who needed to grieve. The hockey team took to wearing black armbands and fought, vowing to take the state title in homage to their fallen teammate. One entire page of the Portland paper's sports section was dedicated to a memorial of Jason's athletic achievements. That same day, Laura went out for groceries. She moved aimessly through the store, picking up things like ugli fruit and bags of pitted prunes, slivered almonds, and balls of buffalo mozzarella. Somewhere in her purse she knew she had a list - ordinary items like bread and milk and dishwashing detergent - but there was a part of her that felt normal things didn't apply anymore and therefore there was no point in buying them. Eventually, she found herself in front of the freezer section, the door open and the cold spilling over the toes of her boots. There must have been a hundred different ice cream flavors. How could you pick, knowing that you'd have to go home and live with the choice you'd made?
She was reading the ingredients on a peach sorbet when she heard two women talking one aisle over, hidden by the freezers.
“What a tragedy,” one said. “That boy was going places.”
“I heard that Greta Underhill can't get out of bed,” the second woman added. “My pastor was told by her pastor that she might not even make it to the funeral.”
A week ago, in spite of the rape accusations, Jason had still been a hero to most of this town. But now death had swelled him to epic proportions.
Laura curled her hands around the front bar of her grocery cart, navigated around the corner, until she was face to face with the women who'd been talking. “Do you know who I am?” The ladies glanced at each other, shook their heads. “I'm the mother of the girl Jason Underhill raped.”
She said it for the shock value. She said it on the off chance that these ladies might, out of sudden shame, apologize. But neither of them said a word.
Laura guided her shopping cart around the corner and toward an empty checkout line. The cashier had a skunk-streak of blue hair and a ring through her bottom lip. Laura reached into the basket and held up a box of plastic knives - when had she taken those off a shelf? “You know,” she said to the cashier, “I actually don't need those.”
“No biggie. We can reshelve them.”
Six packets of powdered hollandaise sauce, suntan lotion, and wart remover medicine. “Actually,” Laura said, “I'm going to pass on these, too.”
She emptied the rest of her shopping cart: bacon bits and baby food and Thai coconut milk; a sippy cup and hair elastics and two pounds of green jalapenos; the peach sorbet. She stared at the items on the conveyor belt as if she were seeing them for the first time. “I don't want any of this,” Laura said, surprised, as if it were anyone's fault but her own.
* * *
Dr. Anjali Mukherjee spent most of her time in the morgue, not just because she was the county medical examiner but also because when she ventured abovestairs at the hospital, she was continually mistaken for a med student or, worse, a candy striper. She was five feet tall, with the small, delicate features of a child, but Mike Bartholemew had seen her elbow-deep in a Y-shaped incision, determining the cause of death of the person who lay on her examination table.
“The subject had a blood alcohol level of point one two,” Anjali said, as she rifled through a series of X-rays and headed toward the light box on the wall.
Legal intoxication was .10; that meant Jason Underhill was considerably trashed when he went over the railing of the bridge. At least he wasn't driving, Bartholomew thought. At least he only killed
himself.
“There,” the medical examiner said, pointing at an X-ray. “What do you see?” “Afoot?”
“That's why they pay you the big bucks. Come over here for a second.” Anjali cleared off a lab table and patted it. “Climb up.”
“I don't want . . .”
“Climb up, Bartholemew.”
Grudgingly, he stood on top of the table. He glanced down at the top of Anjali's head. “And I'm doing this why?”
“Jump.”
Bartholemew hopped a little.
“I meant jump off.”
He swung his arms, then went airborne, landing in a crouch.
“Goddamn, I still can't fly.”
“You landed on your feet,” Anjali said. 'Like most people who jump. When we see suicides like this, the X-rays show heel fractures and vertical compressions of the spine, which aren't present on this
victim.'
“Are you telling me he didn't fall?”
“No, he fell. There's contrecoup damage to the brain that suggests acceleration. When someone lands on the back of the skull, you'll see injury to the front of the brain, because it continues to fall after the skull stops and hits it hard.”
“Maybe he jumped and landed on his head,” Bartholemew suggested.
“Interestingly, I didn't see the types of fractures associated with that either. Let me show you what I did find, though.” Anjali handed him two photographs, both of Jason Underhill's face. They were
identical, except for the black eye and bruising along the temple and jaw of the second one.
