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SIX

A police description can look like this: “Body was found at approximately 7:15 AM on March 13, 1978, off Route 31, two miles south of the corner of Pioneers and the Route 31 interchange. There were numerous lacerations to the neck, shoulders, face. Heavy bruising around the wrists and ankles. Blunt force trauma to the skull. Possible death: strangulation.”

A police description cannot look like this: “I couldn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it. How young! How desecrated! How beaten! And then tossed by the side of the road. Discarded trash. A disposable bag. This could’ve been my daughter, my wife, my niece. Who are they? I will find them. I will find them and I will kill them.”

It could say: “Lacerations around the hands and shoulders, defensive wounds, red marks around the wrists and neck, blunt force trauma, possible strangulation.”

It could not say: “I have seen that throat in chapel choir, those vocal chords, now silenced, singing in a soprano voice, a voice, quite literally, just like the cliché, like an angel. But how can you not think it? A voice, yes, like an angel, in the chapel choir. There, on the altar, singing ‘Ave Maria.’ A soprano voice, a stunning voice, singing ‘Look Homeward Angel,’ singing ‘Dona Nobis Pacem,’ singing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and even, on a lighter day, ‘Southern Cross.’ ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ A child’s voice. A child’s face. A doll face.”

It could say: “Body, half-clothed, facing ground. Dress, torn. Remnants of a sweater. Necklace. A Wedgwood cameo.”

It could not say: “I have seen her in that sweater on the way to school, on the way to St. John’s, in the line at the Farmer Jack, in the line at the Community Shores. I have seen that sweet thinning baby blue sweater with the butterfly, or was it a flower, on the collar. I have seen that robin’s egg sweater as Beth Krause walked with her father, Lt. Colonel Charles Krause, a war hero, by the shore of the lake. I have seen her clutch that Wedgwood locket, a self-conscious shrug, at school, at choir, at Hope.”

It was these thoughts, all of these thoughts, that tumbled, rattling through the head like pickaxes, of Samuel Christopher Barnett, Detective Barnett, not yet five years on the force. A decent man. A kind man. Tried to be kind anyway.

Oh, believe me, there were a million other things his pulse was urging him to do other than write down little words in little boxes, checks and more checks, here and there, on forms and more forms. A traffic ticket for a corpse.

There were a million terrorizing, shocking, blindsiding impulses but no . . . there he was, pen in paper, Detective Samuel Barnett. Brown mouse hair. Skinny no matter what. Old-timey Keystone Cop face. No one looked like that anymore. And he would’ve done them, every million of them, had he not had to, what is it, “keep a brave face,” “stand tall,” for the cameras.

And there were cameras. You betcha. For a band the length of a football stadium, up and down the sliver of that Michigan lakeshore stretch, there were little white boxes with tires on them, barely visible in the snow. Camouflaged. And out of each of these boxes came one, usually a lady, in a smart, snappy getup, with a black penis stick in her hand you were supposed to talk into. A microphone. Careful what you say. Easy now.

That little stick and those batting eyes can get a lot out of you but you better be careful. Brace yourself as the first one comes barreling forward, and then another and another. An army of smart-dressed swine.

Brace yourself. Easy there, Sammy.

“Detective, is the victim a local? Is the victim female or male? What age? Do you consider foul play? Is there a suspect? Do you have a motive? Is the—”

An army of swine. A murder of crows.

Peck peck peck.

What did they want from him? Hadn’t they had enough? They had a blood-red slab of girl-meat in the snow. Wasn’t that enough? Brisk. Brisk. Be brisk. Don’t let them know.

“The body is yet to be identified. No further questions.”

But then, in the back, a yelp. “Here’s the snow plower! Here’s the guy who found her! I got him! I got him!”

And then, the parade goes thataway and Detective Barnett stands still in the snow, abandoned. Put your feet in the snow, look up to the sky. Ask the trees to wonder why.

Bury This

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