To See, And Because You See, To Know

A woman who disappeared eleven years ago turns up in the local insane asylum claiming she killed herself when she was 17.

The room was fluorescent, the corpse laid out on a metal table. Funnily enough this is exactly what I always pictured investigating a corpse would be like. Blue rubber gloves. The whole shebang.

Emily is looking at her dead self. Dead self. What a thing to even think, right?

That’s the last thing I remember thinking – ha-ha, mortality – before Emily started to hyperventilate, and oh my god the corpse, the body, the grey body with brown hair and closed eyes, I think it moved. It did move, motherfucker it’s sitting up, what the hell – and Emily is moving towards the body and the body is crying, she’s crying, they’re both crying – they’re – bang! the next thing I know, Emily is down, blood seeping out of her skull. I spin and James is standing there, gun still pointing at the body, and he looks so angry, it makes my stomach turn. And I’m thinking, where have I seen his face before?

You might wonder how a person ends up in the room with a walking corpse, a girl, and a demon. It’s like this – God needed my services. I’m a private investigator.

So – from the beginning, yeah?

I’m in my office, it’s rainy, the place is shabby. The building has an elevator, at least. I like an elevator because once you’re in, you’re in. But I don’t hear the ding. You bet your ass I’m listening for it because I’m broke.

Nah he didn’t look special. I mean he was cute if that’s what you’re asking. He had this snaggle tooth I kind of dug. He said “hey – you the PI, Lyra?” He said, “I might have the kind of case could change your life.”
I said, “sure, go ahead, change my life.”
He said, “you ever heard of Emily St. Vincent?
I said, “the teenager who disappeared what, eleven years ago now?”
He said, “see it’s like this. She’s over at Matheson’s. She’s healthy except one thing.” Matheson’s is the local loony bin.
“Which is?”
“She claims that eleven years ago, she killed herself.”
“Seems like you have some evidence says she didn’t, though.”
“Something someone might investigate, don’t you think?”
“Oh Christ – look. You pay me and I’ll go see this Emily St. Vincent.”
He named a figure that was higher than I would have high balled for which left me kind of worried. That kind of money means you might die, usually. I know what you’re thinking, you seen the hard-boiled PI shows or whatever, but I love my shabby ass office, and going home to my cat Buttbutt, a book and a Diet coke. Yeah, Diet Coke. Deal with it. Point is, I don’t have a death wish, and I’m not skinny, and I don’t want to fuck, not secretly, not openly, not at all. Capiche?
“So what’s your name, even?” I ask. He looks at me a moment and then he starts to laugh.
“I always forget this part,” he says, “because I don’t like to lie. How about George, I’ve always liked that name. George.”
I give him a look, “George, I say, George, you on the run from the law, George?” He laughs pretty hard at that and then he says, “No Lyra, God as my witness,” ha ha ha, “I do not run from anyone or anything.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Sure,” I say, “half upfront, and I’m off to Matheson’s.” George looks at me a minute.
“Lyra,” he says, “I know you can do this. You’re going to be okay.” That’s probably the first inkling I had, because normally that would be creepy as hell, right? But somehow it just felt – right. I said to him, “George, is there something I should know?”
“Yes, Emily St. Vincent keeps talking about someone. She calls him the purveyor.”
“Like a – like a drug dealer? ”
“Of a sort. He sells... camouflage.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Here’s half.” I stare at the big pile of money. I sigh.
“Okay,” I say, “Okay. How do I get ahold of you?”
“You can just call my name, you always can. You’re the right person for the case, Lyra.” Then George, he just walks out. And for whatever reason, it doesn’t occur to me to stop him.

Matheson’s is modern as hell, vending machines on every floor, secure check in, leave your technology at the desk ma’am.

It is definitely Emily St. Vincent. Her hair is thin, brownish blonde. Neither well styled nor unkempt. Her hospital gown is white with a repeating pattern of poppies, the orange and red and yellow of the flowers pop out like a garish fuck you in a place that’s so sterile, hard to believe people become less suicidal around here. Her eyes are grey, but a weird grey, almost greyscale, as if I’m looking at an article. A missing person’s picture in the back of the newspaper, where they put the pictures of people they’ve given up on. A mouse type. Her skin is so pale, she’s a real delicate blur.
“Hello,” she says, and it’s the strangest thing. I see her lips move, I do, I know she’s said hello. But I have to focus hard to hear. “Difficult,” she says, “to talk to someone when you’ve killed yourself.”  So. Getting right to it then.
“Okay,” I say, “okay – Emily, look, I’m here to help.” She’s startled.
“Oh,” she says, “you’re the first person in a week who could hear me. The janitor’s going to be back soon.” I stare at her, trying to hold the image steady. She looks at me sadly. “It’s the camouflage,” she says.
“Who the fuck are you?” says a voice behind me. I jump, but by the time I turn, my face is stone. I do a real good gargoyle.

“How did you find this place?” he hisses. He’s wearing a janitor’s outfit, but it doesn’t suit him, something about it just aint sitting right. When his eyes flit over to Emily, I see this look, this loathing so deep, it makes me queasy.

“George sent me,” I say, calm like, “because Emily is a cold case.”

“Cold,” whispers Emily. Only she isn’t whispering, it’s just you have to strain to hear.
“Shut up already,” says the man who is not a janitor, “what’s worse than a bitch who won’t shut up? A dead bitch who won’t shut up.” The way he says it, though, it’s like, he really thinks she’s dead.
“Could you excuse us,” I say, “maybe you could clean in here later.”
“I already cleaned,” he looks at me as if to say hello? Are you stupid? I look at him blankly, waiting.
“I suppose you don’t recognize me,” he says, and before I can point out drily that I do not recognize the janitor at the local loony bin, no, sorry, Emily’s whisper stops me cold.
“The Purveyor.”
Now I’m looking at him closely. Thinking back on it, I can’t tell you what his hair color was, or his eye color, or what the janitor’s uniform looked like even. All I can say for sure is he was pale, almost translucent, and he was angry. His eyes were just bottomless pits of cold anger, the long kind, the kind that gets passed down to children.

“Emily,” I say, finally, after a good long stare, “why don’t you tell me exactly how it is you ended up here?” I wonder if the purveyor is going to stop her, but he doesn’t. Instead, he looks at her for a second, then walks right out. For whatever reason, it doesn’t occur to me to stop him.
“I was…I think, thirteen,” she looks at me, “when they --,” she stops for second, “—well they used to sniff me.” I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.
“Sniff..?” She nodded.
“Sniffing. They used to pin me against the lockers, catch me on the way home from school. Deep sniffs.”
“Why…”
“I remember the neck was the worst,” her hand reaches towards her neck, “someone’s face pressed up against you, and you can’t even really tell who it is, just makes you want to…disappear.” She looks sad for a moment. “It didn't stop you know, the sniffing. I just wanted... to smell like nothing at all, to blend in. I remember the feeling of them pressed up against me, but their faces, they’re blurs. I can’t remember their faces. I think—I think I was the last one left who smelled like something.”
“What do you mean?”
“On my seventeenth birthday, I got my first ever detention. Distraction, Mr. Bovern said. Can’t be tolerated. I remember sitting in his classroom after school, with my new journal. It had this skeletal rose on the cover, I loved it. I was seventeen.
He looked up at me, and he said, “Well Emily. It’s time to talk business.” I remember thinking – who? Who is that? Why did I think it was Mr. Bovern? He looked so angry.
He said, “Emily, Emily, aren’t you tired of getting sniffed? I was stunned. The first time anyone had acknowledged it.”

I could just imagine her startled face. Why yes, pretty exhausted, now you mention it.

“He said, you know what your problem is?  You need to be sanitized, standardized, just like everybody else. Would you like that, Emily? To blend in? You would, wouldn’t you? And I looked at him and looked at him because he sounded like he was about to offer me the impossible. He said, ‘they call me the purveyor. I’m in the camouflage business. 100% guaranteed no more sniffing.’”

The janitor’s face came floating back, a dead bitch who won’t shut up.

“It’s simple, Emily,” she whispered, “so simple, Emily. It’s time to get rid of that smelly bitch. Just get rid of her. And I --- I saw my reflection in the window. Only she was crying, I think – she was so sad, and so scared. She was hugging that rose journal to her, and when I reached out she shrank back. But there was nowhere for her to go, of course. Where could she go? I wrapped my hands around her neck.”

That’s when I realized all my mind chatter had just dropped off. As if every thought in my head stopped to grieve, that’s how it felt.

“Anyway,” said Emily, “I can tell you where the body is.”

**

“Have I ever led you wrong? Have I ever lied to you?” Sargent Panker wasn’t having any of it. Panker’s a fat man, and any time his temper gets a little exercise, he goes real pink in the face. Reddish brown beard, I figured him for an Irishman. Good man, couple of daughters who scare the daylights out of him, nice wife who specializes in meat and potatoes. Full figured lady herself, I’ve never known them to turn someone away. Unusual for a cop, but Panker’s alright. He doesn’t go in for the complicated stuff, and I feel some kind of way dropping this in his lap.

“You understand you are telling me there’s a body in the St Vincents’ back yard that looks exactly like Emily but is only kind of Emily? And you want me to put her parents through that obvious horseshit?”
God help me, I thought. Panker’s phone rang. Shooting me another glare, he picked up. Suddenly he’s looking at me again, only now it’s a look that says what have you gotten me into, now?
Then he says into the phone, “In the back yard? Would it be, say, two feet south of the old tulip patch? How did I know? Lyra’s here. Yes, she’s got – well you’re never going to believe it, let’s just say, we have two potential IDs on Emily now. Yeah --- one of those be careful what you wish for things, right? Okay. Okay. Well get the damn thing exhumed or whatever and I’ll meet you… Fine. No, Lyra can bring her in. Yeah, okay. See you.”
Panker looked at me. I waited.
“Lyra.”
“Sargent Panker.”
“That was James, they’re bringing the body into forensics. We’ll need DNA from the Matheson girl too. I want you to bring her in. James will meet you.”
“I don’t know James.”
“Detective James? Oh, he’s been with us…well I can’t even recall how long.”
“James his first or last?”
“Believe it or not, both. Detective James James.”
He gets up. “You’re a pain in my ass, Lyra. But if we close the St. Vincent case…well, maybe I’ll see about a bottle of champagne.” The good thing about Panker is he doesn’t worry too much about things. Far as he’s concerned, there are two possible IDs on Emily St. Vincent which was two more than he had an hour ago. Bad thing about Panker is, he doesn’t worry too much about things. Far as he’s concerned, Detective James James is just one more detective than he had an hour ago.

Panger would have gone red in the face if I told him I was going to the house. But it’s the job. You don’t not go to the house. You don’t not look at the body. You know? The parents are there, and they’re quiet like. Mom’s got this wavy dark brown hair about down to her shoulders, beginning to grey, sad brown eyes, but there’s still something about her lips, like they’re waiting on a smile, they haven’t quite given up. She’s a skinny thing like Emily, and the way her eyes watch the diggers, I don’t think they’ve told her about the living one. The Matheson’s girl. The dad stands back, arms crossed. He’s got a blue shirt and jeans on, not exactly heavy but you wouldn’t call him built, and he looks, well, a little resentful. I get it, I do – he probably wonders why he got the short end of the proverbial stick, and then on top of it, why it took the an entire police force and so many years to go from the living room of a missing girl to her back yard. But even he gets a kind of white in his face when they pull out the body. It’s perfect. I mean it’s perfect. I don’t know much about what a dead person buried some eleven years is supposed to look like, but this body looks like it’s been made up for a damn wake is what, and if that isn’t weird enough – there’s the notebook. You telling me eleven years underground and the notebook’s gonna come out pris-fuckin-stine? Pardon my French.

I stole the notebook. I did. How I got away with it, you’re wondering, well here’s the truth. Crime scenes are chaotic as hell and if you can get behind the yellow tape, you can really get away with just about anything. Thought I was caught for a minute though, when mom looked at me – Melly St. St. Vincent. Won some beauty pageants back in the day. Somehow though, I just knew she wasn’t going to be a problem. She was looking at me a kind of way, I think a little sad, but also a little hopeful. She said something I’ll never forget as long as I live.
“There’s more than one way to die, you know.” I looked at her a long time. What I said was just as much nonsense, but I think – I pray – it registered. I said, “I’m looking, Melly, I’m paying attention.” She nodded at me, and the smiled that haunted her face made a flash appearance, a cameo in a tragedy, but it was something. I took the notebook and I left to get the girl.

Matheson’s. First, there is no Emily. Then there’s an Emily but you can’t just sign people out for a few hours unless it’s – oh it is police business? What do you mean that Emily. That can’t – what – I better call my supervisor. What’s that? Whatever the police need? Well you’d think if they were going to sue, they probably would have over the whole food—right, right, hush hush. Liability, yes, we’ll cooperate.

So, it’s Emily – who is agitated as hell in the passenger seat -- and me -- I’m not doing so hot either. Lifelong agnostic, lover of the simple things, toting some ghost to Forensics.

Detective James James is waiting for us. Emily sees him and for some reason only God knows, she starts to laugh. He looks back at her, his eyes empty, weirdly empty actually. Like a silencing grey void.

“Forensics,” he says, opening the door and pointing inside, and it’s funny because this is exactly what I always pictured investigating a corpse would be like.

Until the body sits up, I mean. I don’t have a reference for this, never saw the point of horror flicks. Anybody in my line of work skirts the line often enough anyway. “Fucking Stockholm syndrome bitch,” said James behind me, which yeah, in retrospect, probably should have been a clue. Now I think about it, there was something pretty peculiar about the way they were looking at each other. And yeah, the whole thing was crooked from the jump, but even so, you look at Emily, she really looks like she’s about to be sick and the body – her body sitting up off the cold slab, I can sort of understand how that might make a person queasy. But the body, the body is staring at Emily like Emily’s the resurrected one, like Emily is going to save her. Meanwhile Emily looks like Emily is going to barf. The thing that bugs me though is James James, he never seemed the slightest bit surprised, and there was just something damn familiar about him. Shooting the moving corpse – a panic reaction, they say. Easy justification, yeah, but I don’t think he was a damned bit panicked. Body was up off that slab and about its staring business for a good several minutes before he pulled that trigger. No I think he was waiting for something, and that for some odd reason makes me think of the way that Emily laughed when she first saw him. Plus there’s the other thing, how it turns out Detective James James doesn’t fuckin exist. Pardon my French.

When the police finally came, only one body was recovered. Emily St Vincent’s one and only body. Panker swears up and down the cop is an FBI guy, and the FBI says why on earth would we send a guy to a smalltime situation like that, a one state one body situation, and we don’t have anyone by that name and I think didn’t Panker say James James had been around for years? But I’ll tell you why I really think he never existed – nobody goes around calling themselves James James. He would’ve been Jay, or Jamie, or something. Whoever that man was, all I can say is I’d never seen him before when he stood outside forensics, but I swear I knew him, or at least I know someone who gets angry exactly the same way he does, a pale face, long skinny lips, eyes like voids..

The bullet that came out of the gun – this thing’s older than time, said forensics, this bullet was special made from metal so old we can’t date it. Oh duh, I thought, you need special metal to kill a corpse. Then again, well, all I’m saying is, one body was recovered, which is great for the newspapers, but for me, the only person standing in the room that’s still standing today, I don’t think there was much in the way of spin. I can usually tell when someone wants things to seem a type of way, but Emily had a claim on that corpse, and it had a claim on her, and me, I think it’s likely James James was waiting for the moment those claims got claimed, and maybe in that split second, maybe right then, there really was only one person, Emily St. Vincent, in body and mind, ready to be taken out the old fashioned way. With an old ass bullet. Pardon my French.

Afterward, Mr. G is in my office again. He’s got the second half.
“You have a natural immunity, really impressive,” he says. He looks very admiring so I thank him as if I understand and he laughs. The sound of his laugh is like being curled up in bed when there’s just enough rain out to make it cozy but not off putting, you know?
I watch him for a minute. “Mr. G,” I say, “George.”
“You want to ask, so ask.”
“Will I ever see you again?” He looks at me for a second, then he closes his eyes, and it seems – yeah I know how it sounds – it seems like he’s…checking. Then his eyes open and he gives me that snaggle tooth smile and he says, “no.” He gets up. “Goodbye Lyra. I’m proud of the way you handled that, you were really there.”

How would he know? Well, you know my theory. Later that night, I’m replaying it again and again in my mind. The way he just said no. I guess I thought it would feel worse. The way he said it though, it was like he had good news and sitting there on my couch with Buttbutt, the image that came to my mind was Emily, reaching out towards her reflection. I think I understand. I can’t explain it, but I think I get it. I crack a diet coke and open my book – a journal with a rose on it. Everyone deserves to be seen.