—No, but I do know I don’t much care for that tone.
—Sorry, sir.
—He stole it. Like a murderer stealing something going to shock anybody.
—And then he leave her under a bus like she’s a damn tableau?
—Don’t understand French.
—Sir, they didn’t even bother to take the damn thing out of her behind. They didn’t even bother.
—Fine, I’ll ask him who he’s protecting when I put him on the stand. You happy now?
—You not going to ask me about her behind?
—Surely he’s not going to take this fall himself if he had company.
—I want to see his statement.
—Then go to the station and knock yourself out.
—Sir, please read my report.
These are the four things that were on Grace McDonald’s desk two hours later when she received a call from Toxicology: a pack of Matterhorn’s, cold coffee in a University of the West Indies—Mary Seacole Hall mug, a pencil chewed out of its original yellow, and a new file, opened before she released Janet Stenton’s body for burial.
Her office had one window which gazed over to another window right across. Between the two windows the hospital had a way of feeling like a prison, especially five floors up. She would get up and pry open the window, keeping it that way for a few minutes to an hour listening for traffic or that sky juice vendor playing Celine Dion, until the hospital smell came through. Sometimes she felt that she took the smell home and couldn’t wash it off. The phone rang.
—Yeah?
—Grace, I have some of the lab work.
—Already? You nah joke.
—Barracat know you doing this?
—You don’t worry about Barracat. What you have for me?
—First thing first, you establish time of death?
—Yeah, Sunday, October 24. They discovered the body on the 25th.
—Saturday.
—Saturday?
—Yeah, I did a histology on one of the samples you sent me. She was murdered Saturday.
—They kept the body an entire day?
—Yeah. Somebody who know a butcher or somebody who have a refrigerated room. Also, I checked the hairs you sent me.
—You got all of them? The black one and the other two, which look white? I just couldn’t tell the rest, and then there are the ones on her bottom.
—All the ones from her buttocks come from the same source and they match a few from her front. But the reason why you couldn’t identify the other hairs is that they weren’t hairs.
—Oh?
—No, not hair. Two of them are wool, like from a rug or something.
—Ah, the rug they wrap her up in.
—Maybe, but the others, Grace.
—Yeah?
—Fur.
—What you just say?
—Fur.
—No.
—Yeah.
—They couldn’t … they just couldn’t.
—It might just be that the person was a dog lover and had just played with his pets.
—Can you tell which dog?
—No. A big black one, though. One that don’t shed much. Grace, I’m going to tell you something. You don’t have dogs so you don’t know. That thing you found up her rectum, you know, the rubber thing?
—Yeah?
—I assume you know what it is.
—No, I don’t. I just know it doesn’t belong there.
—It’s a Stuff n’ Chew dog toy. A dog treat holder. You fill it with peanut butter and throw it to your dog. Takes them hours to figure it out. I use it when I just can’t be bothered to play with Boxer. Me always busy so that’s pretty much all the time … Grace? Grace? You there? Grace?
—You get anything on the grass?
—Yeah, industrial fertilizer. You can’t buy it at the hardware just so. Probably a gardening service.
—Gardening service in Jamaica? A who rich so?
—You can check Glidden’s. They the only one I know.
This is what the woman who answered the phone at Glidden’s Tools and Gardening said when Grace called her immediately:
—We don’t release that kind of information, ma’am.
—Confidentiality? Really? What, you have confessional booth behind the Miracle-Gro? I’m asking if your staff use this fertilizer anytime in the past two weeks and where.
—I can’t really help you, ma’am.
—Put your supervisor on the phone.
—She stepped out.
—When is she coming back?
—Me no know, ma’am.
—Anway, I’m sure you have record somewhere, so please save me the trouble of coming down there.
—Can’t do that, ma’am.
—You know what? That’s fine, you’re being a good employee. Now just hope that when me and the six policeman come down there, and turn everything upside down, that you have enough time to fix up the place before your boss come back.
—You can’t do that.
—Really? You going to see me do it in less than thirty minutes. And by the way, tell your boss that in a month she will be audited too.
—Hold on. Hold on.
—Hello? Who is this?
—No, the question is who is
you?
I’m going to guess that you’re the manager. Had a good walk? Good. Now, listen to what you going do for me right now.
Me want me mother me want me mother me want me mother. Me want me mother.
This is the magazine that Ruth Stenton carried in her hand at the same time Grace McDonald got a call from Toxicology:
Elle
.
Ruth was on her way to the dressmaker she knew. She had browsed a bookshop only hours before and leafed through
Vogue
,
Vogue Patterns
,
Redbook,
and
Harper’s Bazaar
before she found it, a black dress that she wanted for the funeral now that she had twice worn the skirt her sister sent her. The small card lodged at the bottom of the envelope had said,
For Jacqueline
, and it was for her, but a good dress for the funeral was for her too. That, and a gray hearse and a pink coffin with light gray silk trim. The funeral home had shown her a small box covered in purple velvet like fabric at first, and she cursed them out shouting bout if them think is cause she come from ghetto that she can’t get decent coffin for her big daughter. The funeral home director offered her a discount when he recognized Janet Stenton’s name from the newpaper and TV reports, which she took, saying there is no situation so bad that you can’t appreciate a good bargain, right?
After that, she took the magazine to the dressmaker, a stout woman whose dresses always had lace trim and who lived in Riverton City, a zinc-shack ghetto five miles west of Trench Town. Ruth stuffed herself into a packed taxi that ran the Spanish Town Road highway west and came off by the garbage dump that surrounded Riverton City. The garbage rose as high as hills and boys and women picked through, looking for things that they stuffed in black plastic bags. The slow-burning stink worked its way into everything, so complete that the smell vanished for all but those who visited.
—Boy, me know things tough with you, Miss Ruth, but me can’t give you no more dress pon credit.
—But what a way you facety. See it deh, me have money. Me have plenty money. You done now? How much me owe you? Me will pay you. Now, me want this frock.
—White more for wedding than funeral, Miss Ruth.
—Huh? Not that one, the purple one beside it. And me want it in black.
—But that is not no funeral dress.
—Is that me want.
—It don’t have no sleeve.
—Is that me want.
—Sequin not cheap, Miss Ruth.
—Me say me have money.
—You want the split too?
—Yes, me want the split.
—You leaving the funeral to go to party or something?
—You know what me tired of? You know what me tired of, lady? People who think they can judge me. Everybody who walk past me think they should leave word like me is bank and what them think is deposit. You know what? You don’t know nothing bout me and you don’t know how you can do everything you think you can do, and people just do what they want anyway because man tell them to.
—Me never did say nothing.
—You say everything. You a damn Jamaican who think you can talk by looking. Well, me tired of it from people who think them better than me. You is just some little seamstress who can’t even get work at the free zone and you should be glad me spending money with you.
—Look here.
—No, you look here. Shut you rassclaat mouth and make me a damn dress.
—Sorry, ma’am. But at least you must be happy them catch the killer?
—No, me not happy. How any of this to make me happy? Me not happy at all.
Crabgrass is a weed, though some Jamaicans think it is grass. This is one of the things that Grace McDonald was thinking as she drove around Norbrook for hours, turn after turn, avenue after avenue, crescent after crescent, mews after mews, weaving in and out, somehow always looping round again on Norbrook Drive, which cuts the community in half.
She should have taken a map. What the fuck was she thinking? Going out with just the list from Glidden’s. Four people had bought their special crabgrass formulation and service in the last three months. For most people, crabgrass in the lawn was fine as long as everything was mowed level. It was like having a head with different grades of hair.
The first house she found, thank God, seemed empty. A beige one-floor bungalow. Spanish-tiled roof. Glass sliding windows and doors.
She parked on the street and went inside, thinking all the time what to say if someone asked what the hell she was doing on their property picking grass.
Must a good thing to be so rich that you don’t need to worry about thief, she thought. Open gate? Glass windows and doors?
This lawn had neither crabgrass nor the smell of the weed killer, the thing that her nose couldn’t place when she’d inspected the corpse of Janet.
The second house had the weed in the lawn but not the smell.
The third house was like the first—tile roof as well—but two floors. As she moved toward the five-foot iron gate, two barking rottweilers swerved into view. Time stopped. They raced. Time moved again. And they were on their hind legs with their front paws flat on the top of the gate, nails out.
Grace backstepped into her car.
She shook her head. They had a suspect who confessed to the crime and she was a doctor, not a detective. Maybe she had watched too many damn episodes of
Quincy
on TV Land when she lived in D.C. It’s his fault that she switched from pediatrics to forensics, him and his punk rock episode(
punk rock is killing the kids!).
She laughed knowing that nobody at the hospital would have gotten the reference, not even the Indians. But this case had a stink that would not go away. She kept thinking of how settled her life would have been, how much more satisfying it would have been to just smoke the day away had she not turned the poor girl over.
Raping a girl was one thing. Killing her was another. But this was just a different level, a defiance, some man or men saying,
Bitch I’m going to keep on disrespecting you, even as a corpse
. Even a madman killer leave a corpse alone, even he can see that the damage is already done, leave some bit of respect now. But not this man, and it wasn’t a group that do that, come to think of it, it was one man—that kind of shit doesn’t happen by consensus, it happens by ego. That kind of shit comes from a man who want to make it public that the girl was in the palm of his hand, and watch now, Jamaica, watch now, world, while I make a fist.
She was halfway across the lawn before she smelled it.
This is what Alicia Mowatt saw on the day Janet went missing. She was slouching up Norbrook Road at around four p.m. after her Wednesday tennis practice.
Forty or so yards ahead was Stenton, not in school uniform, but a T-shirt and jeans, and wobbling in high heels as she continued uphill. Her hair was parted in two as it usually was, but the halves were loose. She was trying to pull it out and walk at the same time.
Alicia thought to call her name, but they were not friends and she could not think of a single thing to talk about all the way to the top of Norbrook Road. They could always talk about how Spanish turn so boring since grade ten, or it must be something to not need to look good because Sister Mary Clarice would have shaved her moustache by now, or how it long overdue that Georgina stop crimping her hair because 1989 gone and it not coming back, or if she has a boyfriend yet and has the boyfriend touched her breast, or shared a cigarette, or made her listen to Shabba Ranks.
But then a white Land Rover sped past her so fast that she jumped back, even though she was on the sidewalk. The vehicle slowed down a few feet behind Stenton, crawling, then speeding up, then braking fast to draw level.
Stenton was stomping, the wobbly clunk in her heels loud enough for Alicia to hear. As she stopped, the Land Rover stopped. As she started walking, the Rover rolled. She stopped again, looking down, turning full around so that Alicia jumped back behind a bougainvillea hedge. Her heart was pumping furious. She knew the Land Rover.
Stenton paused again, the Land Rover pausing with her. Stenton leaned toward the door and began to gesture, at one point throwing her arms in the air and just letting them flop down. Then she stepped back and crossed her arms and looked down at her shoes and up at the sky. The door eased open from inside. Stenton shook her head and seemed to smile—it was hard to see—and climbed in.
The big white vehicle drove off but not as fast as before. A hundred yards later it made a left turn and pulled into a driveway through an open gate.
Alicia waited. She had forgotten her Seiko so she counted to sixty, seven times, before she began to walk again. She couldn’t care less about Jacqueline Stenton but had hoped so hard that she even whispered it: not that house, not that damn house.
Alicia continued counting as she made her way up the grade. When she got to the house she slowed down and looked, not out of the corner of her eye, although this was what she’d intended. She turned her whole head and stared. Cause she wanted to see what that Stenton was up to in this house she knew. You need details when you take back gossip to the girls. Right, that was it. Nothing to to do with her—besides, Stenton could clearly take care of herself if she was running with this type of crew.