There were fourteen other beds in that cabin, but when I asked Julie if I could stay in her room with her, she said she was hoping I would, just like when we were twelve.
Then she told me, “I think it’s time to open that box now.” It still sat under the dining room table, where we’d left it when we carried it in. Now we brought it into the bedroom and sat it between us on the bed. Carefully, I began to take out the contents, one envelope and file folder at a time.
Julie asked, “Do we have to make a list so we put them back in order?”
“These are just copies,” I said. “I don’t have to give them back.”
One of the padded envelopes was marked CLIP. Expecting a file of newspaper articles, I ran my nail under the seal. A small plastic bag fell out onto the quilt. Inside was a single blond curl, one of its strands darkened, as if with a messy dye. It landed between us, a grim artifact. The label on the bag read, B. McCormack. Like one of my Victorian ladies of fiction, I clutched my throat.
“Julie, wait,” I said. “That’s real.”
She said nothing. When I looked up, I could see she was crying. She reached out and took my hand. I wanted to punch Pete Sunday. What was he thinking? Was he that sloppy, to include real evidence in a box of copies? Quickly, I opened another envelope.
These were photos. They were of the crime scene in color, both lurid and washed out. At first, I couldn’t determine what exactly I was seeing…a close-up of something that looked matted…
I told Julie, “We shouldn’t be seeing these. He must have given me the wrong box. I was just supposed to have copies. Documents. Police reports. Not all this.”
Julie was up then and running to the bathroom, retching into her hands. I followed her, holding her hair back as she threw up in the green marble toilet. I sat on the edge of the beautiful tub, also green, with satin-nickel finish. The soothing luxury of the setting, the low caramel lights, the spatter of fairy-tale snow against the narrow floor-to-ceiling bathroom windows, all in sharp contrast to the violent contents of the box. “We don’t have to look any more,” I told Julie. “The detective must have made a mistake. He would not have done this on purpose.”
“We should go through everything while we are together,” Julie said. “You don’t want to have to do it some other time alone.”
“I don’t have to do it at all,” I said. “There’s not going to be anything in this box that will tell me anything I don’t really know.”
Was there even a chance that Pete Sunday’s choice to give me this box was no error? What if my visit had unsettled him? What if it stirred up some doubts he still had about Stefan’s case? Maybe he wanted an excuse for some fresh eyes on the evidence. Police did that all the time on television. As if examining again the real photos, the lock of hair might reveal motivation or something else that was previously overlooked. Or what if he just wanted to rebuke me with the facts, for my nosiness?
“We have to be brave,” Julie said.
I fanned the photos out like a deck of terrible tarot, pushing the first and most terrible picture of Belinda’s skull aside with one finger. The next photo was of the golf club. In general I didn’t know one golf club from another, but I knew this was an iron, a black shaft with a chubby foot, shiny with blood. Here was a picture of Belinda on the floor, her legs as disjointed as a doll’s, ringed in chalk, then photos of the splattered ceiling, walls, lampshades, couch cushions. Stefan’s stained, pale blue sweatshirt on the floor next to Belinda’s head; the dark, impossibly huge pool of blood on the gray carpet; a man’s rugged fist, index finger extended, pointing to a bloody footprint.
Julie and I sat back. I was panting like I was in labor. Julie went to the kitchen and brought back big mugs of tea with lots of sugar a few minutes later.
The big clock from the church at the edge of the lake struck twelve midnight.
We went on.
INCIDENT REPORT: At approximately 8 p.m. 2000 hours on the evening of January 20, I was contacted by Detective Sergeant Dashelle Lamartine to report to the Covered Bridge Townhomes, 100 Tamarack Road, Black Creek, Wisconsin, Apartment 216, pursuant to the report of an individual found bludgeoned in her living room. I arrived at approximately 8:11 p.m. and was briefed by Detective Sergeant Lamartine. （Prior to my arrival Black Creek County Fire and Rescue responded to the scene including Captain Purvis, Captain Tran, and Fire Medic Probacyzk and Fire Medic Lucarelli.） I observed an injured individual lying facedown on the floor in front of the couch, head pointing north, feet south, a very large pool of blood surrounding the individual’s head and shoulders. Upon observation, this appears to be a woman between the ages of 18 and 25. A single large wound to the back of her head, the size of a man’s fist, seems to be the only visible injury. The skull displays a fracture, from which there is bleeding and bloody serum that have issued from the wound. The victim is wearing black stockings or tights, and a long sweater, probably white in color originally…on the floor adjacent to the body at a right angle is a Callaway Big Bertha Women’s Flex 9 iron golf club with what appears to be significant hair and tissue on the face of the club. Also present are a number of bath towels, also soaked in blood, a bowl containing what appears to be popcorn, a set of electric hair rollers, and a pillow in the shape of a pineapple.