“Yeah, no, that one. That one there.”
Belly bartender reaches back. “This one?”
“Yeah, that's it. Can I see that?”
“Fine with me. Kinda old anyways.”
Shrugging, he hands it over. Might as well keep it.
An almost black Polaroid in the bathroom. A schoolgirl smile, we're doing something bad. We're doing something bad, aren't we? A brown-haired, dough-skinned girl in red halter, sitting on the sink, leaning forward, looking into the camera. At the man behind the camera. I know you want to fuck me. I know you do. Maybe I'll let you. Maybe.
Shauna Boggs.
Twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two.
And, around her neck, a blue-and-white Wedgwood locket.
A cameo.
T
hey'll never find who dropped it off. They'll never find who left it.
In fact, the box, the little beige or gray or white dingy box sitting there, first at the back of the station, then under a desk, and finally on top of a desk, behind the D
ETECTIVE
B
ARNETT
placard, would take two weeks to make that journey.
Two weeks in which something had happened to the respected, well-liked, assuring yet still irreverent detective, who couldn't stop sitting at his desk, staring at pictures.
Here's his favorite picture to watch. A photograph of the front office of the Green Mill Inn. The chintzy little safe, a safe for a child, really, is pried open . . . its contents on the floor. A few coins, papers, the rest gone. The paperwork, bills, documents, and a muscle-car calendar are all flayed out on the ground, spread. The chair, knocked over. The clock, broken, froze at 8:45. The phone, a green dial phone, off the hook. Of course.
What Detective Barnett watched in this picture, what drew his eye, what he stared at waiting to coagulate behind his ears, was this:
It was too perfect.
That is . . . too deliberate. It looked, if you looked closely, like a crime scene you'd see on a TV movie of the week. Straight out of production. The phone, the papers strewn, the chair, the safe . . . all just so. A child's rendering of a break-in.
But why would there be so much astray when the object was simply the safe? Wouldn't you, if you were breaking into some shit-ass motel in the freezing cold of March, just go straight for the safe and be done with it? Why mess around with the chair, the papers, the clock, the phone . . . ?
Signs of a struggle.
Yes, there had to be signs of a struggle.
But why?
The girl, Beth Krause, was no more than five-foot-three, maybe a hundred pounds, soaking wet in a snowsuit. She was slight. A butterfly.
With her, there would be no struggle. You would just fling her aside and that would be that. Christ, you could hold her off with one arm if you wanted.
So, why the Herculean, all-too-purposeful attempt to create, to display, a “sign of the struggle”?
It came between picking up his mug and pouring in his coffee, as these things always do, a stabbing thought. In its wake, a shirtsleeve full of coffee and a reaching for a pen. Never mind the coffee, who gives a shit about the coffee now. Now it's just this!
The safe was not the object of the crime, nor the money from the safe.
The girl was the object of the crime.
The girl was not the afterthought.
The girl was the thought.
They knew her.
T
hey'll never find who dropped it off. They'll never find who left it.
That grubby little box. A shoe box, blank. All alone, poor box, in that rackety rickety station house. A study in green and gray. Metal everything, desks, trash cans . . . bars. Metal even in the windows. Tile floors, green and gunmetal gray. And then, in the midst with papers and walking and mumbled words at the end of a long day . . . still that box, all by its lonesome. Sitting there. Dynamite.
“Uh, boss, I think you might want to take a look at this.”
He's a young cop. Neophyte. Rooky. Sweet kid. Barnett wondered if he'd make it, all heart like that.
It would be this moment, opening that once pristine, now muddled box, that Detective Barnett would go to his grave thinking of. How had it come to pass? Who had left it? And why? And, let's face it, how goddamned lucky it had been.
There she was.
A Polaroid story.
That beautiful, innocent, choir-singing girl, Beth Krause . . . not so innocent now, is she?
Both she and, in this one, another girl. Parts of girls. Girl parts. Girl parts not supposed to be in pictures. Splices of meat. Slabs. Polaroid pieces, bites out of girls.
Who is this other Beth Krause?
Look at her!
And then, in this set of photographs, it's a party. A different party, a different night, a different outfit, a different season, a different man.
And there is Beth Krause in this one, a white tank top and denim skirt. It's a bar, there she is, sitting on his lap, and then his lap . . . arms around his neck and then his and then his. Smiling. Sly. Sexy. Slurred.
I have all of you in the palm of my hand.
And I know it.
The background in these next ones, a room, a familiar room. Rooms. All the same. Slightly different rooms of the hotel, same bedspreads, same carpet, same windows, different sofa, different art.
Same low ceilings. Same crappy over-lit, green-gilled lighting.
Same bathroom. White gilly-white. A light-box square.
And here . . . in this one, what's her name, that girl . . . Troy's kid. Shauna. Shauna Boggs.
(Before she gained weight . . . before they started calling her around town, he knew, Shauna Blobs. And then, years later, Shauna Blob. And now, finally, simply, definitively, the Blob. What was she now, three hundred pounds . . . Christ, he couldn't imagine it. Poor girl.)
And there the younger, thinner Shauna Boggs smiles. In this
one, hair down. In this one, hair in a bun. This one, hot, sweaty, a macramé sundress. Summer.
In this one, boots, plaid skirt, a blazer. Fall.
In this one, red and green tinsel in the background. Someone's holding the mistletoe. Will she give him a kiss? Please? Pretty please? Christmas. Shauna's mouth is open, laughing rough.
And on and on, past the bright shiny hats and streamers. FIVE . . . FOUR . . . THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
1978.
Strung up in gold purple red across the door.
Past Valentine's Day . . . hearts. Shauna Boggs is wearing a red sweater. She has lots of valentines. In this picture . . . five. Five men surround her, their eyes greedy. That hot pink skirt of hers. Eat her up! Oh, please, will you please be my valentine. Gobble me up.
The men, older. Late twenties. Maybe thirty. This one in the background could be forty. Gray around the temples. But this one, with the deep-set eyes . . . twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine . . . in almost all the pictures.
Either near Shauna Boggs and looking confident, boastful, vulgar, or far . . . looking away. Looking for what exactly?
In this one, there she is on the lap of a dirt-haired man in a Jethro Tull T-shirt. And over here, the deep-set man . . . look at his hands clasped tight, knuckles white. He stares frozen at the door, who is he expecting?
But here, even more unfathomable, a happy Shauna Boggs, all those years ago. Swaying at the bar. Maybe Dreamers. Next to
her friend. Beth. There's a pool table and blossom-faces all around. The center of all the fuss. Miss Beth. Everybody's sweetheart. Little miss perfect. She is clasping her hands over a Wedgwood locket, a white cameo face over blue.
They knew her.
A
wet, overcast noon in the comedown days of January. Above in the milk-gray muddle of clouds, a wash of clouds, an unblinking sun, stares down through a blown-out yellow glaze, through the opaque screen.
Below this sullen canopy, a lone figure in a dark gray uniform stares, hesitant, at the edge of the sidewalk, newly shoveled. The snow in piles off the sidewalk, little crest of dirt ridges near the tops, a buildup of snow since November, pebbles in the snow, snow-flecked pebbles, snow dirt, dirt in snow, old snow slush, snow turned into ice and then back again.
Detective Samuel Barnett did not want to make this visit. Earlier this morning, in bed there next to his wife, she'd dragged her fingers through his hair, reassuring.
“It'll be fine. They'll understand.”
Not wanting to leave, wanting to stay there next to his warm-skinned, quilt-wrapped wife, home, tucked in safe.
“They know you, Samuel. They'll understand.”
And now, standing here at the end of this walkway, wanting nothing more than to get back in his black-and-white, made-in-America Crown Vic, drive home, climb up the stairs and back
under the covers. She'll be there reading, now, probably, bundled up under the covers.
Step by step down the walkway. It's not too late to go back. You could just go back now, they'd never know you were here. Quick. Hurry. Go back. Now's the time. Just forget it.
Knocking on the door, he had the sensation of somebody else knocking. That must be somebody else's wrist, somebody else's hand, knuckles, making those sounds.
Tap tap tap
.
What if he left now? He could still get away. Maybe they wouldn't even hear it. He didn't knock that loud. He could just go. Go. And it'd be done. That's that. Just drop the whole thing.
There's a press on the door, from the other side, a moment, and then, presto, door open. Door is now open and, on the other side, in an apron with an apple on the front, apples on the side, up to the bow, Dorothy Krause.
“Oh. Hello. Detective.”
A moment of too many words to say. How to say it? What does it mean that you're here? Can't be good. Can't be good that you're here, Detective, right? We both know it. Too old to hide it, too. Too old for cover-ups.
“Mrs. Krause. I'm sorry to bother you. Um. I hope I didn't come at a bad time.”
Cop speak. Yes, it's cop speak, but what else is there? He can't just blurt it out.
Dotsy, standing there, wiping the flour off her hands with a dish towel.
“No, no. That's fine. Come in, you must be freezing.”
Trying to make it nice.
“Maybe you can try my new recipe. Blueberry crumble muffins. It's new. I just don't know if I got it right. This old oven.”
Walking though the frost-blue house, no more Christmas decorations, just taken down.
“We should probably replace it but, you know, such a hassle.”
At the table sits the Lt. Colonel, reading the newspaper, in front of him a cup of coffee, toast, and a slice of braunschweiger.
“Lt. Colonel. Hello there. Sorry to bother you.”
And the Lt. Colonel, military haircut, stands and says nothing. The detective here, no, no that can't be good. Something soon to upset. Something soon to rattle. Brace yourself.
“Please, let's . . . Do you mind if we sit?”
Detective Samuel Barnett trying to find the words. Oh God. Why can't I be home under the quilt? Why do I have to do this today? And what if I'm wrong. Jesus. What then?
“Detective, how about some coffee? I bet you could use some coffee and maybe a muffin? Sit down, take off your coat. Honey, more coffee?”
The Lt. Colonel shakes his head no and now they are sitting there at the dining room table. Next to the dining table, a picture window and, outside, a scene fit for a still life. The black tree branches, snow-covered, the snow-covered yard, the bird feeder dressed in snow, a sliver oval of ice float water and next to it, now, a robin.
“American robin. Fairly common.”
The Lt. Colonel assures the detective.
“Yesterday we had a cardinal. Beautiful thing.”
“That's right, next to the snow, bright red, I tried to get my camera but . . . ”
Now Dotsy coming in, a plate of muffins, oatmeal cookies, and shortbread, a doily on the plate. Everything just right. Everything just so. Done the old way. From the old time. “All homemade. Except the shortbread. The shortbread is just that same Walkers.”
Now the three of them are seated at the dining table, the tablecloth pale blue and cream. A casual everyday tablecloth, across it an ivory lace runner. In the middle a bowl of fruit, a Willow Ware bowl with apricots and apples.
The robin outside drinks and looks around, drinks and looks around, then a little hop, then a drink, hop hop hop.
“Delicious. Delicious muffins. What did you say they were?”
“Blueberry crumble. It's a new recipe. From
Redbook
.”
“Well, I'll have to get it, for my wife. She'd like that.”
“Oh, that's easy. I'll just jot it down. The secret is blueberries. You can get 'em at the farmers market, fresh.”