Afterward, Trixie lay in bed, shaking. She thought about the bitter cold that had taken up residence under her breastbone, like a second heart made of ice. She thought about what Jason had said and wondered why he'd had to die before he felt the same way she had felt about him all along.
* * *
Mike Bartholemew crouched in front of the boot prints that led up to the railing of the bridge from which Jason had jumped, a cryptic choreography of the boy's last steps. Placing a ruler next to the best boot print, he took a digital photo. Then he lifted an aerosol can and sprayed light layers of red wax over the area. The wax froze the snow,
so that when he took the mixture of dental stone and water he'd prepared to make a cast, it wouldn't melt any of the ridge details.
While he waited for his cast to dry, he hiked down the slippery bank to the spot being combed by crime scene investigators. In his own tenure as a detective, he'd presided over two suicides in this very spot, one of the few in Bethel where you could actually fall far enough to do serious damage.
Jason Underhill had landed on his side. His head had cracked
'he ice on the river and was partially submerged. His hand was covered with dirt and matted leaves. The snow was still stained pink with blood that had pooled beneath his head.
For all intents and purposes, Jason had done the taxpayers a favor by saving them the cost of a trial and possible incarceration. Being tried as an adult for rape made the stakes higher - and more potentially devastating. Bartholemew had seen lesser motives that
caused folks to take their own lives.
He knelt beside Jerry, one of the forensic cops. “What have you got?”
“Maria DeSantos, only seventy degrees colder.” Maria DeSantos had been their last suicide plunger in this location, but she had been missing for three weeks in the heat of the summer before the stench of the decomposing body had attracted a kayaker on the river.
“Find anything?”
“A wallet and a cell phone. There could be more, but the snow's pretty deep.” Jerry glanced up from his collection of blood on the body. “You see the kid play in the exhibition game last night in town?”
“I was on duty.”
"I heard he was hammered . . . and that he was still a hell of a
player.“ Jerry shook his head. ”Damn shame, if you ask me."
“I didn't,” Bartholomew said, and he stood up. He had already been to the Underhill house, to bring them the news of their son's death. Greta Underhill had opened the door, looked at his face, and burst into tears. Her husband had been only superficially composed. He thanked Bartholemew for bringing the information and said he'd like to see Jason now. Then he'd walked outside into the snow, without a coat, barefoot.
Bartholemew's own boss had brought him the news about Holly. He'd known that the worst had happened when he saw the chief of police standing on his porch in the middle of the night. He remembered demanding to be driven to the scene, where he stood at the guardrail her car had smashed through. He remembered, too, going to identify Holly's body in the hospital morgue. Bartholemew had pulled aside the sheet to see the tracks on her arms, the ones he'd been blind to as a parent. He'd put his hand over Holly's heart, just to make sure.
The Underhills wanted to see Jason; they'd be given that privilege before the autopsy began. In this sense, accidents, suicides, and murders were all the same - any death that occurred without someone there to witness it was automatically brought to the medical
examiner for a determination of cause. It wasn't police procedure as much as human nature. We all want to know what went wrong, even when there isn't really an answer to that question.
* * *
The Monday after Jason Underhill's suicide, two psychologists were called to the high school to help students who needed to grieve. The hockey team took to wearing black armbands and fought, vowing to take the state title in homage to their fallen teammate. One entire page of the Portland paper's sports section was dedicated to a memorial of Jason's athletic achievements. That same day, Laura went out for groceries. She moved aimessly through the store, picking up things like ugli fruit and bags of pitted prunes, slivered almonds, and balls of buffalo mozzarella. Somewhere in her purse she knew she had a list - ordinary items like bread and milk and dishwashing detergent - but there was a part of her that felt normal things didn't apply anymore and therefore there was no point in buying them. Eventually, she found herself in front of the freezer section, the door open and the cold spilling over the toes of her boots. There must have been a hundred different ice cream flavors. How could you pick, knowing that you'd have to go home and live with the choice you'd made?
She was reading the ingredients on a peach sorbet when she heard two women talking one aisle over, hidden by the freezers.
“What a tragedy,” one said. “That boy was going places.”
“I heard that Greta Underhill can't get out of bed,” the second woman added. “My pastor was told by her pastor that she might not even make it to the funeral.”
A week ago, in spite of the rape accusations, Jason had still been a hero to most of this town. But now death had swelled him to epic proportions.
Laura curled her hands around the front bar of her grocery cart, navigated around the corner, until she was face to face with the women who'd been talking. “Do you know who I am?” The ladies glanced at each other, shook their heads. “I'm the mother of the girl Jason Underhill raped.”
She said it for the shock value. She said it on the off chance that these ladies might, out of sudden shame, apologize. But neither of them said a word.
Laura guided her shopping cart around the corner and toward an empty checkout line. The cashier had a skunk-streak of blue hair and a ring through her bottom lip. Laura reached into the basket and held up a box of plastic knives - when had she taken those off a shelf? “You know,” she said to the cashier, “I actually don't need those.”
“No biggie. We can reshelve them.”
Six packets of powdered hollandaise sauce, suntan lotion, and wart remover medicine. “Actually,” Laura said, “I'm going to pass on these, too.”
She emptied the rest of her shopping cart: bacon bits and baby food and Thai coconut milk; a sippy cup and hair elastics and two pounds of green jalapenos; the peach sorbet. She stared at the items on the conveyor belt as if she were seeing them for the first time. “I don't want any of this,” Laura said, surprised, as if it were anyone's fault but her own.
* * *
Dr. Anjali Mukherjee spent most of her time in the morgue, not just because she was the county medical examiner but also because when she ventured abovestairs at the hospital, she was continually mistaken for a med student or, worse, a candy striper. She was five feet tall, with the small, delicate features of a child, but Mike Bartholemew had seen her elbow-deep in a Y-shaped incision, determining the cause of death of the person who lay on her examination table.
“The subject had a blood alcohol level of point one two,” Anjali said, as she rifled through a series of X-rays and headed toward the light box on the wall.
Legal intoxication was .10; that meant Jason Underhill was considerably trashed when he went over the railing of the bridge. At least he wasn't driving, Bartholomew thought. At least he only killed
himself.
“There,” the medical examiner said, pointing at an X-ray. “What do you see?” “Afoot?”
“That's why they pay you the big bucks. Come over here for a second.” Anjali cleared off a lab table and patted it. “Climb up.”
“I don't want . . .”
“Climb up, Bartholemew.”
Grudgingly, he stood on top of the table. He glanced down at the top of Anjali's head. “And I'm doing this why?”
“Jump.”
Bartholemew hopped a little.
“I meant jump off.”