Andy gave out a sigh deep enough to raise his shoulders, then he turned and looked toward the cruiser. He was ready now.
A.J. pushed out of the car and started across the bridge. Andy stepped forward under the light. He had some color back, but his forehead was still beaded with sweat or rain. He lowered his eyes, then forced himself to look back up.
“How ya feeling?” A.J. asked.
When Andy found his voice, it was still thick with the scorch of vomit. “Don’t tell the guys I lost my dinner, okay?”
“Not a problem,” A.J. said.
Andy’s eyes drifted reluctantly back to the edge of the railing, then down toward the water, but he didn’t move from his spot. He looked lost as to how he should behave or where he should keep his eyes. A.J. stepped forward and placed a hand on the wet concrete railing. He looked down.
The inky water slithered alongside a bank of thick brush, rounded rocks, and cypress trees. One of the trees had been shattered a lifetime ago by a powerful bolt of lightning. In the dim light, the branches looked burnt.
That’s where she lay. In the arms of the dead tree.
Her name was Tammy.
They had gotten the missing person’s report almost two weeks ago, just another thirteen-year-old girl with a juvenile record, a know-it-all attitude, and a boyfriend who thought it was sexy to cover her neck in hickeys.
A.J. and Andy had been called to take the initial report, and he had let Andy take the lead. They had stood in the dirty, cramped living room, Andy’s pen poised over his notebook. The mother had been unable to remember much about her daughter, except that maybe recently she had dyed her hair red, but she wasn’t sure if it was still red now, or some other color. She didn’t know the last names of any of her daughter’s friends. She wasn’t even sure if her daughter had attended school that day. Sometimes she skipped, the mother said.
Andy had stood there, looking down at an almost blank page in his notebook. Later, on the way to the cruiser, Andy had paused and looked back at the house.
It’s like she was lost long before she was lost, Andy had said.
Then, the mother had come to the porch, calling to them, offering one final recollection.
Hey, officers... she had this pink T-shirt she loved, something with rhinestones on the front that said Too Hot to Handle. She’s probably wearing that.
A.J. turned on his flashlight and shined it down into the black branches. In the thin beam of white light, the pink T-shirt looked more like a rag, the fabric eaten away by eleven days of cold, rushing water. The ribbed collar hung loose around her black, decaying neck.
For a second, he thought he could see the glint of one of the rhinestones, but he knew he must be wrong. The stones would be moldy now, their shine lost in the muddy water, if they were even still there.
The T-shirt was the only piece of clothing on her body.
He looked back at Andy.
Andy had finally come to the edge and was staring down at her, the look on his face a mix of morbid curiosity and horror.
“Not going to get sick on me again, are you?” A.J. asked.
“No, sir,” Andy said, drawing a deep breath. “It’s a little easier the third and fourth time.”
A.J. clicked off the flashlight. “It’s never easier.”
They both turned away from the body and leaned their hips against the railing. In the distance, A.J. could hear a siren, and knew in a few minutes the road would be lit with half a dozen sets of headlights.
“If it doesn’t get easier,” Andy said, “how does anyone do this for twenty-five years?”
“You just find ways,” A.J. said. “And you find things. Like finding this girl. If you hadn’t needed to take a leak, we wouldn’t have found her. But you did need to take a leak and we did find her. And now she can go home. And that’s what you think about.”
“So finding her is a good thing?” Andy asked.
“Yeah.”
“Will we get any recognition for finding her?”
“Nope.”
Andy thought about that for a minute, then took the flashlight from A.J.’s hand. He shined it back down into the tree limbs, holding it on the pink shirt for a long time. From the brush and trees below, the chirr of crickets was starting up and they both stood there for a moment, listening.
“I don’t ever want to forget this moment,” Andy said.
“You won’t.”
Andy set the flashlight down, pointing it so the beam ran along the top of the half-wall. He drew a pocketknife from his pants and flipped it open.
“What are you doing?” A.J. asked.
Andy bent over the railing and started carving in the concrete. A.J. glanced down the road for the cruisers, then back at Andy. Andy’s knife was scraping furiously against the hard surface.
The first headlights were coming down the road when Andy brushed away the gray dust and put his knife in his pocket. Then he walked off to meet the arriving cruiser.
A.J. picked up the flashlight and shined it down on Andy’s scratchings to see what he had written.
I FOUND TAMMY. BADGE #221.
A.J. turned to look at Andy as he walked down the bridge toward the flashing blue lights. Despite the mud and rain that spattered his sleeves and trousers, his step was sure and his shoulders were straight.
A.J. watched him for a moment, then looked back to the carving. After a moment, he pulled out his own pocketknife and worked the rusty blade open.
Under Andy’s inscription, he wrote one of his own.