Greg Iles - Blood Memory

Mr. McDonough looks pointedly at his watch.

As I take my first step, I force myself to recall my time in Bosnia working with the War Crimes Commission. When the UN backhoes uncovered the long trench, I saw three hundred men, women, and children in various stages of decomposition. Mothers holding infants. Toddlers riddled with machine-gun bullets. Little girls clinging to dolls, the last things they saw before their skulls were caved in by rifle butts. Whatever is in this casket can’t compare with that in horror. And yet…the funeral director’s voice whispers in my mind: When it’s your own folks, it’s different.

I step around the casket and look down.

My first reaction is disbelief. Except for the black suit, my father looks much as he did in life. To a passerby, he would appear to be a young man napping quietly after Sunday dinner. A whiskery black beard covers his cheeks and chin, a beard he never wore in life. This beard is not made of hair-it’s mold-but compared to the terrible changes I could have seen, a beard of mold is nothing.

“Would you look at that,” says Mr. McDonough, a certain pride in his voice. “He looks as good as Medgar Evers.”

Lena the Leopardess lies cradled in the crook of my father’s arm. The sight of her orange-and-black-spotted fur is almost more than I can bear. I slept with Lena every night until my father was buried. And except for my dreams, I haven’t seen her in twenty-three years.

“They exhumed old Medgar for James Earl Ray’s trial a few years back,” says Mr. McDonough, “and he looked like they’d just buried him. Your daddy’s the same. Old Jimmy White was doing my prep work back then. You can’t find help like that now.”

“Could I have a few moments, please?”

“Oh. Yes, ma’am.”

Mr. McDonough takes a few steps back.

I feel like a character in a Disney fairy tale. As though I’ve struggled on a long journey to get to this spot, and now, by simply bending over and kissing his cold lips, I can wake my sleeping prince and live happily ever after.

But I can’t.

The longer I look at my father’s face, the more certain that becomes. His cheeks have actually sunken in quite a bit-his eyes, too, despite the plastic eye caps they put beneath the lids to maintain the illusion of normalcy. With a quick motion like a bird pecking at something on the ground, I bend and pluck Lena from Daddy’s arms.

“Close it up,” I say.

Mr. McDonough closes the casket and signals his van to approach.

“You saw me remove this stuffed animal, correct?” I say.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I know I should wait, but I can’t. “Mr. McDonough, could you come with me to my car for a minute?”

He glances at his watch again. “I really should be getting back to the home. There’s a service going on right now.”

I meet his eyes and silently plead for chivalry, something that almost always works with Southern men.

“Well, just for a minute,” he says.

“Could you bring your jacket?”

He retrieves his jacket from the wall, then follows me to my mother’s Maxima, which is parked on the grass between two walled plots. I open the trunk and remove the box of forensic chemicals I brought from New Orleans to use in my bedroom. The sight of the luminol bottle makes me think of little Natriece and her saucer eyes on the day she spilled the fluid and found the bloody footprints. This job is too sensitive for luminol, which not only consumes the iron in hemoglobin as it reacts with it, but also damages the genetic markers in the blood it detects, making valid DNA testing impossible. Today I’m going to use orthotolidine, which will reveal any latent blood on Lena’s coat, but also maintain the integrity of the genetic markers.

“Could you get inside with me?” I ask, climbing into the driver’s seat.

After a brief hesitation, the funeral director gets into the passenger seat beside me. “What’s in that bottle?”

“A chemical that detects hidden blood.”

He purses his lips. “This some kind of criminal investigation?”

“Yes. Could you hold up your jacket so that it covers my hands and the leopard?”

“I guess so. You’re not going to ruin it, are you?”

“No, sir.”

As he unfolds his jacket, I carefully examine Lena. Parting the orange-and-black fur beneath her jaw, I can still see the stitching where Pearlie repaired her after the night my father died.

“Like this?” asks Mr. McDonough, making a tent of his jacket.

“Perfect.” I hold Lena under the tent with my left hand and spray some orthotolidine on her coat with my right. Then I turn her in my hands and cover her other side with the chemical.

“What happens now?” asks Mr. McDonough.

“We wait.”

Photographers once used suit jackets as portable darkrooms in the field. The advent of digital photography has probably made that practice a thing of the past, but on this day, the knowledge serves me well.

“Can you turn on some AC?” Mr. McDonough asks.

“No. We don’t want this chemical blowing around the car.”

“Is it toxic or something?”

“No,” I lie.

“Huh. Well, what’s supposed to happen?”

“If there’s blood, it’ll glow blue.”

“How long does it take?”

“A minute or two.”

Mr. McDonough looks interested. “Can I see?”

“Yes, if we get anything. I want you to witness it.”

After two minutes pass, I raise the tail of the jacket and peer into the darkness. Lena’s head is glowing as though painted with blue-dyed phosphorous.

My heart is pounding. Grandpapa never mentioned Lena in any version of the story he told me of the night my father died. But he definitely told me to put her into the coffin. And soon, I may know why.

“What do you see?” asks the funeral director.

“Blood.”

“Can I look?” He sounds like an excited four-year-old.

“In a minute.”

I carefully turn Lena in my hands and examine her head. Though smeared quite a bit-probably from cleaning by Pearlie-the blood appears to have been deposited in small gouts. There’s also some fine spray that Pearlie apparently missed with her cleaning rag. Most of the blood seems to have been deposited on Lena’s head, while very little touched her body. It’s almost as though her head was stuffed into a wound to try to stanch severe bleeding. Did Daddy shove my favorite stuffed animal into his chest to try to save himself? It’s certainly possible, though with the large exit wound in his back, that measure wouldn’t have saved him.

You’re looking right at the answer, says a voice in my head. Looking but not seeing …

The blue glow is stronger now. Slowly, I turn Lena’s head and examine it from every angle. I study the stitches beneath her chin. Why was she torn there? If Daddy stuffed her head into a bullet wound, what could have torn her cloth covering? A smashed rib? Possibly. As I turn Lena’s head to examine her nose, the answer hits me like ice water thrown in my face.

On top of Lena’s snout is a perfect arch of glowing blue, almost exactly the size of the maxillary arch in an adult human being. There’s not enough detail to make a comparison with individual teeth, but I know without checking that the arch on Lena’s fur will perfectly match the arch of Daddy’s upper teeth.

My father suffocated to death.

For the first time, the reality of that night plays out in my mind’s eye exactly as it happened. Grandpapa shoved Lena into Daddy’s mouth, possibly to muffle his screams of pain, but more probably to finish the job of murdering him. While Daddy lay bleeding on the floor like a gutshot deer, while Pearlie ran down from the big house to the slave quarters, my grandfather shoved my favorite companion down Daddy’s throat and held his nose to finish him off. To silence him forever.