31

The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau is on Fourth Street, just behind the blue Health Services building. The coroner’s bureau has no windows—a beige, faceless fortress. An old-fashioned blue sign, CORONER, sticks out over the sidewalk, with neon tubing over the letters so they show up at night.

Only in the rear of the building could we see an entrance, and that was where the white van with the sheriff’s star on the side door was backed up, all the way into the shadows. We got out of the Jeep and I felt myself feeling just one pace behind my own body, my bones and my muscles a loose fit, clothes that didn’t belong to me.

My mother took a long time accepting the red folder from my hands, putting it into her briefcase. Dad looked at the red folder and bunched his lips, an expression like a kiss, but thoughtful. Then he was off, hurrying to a side door, one with big dark letters, THIS IS NOT AN ENTRANCE.

He read the words after trying the door, and we followed him around to the front of the building. He held open a metal-framed glass door for us, a door much too small for a building this size. It was one of those doors that close partway and then close a little more, and then close almost all the way, and stay like that for a while.

There were no doors leading from the small lobby. A potted tree leaned toward the daylight, a broad-leafed plant in a brick red tub. The steps were brick red, too, worn brown in the middle of the stairs, and the banister was teak, I thought, or some other tropical wood worn dark.

We passed a door stenciled NO ADMITTANCE, and Dad knocked. His knocks did not seem to make any sound, absorbed by the metal door. He jiggled the knob, then went up another flight. My mother was breathing hard, dragging herself up the stairs, Dad hurrying on ahead, stumbling on one of the steps. He began to call out “Hello?” like someone wandering into a house before any of the other guests.

He knocked on another door, and a young woman with dark hair leaned out to look at him without seeming to understand, and then looked at my mother and then at myself, puzzled. Or perhaps she was not—perhaps she was tired, or nervous about something happening in her own life. I tried to read the look in her face as she heard my father explain who he was, mentioning Detective Waterman’s name.

Someone came up the stairs behind us and said, “Do you folks need any help?”

We all turned, and something about us made him stop.

“These are going to be the Buchanans,” he said over our heads, as though we weren’t yet, but would be when he was done with us. He was a burly man with a red mustache and a star on his chest, right above a gold ballpoint pen, its clip over the front of his pocket. He was either full-muscled or starting to get fat. He filled out his shirt so it was tight all over his upper body.

The young woman’s face softened into understanding. She said, in an accent I did not recognize, that we should go on upstairs and Detective Waterman would be with us soon.

“You just want to head up there,” said the man with the star, assuming we could not possibly understand the young woman. “Take that next door, go on in, and some good people will be there to help you.” He had a name on his chest, white lettering in a black rectangle, but I could not get my eyes to work, or my brain to register.

“We need to know what’s happening,” I heard myself say.

“I don’t have any answers,” he said, nearly filling out the entire stairway, side to side, “and I’m afraid there won’t be any answers for just a little while longer, and believe me, I know what a strain this is on all of you.”

How many times had this man stood in this building and given that sort of cop speech? I saw how little he knew about us, how many times he had trudged up and down these stairs, the rubberized radio antenna wiggling at his hip.

None of us were moving, arranged on the stairs, looking down at a big red-headed sheriff who had to tilt his head to look past me at my father and say, “My understanding is, Detective Waterman is expecting you.”

I heard my father thank the man, and a door opened. Light from a room lanced down the stairwell, and we found ourselves in a room with chairs that had straight metal legs. It was the kind of room that usually has old magazines, but there weren’t any. A satellite view of San Francisco Bay was framed on the wall, the salt flats at the end of the South Bay bright reds and yellows. Behind a steel-mesh window a woman with a star was making a gesture, indicating that we should sit down, as she picked up a phone and spoke into it.

The interior door opened and a figure entered the room, a tall, dark-skinned man in a suit. There was a pin in his lapel, a golden Oakland tree, encircled by the words TWENTY YEARS OF SERVICE. “Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan,” he said. He turned his face toward me briefly. “And the brother. I am Steven Wallace, the Coroner for the County of Alameda.”

I went dry inside, solid, all the way through. We weren’t going to see Detective Waterman, and despite my complicated feelings for the detective, I wanted to see her, a familiar face in this building of blank walls. I could see the wrinkles in my dad’s face, the gray sheen of my mother’s.

We shook hands with Mr. Wallace, taking a long time about it, my mother first, then my dad, then me. Even then, moving in little jerks, hardly able to stand upright, we went through the motions of behaving as though we knew what to do.

There was something dainty about the way the cororner perched on the edge of his chair, “What we have here is a young woman discovered five meters from a county road.” A dash of white at his temples, a single white hair in one eyebrow. This man had just been inside looking at a dead body.

My mother handed him the red folder. He cleared his throat, opened the folder, and continued speaking. “It was among trees up near Redwood Park, and I must tell you we need to be very careful.”

I couldn’t help the way my mind worked. I couldn’t help wondering why they had to be careful, like the body might blow up. I took my mother’s arm. It was wooden, heavy, my mother staring at the coroner’s knee.

“In these particular circumstances, fingerprints are not an option,” said the coroner. He studied the X rays as he spoke. Then he reached into his breast pocket and shook out a pair of glasses.

My mother said, “I will identify the body.”

My father turned and put his hand over hers.

“I’ll do it,” she said, quietly.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Mrs. Buchanan,” said the coroner.

And then he left us alone, my mother beside me, trembling, but not crying, burying her face in a Kleenex like someone seeing how long she could hold her breath.

“There’s some water,” said the woman behind glass.

It was an Arrowhead Springs bottle and a dispenser, with a metal cylinder and paper cups. I tugged the bottom cup, and another cup fell immediately into place, ready for the next thirsty person. I tried to think like this, step by step.

I plunged the handle and the paper cup filled with cold water. It was more than cold—it was very nearly ice. A bubble burned up from within the glass urn of water. I gave the cup to my mother, who did not see it until some of it pattered onto the floor, and then she drank.