He’d have to interview her parents eventually, break the bad news to them about the loss of their daughter. He always hated that part of the job. He’d ask about her dating habits, find out if they knew of any jealous or possessive boyfriends. Boys, men, could be like that. He remembered not letting his daughter, whatever her name was, date until she was seventeen. At least not the kind of dating that amounted to anything serious. There had been plenty of arguments on that subject. He recalled fighting with both his daughter and his wife over it. Or had it been over something else? Did he and Brenda ever really fight over anything? His daughter and he had. Hadn’t they? No, their relationship had been good. She had married and done all right, hadn’t she? He stood there on the grass and tried to recall if she had ever married at all.
“Lieutenant, can you tell me what precinct you’re with?” One of the detectives took him by the arm and pulled him away from the body. The edge of the sheet fluttered from his fingers and settled back over the girl. The ME probably wanted to take a look at her. Collect whatever evidence he could before taking her down to the morgue. He should tell them about the thread and the cigar smell he’d noticed.
“Can I see your badge again?” the other detective asked him.
He handed his badge over, scanning the area to see if Darby had arrived yet. Hadn’t one of the patrolmen called Darby? He’d given them the order to ring his partner, hadn’t he? He looked around for Brenda – no, not his wife, not her this time, for his partner. He looked at the faces of the milling crowd. People shifted on the street, craning to get a look, whispering to one another and pointing up the hill. Something caught his attention. Was it Darby? He searched the faces of the crowd more earnestly now. No, it was something else. Not Darby. Darby was back at the house, or at the station, wasn’t he? He examined eyes, expressions, arms and legs moving in the crowd. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but he knew it was important.
“This badge belong to you?” one of the detectives asked him. The other was walking down the hill toward one of the patrol cars. He watched the detective reach in through the front window and speak into the radio. Maybe he was talking to Darby, telling him his partner was already on the crime scene.
“Are you supposed to be here?” the other detective asked him.
He didn’t answer. He looked back at the crowd. More eyes, faces, legs, bodies, floating in the darkness before him. Something was out there, just beyond his vision, just at the nearest edge of his memory. He looked back at the body of the girl beneath the sheet. The end of the sheet hadn’t covered her outstretched hand when it came out of his grasp, and he stood and stared at the tiny, delicately thin fingers splayed out on the grass. God, was that his daughter under there? Shannon, dead? He felt his chest tighten. Something cold crawled into the center of his stomach. Had Karen been killed by that boy who always came around the house? What was his name? Roger? No, that was her husband’s name. Had he been the one who kept coming around? Why would Roger have wanted to kill his daughter? They’d had cookouts together once a month, long ago, hadn’t they? Was it so long ago? He took a step toward the body, but the detective took hold of his arm and didn’t let go.
“That’s a retired badge,” the other detective said, jogging back up the hill from the patrol car. He stopped next to his partner and leaned close to whisper. “Don’t be too hard on the guy,” he told the other detective. “He ain’t right.”
“He’s a detective?”
The other man nodded. “Was. Retired twelve years ago.”
There was no time to retire. A criminal was getting away with murder. He pulled his arm from the detective and stood staring into the faces of the crowd. Eyes and mouths flashed at him in the dark. He thought he saw his wife’s face, Brenda, or Karen, or something. He knew her face. At least parts of it. He stood and tried to pull the pieces of her together in his mind. And where was his daughter? She had to be somewhere below, didn’t she, with her husband, Larry, or Roger. Had she married twice? Then he saw someone he recognized. A face in the crowd with the right arms, the right clothes. That was Darby, wasn’t it? His partner was the one moving slowly through the crowd. No, not Darby, but someone else he was looking for.
“It’s not his fault,” the detective who’d been speaking to Darby on the radio said. “Dispatch says he was retired because he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”
“Alzheimer’s? How did he get here?”
“He’s been pulled in before for showing up at disturbances, especially late at night. The sirens seem to be a trigger for it. He doesn’t know any better. Dispatch said his daughter is aware of the problem. She thinks he needs to be in a nursing home, or something like that.”
“Well, one thing I know is he doesn’t belong at a murder scene,” the other man replied. “Get him out of here, make sure he gets home. Tell his daughter to come get him. Tell her that she needs to bring her father home.”
“She lives in another state, according to dispatch,” the detective said.
“Well then, call a nursing home and have him carted away. And keep that badge away from him. He flashes that in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he’s going to get himself or somebody else killed.”
The first detective put a gentle hand on his arm as he was still searching the crowd. He turned and looked at the man. He wasn’t the one. He wasn’t wearing a sweater. He was in a coat and tie. White shirt, black coat. No cigar smell on him. He pulled himself free and pointed down at the crowd below.
“He’s down there, just to the left at the end of the block, standing by the hedge.”
“Come on, now,” the detective told him, trying to take hold of him again. “We have to get you home. Your wife must be worried.”
“Dead,” he told the man, not taking his eyes from the crowd, from the man at the edge of the block. “She’s dead.”
Who was dead? Brenda? How could she be dead? Hadn’t he just left her back at home in bed? No, she had already been off to work. She was off to work overtime every day, trying to save, like he was, trying to save until the overtime became too much to take. No, not Brenda, not dead, not now. That was years ago. Long ago and buried. The girl on the hill under the sheet with the doll-like face just like his daughter’s was dead, now, tonight, and he had a job to do. Even without Darby there to help him. Even without Brenda to live somewhere there in the back of his brain.
“Is there anyone we can call for you?” the detective asked, holding him.
He used his free hand to point into the crowd. “There, see the teenager moving along the sidewalk at the edge of the block? The one in the blue-and-red sweater?”
“Come along, now.”
“He’s smoking a cigar, a little thin one. Can’t you see the ember burning at the edge of his mouth? Can’t you smell the smoke around the body? Cigar smoke, like those smelly things the kids like. There’s a thread by her right arm there, no, her left. Can’t you see him down there?”
“God, he’s right.” The other detective, who had bent down to examine the body again, held a small piece of thread in his gloved fingers. He looked at it in the beam of a flashlight and then stared at his partner. “Is there a guy down there like that?”
The other detective pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it. Two patrolmen looked up. They spoke back to the detective and sighted in on the teenager moving faster down the street. They moved away from the hill and started toward him. The young man bolted then, churning his legs and arms to get away, but the patrolmen drew their guns and ordered the suspect to stop. The kid skidded to a stop. His breath came out in frosty chokes. They were on him in a heartbeat. He watched them lie him down, cuff him, and drag him to his feet. The patrolmen took him to one of the cars by the curb.