by Anne McAneny
I flipped to the centerfold and nearly spit out my tea. No wonder Jack hadn’t been that upset by the two photos I’d shown him. He’d taken it to a new level of perversion by dedicating the center spread to a close-up of my mom’s body as EMTs crowded over her, followed by detailed shots showing a Texas-shaped mustard stain on her uniform; her scuffed, thick-soled, white shoes; her shimmering blond hair; and, of course, the baby bump with the protective, ringless left hand flung across it. It was Jack’s first true close-up, and he would never have let a book go public without it, even if it was in utero and shrouded by a dirty uniform.
Whoever had taken the police photos must have arrived at the same time as the medics. They’d managed to get a more distant shot that showed a bare-chested Grandpa Barton still hovering over his daughter. He looked so vulnerable, so wrecked, it broke my heart. He’d been strong all his life, callous even, and maybe too direct, but always full of good cheer—rarely with a tear in his eye or a regret in his heart. But here he was, cast upon the world with his body and soul exposed, swaddled in so much grief that he appeared shattered from the inside out. His body pointed in four directions as emotions pulled at him from every corner. His swollen eyes stared at the approaching ambulance technician. His right hand held his own shirt against his daughter’s bleeding head. His left pointed accusingly toward the kitchen, undoubtedly at the prone man still holding the smoking gun, but the main of Grandpa’s body draped his daughter, shielding her from harm while the futility of that effort glared back at him through a blood-soaked rag.
When my own tears crashed down on the page, I forced myself to buck up. After all, this was what Jack wanted: sympathy that would be converted into votes. Part of me hoped his strategy would backfire, that people would be so horrified at his heartless manipulations that they’d give their vote to the person who didn’t choose tragedy as a tool. But I knew most readers would run to the election office blubbering, asking to cast their vote early.
Despite my disgust, something bigger bothered me. This wasn’t our first close-up. I possessed that photo. I lurched from my reclined position, letting my tea grow cold. From my bag, I extracted the mailed photos and placed them side by side with the book. I tried to detect which details were different, to see if anything would provide a clue about the Haiku Killer. None of the inanimate objects in the room had been touched; it was only Bridget Perkins who was different—and she was damn near inanimate herself. It stirred me again to realize that Jack and I were fully alive in there, the only ones unaware of the preceding moment’s impact. Heck, we might have been pawing at each other like hungry kittens, vying for nutrition or more space, or maybe even to get out and be. Who knew?
I gazed at the picture in the book, then at the picture taken by someone who’d made a serious clusterfuck of my decades of misdirected anger. Something bothered me, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. As a crime scene photographer, I couldn’t always look for the best angle or lighting. Rather, I needed facts. Cold, hard, brutal, and undistorted. I needed to produce when the coroner asked to see the body’s position in relation to the blood spatter. I needed to capture the bruises when they were fresh, the blood before it thickened, and every finger and toe articulation. If I missed the shot that showed where the knife lay in relation to an arm, or how the head took a chunk out of the coffee table on its way to the floor, I’d be out of a job. But when I looked at these photos, I felt blind, incompetent. Grandpa Barton hadn’t changed a thing in that room for years, except to put in new flooring and a huge carpet. And here I was, with the unique advantage of unlimited playtime in an actual crime scene, unable to figure out what was calling to me. It felt like the pinprick of a misdirected eyebrow hair, where sensation could be isolated to a single follicle because it pointed one way its entire existence and now it didn’t.
Maybe Sophie Andricola was right: I was too close to the situation to see anything clearly.
I flipped through the rest of the book, disgusted by my voraciousness. I was as bad as the readers of the celebrity rags who cackled when they saw the sunbathing celebrity who had gained five pounds at age forty. Fat Fat Forty, No Longer Sporty. They forgot that the woman in the photo read the papers, too, just like they forgot there was a little girl in that womb who didn’t want her picture splashed on a tabloid cover when her brother’s book became a bestseller. The Harried Haiku Twins—Where Are They Now?
The aggressive knock on the door startled me, but then I got pissed. Tenants weren’t supposed to let salesmen into the building, and salesmen weren’t supposed to claim they didn’t see the No Soliciting signs. I yanked the door open and my fed-up expression immediately transformed into one of surprise.
Hump Banfield was smiling and waving at me from his wheelchair.
CHAPTER 20
“Surprise!” Hump said, his smile growing clown-like.
I couldn’t have been more surprised if it had been Grady McLemore with a Father of the Year pin on his lapel.
“Hump, what are you doing here? I was—”
“The Aberdeen has that shuttle service and I thought, since it was getting close to five and I hadn’t heard from you, I’d save you the trip.”
“How did you know where I lived?”
“My niece knows where you live.”
The hell she does. But then I remembered two occasions when reporters had staked out my apartment for comments. The first, when it looked like Grady McLemore might get of prison five years ago, and again when Jack was hired by the attorney general.
“I said I’d come by at five thirty, not call.”
“I know, I know. Hope you don’t mind.”
He rolled in, forcing me to the side, then pivoted his chair around and closed the door. When he also turned the deadbolt, a pang of alarm went off in my brain, but I forced it down to a dull buzz in the back of my head. There were plenty of ways out of my fourth-floor apartment: the fire escape, the small window in the bathroom beneath the neighbor’s balcony, the bedroom window. I really wasn’t a big fan of enclosed rooms with strangers—unless they were already dead.
“Lovely place, Janie. Lovely. Very practical. Not as much as you want, but as much as you need, plus a dash more to make it home. Gosh, if all Americans lived this way, the landfills would go out of business.”
I really didn’t give a damn about the landfills as I tried to wrap my mind around this visit. For a moment, my thoughts jumped to the gun I kept loaded and ready—but I quickly followed it with the embarrassment of an imagined headline: Haiku Twin Slays Wheelchair Veteran. Definitely wouldn’t play well with the public.
“Listen, Hump, I wasn’t expecting—”
“Told the shuttle driver to pick me up in an hour. Not that I’d intrude on you for a full hour. I’ll wait on the street, maybe get a few people to throw coins at my chair.” He chortled. “People do that, you know. They literally throw money at chairs! It’s a wonder there aren’t more scams.”
“I think there are,” I said, feeling more discombobulated with each animated sentence he delivered.
“I brought the war photos,” he said. “I’ve just been so excited since we met.”
I flicked on a lamp, realizing how dim the room had gotten as the sun sank behind some buildings.
“Isn’t that delightful?” Hump said in response to the lamplight. “I remember the long nights spent in the trenches in my early military years. We would have been thankful for a candle back then. The only light came from the landmines we didn’t see in time; you’d be amazed how brightly a body can burn.”
The comparison jarred me. Maybe it was the way he conveyed it like a fond reminiscence. Hump had wheeled himself to a snug spot between the couch and chair, as if it were his usual spot.
“You have your photos, then?” I said, swallowing away my unfounded anxiety.
“Here they are.” He handed me an envelope much like the one I’d received in the mail.
“I’m eager to see your reaction.”
The burden of having to react to his photos weighed on me. I was good at a lot of things, but being phony wasn’t one of them, and I didn’t have the energy to feign interest in his predictable war-buddy scenes. I pulled them out.
No feigning needed. These images weren’t predictable. In fact, they were disturbing. I glanced at Hump and then at the locked door. The hairs on my arms stood up and my heart raced. Here I was like an idiot, locked in my apartment with a man I barely knew, and no one within a two-mile radius who even knew my name. My cop buddies would skin me alive for this genius move. Then, feeling Hump’s eyes on me, I realized how he must feel every day—confined, limited, trapped. The thought calmed me. These were just photos, no worse than the ones I took on the job, and he was a lonely old man. Besides, I could surely take a guy in a wheelchair. Look at his feet, for God’s sake, turned in toward each other—probably hadn’t felt solid ground in years.
The image in my hand stared back at me with empty eyes. It showed a man, midthirties, in a hospital bed, pale as a corpse—because he was, in fact, dead. His slightly open, dehydrated lips and gaunt face seemed to form a sound—eeeeh—like the screech of an unwilling door forced open by the hand of death.
“That’s my friend,” Hump explained, inching closer and tapping the photo. “Harry West. Begged me to capture his soul leaving his body. Said it would be fifteen minutes after he died because he’d be bidding farewell to the memories in his heart and brain. So I sat with him all night. He passed at 2:15 a.m. and I took the picture at 2:30. Injured by a grenade, you see.”
“I don’t mean to be forward, Hump, but in this photo, it looks like he’s been dead for more than fifteen minutes. You took this shot in profile and you can see all the blood pooled at the base of his neck. It’s called livor mortis.” In death, blood no longer enjoyed the thrusting pump of a heart to help it defy gravity. It settled to the bottom like everything else. I’d seen one guy lying facedown for four days in an alley during a particularly hot August. Between decomp and livor, we couldn’t even tell if he was black or white.
“Oh, gosh, Janie, I forgot how much you deal with this stuff every day. Well, you know how I am.”
No, I didn’t. Hump spoke as if we shared a long-established bond rather than a one-minute roll across a parking lot. I found it disconcerting and the room seemed to grow smaller. The smells of an old man in such close quarters suddenly became more concentrated—his old-fashioned aftershave, the bad breath from a rotting tooth he’d tried to cover with minty toothpaste, the bits of mud caked in his wheels that provided a gritty tone to the palette of odors. It all combined to make the oxygen in the room more difficult to access.
“Your friend here . . .” I said, not sure where I was going with the words.
Hump touched my arm. His hand was cold. “Just between you and me, Janie—I’ve never told anyone this—but I may have drifted off for a few hours while waiting for Harry to pass. I’m afraid I broke my promise.” His small voice fell to a shameful whisper. “His soul slipped out while I was snoring at his side.” Hump removed his hand, held up a crooked finger and shook it. “In my defense, I’d been feeling ill, and the air in that hospital was hot and thick. Could have lulled a warlock to sleep.”
I gazed at him sympathetically. He’d been carrying that around for a long time—the sin of sleep while a friend died alone. Was I his sole confessor?
“I think Harry would have understood, Hump.”
“Thank you, Janie. That means a lot.”
“Still, do you think this is an appropriate picture to share with your grandnephews?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, perking up. “Right now, they think war is aiming a gun with a plastic controller and watching blood spurt out like a fountain. I want to show them reality, make an impact. Don’t you think that’s noble?”
Noble, sure—or warped. I flipped through more photos: a damaged tank with a streak of blood on its side, four smiling men with missing limbs, a close-up of a foot with four toes and an inelegant scar, a portrait of a woman in uniform with the reality of the world weighing on her narrow shoulders. The dreariness continued. I couldn’t. My surroundings grew tighter. There wasn’t even a back door to escape through if the rear windows were jammed shut. And what if the fire escape was blocked or corroded?
My inner voice, the one I so often stifled when it warned me of danger, had gone from nibbling at my core to chomping at my brain. Weighing my options, I decided that scanning the photos and wheeling him out of my life for good was the way to go. Hell, I’d even throw dollar bills at him.
“Let me grab my scanner so you can get on your way.”
“That would be lovely,” he said, “absolutely lovely. And . . . might I trouble you for a cup of tea?”
I looked at him like he’d asked for roasted duck, then forced myself to get a grip. It was an old man who wanted tea. I should be embarrassed for not having offered.
Ah, screw it. I’d make his tea lukewarm, let him gulp it down, and shoo him out.
“Sure.” I shoved a chipped mug of water into the microwave and set it thirty seconds less than usual, then headed to my bedroom to get the scanner and flash drive. By the time I returned, Hump’s chair was facing away from me and his head was sunk down. For God’s sake, please tell me he’s not dead.
“Hump, you okay?”
I went rigid when he didn’t answer. I was fine with stiffs, but not in my apartment, and not ones I’d just been chatting with. I dropped my things on the coffee table and rushed toward him just as he whistled in appreciation. “My goodness, Janie, is this the house where you grew up?”
Relief and agitation washed over me. “What are you looking at?”
He spun his chair around in a remarkably deft movement, Jack’s book on his lap.
“Oh, jeez, Hump, let’s put that away. It’s my brother’s debut as an author, of sorts.”
“You’ve clearly cracked it open,” he said, a hint of accusation edging his voice. “It didn’t make that new-book creak, the one that quality hardcovers make when you spread the pages for the first time, as the smell of the virginal paper wafts toward the reader.”
His tone gave me chills. Did he think I’d raped the book—or denied him the pleasure?
“Looks like you spent a lot of time on this page,” he said, tapping it with his pudgy finger.
So now he was a literary forensics expert? The page showed multiple photos of my mother with her parents, mostly on her birthday or holidays. In the largest image, she wore a pretty lace dress and a salmon-colored bow, the same color as the paint in her childhood room. That page had bothered me because it seemed to hold a clue I couldn’t decode.
“I can tell,” Hump continued, “because the book wants to go there, offering itself to you. Was there something unique—or disturbing—about this page, Janie? Or had you just not seen many photos of your mother when she was young?”
I wanted to slap him and say, It’s disturbing because my mother was killed in that room, dumbass, but I went with, “I don’t know. The whole book is tasteless and manipulative.”
“Ah, how Machiavellian,” Hump mused. “Well, your brother is a politician. It’s in his blood, one might say.”
“Or one might not.”
“Problem accepting a politician as your father, Janie?”
“Look, Hump, I’m trying to be nice here, but my hang-ups are my own.”
“You know, I learned a lot from others in the chair. Repression has its merits, but denial, no. It’s one thing to accept a reality, make it small, and stick it in a corner, tend to its needs when its cries become relentless. But denial? That hoodwinks your mind into believing that something you know happened didn’t happen. Look at motion sickness. Your eyes tell your brain you’re moving, but your body tells your brain it’s sitting still. It doesn’t compute. Imagine what happens to
the poor brain when its master processes two opposing facts as true. This happened; this didn’t happen.”
“That’s all well and good, Hump, but if you don’t mind, my family dynamics are—”
He put up a hand to stop me. Almost immediately, his eyes swelled and the telltale tensing of the neck followed. “I’m sorry, Janie, so sorry. Lifelong tendency of mine.” His voice caught. “Big buttinsky, my parents called me. Please forgive me. You’ve been nothing but kind, and I’ve taken advantage. I get too . . . enthusiastic with new friends. It’s a phenomenon that as we prepare for the solo journey to meet our maker, life readies us by making us more alone with each passing year.” He pressed his finger to his lips. “I guess I’m not quite ready yet.”
Oh for shit’s sake, why didn’t I just kick a puppy? I went to the microwave and gave his tea an extra thirty seconds. I’d offered this deed in the first place to make up for my lack of time with Grandpa. The least I could do was see it through pleasantly. I set down his mug and even brought along some old gingersnaps, hoping he’d dip them so he wouldn’t realize they were stale.
Having returned my brother’s book to the coffee table, Hump accepted the tea and immediately dunked a cookie.
“Sorry I was short, Hump.”
“You had every right. We’ll just get those photos scanned and I’ll skedaddle.”
“By the way,” I said, “that was the house I grew up in. It’s kind of painful to see those photos because the house stayed like that most of the years I lived in it. Right down to the ugly papier-mâché gargoyle my grandmother made in an art class.”
“And where is it now? Still there?”
“Probably not. Grandpa overhauled the place about ten years ago to impress a lady friend.”