I Know Where the Dead Ones Go

1

It's Friday at 4, an hour before the shift clears and I finally get a three-day weekend, when Marty sticks his shaved head around the corner of my temporary office and says, "Hey, Juan, you got time for a quick one?"

I wish he meant beers like we used to share when we clocked off back in the patrol days, but I know better. It's been deskwork ever since "the accident." People drag themselves off the street and into the police station. I take a statement and pass it off down the line. Like processing meat. Repeat. Repeat.

"How bad does it look?" I say, knowing that the past three statements soaked up two hours apiece. Nasty stuff out there in the city. People can't make sense of it, and they don't have to, because that's my job. It's why the paragraphs I write are always short, and why the detectives come back with questions. Wish I had answers, so I tell them it's the lunar cycle or the heat wave or something in the air. They know what I mean.

"Just a single. A woman. Prostitute. Well, probably a pro. I can't tell anymore with how these people dress. You want me to kick it to Julie? You look like you're about spent," Marty says. He wears the uniform of a sergeant.

I owe Julie too many favors already, so I say, "Send her in. What's she saying?"

"Hell if I know. Take her statement and go home," Marty says and disappears down the hallway.

"You checked her, right?" I say. Had someone get a knife through the metal detector last week.

Marty's gone, though. Or maybe he pretended to not hear me. Marty's like that.

I wait a beat and pull up a new report on the computer. The heat from the overworked monitor cascades across my face. Matches the boils the sun wrenches into the city outside. How long has it been since this thing was turned off?

My nose detects the woman before I see her step into my office. I thought I'd get used to it by now, and I did back when more moderate temperatures didn't bake the pavement outside into cookie dough. But now, with the heat, it's like living under a fold of fat. The ones without air conditioning, the ones living outside more than they'd like to, suck in the grease more than people like me, relegated to a desk out of the sun.

"Watch this one," Marty's voice says from somewhere down the hall as the woman takes a seat. He might claim she's dressed like a pro, but I give her the benefit of the doubt given the heat. Those scabs up her arm don't help her case, though. She looks like a cross between Courtney Love and a ditch. It's a shallow observation given we haven't even talked yet, but these are the things they pay me to notice. Regardless of the training, I can't tell if she's 14 or 41. Too much bark on her.

"Water," the woman says, her voice so dry it sounds like it could crack in half.

It's not an uncommon request. I grab a bottle of water from inside my desk next to the tissue packs and slide it over to her. She drains it without pausing and sets the bottle back on the desk.

"Are you OK?" I say as she holds her stomach in pain.

"Yeah, yeah," she says.

"Take a minute if you need it," I say and fold my hands on the desk. People don't open up if you act like a courtroom stenographer. "I help record police reports, statements from everyday people and that sort of thing. This isn't an interrogation or anything like that. I just take down information. Nothing more, nothing less."

"I know what a police report is," the woman says.

On second thought, I place my hands over the keyboard. I say, "Then let's start with your name."