“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“No,” he murmurs.
They ride in the patrol car with the reverend in the front seat, the lights off, and the windows open from First Baptist to 86 Brookmeyer Road. It takes nearly fifteen minutes, during which the reverend says nothing. The silence is more than Melinda can stand:
“You watching the elections, reverend?”
“Of course,” he says, looking out the window.
“I know most cops vote Republican, and I know Irv’s one so maybe we can keep this between us, but I’ve decided to vote for Obama.”
“I see,” he says.
“How do people at your congregation feel about it?”
“You mean how do they feel about a brother being elected president for the first time in a country where people like him were once slaves?”
“Feels like maybe America’s going to take a big step forward, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.”
“You think he can win?”
Melinda doesn’t hear Green’s answer. If he said anything it was no louder than the wind battering their clothing through the open windows, his black blazer flapping at the collar.
Eventually and long after the moment had passed, she hears him say—but not to her—“Maybe.”
“This is probably none of my business or anything,” Melinda says, “but . . . you don’t sound very enthusiastic about the prospect.”
“That’s because if he’s elected president of the United States,” Reverend Green says, “they’re gonna shoot him.”
Melinda parks in the no parking zone in front of 86 Brookmeyer Road. They both exit the car and look up before going in.
Eighty-Six Brookmeyer is a steel and glass office building that is still in the making but is no longer being made. It rises from a street corner in a depressed and depressing neighborhood with lowering property values; the kind of structure permanently locked in litigation, bankruptcy filings, and battles for money that leave the physical structure open to the social and natural world to atrophy and rot.
Whatever hope for urban renewal and employment its erection might have once promised, 86 Brookmeyer is a setting for a dream that no one has or wants. And yet despite its irrelevance, there it is: as shiny, as bright, as unfulfilled and overconfident as the people who planned it.
It rises twelve stories and has no organic lines. To Melinda it looks like it was designed on a budget or with a kit; it seems identical, to her untrained eye, to every other glass and steel building she’s ever seen. Irv once told her that the population boom, the gas crisis of the 1970s, and bad taste had all collided to create the ugliness of America’s “upward expansion,” he called it. He told her it was a pity America hadn’t decided—after conquering the West—to burrow downward rather than reach upward. “Would have made more sense,” Irv had said, “considering that underground buildings retain heat better and are more likely to survive a Soviet missile. And on top, we could have built parks!”
“Have you been here before?” Melinda asks the reverend once they are out of the car, eyes trained on the spot where Lydia died. It is no longer roped off. It is no longer a crime scene, and nothing of its past remains visible. Melinda looks at it; she stares because it has a life force of its own and she wants to scrape her foot over the surface and see whether it is indented or not. It seems crazy to her that a person can be killed and vanish forever without leaving a trace of any kind.
“No,” he answers. “I don’t understand why we’re here, Deputy.”
“Irv said we needed to talk and this seemed like a good place.”
“Have you been here?” Fred Green asks her.
“I drove by once when the tape was still up. Irv didn’t put me on this case until after that.”
“Where are we going?”
“Up. To the crime scene. Which . . . now that you mention it . . . I need more information about. Can you hold on a second? I need to ask Irv something.”
Alone, Fred Green removes a white and green packet of Newport Kings from his pocket and lights up with an orange Bic. Melinda leaves him to his ritual as she waits for the sheriff to pick up.
Irv is leaning back against the oak trying to convince himself that he isn’t cowering, per se, but rather taking a reasonable and defensive position, at least for one with the military training and instincts of a theology student.
As he rests there dreaming of bodysurfing in Maui, the phone rings. He answers it, keeping his eyes on Sigrid as his proxy for Marcus, who doesn’t seem intent on going anywhere but heaven.
“Hello?”
“Sheriff? It’s Melinda. How’s it going?”
“I’d rather not say. What’s up?”
“What floor did she fall from?”
“Huh?”
“What floor? I’m with Mr. Green now at the building. The file says it was at least the third because of the injuries, but I didn’t see a floor number.”
“Yeah. We looked for evidence. We don’t know.”
“So we’ve never been to the crime scene, technically,” Melinda clarifies.
“We’ve been to all the floors. So we have, technically, but not knowingly. Hold on a sec,” Irv says, and holding the phone away from his face, yells out to Marcus, “Which floor were you on when you killed Lydia?”
“Sixth,” says Marcus.
“Thanks.”
Sigrid starts to object, but Irv sticks his finger into his ear to hear Melinda better and Sigrid worse.
“Sixth,” Irv says to Melinda.
“How do you suddenly know that?” she asks.
“I asked Marcus.”
“Is he in custody?”
“He’s . . . with me. Is there anything else, Melinda?”
“I know I’m supposed to ask Mr. Green about his relationship with Lydia and his thoughts on our latest theory about her committing—”
“. . . diplomatically . . .”
“. . . but is there anything else?”
“Well, yes, Melinda. If Marcus really and actually did it, we’ll all be fine. But if he didn’t, and it’s suicide, you and Green need to work out a way to keep her and her parents from living in eternal hell.” Irv switches the phone to his other ear and looks at Sigrid, who is sitting on the ground, hapless. “Roy Carman. The grand jury. Jeffrey. Lydia. The parents. The race issues. This
