(14)

This is Officer Ronnie Candles,” Dudley said. “It’s been a while, but you know her, of course.”

“I can see the young Daniel in your face,” she said.

“Truth is, you had to know I was going to be here to recognize me.”

“Saw your face on the back cover of your book. Had on a tweed jacket with elbow patches. How writerly of you. But you look the way I remember you, only a lot taller.”

“You read my novel?”

“Bought it but haven’t read it yet. The Stone at the Bottom of the Sea.”

“That’s it.”

Chief Dudley said, “I remember you both standing in my office, dripping water. You interrupted my supper.”

“I remember too,” Ronnie said. “There was a colored waiting room still there, or the sign was, anyway, under thin white paint.”

“Well,” Chief Dudley said, “ain’t there anymore. Why don’t you take Danny to get some food, then take him over to the morgue?”

“I prefer going to the morgue first, if that’s all right?”

“Fine by me, son.”

Me and Ronnie walked to the desk, took off our gear, and put it in a disposable bin. We went out into the sunshine. It felt good at first, and then the heat turned weighty.

Now that Ronnie had removed the coverings, I could see she was compact with broad shoulders, catlike when she moved.

She reached back and unbound her hair, which had been gathered and contained by a huge hair clip. It sprang up and was soft and black and shiny in the light. She had found a style and was sticking to it.

Damn, she was lovely.

“Do you remember me, really?” I said.

“I remember how scared and wet and cold you were. I remember how scared and wet and cold I was. I remember you staying with us awhile. Yeah. I remember you.”

“Your parents?”

“Older, but fine.”

“Still got the books they gave me, the multi-tool pocketknife too. Got it with me right now.”

“That’s nice. Daddy still works the bag a little. Mama, she’s buzzing around like she was twenty years younger. I feel a bit sad when I see the gray in their hair because it reminds me, as Daddy says, that they are moving closer to the barn. But they’re okay.”

I thought: Do you remember the kiss in the hallway? Part of me very much wanted to know, but I certainly wasn’t about to ask.

We got in the cruiser and Ronnie started up the engine. The air-conditioning felt good. It was a short drive to the morgue, a moderate-size aluminum rectangle that looked a bit like a hangar for a small aircraft.

Another small building, also made of aluminum, was pushed up near it and there was a porch that led from the larger building to the smaller one. The porch had an overhang on it, and the sides of it were not wood or brick but hard plastic that served like long windows; a rectangular fish tank is what it reminded me of. Someone walking from one building to the next could easily be seen.

We stepped out into that dreadful heat, made our way to the smaller of the buildings, and went inside. There was a desk in there with a word processor and printer on it. A young woman was seated behind the word processor. She looked like she had not yet graduated from high school. Pretty in a pouty way, with a big tumble of red hair and eyes green as memories of Ireland.

There was a man, probably ten years older than me, putting a manila folder into a file cabinet. He had the physique of an athlete, was tall, and his hair was black as engine grease.

The air in there was almost cold and there was a dark curtain mostly drawn over a little window to the right of the desk, and where the curtain split was a slash of light that cut across the wooden floor like the edge of a solar razor. There were chairs in a row near a long, narrow table with a glass coffeepot on a hot plate. There was coffee in the pot. It looked dark and deadly.

The man turned and looked at us. There was an old-fashioned manly air about him. He was thin-lipped and squint-eyed; a lock of his dark hair hung down on his forehead. It was like someone had jacked up Elvis and driven John Wayne up his ass. He had on a loose Hawaiian shirt and khaki pants and white slip-on tennis shoes.

When he moved, the girl behind the desk studied him with a smile on her face, and I swear, I thought the air smelled of musk, but it could just as easily have been coming from me. The mere sight of Ronnie had fired up a lot of chemicals.

“Hello, Jay,” Ronnie said. “How are you?”

“Good. You must be Daniel, the son?”

“I am.”

“Chief called. Said you were coming over.” He stuck out his hand. “Jay Scott.”

We shook.

“Glad to meet you, Jay.” I was lying through my teeth, because as he shook my hand, he was glancing past me, studying Ronnie as if he were observing Aphrodite rising nude and gorgeous from the foamy sea. A bolt of unreasonable jealousy passed through me and then was gone.

The redhead behind the desk cleared her throat.

“Oh, this is Shirley Rivers,” Jay said. “Excuse my manners. Too much time at work. The dead don’t need formal introductions.”

Shirley lifted her hand and moved her fingers a little, said, “Hi. I’m not one of the dead.”

If her voice had been any smaller and cuter, it would have needed a high chair.

“Intern from University of Texas,” Jay said. “Nursing, right?”

“Anthropology. But that’s okay, you weren’t even close,” Shirley said.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Shirley said.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Jay said. “Follow me, please. Not you, Shirley. You have paperwork.”

“Yes, boss,” she said, and saluted.

We went through a door at the back of the room. Jay led us along the clear plastic walled-in walk to the larger building. Inside it was icy and we were standing in a narrow pathway between a row of what looked like giant file drawers. Our breath puffed out in cottony clouds.

Jay walked directly to a long drawer and pulled it open. There was a cardboard box inside and there was a white cloth over the top of the box. It was hard to imagine that someone that had lived could now be stored in a cardboard box in a file drawer.

“You know, I have a saying,” Jay said. “‘Dying makes the dead better people, and if the living pay attention, it does them good too.’ I think we find death puts things into perspective. Chief Dudley told me about your past. The bridge and all.”

“I’ve made my peace with who he was and what he did,” I said.

Of course that was a big fat lie.

“These are the remains of your father, Daniel.” Jay removed the cloth from the box.

I looked in.

There were yellowed bones, a skull with a crack in the front of it, probably where it had banged against the steering wheel. I didn’t feel anything right then. Without flesh, it could be anybody.

In there with him were pieces of his clothes in plastic bags, and in one of the bags was a single item, a silver ring. I knew it to be my father’s ring. I remembered how it glinted on his finger as his hand rested on the steering wheel that night long ago. That ring brought the reality of his death home to me more than his bones.

“Hello, Dad,” I said.

“We might need some information from you. A way we can check his dental records against these teeth, to be sure.”

“I don’t have any idea who his dentist was,” I said. “Too many years ago. I may never have known. I don’t even know what dentist I went to. Same with Mom. Chief Dudley asked me the same thing for her.”

Jay nodded. “Maybe we can figure it out. Probably will.”

“That’s his ring, though. I’m certain of that.”

Jay closed the drawer, moved to another, and when he pulled it open, the air inside felt solid, as if it were climbing out of that drawer.

There was a blanket in there, my childhood seahorse blanket stained with mud, and it was wrapped around a bundle of something. Of course, I knew what that was. There were also three clear plastic bags containing little blue-bud earrings, a silver wedding band, black dress shoes of the sort a woman might wear to church, and some fragments of mud-stained hair.

Jay, as if unwrapping a burrito, opened the blanket. I tried to see my mother in those bones, but of course I couldn’t. Besides the bones, there was some leathery flesh holding some of the bones together.

I leaned over and looked at the smiling skull and noticed something important.

I took a deep breath. So deep and loud, both Ronnie and Jay turned toward me.

The words practically tumbled out of my mouth.

“That’s not my mother.”