C H A P T E R • 2
Then I was running down the two flights of front stairs and down the street and through the loose crowd toward Cecelia.
Two women who were part of the group ministering to her got up and shook their heads.
Her neck met her shoulders at an absurd angle, like a broken doll’s. A mess of dark hair had escaped when she lost her wrap and the tangle of it gave her a wild look she never would have allowed in public, in life.
The terrible ominous wailing of a herd of police cars announced their arrival.
I had to remember to breathe. In and out. And again.
I walked closer and put her Coach tote over my shoulder and picked up one grey suede pump. The shoe was almost new. The bottom wasn’t even worn.
In that moment, the absurdity of my need to take control in such an inconsequential way finally broke me. I squatted and gathered my skirt, pulling it out of the way, rocking forward. And I said loud enough for her to hear me, “Let go. Remember all this fleeting world is a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightening in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream. Go for the light.”
“What is that?”
I looked up at Police Captain Obsidian Bailey.
“Hearing is the last sense we lose,” I said. “She can hear me.”
“You told her to let go. What else could she do?”
“She could struggle to hold on. This is a great and difficult transformation.”
“But she’s dead.”
“I know.”
“Are you a Buddhist?”
“I’m studying the Buddha’s teaching as part of my martial arts practice.”
“What you said was weird but kind of peaceful,” he said.
“But I’m telling her to let go and I’m not about to let go. Not hardly.”
“You must realize you’ve compromised the investigation by picking up her shoe.”
“I stopped myself from doing any more.”
“Come on, Pearl. You played a cop in enough movies to know better. Every kid in America knows the routine at a crime scene.”
“I think he aimed at her. And I was thinking it was an additional crime for her to be lying in the street looking like that.”
“Or it was an accident,” he said. And he took the shoe and walked away.
“Pearl, look over here.”
Karl, a freelance photographer they often use at the Journal, took my picture.
“He aimed at her,” I told Karl. “You’ll see.”
I took the camera strap from around my neck. “I was shooting a fight out the window at the newspaper when I saw Cecelia walking across the street, and I used the camera to get a better look at her. I need the pictures for page one. Can you give a set to the police without telling them you got them from me?”
“No shit? You mean to say you got us a picture of the hit-and-run car?”
“It looked like a gypsy cab. It was terrible.”
“Cool.” He made some adjustments in the heavy gadget and lens bag that was brown like everything else—his shoes, pants, windbreaker, face, hat.
He retrieved a little camera. “I’ll trade you. It’s my new toy. Easy to shoot. With a zoom. Tell me how you like it.”
An instinct must have alerted him because he turned around quickly to take the picture of the Right Reverend Doctor William Garrison kneeling over Cecelia, saying something we couldn’t hear, touching her hand, shaking his head.
An orange had rolled out of a paper bag just beyond her delicate fingers.