J. Wachowski - In Plain View

“Lead one-flat line.”

Had she gotten a call too?

“Lead two-flat line.”

“Roger. Stand by,” the dispatcher said.

The only personal effects the sheriff’s team had located on the scene were those fucking magazines. It was hard not to hit something just thinking about it.

There had to be a cell phone. He held his phone cocked against his shoulder, pulled off the electrodes with one hand and snaked the other hand down into the bag, along the body. It was cold already. There were damp patches where fluids had started to settle. He felt the change of texture and temperature through the thin casing of latex over his hands.

Nothing.

The phone wasn’t the only thing missing that could get him into trouble.

“Everything all right back there?” his driver called out.

“Fine.”

He had to find the sample bag. Everyone was watching him now. Thinking the worst. No matter how hard he tried to explain, to fix things, it never seemed to be enough. Nothing else could go wrong now or more people would get hurt.

She didn’t know what she was getting into. He was not going to let her fuck everything up now.

The face lying before him wore a contorted grimace of pain and bruising.

He wasn’t supposed to touch the body but he couldn’t stop himself. He pounded down with both fists, hard, center of the chest, right over that guilty heart.

What did you do? What did you do, you dumbass farmboy?

“Hey! Whoa, what’s going on back there? We’re one minute away, man. Captain’s going to be at the other end. Don’t freak on me now.”

“Okay. I’m okay.”

There was no peace in death on that face. Only pain. And hatred.

Gently, he laid his hands on the face. He massaged the mouth, the jaw, the brow. He tipped the head and smoothed the expression.

At last, the face appeared peaceful.

He would do whatever he had to do to fix it, to smooth it over.

Everything was going to be fine. Just fine.

He zipped the bag shut slowly, so there was almost no sound at all.

3:52:34 p.m.

It took forty-two minutes for Ainsley to drive me to the house that once belonged to my sister, Angelina O’Hara.

Jenny was waiting, sitting on the doorstep hunched by the bulk of her backpack, fiddling intently with her shoe. She’s the kind of kid who looks like she’s made of hollow straws and toothpicks, all held together by wire bread ties. Everything about her was either stiff or sharp.

I swear, we couldn’t have been more than twelve, thirteen minutes late, at most.

“This is where you live?” Ainsley asked.

“Yeah.” A squat, yellow-brick ranch house was not my idea of heaven either.

“Who’s that?” Ainsley asked.

I had a sudden flash of the Boy Wonder reporting back to Uncle Rich all the details of my life story. Definitely not. Not before I signed the paperwork anyway.

I popped the van door open but didn’t get out. “You’re mighty curious, aren’t you? Let’s add research to your job description. Go back to the station and make some calls. See if you can find out why Sheriff Curzon hates us. I’d guess he’s worked with the press before. See what you can find out. Then call the police station just before five. If they still won’t ID the body, get a name on who owns the property where it was found. We ought to try to set up an interview first thing tomorrow. Early light would be nice. Call me at home later so we can set a schedule, but plan on picking me up around seven-A. You got my cell number?”

“Yeah. I got it.” He sounded distracted. Or maybe it was pissed. Sensitive boy. Wasn’t like I ordered him to pick up my dry cleaning.

“Oh, one more thing. Push my bike into the dock, would you? Night air isn’t good for Peg.” I slammed the door behind me. “See ya.” I followed the van as it backed down the driveway, walking all the way out to the road so I could empty the mailbox.

Jenny never picked up the mail; Jenny never went near the road.

Three months ago her single mother-my only sister-was the hit part of a hit-and-run. She died.

Fucking boondocks.

I got the call between flights on my way to a natural disaster in Mexico-earthquake? Killer bees? Hell, I don’t even remember. I got off one plane and onto another, and just that fast, the life I had was over. My new life consisted of a thirty-year-old ranch house, a ten-year-old Subaru station wagon and an eight-year-old niece. Jenny.

The school counselor told me it’d be a big mistake to move her right now. Said Jenny needed stability. Same house, same school, same friends. So, here I am in the no-man’s land of the Chicago ’burbs. Harbor of White Flight. Republican stronghold. Protestant heaven. Journalist hell.

News flash: Jenny wasn’t all that happy with me either.

I crouched down next to her on the concrete step. “Been sitting here long?”

She shrugged and continued staring at her shoes.

“Sorry I kept you waiting.”

No answer. She leaned over and poked the tip of her shoelace into one of the lace holes.

“I got the job. That’s why I was late. We don’t have to move or anything. For now.”

Thank goodness I had enough cash stashed away, I could afford to sit on my ass with her for the summer. Neither of us was in any shape to detail a life plan more complicated than dinner and the TV guide. But I’d told her from the beginning that couldn’t last. Besides the money, I needed to work. It kept me in circulation.

It kept me from going insane.

Jenny finally tossed her head at me, oh? and her purple plastic barrette unsnapped. A curtain of fine, brown hair, straight as her mother’s, drooped in front of her face.

“Guess we should get you a key or something,” I offered. “So this doesn’t happen again.”

“Kids aren’t supposed to have keys,” she mumbled to her shoe laces. “Kids are supposed to have somebody.”

“Right.”

Our after-school routine was loosely based on her mother’s plan of operation. We ate a snack, watched cartoons together, then she tackled homework while I ran through my weight program. Today, I scrapped routine. I threw the kid a bag of chips and went straight down to my darkroom to work, eager to see how my shots would develop.

I had turned a portion of the basement into a work area as soon as I’d arrived. One small window had to be blocked off, but there was running water and plenty of space to hang prints to dry. I tied lines to plumbing pipes, bought myself some heavy-duty shelves and a shop table at the local hardware store. Boom, I was in business.

Jenny hung around the first time I printed a roll. But she didn’t like the smell of the chemicals, which meant I usually had my privacy in the darkroom. Another bonus. Sometimes the hardest thing about coming to live with Jenny was simply having her around all the time.

People are funny. If somebody said go into a damp, smelly basement and sit around for a couple of hours, it’d sound unpleasant to most, but I always felt refreshed after time in the darkroom. There’s a certain level of concentration that must be maintained, steps that happen in a certain order, and in the end if you do it right, you get something beautiful.

Some people do yoga. I do photography.

Photographing a death scene is a special challenge. There are very few shots that will play as acceptable for prime time, although the boundaries of acceptable have expanded in the last few years. I got everything through two baths and hung to dry when I heard a knock. The shot with the firefighter was a beauty.

“Come on in.” I was hunched over the table, checking a wide shot with a jeweler’s loupe. There was a flare showing up in some of the shots that irritated me.