Sophie's Last Stand

With that, Mr. Wonderful vanished and Detective Gray Evans went to work.

“He’s a friend of yours?” I asked Joey, trying to keep my tone casual.

Joey looked away from the crime scene, glancing sharply at my face, then back to the crowd of police officers. “Yeah, I like the guy, but we travel in different circles. He’s single, I’m married and got kids, so we mainly see each other at practice or a game. Nice guy, though. Even read my books. Go figure that, huh? A cop reading poetry?”

I shrugged, watching Gray talk to the uniformed officers. I liked the way the sunlight glinted off his hair, tinting the gray into a brilliant silvery white and somehow managing to make him look even younger.

“What? You’re saying a cop can’t be sensitive?”

Joey barely seemed to hear me and I was surprised when he answered. “You know any like that? Sensitive?”

Well, no, I didn’t. In Philadelphia the streets hardened them, and even if they had felt an emotion, I never saw it. But then, I only knew the South Philly boys, the ones from the neighborhood. I can assure you, sentimentality was not their forte.

“He works with Boy Scouts. That’s sensitive.”

This grabbed Joey’s attention. “I thought you didn’t know the guy?”

I could feel the heat rising up into my cheeks, spreading like a rosy wildfire across my face. I looked away, focusing on the activities of a slow crime scene technician who seemed to be gathering blades of grass from the ground around the victim’s body.

“Oh, I ran into him at the Tour of Homes. He was helping them sell lemonade.”

Joey’s attention sharpened. “So you run into him at the tour and still remember him?” he asked.

“Well, I guess he sort of stuck out in my mind, that’s all. You know, Joe, women are observant.”

Joey snorted. “Tell me about it.”

“So have you met his girlfriend?” I asked, fishing.

Joey had switched his attention back to the scene. “Met who?” he asked without turning.

“His girlfriend, Joey. He has one, doesn’t he?”

This earned me another sharp glance. “What? No, I haven’t met her. I don’t know who guys bring to the game with them. I’m just there to play. I didn’t notice anybody in particular. Lots of women come to the games, but so do guys.”

Men were so unobservant. “So he brought a lot of different women to the games, huh? What is he, a player?”

Joey’s attention was only marginally on my interrogation. He shrugged. “Whatever. Yeah, I’d say he’s a good player.”

I looked back at the detective. He radiated charisma; of course he was a player. Why not? He was a man, wasn’t he?

Like a homing pigeon, my sister Darlene arrived. How she knew something was going on at my house is a mystery, but then, that’s Darlene, ruled by the cosmos, victim of supernatural wavelengths. Our grandmother always said Darlene had the gift—the Eye, as the family calls it. She said Darlene “saw” things and “knew” things, things that other people don’t know…yet.

Darlene drives a beat-up Chevy Colt. It resembles an empty soda can on wheels, half crushed up and dented by what would be normal wear and tear in a regular vehicle. Of course, Darlene drives the way she thinks, in a nonlinear fashion, weaving from one location to another, which probably accounts for the car’s condition more than anything.

She parked, if you want to call it that, halfway down the block and then strolled back toward the house. She was wearing another one of her hippy outfits, a flowing chiffon dress and pink sandals. She didn’t wear a floral wreath today, probably because she’d come from work, but two slender braids pulled her straight brown hair back into a post-sixties look. She appeared to be oblivious to the police cruisers parked in the driveway. As she drew closer, I realized she was humming.

Joey rolled his eyes. He has no patience with her because he says she’s a disaster waiting to happen. I think actually she stresses him out because he feels he needs to protect her because she’s divorced two husbands and buried one. He’s worried because she doesn’t seem in a hurry to find number four.

“Good morning,” she said, her voice a singsong lilt. Then she stopped, seemed to take stock of her surroundings and said, “Oh, I guess it’s afternoon, huh?” Still no acknowledgment of the police cars.

She wandered up to where we stood before the change came over her. “Oh, man, something feels weird here. There is, like, a total disturbance in the energy level.” She actually shivered, wrapped her arms around herself and looked toward the backyard.

“Oh…it’s cold here, even colder back there.” She looked from me to Joe. “All right,” she said, “who’s dead?”

“Sweet Mother of God!” Joe gasped in mock astonishment. “What was it gave it away, the crime scene van or the three cop cars and the entire New Bern police force in the backyard?”

Darlene gave him her patronizing smile. “You should give up meat, Joe. It makes you mean.” Then she looked back at the scene and saw Mr. Wonderful.

How the woman recognized him again, after only seeing him one time in passing, is beyond me, but she did. She broke out in a triumphant grin. “Aha!” she cried. “What did I tell you? It’s your destiny! Fate cannot be denied!”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Joe cried.

“It’s the meat, isn’t it, Joe? You’re probably constipated,” she said, and dismissed him.

“He’s a detective,” I said. “Who knew?”

Darlene smiled. She knew. You could see she was thinking it. I knew.

At that moment, Gray Evans looked back at us and smiled. He knew, too, I thought. He knew all along.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. I couldn’t take it, couldn’t take everybody seeing my future, even me. I knew that it was all an unrealistic fantasy we were creating, not real life. In real life people simply do not fall in love at first sight or cement their relationship over a dead body. It just didn’t happen and the sooner we all got that, the sooner I could get on with my life.

We stood in the kitchen, or what would be the kitchen, and stared out the back window into the yard where Gray Evans and his squad of officers toiled. It was a close-up view of things we probably shouldn’t have seen.

A technician nodded to a question asked by Gray’s partner, the tall older man with a permanent look of sorrow on his well-worn face. With a quick nod to Gray, the senior detective leaned forward, pinched the edge of the plastic between two latex covered fingers and slowly tugged the wrapping away from her body.

Joe and I crossed ourselves, with him saying the Rosary softly and Darlene on my other side murmuring an incantation that sounded like “Now I lay me down to sleep.” As the police officers moved and the technicians snapped pictures, we had a pretty good view of the victim. She was young and had worked hard to disguise any natural beauty that might have been evident. Her hair was black, cut into a scalp-hugging cap of short, shaggy layers.

Joe whistled softly, cutting off his prayer at the sight of this poor dead thing. She was wearing a black leather halter top, complete with bright chrome studs, cutoff jeans and heavy black boots. Her skin, pasty in death, was covered with a number of intricate tattoos.

I watched the police officers exchange glances, a couple of them seeming to snicker. I looked back at the dead girl. She looked more like she was sleeping than dead. Her eyes were closed and her body wasn’t contorted into any of the anguished positions I’d expected of a violent death.

Darlene studied her. “Would you look at her boobs?” she said finally. “You think those are real?”

“Darlene!” Joe and I both yelled at her. “Have a little respect for the dead,” Joe added.

“I am respectful,” Darlene said. “I don’t have tits like that. I mean look at them. They have to be a triple D cup. Do you think they’re real?”

Joe was rolling his eyes, but I looked at the dead woman again. Darlene did have a point. Whatever she’d packed into that halter top, real or otherwise, was a pretty full load.

Darlene was entranced for another minute, and then she sighed and turned to look at me. “Bet she had back problems.”

“You think?”

Darlene, not sensing the sarcasm, nodded wisely. “I am a trained therapist, you know. I should be in a position here to judge.” Then, as if having another thought, she stopped, looked back at the victim and said, “You think she got shot there? I don’t see any blood, but then if the bullet hit a saline bag and it ruptured—”

“Darlene!” The image was too gruesome to imagine.