E is for Evidence

I jerked my hand away, making one of those sounds that has no translation in human speech.

Leaning against the window on the passenger side was the bloated face of Lyda Case, eyes bulging, tongue as fat and round and dark as a parakeet's, protruding slightly beyond puffy darkened lips. A scarf gaily printed with a surfing motif was nearly buried in the swollen flesh of her neck. I pulled the cover back over the windshield and went straight to my phone where I dialed 911 and re-ported the body. My voice sounded low and emotionless, but my hands were shaking badly. The sight of Lyda's face still danced in the air, a vision of death, wed to the smell of putrescence. The dispatcher assured me someone was on the way.

I went back out to the street. I sat on the curb to wait for the cops, guarding Lyda's body like some old loyal pooch. I don't think four minutes had passed before the black-and-white came barreling around the corner. I got up and moved to the street, holding an arm up like a crossing guard.

The two uniformed police who emerged were famil-iar, Pettigrew and Gutierrez, male and female. I knew they'd seen worse than Lyda Case… what beat cop hasn't?… but there was something repellent about the spectacle of this death. It looked like she'd been positioned so as to maximize the horror. The message was for me… mockery and macabre arrogance, an escalation of the terms between this killer and me. I hadn't taken Olive's death personally. I'd felt the loss, but I didn't believe I'd been targeted in any way. My presence there when the bomb went off was purely circumstantial. This was differ-ent. This was aimed at me. Someone knew where I lived. Someone had made very special arrangements to get her here.

The next two hours were filled with police routine, comforting procedures, as formalized as a dance. All of the responsibility belonged to someone else. Lieutenant Do-lan appeared. I answered questions. The car turned out to be another rental, Hertz this time instead of Rent-A-Ruin. I'd first seen it this morning, as nearly as I could remem-ber. No, I'd never seen it before. No, I hadn't seen any strangers in the area. Yes, I knew who she was, but she hadn't been in touch. No, I had no idea when or why she'd come to town except that she'd told Terry Kohler she had information for him. Dolan had waited with us at the bird refuge so he knew she hadn't showed up. She was probably already dead by then, her flesh beginning to bake in the toaster oven of the locked car.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the medical examiner do his preliminary examination of the body. The car doors were hanging open, the neighborhood perfumed by the stink of the corpse. By that time it was fully dark and neighbors were giving the crime scene a wide berth, watching from porches all up and down the street. Some were still in work clothes. Many held handkerchiefs to their faces, filtering the smell. The police personnel work-ing directly with the body wore protective masks. Lights had been set up and the fingerprint technicians were go-ing over every inch of the dark-blue car with white pow-der and brushes. Door handles, windows, dash, steering wheel, steering column, plastic seat covers. Since the rental car was probably cleaned up between uses, there was a good chance that any prints lifted would be signifi-cant. Easy to match, at any rate.

Pettigrew had gone into my apartment to contact the Hertz manager by phone.

Lyda was zipped into a body bag. The gases that had collected under her skin made her look like she'd suddenly gained fifty pounds, and for a moment, grotesquely, I wor-ried she would burst. I got up abruptly and went inside. I poured myself a glass of wine and chugged it down like water. Officer Pettigrew finished his conversation and hung up the phone.

"I'm going in to take a shower if no one objects." I didn't wait for an answer. I grabbed a plastic garbage bag from the kitchen, closed myself into the bathroom and stripped, dropping every article of clothing, including my shoes, into the bag. I tied it shut and set it outside the bathroom door. I showered. I shampooed my hair. When I was done, I wrapped myself in a towel, searching my face in the mirror for reassurance. I couldn't shake the images. Lyda's features seemed to be superimposed on my own, the stench of her competing with the scent of shampoo and soap. Never had my own mortality seemed so immedi-ate. My ego recoiled, incapable of contemplating its own surcease. There's nothing so astonishing or insulting to a soul as the suggestion that a day might come when it would not "be." Thus springs religion with comforts I couldn't accept.

By 9:00 the neighborhood had cleared again. Several prints, including a partial palm, had been lifted from the car, which had then been towed to the impound lot. The Hertz manager had appeared on the scene and the finger-print technician had taken a set of his prints, as well as mine, for comparison. The crime-scene investigators would dust and vacuum the car like a crew of charwomen and then they'd begin the painstaking business of analyz-ing trace evidence.