WHEN CRIME SCENE unlocks the back of the van revealing the blood-smeared gray metal walls, O’Hara’s mind reels, and retreats to the Chelsea gallery where she first glimpsed the kid, and fell hard. Despite what her eyes see now, she smiles at the remembered image of that shirtless gink, all skin and bones and attitude, his arm cavalierly draped over the shoulder of a topless girl, as if it’s the kind of thing that happens to him all the time. The photographer must have seen that the kid was a natural, and no doubt the kid nailed it, gave him exactly what he wanted, but he also threw in a little mockery for himself.
O’Hara loves that sparkle in the kid’s eyes, is unlikely to ever forget it, but as a mother, O’Hara is even more defenseless against the sight of the kid’s belly, his smooth skin stretched tight over his ribs and skinny arms. It reminds her of a picture she took of Axl when he was three or four. A friend of O’Hara’s came over and was playing with Axl in her mother’s backyard, holding a baseball bat sideways as Axl clung to it like the bar of a jungle gym. In the picture, the friend lifts the bat in the air, and as Axl hangs on for dear life, his shirt rides up over his navel, and whenever she looks at the picture she recalls exactly how the cool skin of her son’s stomach felt on her hands and lips. She knows it’s all evolution, like the sweet smell of a baby’s head, a way to make parents adore their offspring, take care of them, and even die for them. But did they really have to make the smell and touch that sublime? Obviously they did, because for some parents it’s still not enough.
O’Hara’s mind jumped from the back of the van to the last known image of the kid alive, because she knows that here, alone in this windowless cell, is where he died. While the perps stuffed their faces in front, the kid slowly bled to death behind them on a thin foam mattress stained maroon black. Surrounding the mattress are mangled packages of gauze, cotton balls, and antiseptic wipes, and empty bags of M&Ms and Cheetos and two Superman comics, and everything is dabbed with bloody fingerprints, even the paint bucket the kid used as a toilet.
Of all the stains, the most disturbing are the handprints on the flat gray metal walls. They are the same size as the ones stamped out of the gate at the community garden, but these are the prints of someone trying desperately to get out.
When O’Hara stands up and turns away, she searches the garage for her new friend. “Hey, Porter, what happened to Mabel?”
“As soon as they opened the van, she scratched on the back door and asked to be let out. She didn’t want any part of it.”