Chapter One
I am drenched to the bone. Rivulets of muddy water are dripping from me onto the cement and staining it in splotches, and I can’t turn away from them. A confusion of flashing lights and shouting surrounds me, but I am detached and cold as I wait. A man nearly died. Or maybe he is dying right now; I’m not sure.
All I can think about is my mother, about how I don’t want to go to the hospital, even if they insist. At some point earlier, an EMT wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, but it’s doing little to calm the shake in my shoulders that reverberates down to my knees.
The owner of Dello’s bar has just arrived. Apparently, he lives around the corner, and the sirens forced him to abandon whatever he was doing the only night of the week that his bar is closed. I’m huddled under the bar’s patio roof because I wanted protection from the rain and didn’t know where else to go. Now, Dello—a man with thick gray hair pulled back into a ponytail and a raspy voice—is asking me too many questions, not waiting for a response before moving on to the next.
“What were you even doin’ down here?” he rasps. “It’s always something. I get one damned night off a week. Why can’t I get any peace in this damned town?”
What happened seems to be the most important question, but I don’t have any answers.
The tiny gravel parking lot, which is usually vacant, is crowded with cars: mine, an ambulance, two cop cars, and now the owner’s beat-up Nissan too. My car is blocked in. It’s funny how an hour ago it was just me here. Distantly, I hope that they’ll move so I can leave soon and shower. I want to get out of these clothes.
Once the ambulance arrived, someone had led me up the rocky path away from the river and back into the parking lot. They checked me out to see if I was hurt or injured in any way, but the blood wasn’t mine. None of it is mine, which means he lost too much. That much I do know.
They are carrying him up the path on a stretcher now and putting him onto a gurney. Through the rain, I strain my eyes to see if his chest is still moving, but everyone is rushing, and it’s too hard to tell. He looks just as lifeless as he did while I waited for the ambulance. Only a few minutes ago, I was covering his chest with my own hands and could feel his shallow breath coming in and out.
With that, I turn my palms over. It just looks like mud under my nails, but the harsh red that seeped through his shirt and onto my hands is turning dark brown now that I’ve been standing for a while. He’d felt warm against my cold hands. I try to shake that thought away. In reality, blood is nothing like the nonsense that appears in movies. Seeing that much blood in real life is like realizing you don’t know shit about anything.
The EMTs load the ambulance and speed away. The wind picks up, and while I wait, rain pours in sideways sheets. I hunch against the cold and vaguely wonder what I’m supposed to do now. Eventually, Dello unlocks the front door, and a woman in a uniform leads me to the bathroom. I had just been here the other day, but empty and quiet, it’s sinister and unfamiliar.
Even in my shocked state, I know that I reacted too strongly when they told me I should go to the hospital to get thoroughly checked out. My voice was too loud, verging on hysteria as I refused. Now, the woman pushes the bathroom door open for me like I’m too delicate to do so myself, or she doesn’t want me to touch anything with my blood-smeared hands.
As I step inside the tiny room, my reflection in the mirror under the light makes my knees lose their steadiness. I want to tear off the blood-stained shirt. Instinctively, I suck in my stomach, so the fabric pulls away from my skin. I take my jacket off and lay it on the sink. The material is heavier than it should be, and for a second, my mind goes to what is stashed away in my pocket.
I’m thankful that everyone has left me alone because when the porcelain sink turns a disgusting brown from the blood, I want to vomit. I have to breathe loudly through my nose to stop that from happening.
For a minute, I just stare at my reflection, trying to force my breath to come easier. I’m suddenly certain that this night, this last hour, has noticeably changed me. Yet, my hair is still the same chestnut brown and unruly mess, hanging down past my shoulders. I’m still skinny, but without the muscle I once had in college. There’s still that same uncertain expression in my brown eyes as if I’m afraid to take a step in any direction because the floor might give out. Twenty-six years old, and I still look like a kid, lost, but too stubborn to ask for directions.
The woman returns for me, and I’m forced to leave the tiny room.
“Ma’am, you can wait here, but please don’t go anywhere. The police are going to want to talk to you.” She gestures toward a few chairs on the other side of the room, which is dim even though Dello flipped on a few lights.
The woman is close to my age, but her I.D. badge has an important-looking title after her name. My plain name, Margaret Hayes, seems inadequate in comparison. I wonder why my mom even picked the name, Margaret. Why didn’t I ask her? Guilt for thinking about myself in this situation overwhelms me, and I squeeze my hands together to keep them warm and from shaking.
There is nothing left to do but wait. Is this what it’s like to be in shock? That’s stupid. If I’m in shock, then I wouldn’t be thinking about my mom. I shake my head slightly, hoping to clear up some of the fogginess. When that doesn’t work, I settle on staring at the scuffed floor.
It feels like hours before a police officer steps into my line of vision. He breaks my gaze that’s trained on the floor and drags me back to reality.
“Ma’am?” The officer’s voice is steady and firm, but not harsh. “I’m Officer Keating.”
“Hi.” My voice seems to vibrate up from my throat into my ears. The start of a headache settles in, but I straighten in my seat anyway.
“What’s your name?” Officer Keating asks, bringing his hands to his belt but then awkwardly lowering them again.
My exhaustion hunkers down, and I want more than anything to leave.
“Maggie. Uh, Margaret.” I pull my jacket sleeves down over my hands. There’s that plain, simple name again. Its inadequacy seems to be mocking me tonight, for some reason.
The officer eyes me carefully, and I note the older and clearly superior officer standing to the left with his eyes trained watchfully on me.
“Maggie, can we talk for a minute?” Officer Keating motions toward the man on his left. “This is Detective Bridge.” The line from an old movie filters through my mind as I shift in my chair. Where were you at 10:58 p.m. last Wednesday?
“Maggie, we’d like to get a statement from you. Can you tell us what happened?” Officer Keating encourages. The way his partner is watching me raises the hairs on my neck and goosebumps prickle my forearms. My mom used to call them goose pimples, which I hated. “You have a lot of blood on you. Can you start from the beginning?”
My eyes snap down to my shirt. The thought of it soaking through my clothes makes me squirm in the wooden chair. They’re waiting. I have to say something if I want to go home.
“The beginning?”
I’m about to start in a jumble by telling them how I had gone to school in Minneapolis a couple of years back, but I only just moved back to the city five months ago. Last week, I came to Dello’s to meet with some old friends, though none of us had ever been here before. My mom would have been furious if she ever saw me in such a dive.
“Yes, the beginning, Maggie,” Officer Keating glances at his partner, who is shifting impatiently from one foot to another.
“As in when I first saw him or what?”
“Why were you there in the first place?” Detective Bridge interjects in a clipped tone.
“Dello’s?”
“You were inside Dello’s?” Keating attempts to take control of the conversation again.
“No, I mean, yes. I was last week,” I blurt out, trying to clarify. I’m sure they don’t need the whole story about what brought me to Dello’s in the first place, but where do I start?
My mind races back to last week. Last week, there had been a guy at Dello’s, perched at the bar, alone and intense. He tried to chat with me while I waited for the bartender, leaning in too close and spinning his nearly empty glass around and around. I was staring at a tattoo on the inside of his wrist when he asked me what I did for a living, and carelessly, I blurted out that I was a photographer, which wasn’t exactly a lie but wasn’t exactly the truth either. The conversation died when I declined his offer to buy me a drink. He grumbled something about being uptight and turned his back to me, a wave of annoyance rolling off him. But the conversation got me thinking about my camera, about the last time I’d tried to capture anything decent.
I saw the path last week, and I figured that it led right down to the river that ran behind Dello’s and under the Lake Street Bridge. Taking pictures of the bridge consumed me. I’d seen the splashes of spray paint against the gray cement, and I wanted to investigate. I’d felt curious for the first time in forever.
“I’m a photographer,” I explain, though it doesn’t sound convincing this time either. “And I thought I could get some photos of the graffiti under the bridge and the river. I noticed the path, and today, I was taking pictures of the bridge.”
Officer Keating grumbles as if I’ve just told him that pigs can fly, but maybe I’m imagining that part.
“Anyway, it rained all weekend, so today after work, I drove over. I work at Front De Mer, the restaurant. I parked in Dello’s lot and walked down there.” I add a shrug, not wanting to explain that my career as a photographer had fizzled out before it had a chance to go anywhere. My creativity, along with my curiosity had drained away at some point. When it reared its head last week, I latched onto it.
“What happened when you found him?” Keating asks, while Detective Bridge listens.
The rocks made me unsteady walking along the river, and I was worried about dropping my camera. So, I was focused on my feet nearly the whole time. The poor guy had almost gotten a kick to his ribs on top of everything else.
He didn’t yell or move or anything. I almost stepped on him. He had dark clothes on, and he was partially hidden in the weeds. Dirt and blood covered his T-shirt and jeans, along with his hands, chest, and face. His eyes were open, though, which is what I think I saw first.
“I yelled,” I admit, defensively. “But not very loud. Then, I twisted my ankle, trying to back away, and I fell hard on the rocks.”
I stretch, and the dull ache returns now that I’ve mentioned it. It’s like I’m telling a story, and any minute, someone is going to blurt out, wait, this was a dream, right? But no one does.
“And what happened after that?” Detective Bridge chimes in. His patience with me seems to be running out.
“Well, he started to groan and move around, and that’s when … then I called 911.”
My hands were wet as I reached into my camera bag for my phone. The screen wouldn’t register my touch the right way because tiny droplets of muddy water gathered on it. I kept whispering to myself, come on, come on, over and over until I was finally able to dial. It was the second time I had ever called 911 in my life. The first time was when I was eight. I was in my dad’s car, and we passed an older lady who was lost, driving the wrong way down a one-way street and panicking. My dad pulled right up to a payphone down the road and told me to dial. That hadn’t prepared me for this.
“He was bleeding from pretty much everywhere, or that’s what it seemed like. So, I … I tried to use my hands and put pressure”—I glance at my hands again—“then, he looked me right in the eye, and …” I let some air out of my lungs because I’m not sure what I should say. I’m desperate for this conversation to be over. “He passed out.”
“Did he say anything at all?” Detective Bridge pipes in again.
“No.” The word sounds loaded, or maybe I am imagining that too. “I think … I think he may have tried to, but nothing came out.” The man’s desperate, angry look while he had been lying there won’t leave my mind. Blood was smeared across his chin and cheek. Around him, rock, mud, and tall grass seemed to be devouring him. I wondered how long he had been there, but mostly I strained my ears, trying to hear the ambulance over the gurgling rush of the river.
I didn’t hear a thing until the paramedic called out to me. I had been so focused on the almost nonexistent rise and fall of his chest that I hadn’t realized my eyes were squeezed shut. When I opened them, for a second, I thought I imagined the movement under my palms and he had actually already died, but the paramedics moved me aside and found a pulse.
“I should have said something comforting, maybe,” I tell the officers, feeling an odd sense of numbness. “But I didn’t.”
“Did you see anyone else or a possible weapon anywhere near where you found him?” Keating shifts his weight around again, and I shake my head. “There wasn’t anyone else at the bar when you pulled in?”
“No, just me.”
“Did you know the bar was closed tonight?”
“I didn’t think about it.”
“Did you take any photos before you found him?” He glances skeptically at his partner when I shake my head. “And where is your camera now?”
I instinctively reach to my side where my camera usually rests on my hip. When I twist and realize it’s not there, the edge of something buried deep in my jacket pocket pokes at my ribs. “I must have dropped it. I forgot all about it until now.” With a slight sting, I figure it’s broken or lost. My mom bought that camera for me. I hug my arms around my stomach and squeeze, trying to feel less shaky. The unfamiliar corner in my jacket digs into my ribs again.
“I took a few shots under the bridge, maybe five or six, but that was it. I can’t imagine they were anything spectacular.” They ask more and more questions, but each one’s less relevant. I can’t help but wonder why they aren’t searching the woods that stretch along the river for someone or something that can help. I try to stay focused, but thoughts of my camera, smashed or lost, and the man’s blood under my fingernails keep me distracted.
“Ma’am?”
Detective Bridge is blurry. It’s been a while since I’ve blinked.
“We’re all done here.”
I nod in response, my head heavy and my body worn out.
“You know, you shouldn’t be out in the woods like that by yourself, right?” Detective Bridge steps forward, finally flexing the authority I knew he had. He nods as if I’ve already agreed with him rather than staying silent. “It’s dangerous.”
I’m exhausted, but I am alert enough to stiffen at his dark tone. There’s something about the look in his eyes. He doesn’t believe me.
“If you think of anything else, call us.” Detective Bridge looks at me with purpose as his partner passes me a business card. “We’ll let you know if we find your camera.”
I nod.
The two of them leave together, heading toward the path I stumbled down just a few hours ago. Bridge makes it a point to glance back over his shoulder at me before exiting, a leering accusation in his eye.
