scandal, even the fake whiff of one, would not play well.
'I can't see how I can help,' I said. 'Maybe you can't, maybe you can.' Dillon rotated the cinder block. 'But you want to help if you can, don't you?' 'Of course,' I said. 'I mean, I don't want your ass itching any more than it has to.'
He almost smiled at that one. 'Then get in the car.'
'I have an important meeting this afternoon.'
'We'll have you back by then.'
I expected a beat-up Chevy Caprice, but the car was a clean Ford. I sat in the back. My two new friends sat in the front. We did not speak for the ride. There was traffic at the George Washington Bridge, but we just hit our siren and sliced through it. When we were on the Manhattan side, York spoke.
'We think Manolo Santiago might be an alias.'
I said, 'Uh-huh,' because I didn't know what else to say.
'You see, we don't have a positive ID on the victim. We found him last night. His driver's license reads Manolo Santiago. We checked it out. It doesn't appear to be his real name. We ran his prints. No hits. So we don't know who he is.'
'And you think I will?'
They did not bother answering.
York's voice was as casual as a spring day. 'You're a widower, Mr. Copeland, right?'
'Right,' I said.
'Must be tough. Raising a kid on your own.'
I said nothing.
'Your wife had cancer, we understand. You're very involved in some organization to find a cure.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Admirable.'
They should only know.
'This must be weird for you,' York said.
'How's that?'
'Being on the other side. You're usually the one asking the questions, not answering them. That's gotta be a little strange.'
He smiled at me in the rearview mirror.
'Hey, York?' I said.
'What?'
'Do you have a playbill or a program?' I asked.
'A what?'
'A playbill,' I said. 'So I can see your past credits, you know, before you landed the coveted role of Good Cop.' York chuckled at that. 'I'm just saying, it's weird is all. I mean, have you ever been questioned by the police before?'
It was a setup question. They had to know. When I was eighteen years old, I worked as a counselor at a summer camp. Four campers- Gil Perez and his girlfriend, Margot Green, Doug Billingham and his girlfriend, Camille Copeland (aka my sister) sneaked into the woods late one night.
They were never seen again. Only two of the bodies have ever been found. Margot Green, age seventeen, was found with her throat slit within a hundred yards of the campsite. Doug Billingham, also seventeen, was found half a mile away. He had several stab wounds, but cause of death was also a slit throat. The bodies of the other two, Gil Perez and my sister, Camille, have never been found.
The case made headlines. Wayne Steubens, a rich-kid counselor at the camp, was caught two years later, after his third summer of terror-but not until he murdered at least four more teens. He was dubbed the Summer Slasher, an all-too-obvious moniker. Waynes next two victims were found near a Boy Scout camp in Muncie, Indiana. Another victim was attending one of those all-around camps in Vienna, Virginia. His last victim had been at a sports camp in the Poconos. Most had their throats slit. All had been buried out in the woods, some before death. Yes, as in buried alive. It took a fair amount of time to locate the bodies. The Poconos kid, for example, took six months to be found. Most experts believe that there are others still out there, still underground, deep in the woods.
Like my sister.
Wayne has never confessed, and despite being in a super maximum-security facility for the past eighteen years, he insists that he had nothing to do with the four murders that started it all.
I don't believe him. The fact that at least two bodies were still out there led to speculation and mystery. It gave Wayne more attention. I think he likes that. But that unknown, that glimmer, still hurts like hell.
I loved my sister. We all did. Most people believe death is the cruelest thing. Not so. After a while, hope is a far more abusive mistress. When you live with it as long as I have, your neck constantly on the chopping block, the axe raised above you for days, then months, then years, you long for it to fall and lop off your head. Most believed that my mother ran off because my sister was murdered. But the truth is the opposite. My mother left us because we could never prove it.
I wished Wayne Steubens would tell us what he did with her. Not to give her a proper burial or any of that. That would be nice, but beside the point. Death is pure, wrecking-ball destructive. It hits, you're crushed, you start to rebuild. But not knowing, that doubt, that glimmer, made death work more like termites or some sort of relentless germ. It eats away from the inside. You cannot stop the rot. You cannot rebuild because that doubt will just keep gnawing away.
It still does, I think.
That part of my life, much as I want to keep it private, was always picked up by the media. Even the quickest Google search would have brought up my name in connection with the mystery of the Vanished Campers, as they were quickly dubbed. Heck, the story still played on those 'real crime' shows on Discovery or Court TV. I was there that night, in those woods. My name was out there for the finding. I was questioned by the police. Interrogated. Under suspicion even.
So they had to know.
I chose not to answer. York and Dillon didn't push it.
When we arrived at the morgue, they led me down a long corridor. No one spoke. I wasn't sure what to make of this. What York said made sense now. I was on the other side. I had watched plenty of witnesses make walks like this. I had seen every sort of reaction in the morgue. The identifiers usually start off stoic. I'm not sure why. Are they bracing themselves? Or does a smidgeon of hope, that word again, still exist? I'm not sure. Whatever, the hope quickly vanishes. We never make a mistake on the ID. If we think it's your loved one, it is. The morgue is not a place of last-minute miracles. Not ever.
I knew that they were watching me, studying my responses. I became aware of my steps, my posture, my facial expression. I aimed for neutral and then wondered why I bothered.
They brought me to the window. You don't go into the room. You stay behind glass. The room was tiled so that you could just hose it down, no need to get fancy with decor or cleaners. All the gurneys save one were empty. The body was covered with a sheet, but I could see the toe tag. They really used those. I looked at the big toe sticking out from under the sheet, it was wholly unfamiliar. That was what I thought. I do not recognize the mans toe.
The mind does funny things under stress.
A woman wearing a mask rolled the gurney closer to the window. I flashed back to, of all things, the day my daughter was born. I remember the nursery. The window was much the same, with those thin strips of foil forming diamonds. The nurse, a woman about the size of the woman in the morgue, rolled the little cart with my little daughter in it close to the window. Just like this. I guess I would normally have seen something poignant in this, the beginning of life, the end of it, but today I didn't.
She pulled back the top of the sheet. I looked down at the face. All eyes were on me. I knew that. The dead man was about my age, early to mid-thirties. He had a beard. His head looked shaved. He wore a shower cap. I thought that looked pretty goofy, the shower cap, but I knew why it was there.
'Shot in the head?' I asked.
'Yes.'
'How many times?'
'Twice.'
'Caliber?'
York cleared his throat, as if trying to remind me that this wasn't my case. 'Do you know him?' I took another look. 'No,' I said. 'Are you sure?' I started to nod. But something made me stop.
'What?' York said.
'Why am I here?'
'We want to see if you know'
'Right, but what made you think I would know him?'
I slid my eyes to the side, saw York and Dillon exchange a glance. Dillon shrugged and York picked up the ball. 'He had your address in his pocket,' York said. 'And he had a bunch of clippings about you.'
'I'm a public figure.'
'Yes, we know.'
He stopped talking. I turned toward him. 'What else?'
'The clippings weren't about you. Not really.'
'What were they about?'
'Your sister,' he said. 'And about what happened in those woods.'
The room dropped ten degrees, but hey, we were in a morgue. I tried to sound nonchalant. 'Maybe he's a real-crime nut. There are lots of them.'
He hesitated. I saw him exchange a glance with his partner.
'What else?' I asked.
'What do you mean?'
'What else did he have on him?' York turned toward a subordinate I hadn't even noticed was standing there. 'Can we show Mr. Copeland here the personal effects?' I
