over his teeth. Regrets it. Plaque: his mother used to say it like a swearword, the corners of her lips turned down in disgust. He has forgotten to brush.
6:03 a.m., and Russ is the last to arrive.
The body is at the elementary school. All five patrol cars are parked in the middle of the street like they’ve been washed from the curb in an apocalyptic flood; fire truck and ambulance flash red across the intersection. Russ parks on the corner and his tires squeak, packing down snow. A layer of new slush mars the concrete.
Fletcher, someone says when Russ approaches. It took Russ months to adjust to this form of address. Fletcher was his father. Even after a year on the force, it didn’t register in his memory. Fletcher! someone would call, and Russ would keep typing case reports like no one needed him.
Now, the team is clustered around the playground carousel. They rub their eyes, bleary from the early-morning call: Sergeant Capelli, Lieutenant Gonzalez, Detective Williams, and all five patrol officers. They stand in a tight circle at the center of the black morning, backlit by a film of gray at the horizon where the sun will eventually rise.
Detective Williams ushers Russ forward, hands shoved in his pockets, asking what took him so long, he’s got to see this—it’s pretty bad, they found her like that, go take a look.
The body belongs to a young girl. Fifteen, maybe sixteen years old. She is covered in a thin membrane of fresh snow, and her skin is jaundiced in the glow of CSI’s spotlight. Blood and snow have frozen together on one side of her head (blond, the few untouched pieces of hair by her scalp). Her neck is broken, twisted to the side at a decrepit angle. The girl’s eyes are closed—postmortem, Russ thinks, because the snow has been wiped from her forehead with clumsy hands. She wears a purple skirt and black, sparkly tights, flecks of glitter dotting the nylon.
Later, Russ will see photos of this girl, alive, and she will look like teenagers he used to know. Like the girls he and his school friends thought about when they jerked off in the early afternoon, listening anxiously for the grumble of the garage door. Child hips.
Lucinda Hayes, someone says from behind.
It’s Detective Williams. He puts a hairy hand on Russ’s shoulder and continues: The family reported her missing late last night. Heard something in the yard, parents checked, she wasn’t in her bed. The body matches the description. We’ll need you and the boys to stay here, secure the scene after Medical is done. Then take a walk around the neighborhood. Knock on some doors, ask around.
This your first body?
Russ doesn’t answer. He looks down at the dead girl again. She does not seem at peace. He thinks of Ines and how she sleeps, all those shifting positions; Ines has seven, maybe eight sleeping forms she cycles through each night, indecisive about what will bring her comfort. Nothing, it seems.
The body—Lucinda Hayes—reminds Russ of his wife. She does not know how to position herself. Legs jut at an angle. She looks dissatisfied.
Russ was barely twenty-one when he started his job. He’d spent the three years since high school on his parents’ couch, doing crunches on the carpet and waiting to be older. He attended the occasional criminal-justice class at the community college, and after dinner, his father drank scotch and told Russ about his own time in training. The sergeant pulled out the shadow box, with his old badge and his old gun, and he talked himself ruddy. When Russ’s father retired, the department had rolled out the infamous meat-and-cheese platter, an inexpensive champagne toast.
When it finally came time, Russ passed all his tests at a mediocre level: civil service, written exam, oral board, psych evaluation, fitness test. Then, training, where he spent twenty weeks shadowing an older, more experienced patrol officer.
His assignment was Lee Whitley—the pale, bony officer the rest of the patrol guys whispered about, the weakest member of the Broomsville Police Department. A man who’d been given four whole years to prove himself entirely unremarkable.
Russ doesn’t allow the memories very often. But in these rare moments of reminiscence, Russ wonders if he always knew—somewhere locked and hidden away—what would come of Lee Whitley.
They met outside the lieutenant’s office on Russ’s first day of training. A dreary afternoon, seventeen years ago—1988. Hair was bigger and cigarettes weren’t so bad, and they all wore faded denim with white, foamy sneakers.
Lee was the skinniest thing. His gaze flitted down and to the left when he spoke. Bulky nose, turned-in feet. Hazel eyes with pinprick pupils. His concave chest made a hollow sound when you slapped it in jest.
Okay, Russ said, and that was all he could manage.