Aunt Barb sobbed, hoarse sobs racking her frail frame. “She should have been … at work. Why wasn’t she … at work?”
Judy hugged her aunt close. “Maybe she wasn’t feeling well, so she left work and went home?”
Judy’s mother nodded, dry-eyed, taking her place behind the chair. “That’s probably what it was, Barb. You never know, she could have been nauseated. Nausea is a sign of heart attack. Jaw pain, too. Shoulder pain. Women often mistake warning signs. They think the problem is the flu, but it’s not. Did you know that?”
Judy knew her mother was talking only to fill the silence, so she didn’t answer, but kept rubbing her aunt’s back.
“No, no … this is too awful, it can’t be. It just can’t be. I just can’t believe … it’s her.”
“Ladies, excuse us.” Officer Hoffman rose quietly, and Officer Ramirez followed suit. “We’ll leave now and give you some privacy.”
“Officers, no, wait.” Aunt Barb lifted her face from her palms. Tears filled her eyes, her brow collapsed into deep furrows, and her downturned mouth made a mournful gash. “I want to go, I want to … see her. Where is she?”
“What?” Judy asked, aghast. She couldn’t imagine her aunt’s going to the scene and seeing the body.
Judy’s mother frowned. “Barb, no, you’re not thinking clearly. You’ve had a shock. Stay home, please. You have so much to do. Your friends from work have been calling. You have to call them back.”
Office Hoffman blinked. “Mrs. Moyer, there’s no need for you to go to the scene. A photo ID suffices for a personal ID, for our purposes.”
“I want to see her.” Aunt Barb took a long final sniffle, but her lips trembled, curling into a miserably wiggly line.
“Aunt Barb, this is too awful to do—”
“No, it’s not, I can do it.” Her aunt shook her head, stricken. “I know what death looks like. I saw my parents. I saw Steve, I was with him. I held his hand.” Aunt Barb pursed her lips, as if what she was about to say physically pained her. “Iris carried my name and number in her wallet. She thought I was there for her. Now I will be. I’m going. I’ll just get my purse, Officer.”
Judy sighed inwardly. Her aunt may have been the baby of the family, but when she wanted to do something, there was no stopping her. It was no accident that she could grow the notoriously tricky heirloom roses. “Aunt Barb, let me go with you then.”
“I’d love that, if you don’t mind.”
Chapter Six
Judy parked her tomato-red Volkswagen Beetle behind the police cruiser, on a long, straight stretch of Brandywine Way, a single-lane backroad through acres of shorn hayfields, which would have been pitch black except for the police activity. Uniformed police officers and men in ties and jackets stood in the street, talking in groups. Several police cruisers parked, with their red, white, and blue lights flashing silently from a light bar atop their roofs. Red flares marked a perimeter, sending smoke trailing into the air, where it vanished. In the center of the scene, its front bumper buried in a huge hay roll, sat an old brown Honda.
Judy looked over at her aunt, who had sobbed softly during most of the ride. “Aunt Barb?” she said, touching her arm. “We’re here.”
“Okay.” Her aunt dabbed her nose, then put her Kleenex away in the pocket of her parka. She had on a red knit cap and seemed lost in her maroon parka, which dwarfed her since she’d lost weight. Her skin looked pale even in the dim interior, lighted only by the flashing lights of the police cruiser in front of them. “Thanks for taking me. I just want to see her, for myself.”
“I understand.” Judy patted her aunt’s arm, stuffed in the thick parka.
“I know she’s gone, but I don’t know, in a way. It’s unreal to me, it’s abstract. Does that make any sense?”
“Sure,” Judy answered, meaning it. She knew-but-didn’t-know so many things in her life. She knew-but-didn’t-know that she wouldn’t marry Frank. She knew-but-didn’t-know that she wanted to be a partner. She knew-but-didn’t-know that she wanted to be closer to her mother. She knew-but-didn’t-know that Aunt Barb could die. “I think it’s good that we came.”
“Thanks.” Aunt Barb closed her eyes, and a tear rolled down her cheek, illuminated by the flashing lights. She wiped it away quickly. “Iris was my best friend. I didn’t want to say so before, in front of your mother. I was afraid that she—or my friends at work, whoever—would judge me.”
“I wouldn’t have,” Judy said softly.
“I know that, but shame on me. Iris has such a good heart. She always understood how I was feeling, even when Steve died. She was there.” Aunt Barb frowned, blinking wetly. “Please don’t take that the wrong way. You and your mom were there, too. But after the funeral, when everybody went home and the casseroles were eaten and the phone calls stopped, Iris was there.” Tears brimmed in Aunt Barb’s eyes, threatening to spill over again. “I told everybody at work that my garden healed me after Steve passed, but it was really her.” Aunt Barb’s lower lip puckered, her tears pooled in her eyes. “She’s my best friend. I never even said so, before now. I never even told her, and now it’s too late.”
Judy’s heart broke for her. “Aunt Barb, I’m sure she knew.”
“But still, I should have told her, or you or your mom and people at work. Why didn’t I?” Aunt Barb wiped her eyes, shaking her head. “Because I was ashamed? Was it class or race? Or money? What’s the difference? I’m a moral coward. We got along great. We talked about everything. We laughed and laughed.” Aunt Barb wiped her cheeks and eyes, then seemed to will her tears to subside. “I’ll find a way to make it up to her. I will bury her and I will mourn her.”
Judy touched her arm again. “I’ll help you.”
“I knew you would.” Aunt Barb managed a sad smile. “You know who my emergency contact is, now that your uncle is gone?”
“My mom?”
“No. You.”
“Aw, thanks.” Judy felt tears come to her eyes, but blinked them away. She prayed that Aunt Barb recovered from her awful disease and there was no need for her to have an emergency contact for many, many years.
“Look, here comes the police.” Aunt Barb shifted up in her seat, and Judy turned to see Officer Hoffman striding toward them, bulky in his jacket and gun belt, carrying a clipboard. He had his cap back on, his Windbreaker was buttoned up, and his mouth made a grim line.
Judy lowered her car window, letting in a blast of brisk air. “Should we get out?”
“Yes, please.” Officer Hoffman stood aside, taking a pen from inside his Windbreaker, and Judy got out of the car, checking to see if her aunt needed help, but it didn’t look like she did. Aunt Barb walked over to Officer Hoffman, plunging her hands into her pockets and standing in the headlights from the Volkswagen.
“Ms. Carrier.” Officer Hoffman gave Judy the clipboard, which had a pen under the silver clasp at the top. “Please initial here, on this line.” He pointed at a grid with a thick finger. “This is our case log, which shows who visited the scene and when. It’s for our records.”
“No problem.” Judy wrote her initials in the block and handed the clipboard back to Officer Hoffman.
“Ladies, you won’t be permitted inside the perimeter. Just stay with me, outside the flares.”
Aunt Barb frowned. “But that’s so far from the car.”
“No civilians inside the perimeter, that’s our procedure. We didn’t ask you down here, the ID is already made. If you want to be here, you have to follow procedure. Ladies, follow me and stay with me.”
Officer Hoffman turned away, Judy took Aunt Barb’s arm, and they walked together outside of the flares, past the group of police and administrative personnel, then farther down the road. A uniformed police officer stood off to the side of the street, his orange flashlight in hand, ready to redirect traffic, but the only cars and people were official. They got closer to the Honda, and a fire-department truck was parked at its front, where several sets of bright white klieglights
had been set up, top-heavy on spindly metallic stalks, with tripod feet.
A gleaming blue van with the white symbol for the county coroner sat behind the Honda. Its back doors had reflective chevrons and were hanging open, so Judy assumed that the van hadn’t been loaded yet. Iris’s body must still be inside the Honda. A photographer took pictures inside the car, and his electronic flash fired at irregular intervals, visible through the windows, which were rolled down on the driver’s side. Shadowy silhouettes moved around inside the Honda, but it was too far to see anything clearly.
Judy sighed inwardly, the sight making her profoundly sad. It seemed wrong that someone could die in such a mundane way, a heart attack while driving, sitting for hours strapped into a car seat, surrounded only by people whose job it was to see to it that she was examined, investigated, photographed, documented, and carted away in a van, to be taken to a morgue. Judy guessed that there would have to be an autopsy because it was an unattended death, and somehow that made it worse, that in a few hours or maybe even the next day, another stranger would invade the very corpus, slice a Y-incision into her chest, then extract, examine, measure, and weigh her organs, record her demise in triplicate, and issue a death certificate.
They reached the point directly across from the Honda, so that they were lined up with a clear view of the front seat. They stopped, and Aunt Barb’s attention riveted on the Honda, where silhouettes were still moving around inside the car. There did appear to be a figure in the front seat, but it was too far away to see clearly, for which Judy was secretly grateful.
Aunt Barb craned her neck, standing on tiptoe. “What’s going on, Officer? What are they doing in there?”
“That would be the coroner and the deputy coroner, performing the last stages of their investigation. They and the evidence technicians examine the body and make sure it gets photographed the way it was found.” Officer Hoffman gestured to the group of police officers. “The department already has uniformed officers interviewing neighbors, to see if they saw the vehicle pull over or anything else unusual or out of the ordinary. We ask them if they know the deceased or recognize the vehicle, and if they’ve had any strange events in the area.”
Aunt Barb frowned, but didn’t look away from the Honda. “There are no neighbors.”
Judy nodded. “And it’s not as if it’s a crime scene.”
“No matter, crime scene or no.” Officer Hoffman shrugged in his heavy Windbreaker. “We follow the same procedure. It’s an apparently natural death, but we still investigate as if it’s a crime scene. An assistant from the D.A.’s Office is here, and so are two of the county detectives.”
Judy eyed the clump of men. “Are the detectives the ones in suits and ties?”
“Yes. In addition to the interviews, we have uniformed officers patrolling the perimeter, looking for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary on the ground, near the vehicle, or even in the hayfield.”
Aunt Barb shivered slightly, her eyes glued to the Honda. Grief etched lines into the pale skin of her face, stretched thin across her gaunt cheekbones. The tip of her nose was turning red, though it wasn’t that cold.
Judy talked to fill in the silences, her mother’s daughter. “Officer Hoffman, do you do anything differently in terms of your investigation, if the deceased is undocumented?”
“No,” Officer Hoffman answered. “We do everything by the book. For example, we had an aggravated robbery last week of an undocumented worker, which unfortunately happens a lot, since they get paid in cash. We investigated and prosecuted that case the same as if that person were a citizen. We have to. Same difference if we arrest an undocumented person or if an undocumented person is our suspect. We Mirandize him, and he’s entitled to the same free lawyer as a citizen.”
Judy had no idea. “If you were to ascertain that someone you arrest, or a victim, was undocumented, what are your obligations to the immigration services at the federal level? Do you have to report to them?”
Officer Hoffman’s blue-eyed gaze shifted slyly to her. “You’re talking like a lawyer. Are you a lawyer?”
“I am.” Judy smiled. “Does it show?”
“Luckily, no.” Officer Hoffman permitted himself a tight smile. “Anyway, in answer to your question, I don’t know if we legally have to notify the feds, but we do. It’s not our first priority, but the chief will probably contact ICE tomorrow.”
“What’s ICE?” Judy asked.
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We have a small police force in East Grove, only eight uniformed officers, three evidence techs, and the chief.”
“But it’s fairly safe out here, isn’t it?”
Officer Hoffman nodded. “Yes, the main issue in the undocumented community is robbery and theft. They can’t use the banks and are always taking cash to Western Union, to be wired home. You ask me, Western Union would be out of business but for them.” Officer Hoffman surveyed the scene. “It will take us a few more hours to process here. We’ll probably release it tomorrow. We lucked out in that this isn’t a busy road.”
Meantime, Aunt Barb had fallen into a grave silence, still fixated on the Honda. “It looks like the window is down in the front seat, doesn’t it, Officer?”
Officer Hoffman squinted. “Yes, it does.”
Judy looked, too. “Did the coroner do that, or the evidence techs?”
Officer Hoffman shook his head. “No. We leave everything untouched, everything exactly the way it was found.”
Aunt Barb was shaking her head. “Iris doesn’t drive with the window open, even on a nice day. She doesn’t like her hair to blow around, and I can’t understand why she’s on this road at all.”
Judy asked, “Is it on the way home for her, from work?”
“No, not at all.” Aunt Barb kept her eyes trained on the Honda. “It’s a straight shot from where she works to her apartment. So if she felt nauseated at work and decided to go home, she wouldn’t take this way. This is like the hypotenuse to the triangle. It would add twenty minutes to the trip. Also, remember that call she got before she left today? I wonder where her phone is.”
“Hold on.” Officer Hoffman motioned to the coroner’s van, where there was new activity. Two young men in black uniforms emerged from the back of the van with a stretcher and carried it toward the Honda. “The coroner’s office is getting ready to take her now. Some of the big departments have standup screens that you can put up, so that nobody can see anything. We don’t have the budget for that.”
Judy put her arm around her aunt. “Aunt Barb, you want to go back to the car?”
“No, thanks.” Aunt Barb formed praying hands, which she pressed to her lips.
Uniformed personnel climbed out of the Honda’s front seat, and others arrived to help. Their bodies made a crowd of dark silhouettes around the car, blocking Judy’s and Aunt Barb’s views, but in the next moment, two men in black uniforms lifted a body from the front seat. Then it disappeared from view again, as they must have put it on the stretcher.
Judy couldn’t see the body and was sure her aunt couldn’t, either. She looked over to check, but before she knew what was happening, Aunt Barb had slid out from under her arm and was charging forward, bolting between the flares, through the perimeter, and toward the Honda.
“Miss, please, stop!” Officer Hoffman called out, giving chase.
Chapter Seven
“Aunt Barb!” Judy caught her aunt by the elbow just as she almost stumbled on an electrical cord from the klieglights, which blasted the area around the stretcher with light. The crowd of police personnel turned around at the commotion, and the klieglights made harsh, contrasting shadows on their faces. Their expressions looked collectively disapproving.
Judy looked past them, stricken. Iris was laying on the stretcher, inside a black vinyl body bag that had yet to be zipped, its sides gaping open. Her eyes remained closed, but her head was to the side, showing her ear and the gold crucifix earrings. Her hands were resting together on her body, but od
dly, it looked as if one or two of her nails had been broken, the red polish chipped off and some of the rhinestones missing.
“Oh, Iris, no!” her aunt cried out, collapsing, and Judy grabbed her, hugged her close, and moved her away from the sight.
“Aunt Barb, come with me, I’m sorry, so sorry.”
Officer Hoffman took her aunt’s other arm gently. “Ladies, you must exit the perimeter.”
“No, no, no.” Aunt Barb sobbed, hanging her head, sagging between the policeman and Judy, and letting them lead her away from the stretcher and back to the Volkswagen, where they eased her, sobbing, into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her.
Judy faced Officer Hoffman. “I’m sorry that happened. I didn’t see that coming, but I should have.”
“No need to apologize.” Officer Hoffman nodded, sympathetic. “You never know how people are going to react in a situation like this. That’s why we do death notifications in pairs, and why we always make sure that the next-of-kin is sitting down when we do the notification. I’ve had the craziest things happen during a notification. One time, I told a man that his son had been killed in an auto accident, and the man jumped up from the couch and ran clear out of the house. We had to chase him down the street.”
“Oh my,” Judy said, thinking that being a policeman had to be one of the most demanding jobs on the planet.
“So thank you for your cooperation. I’ll make a note that your aunt made a personal identification.”
“I have one question before we go.” Judy couldn’t get Iris’s broken fingernails out of her mind, for some reason. “What happens next, to the body? Will there be an autopsy?”
“Yes, since the new D.A., we always autopsy after an auto accident to find out if there was a medical event.”
“How long would that take and who would get the results?”
“Let’s see, it’s Saturday night, so I bet the autopsy would be Sunday or Monday. They would release the body, probably on Tuesday, to the funeral home that would be picked out by whoever claims it.”