I stare at her. I can’t believe she didn’t recognize Lindsay back when she’d been looking into the pot. It’s true I probably saw Lindsay more often than Magda did, on account of her affection for my condom jar. So it isn’t any wonder I had no problem recognizing her. Is it?
Or is this the job I’m suited for? Recognizing the faces of dead people who’ve been boiled for a while? What kind of position would this even qualify me for? I mean, there can’t be any demand for someone with a skill like this, except maybe in the few societies that are left that still practice cannibalism. Are there even any of these?
“Yes,” I say, in answer to Magda’s question. “Yes, I’m sorry. But it was Lindsay.”
Magda’s face crumples again. “Oh, no!” she says, with a wail. “Heather, no!”
“Magda,” I say, alarmed by her reaction. Which, really, if you think about it, is way more natural than mine—which had been to flee the area for the warmth of the St. Vincent’s ER. Or Sarah’s, which had been to make bad jokes. “I’m so sorry. But if it’s any consolation, Cooper told me the coroner thinks she was strangled first. I mean, she didn’t die from…from having her head chopped off. That didn’t happen until later.”
Not surprisingly, Magda seems to find little comfort in this piece of information. I really do suck at grief counseling. Maybe I should go into accounting.
“It’s just…” Magda sobs, “it’s just that Lindsay—she was so sweet! She loved it here so much! She always wore her uniform on game days. She never did anything to anybody. She didn’t deserve to die like that, Heather. Not Lindsay.”
“Oh, Magda.” I pat her arm. What else can I do? I notice that each of Magda’s nails has been painted in the New York College school colors of gold and white. A major college basketball fan, Magda never misses a game, if she can help it. “You’re right. Lindsay never did anything to deserve what happened to her.” That we know of.
Oh, see? There it is again! Where does that kind of jaded cynicism even come from? It can’t be because I’m a washed-up former pop star trying to put my life together, only to be told I have to take remedial math.
Can it?
“People are gonna try to make things up.” Magda’s gaze on mine is intense. “You know how people are, Heather. They’re gonna try to say, Well, she shouldn’t have been seeing so many boys, or something like that. But it wasn’t Lindsay’s fault she was so pretty and popular. It wasn’t her fault boys buzzed around her like bees to honey.”
Or flies around horse manure.
God, what is wrong with me? Why am I blaming the victim? I’m sure Sarah, if she were here, could tell me. Is it out of some desire to distance myself from what happened to Lindsay, so I can be, like, Well, that could never happen to me, because the boys aren’t exactly buzzing around me like bees to honey. So no one will ever strangle me and then chop my head off?
Or is there some other reason I can’t help thinking there might be something more to Lindsay’s death than a “random act of violence”? Was she really all sunshine and school spirit? Or was she actually hiding something behind those iridescently green contact lenses?
Magda reaches out and grasps my hand in a grip so tight that it hurts a little. Her eyes—still swimming with tears—are bright as the rhinestones she sometimes has implanted in her nail tips.
“Listen to me, Heather.” Magda’s carefully lined lips tremble. “You’ve got to find the person who did this to her. You’ve got to find him, and bring him to justice.”
I’m on my feet at once. But I can’t go far due to Magda’s death grip on my hand.
“Mags,” I say. “Look, I appreciate your faith in my investigative abilities, but you’ve got to remember, I’m just the assistant hall director….”
“But you’re the only one who believed those other two girls, last semester, were murdered! And you were right! Smart as he is, that Detective Canavan, he couldn’t’ve caught their killer—because he didn’t even think they’d been killed. But you, Heather…you knew. You’ve just got this way with people….”
“Oh,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Yeah. Right.”
“You may not think so, but you do. That’s why you’re so good at it. Because you don’t know you can do it. I’m tellin’ you, Heather, you’re the only one who can catch the person who did this to Lindsay—who can prove she really was a nice girl. I’m begging you to at least try….”
“Magda,” I say. My hand is starting to sweat from her grip on it. “I’m not a cop. I can’t involve myself in their investigation. I promised I wouldn’t….”
What is Magda even thinking? Doesn’t she know that this guy, whoever it is, isn’t shoving people down elevator shafts? He’s strangling them, and chopping their heads off, then hiding their bodies. Hello, that is a lot different. It’s a lot more deadly, somehow.
“That little pom-pom girl has the right to a good and proper rest,” Magda insists. “And she can’t have it until her murderer is found and brought to justice.”
“Magda,” I say uncomfortably. How would a grief counselor respond, I wonder, if one of his patients demanded that he solve the brutal slaying of the individual the patient was grieving over? “I think you’ve been watching a few too many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries.”
Apparently this was not the proper way to respond, since Magda just clutches my hand harder and says, “Will you just think on it, Heather? Just think on it for a while?”
Magda had once told me that, in her youth, she had been a beauty queen, runner-up for Miss Dominican Republic two years in a row. It isn’t actually that hard to believe now, as she gazes up at me with all the intensity of a pair of headlights set on high. Beneath all that makeup, the drawn-on eyebrows, and the six-inch-high hair, there’s a dainty loveliness that the entire contents of the Duane Reade cosmetics aisle couldn’t hide.
I sigh. I’ve always been a sucker for a pretty face. I mean, that’s how I ended up saddled with Lucy, for God’s sake.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, and am relieved when Magda loosens her grip on my hand. “But I’m not promising anything. I mean, Magda…I don’t want to get my head chopped off, either.”