Faces of the Gone: A Mystery (10 page)

I picked up one of the dime bags and examined the picture on it more closely. It was an eagle, sort of like the one on the back of a quarter, except instead of clutching arrows, this one had a syringe in its talons—a national symbol for junkies.

Then I started combing through the stash box, staring at its contents until suddenly it became obvious what Wanda had been doing: the empty bags, the razor, the baking soda, the scale. Wanda had been running her own cutting operation. It involved opening the The Stuff bags, diluting it with the baking soda, then repackaging it in the unstamped bags. It was a quick way to augment supply.

The Stuff was obviously the top-of- the-line name-brand product she sold to her best customers. The blanks were like the generic brand that she sold to everyone else. On an impulse, I grabbed four of the bags—two of The Stuff and two of the generic—and dropped them in my pocket. I briefly debated the ethics of doing so, since I was sort of tampering with evidence. I also briefly debated the sanity . . .

Why, no, Officer, that heroin isn’t mine. My interest is, uh, purely professional . . .
But, ultimately, I knew I’d regret it later if I didn’t take some product samples while I had the chance. Heroin was clearly the link between those four bodies. Having some of it in my possession just seemed like a good idea. Maybe we could have it tested at a lab? Maybe it would make a nice photograph?
And maybe I was just out of my bleepin’ mind. But before I chickened out, I repacked the box, replaced it in the back of the closet, then rejoined Tynesha and Miss B in the living room, where they were sniffling into their tissues.
“Should we head to the funeral home now?” I asked.
Miss B nodded and began preparing herself for a trip outside, allowing me a few more moments to dwell on all those pictures of Wanda.
We often ran head shots of people who died quick and violent deaths in our paper, and there was something about them I found endlessly fascinating. Especially when they captured some happy moment—a graduation, a wedding, a retirement, whatever. I just couldn’t help but think: If the guy in that photo had known he had three years until he got splattered on some drunken trucker’s grill plate, would he have lived differently? Would he have left his wife or spent every second with her? Would he have gone on a cruise around the world? Or just gone to the racetrack every day?
If Wanda had known the choices she was making would have left her dead before her thirtieth birthday, would she have chosen differently? Maybe. Except, of course, Wanda probably never thought about her thirtieth birthday. It’s a common problem among the impoverished, the lack of future focus. People are so worried about surviving today they don’t have the luxury of thinking about tomorrow.
“Sometimes, I think I could just stare at her picture all day, too,” Tynesha said, walking up alongside me. I suddenly became aware they were waiting for me.
“All right, let’s go,” I said.
Our departure brought about much less Nextel blurping than our arrival did. The white man hadn’t been that interesting, after all—he had come and gone without arresting anyone or buying anything.
I fired up the Malibu, flipped the heater on high, and drove us downtown to one of the funeral homes that had been serving Newark’s black community for more than a hundred years. I had never been to this one before, but knew the type. And I could practically guarantee the folks there were tired of burying people like Wanda Bass. In this city’s death business, the customer demographics had skewed young far too long.

e didn’t seem to have an appointment, but we were still ushered into the office of Mrs. Rosa Bricker, who had the role of funeral director down pat. She was friendly, but not too friendly. She cared, but not too much. She was warm, but in a detached kind of way. She dealt with death the same way an accountant deals with taxes: as a practical problem worthy of attention but not hysteria. She was, above all else, professional. After we were properly introduced—having a reporter in

the room didn’t seem to faze her—she slid a packet labeled “Price List” across the desk at Miss B. The basic services included embalming, dressing, viewing ceremonies, transportation, and so on, and they went for around $3,500. That didn’t include the casket, which ranged from your basic three-hundred-dollar pine box all the way up to the Z64 Classic Gold Solid Bronze Sealer With Velvet Interior. It went for a hair over 10 Large. Calculating in monetary terms I could understand, that was about 2.8 used Malibus.

Miss B was doing her best to keep her composure, but it wasn’t hard to see how floored she was. She obviously didn’t have enough savings to get Wanda near the cemetery, much less in the ground. There was a grim joke in the funeral home business that the shorter the driveway, the more expensive the funeral. Rich people just wanted to get on with probating the will. It was the poor folks—the ones who couldn’t really afford it— who felt the need to have showy funerals.

Miss B didn’t even have a driveway.
“Do you . . . do you offer payment plans?” she asked. “Naturally,” Mrs. Bricker said. “But if I might make a suggestion, you might want to make an application to the Violent Crimes Compensation Board. They pay up to $5,000 for funeral costs. We can assist you with that.”

“I would appreciate that,” Miss B said, then started breathing normally again.
Mrs. Bricker pulled some paperwork from her drawer. Much of it had been filled out in advance. This obviously wasn’t her first time with a murder victim.
“We have a package we offer for families who are using Violent Crimes money,” Mrs. Bricker said, pushing a piece of paper across her desk at Miss B. “It covers all essential services, including a burial in a sealed casket with a headstone. You would be responsible for any additional costs, although we’ve tried to make the package as inclusive as possible.”
As Miss B began filling out the required form, I caught myself feeling relieved, which was odd. I didn’t know Wanda. Up until an hour ago, I didn’t know Miss B. And I grew up in a house with a long enough driveway that pricey funerals struck me as pointless. What did I care if Wanda Bass was buried in a pine box? More to the point: what did
she
care?
But I did care. I cared because of Miss B and Tynesha. I cared because the girl in those pictures had had a lousy life and an even lousier death. She deserved a little something unlousy coming her way, even if it was too late to do much good.
Miss B caught me off guard with her next question.
“Can I see Wanda now?”
My innards did a somersault–back handspring combination and for a moment I thought I was going to regret some of the previous night’s overexertion. Mrs. Bricker’s smooth surface didn’t ripple for a moment. Instead, she folded her hands on her desk and looked straight at Miss B.
“We can certainly see her if you wish,” Mrs. Bricker said. “But I will tell you we had to do quite a bit of restoration work. It may be difficult for you to view her right now. You may want to wait until we’ve had the chance to dress her, do her hair, and put on some makeup.”
“I can handle it,” Miss B said.
“It can be traumatic,” Mrs. Bricker said, more firmly. “I’d advise against it. It will be a much more positive experience if you wait.”
“I will see my daughter now,” Miss B said with a certain edge that seemed to settle the matter.
“Very well,” Mrs. Bricker replied, smoothly picking up the phone on her desk. She said a few soft words to the person on the other end and hung up.
“Come with me,” she said, rising from her desk.
I was hoping someone would ask me to stay in the office, which I would have happily done. It’s not that I have anything against dead bodies. I just prefer living ones.
Alas, no one said a word. So I brought up the rear as we were led downstairs and through a door marked
STAFF ONLY
. The room we entered was brightly lit, slightly chilly, and tiled from floor to ceiling. Jugs of pinkish liquid—embalming fluid, I assumed—were stacked against the far wall. In the middle were three stainless steel gurneys. Two were empty. The third was very much occupied and draped with a white sheet.
An underling, dressed in scrubs, nodded at Mrs. Bricker as he departed.
“We don’t allow families in here if there is more than one body present—out of respect to the other families. But as you can see, Wanda is alone here today,” Mrs. Bricker said, and it seemed to be for my benefit. I guess she didn’t want
EagleExaminer
readers thinking her funeral home lacked discretion.
Miss B, who didn’t seem to be hearing anything, stood about five feet from the gurney, her eyes locked on the figure underneath.
“I’m going to roll back the drape now,” Mrs. Bricker said.
When Miss B nodded slightly, Mrs. Bricker neatly folded back the sheet.
It wasn’t Wanda. Well, technically, it was. But it was some grotesque version of her. Her face barely resembled the beautiful woman I had seen in the pictures. The cheeks were swollen. The eyes were sunken. The forehead looked like it had been shattered and put together again—which it probably had been. All the features were just slightly off.
“Are you sure that’s Wa—” Tynesha began, then stopped herself.
“We started the work as soon as we received the body from the medical examiner yesterday,” Mrs. Bricker said, answering the question Tynesha sort of asked.
Miss B uprooted herself and approached her daughter’s corpse. She first touched the hair, then gently cupped the jaw, then brushed her fingers across the lips. The tears were rolling down both sides of Miss B’s face, onto her chin, and into the folds of her neck. But no sounds were coming out.
“As I said, the restoration was extensive,” Mrs. Bricker continued. “I worked on her myself for several hours.”
“Can I just be alone with her for a moment or two?” Miss B asked.
“Of course,” Mrs. Bricker said, nodding at me and Tynesha. I didn’t need to be asked twice, and made quickly for the door.
“Oh, Tynesha baby, stay here,” Miss B said.
Tynesha rushed to her side. As the door closed, I saw them embrace awkwardly. Miss B’s eyes never left her daughter’s broken face.

ack in the hallway, Mrs. Bricker leaned against the wall and crossed one foot over the other. The sudden relaxing of her posture surprised me. Up until that point, she had been nothing but formal. Now that she was out of eyeshot of the customer, she felt she could stand down just a little.
“Wow, that’s tough,” I said, slumping against the other wall.

“That’s why I told her to wait,” Mrs. Bricker said. “But I could tell she was going to be a stubborn one.”
I nodded, as if I, too, knew Miss B was going to be a stubborn one.
“You get any of the other bodies from down on Ludlow Street?” I asked.
“No, just this one.”
“You get used to stuff like that?”
“I’m around death all the time,” she said. “Sometimes it agitates me our society has so many superstitions about it. It’s really just a natural thing. It happens to everyone eventually.”
“No, I mean do you get used to what happened to Wanda?” I said. “I mean, what
did
happen to her? You heard that in there. Her own best friend barely recognized her. I’m sure you did what you could, but . . .”
It was among the less articulate questions of my journalism career. Mrs. Bricker took it in stride. I suppose it was a nice change for her to talk with someone who wasn’t near- hysterical with grief.
“I’ve seen worse, but that was a pretty difficult reconstruction,” she said. “You have to understand, when that girl came here, she only had half a face.”
“I thought she had been shot in the back of the head,” I said.
“She was. And there was an entrance wound in the back of the head. It was pretty small. That was about a ten-minute patch job. It was the exit wound that was the problem. That bullet took a lot of the forehead with it.”
I cringed a little but tried to hide my reaction. There was no room for sentimentality in a discussion like this.
“Any idea what kind of gun it was?” I asked.
“Forty caliber,” she said without hesitation.
“That’s odd,” I said. “Are you sure it wasn’t a .38?”
I’m no gun nut, but it was my understanding .40 caliber was used mostly by law enforcement—local, state, and, primarily, federal. The thug or thugs responsible for this must have somehow gotten their hands on some cop’s gun.
“We serve the neighborhoods,” Mrs. Bricker said. “Trust me when I tell you I’ve seen enough bullet wounds to tell the difference. It was a .40 caliber. A .38 wouldn’t have done nearly as much damage.”
“Well, then explain something to me,” I said. “You said the bullet took out the forehead. I thought it would have come out lower.”
“Why?”
“Well, the cops told us the killing was done execution style. To me, execution style means the victim is kneeling and the perp is standing, meaning the shot goes downward.” I pantomimed a gun, putting a finger to the back of my head, tilting it at the appropriate angle. “Shouldn’t it have blown off the nose or jaw or something?”
“Well, in this case, she was standing, not kneeling,” Mrs. Bricker said definitively.
“Oh?”
“The entrance and exit wounds are parallel. That tells me she and the shooter were at the same level. You’re probably looking for a gunman who is tall, six three to six five.”
“I didn’t realize you doubled as a forensics expert,” I said, smiling despite the subject matter.
She smiled, too. It was her first one. “I’m not,” she said. “But in this case the math is pretty simple. Wanda was tall, right? Let’s say five nine or five ten?”
Tynesha had talked about what long legs Wanda had. “Sounds right,” I said.
“Okay, so we know the perp was holding the gun straight, because the entrance and exit wounds are the same height,” Mrs. Bricker said, now pantomiming her own gun. “Since he’s able to hold the gun straight and still be pointing near the top of her head, the shooter must be roughly a head taller, call it six or seven inches. That’s how you get six three to six five.”
“You’re good,” I said.
She smiled again but stamped it out the moment Miss B and Tynesha emerged from the examining room, sniffling and leaning on each other for support. Miss B’s limp looked even worse than before.
“Thank you for trying to patch her up,” Miss B said. “I think we’ll keep the lid closed for the viewing.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Bricker said, having immediately resumed her former ramrod straightness. “We’ll still want to get some clothes from you to put her in. If you don’t have anything suitable, we work with a charity that provides burial outfits for needy families. And of course we’ll bring someone in to do her hair. That’s part of the package.”
Miss B murmured something indistinct. Seeing her daughter laid out on a metal gurney in that cold room had taken all the starch out of her. It required some effort to get her back up the stairs and out into the street, where I feared even the smallest gust of wind was going to knock her over. Tynesha had her by one arm. I couldn’t grab the other because of Miss B’s cane, but I stayed close in case she toppled.
After a silent car ride back to Miss B’s building, we got her back out of the car and I resumed spotting. The Nextel guys paid us little mind as we slowly hobbled up the steps. We were just a couple of people escorting a crippled old woman home.
Miss B went straight into her bedroom and Tynesha gave me a little wave as she followed. I took one last glance at Wanda’s high school portrait, then departed.