Sergio De La Pava - Personae

The ensuing is the report of one Detective Helen Tame. I am Helen Tame, the ensuing is my report, and it is not true that this second sentence adds nothing to the first. I should note at the outset that this Department is obsessed with reports and I am not; if I had to cop to any obsession it would be with Truth. Truth in its multifarious instantiations, ranging from simple if inviolable mathematical truths to other less evident yet persistently attractive ones. How it is true that a three-year-old’s smile is an unambiguous good whereas decades later those same lips must first be parsed, how certain narrative memories will attach to an extant piece of music and refuse to ever again let go, but mostly how an unexplained human death nonetheless retains a core truth that can be teased into discovery. What I do is make these discoveries then, because of the above-mentioned obsession, write about them:

The apartment I responded [1] fn Despite the admittedly unconventional nature of this report I nonetheless intend to occasionally pepper this account with the kind of tortured locutions often found in official law enforcement documents. Thus, as in above, I will not merely go to or arrive at a location, rather I will respond to it in my vehicle (car). Likewise expect possibly copious mentions of perps, vics, subjects, suspects, wanteds etc. My motivation for this I’ll keep to myself but I must consequently implore the reader not to prematurely impugn my intellect nor should said reader be dissuaded from continuing with what promises to be an altogether rousing narrative. to was a Manhattan special, meaning you cannot believe a human being who is not incarcerated is not entitled to more space. I am here because of blood, blood that makes little sense. John Doe is on the kitchen floor but Mr. Doe is so obviously and severely weathered, so far along his now conclusive personal timeline, that his status as a DOA would occasion no mystery remotely warranting the tentatively solicitous phone call I received but for, again, the blood.

There is blood just above the molding in the hall leading to the kitchen and less in other spots but none in the kitchen. P.O. Avery is correct and seems pleased.

“They said call you in these instances, just this morning in fact.” I say nothing because I’m mildly curious what he will add. The resulting silence causes him stress he’s unaware of and he says, “I took the number down. Everybody was kind of taken aback you know? Since day one it’s been call crime scene you know, don’t touch anything just call. Then suddenly today it’s call you instead if attendant circumstances suggest that a high degree of notoriety will attach to the case or resolution of the matter will prove particularly thorny , that last part starting with attendant my sergeant read from a piece of paper, he doesn’t talk like that.”

I am slowly walking throughout the apartment and while it is true I can attend to two matters at once, that is, I can listen to Avery’s noise and still begin making the necessary observations and thoughts, I would prefer not to that the thoughts may be richer and for that I will have to speak. I turn to look at him directly. His pupils dilate and he has somehow managed to bore me further. He is still talking.

“I told him I had to disagree you know? Don’t get me wrong he’s a great partner and all,” he is glancing at him in the hall maybe thinking great was too strong. “But I told him I think this is exactly what they were talking about this morning. Meaning I thought that was blood, fresh blood at that, and yet it doesn’t appear to have come from the body, the deceased, the decedent I mean.”

“Stop talking,” I say and he does. I am putting on gloves I designed years ago and staring at a clean spot on the carpet. “You can go now,” I say but he hesitates. “That means leave in Etiquette.”

“Just that, well, they didn’t really say what to do after calling you. In other words, does calling you obviate the need to call CSU? Do I fill out a report?”

“Likely.”

“Nothing about what constitutes proper procedure from here on out you know? So I’m at a bit of a loss.”

“Here’s why. You weren’t given further procedure because this is the end of the line for you. Once you call me and, more importantly, I come, then I alone make the determination of what constitutes , as you say, proper procedure from this point forward. Make sense?”

“Yes.”

“And I am repeating my invitation to you to join your partner in the hall, then the street, then your RMP to continue providing service and protection.”

“Accepted.”

“Well done.”

“With permission to add that when I started I told myself that to the extent I made errors they would be errors of commission and not omission.”

He had made the relevant O a little too long during which I diagnosed ambition and felt remorse. “You did well officer,” I say. “It is blood and in highly suggestive locations, good work.” I then take him by the elbow like a child, a quite involuntary sin of condescension that requires I atone by asking who his sergeant is then indicating I will deposit positive impressions there, and take him to the hall where I close the door before the partner can even form the intent to speak.

Now I’m tired. Even minimal social niceties exhaust me and the commitment to future such interactions doesn’t help. I am walking about the apartment collecting. I touch nothing, I am collecting observations and placing them in my mind. Once they’ve all been crowded in I’ll order them, connect them where appropriate, delete the irrelevant, promote the critical, and begin the circuitously ineffable process of forming conclusions.

The apartment is essentially two rooms. In one, a kitchen with a refrigerator and oven that look like toy models opens into the maybe two-hundred square feet of combination living/dining room. The other is the bedroom, notable at first blush primarily for the absence of any bedframe for the mattress on the floor in the corner. Bathroom of toilet, sink, shower, ends the tour with only the medicine cabinet intriguing me but not greatly.

Can’t say the same for other things I’ve seen however. For example the main room has a piano and not a bad one. The same man who slept on the floor owned a piano. But not a television or computer. There’s a radio, old as sin, the kind that looks like it was manufactured to report on the progress of the Allies. The sofa facing it has recently been cleared of considerable clutter. Not so the coffee table which seems almost comprised of newspapers and magazines. The carpet is wall-to-wall and gold with the clean spot I mentioned.

I go to the kitchen and the body on its floor. The body is splayed almost prototypically, the right arm reaching up as if hoping to be called on. In the hand an open orange bottle of pills, pills on the ground, pills in the mouth. No label on the bottle, no identifying features on the pills. Left hand palm-down on the floor near his waist. Medium-sized white tee shirt and pajama pants, nothing else. Eighteen pills total between bottle, floor, and mouth. Right side of face on the floor so I put a digital thermometer in his left ear. Beep and eighty-two degrees confirms he’s been dead an hour and forty minutes. I squeeze his left thigh and estimate the density of his femur. I look at his face and open the eyes to see their reddish scleras.