Chapter 1.6 - 1.7

“Took you a while.” Constanza was sitting by the reception counter in the station, putting away a long outdated copy of the Scientific American to shake my hand, without getting up. “So how’s life without your wife so far?”

“Sucks like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Well, the last time my woman went to her parents’, it was like having cuffs removed. Beer and bowling all weekend long. Uh, while I was off-duty, of course.”

“Thankfully, I’m not yet at that stage of my marriage.”

“Hey, what are you trying to imply, huh?” the cop asked jokingly, trying to force back a full-blown smile which he probably decided may disturb some people. “You’ll get there someday,” he warned. “Anyway, may I listen to the message you told me about?”

“Sure.” I dialled the number, went through the list, and then played the recorded message for him to hear.

“Oh, damn. Sorry for doubting you the other day. Mr. Carter, I can’t tell you if the guy in the message meant it as a real threat or not, but I can tell you that these kinds of things are what sends us cops running around the city looking for missing people. Yup, evidence of foul play is what that is. Was? I hate grammar.”

So much for hoping that he’d clear my doubts for me. “What about the lead that you told me to come down here for?”

He suddenly seemed a little flustered. “Well, that. I need you to come with me, Mr. Carter. Help me out with something.” He stood up and walked out of the station and motioned for me to follow. Standing, Officer Constanza looked a lot less round and a lot more big.

“Is this necessary? And what about my missing persons report?”

“You can fill the report later. And I assure you, what we’ll be doing is absolutely, completely, one hundred percent relevant.” He looked over my shoulder - back into the station - and started waving at someone or something. “Janine! Hey, could you tell Murphy to cover for me ‘til I get back? He owes it to me, by the way.”

I turned around to see the policewoman named Janine, her fingers running accross a keyboard and her eyes glued to a computer monitor. The same voice that first answered my call to the station replied, “As good as done. Stay out of trouble, Louie.”

“Will do,” Officer Louie Constanza answered. He beckoned to me once more, and the both of us were soon walking towards his parked police car with the typical blue-striped, white finish. It was a Chevrolet, but I was unable to name the model.

As though he read my mind, Constanza patted the automobile and announced, proudly, “2001 Chevy Impala, 9C1 for police operations. Heavy duty as hell. How’d you think we outrun crooks, eh? Good old American engineering. By the way, were you one of those kids who’ve always wanted to ride in a cop car with the sirens turned on?”

I wasn’t really sure. “Can you tell me who wasn’t?” I said, just to humour him.

“Heh, well, I won’t let ya. Sit up front,” he said while unlocking the car.

Based on my first impression of him, Constanza’s patrol car was nothing like I would’ve expected. It was meticulously clean. The floor mats were effectively free of gravel and sand. The dashboard was spotless and empty, save for a bobblehead Dalmatian on the passenger’s side. A Little Trees air freshener hung from the rear view mirror, causing the car to smell a little like grapes. A glance at the backseat revealed a handheld vacuum cleaner. Constanza reached out to grab the aforementioned appliance and kept it in the glove compartment. “Murphy - that's my partner, by the way - he's a kinda messy fella,” he explained.

He reminded me of Adrian Monk.

Before long, the car started and hit the road. “Where are we going, anyway?” I inquired.

“You’ll find out.”

“This isn’t a kidnapping, is it?”

“Nah,” he said, laughing. “I just don’t think it’s right to tell you just yet. Come on, let’s talk about something else. What’s your job like, uh, Carter?”

If it is small talk that he wants, I’m fine with it, I guess. “I’m a business researcher and information analyst.” That was as much a euphemism as it was my real job description, since the word “telemarketer” carried with it some sort of stigma.

“Whoa, that sounds important.”

“Not really. That’s just another way of saying that I’m a telemarketer who doesn’t sell stuff over the phone.”

The cop was puzzled. “Then what do you do over the phone?”

“Surveys and enquiries, mostly. It’s a long story, and frankly, a lot more boring than it already sounds.”

“Thank God I’m a cop, then - Car chases and shootouts and donuts, oh my!” Then when he realised that I didn’t get the joke, he helpfully added, “It was sarcasm, man.”

“Oh.” That was followed by a long, awkward silence which I eventually broke. “I thought cops lived for these stuff.”

“Yeah, sure, but like I always say, there’s two sides to every job. Most of the time, it’s just paperwork and patrols and inspections. Personally, I’ve never been in a pursuit or gunfight before. Sure, there were times when I had to point the gun at suspects or settle the occasional domestic squabble with a manhandle - or womanhandle, those fights go both ways, you know what I mean, this is the age of gender equality, heh - but so far, nothing that puts my life in danger. And that’s good, too, because you know, crime is on the rise here in Phobos.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Well,” he sounded as though he was trying not to say it, “more or less. Kinda. When you’re a kid, and when you watch too much Starsky and Hutch, you wanna be like those guys, right? But when you’re writing reports, it just doesn’t feel like you’re upholding justice, you know? That’s the harsh reality, kid.”

I found myself more amused by him referring to me as “kid” than by his rambling. In any case, I felt at ease. Ever since Mona went missing, I was plagued by a perpetual state of anxiety. I spoke to my co-workers less and less, and I didn’t tell my friends anything - or Mona’s, for that matter - because I didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily.

A quasi-philosophical thought occurred to me: Was I bearing the whole brunt of the anguish because I didn’t share it? Was there such a thing as “spreading out your worries”? And perhaps more importantly, was it the reason for the imaginary clowns and the state of illusion I had earlier?

While I was pondering, Constanza had turned on the radio (“Hope you don’t mind,” he said). At the moment, we were listening to the American Top 40’s number one song for the week.

“She take ma muhnay!” the cop sang, his head bobbing to the beat (and so was the Dalmatian), “When ah’m in need!”

Kanye West’s musical rant was all the conversation we required on the way to our destination, Constanza singing all the words off-key, but entertaining nonetheless. It was like watching a Village Person dropping disco and picking up rap. And I was guilty of joining him.

***

“The hospital?” My worries multiplied tenfold as we exited the warmth of the Impala and entered the cold of the winter.

Constanza locked the car and then gave me a withdrawn look. “Okay, Carter, I’m not gonna hide it from you anymore. Please keep cool when I tell you this, alright?”

“By saying that, you only make it worse.”

“Aww, crap.” He held his forehead in his hands for a moment, then said, “Alright, I’ll cut to the chase. On Friday night, I think that was the day you came over, we got reports of dead bodies being found in Petersen’s Mire.”

Shit. My heart began to jog.

“Two men, plus a woman in her late twenties, found murdered and dumped in the bog.”

It was racing now, as it had been earlier today.

“I brought you here because I wanted you to identify the woman.”

The jester was laughing again, in his bright purple and red chequered costume, hanging just at the corner of my eye.

“See if it’s your wife.”

The deafening, chilling howl sent shivers up and down my spine, and my legs and arms, and every extremity, putting my whole body in a nervous tic. My shoulders were raised to my neck and my eyes were fixed to the ground. I could see the cop’s mouth move, but could hardly hear him over the din. He spoke for such a long, long time.

“Carter? Mr. Carter? Are you alright?”

Laugh, howl, guffaw, cackle, snigger, titter, somebody had been reading a thesaurus!

“Carter!”

I snapped out of it. I looked up at Constanza, stared at him for a second and nodded.

“Please,” he said, laconically.

I nodded again. He patted me on the back, and after that we began walking to the morgue. As we did, I caught on to why he was so uncharacteristically - at far as most Phobos City cops go - friendly and genial in the car. That, I believed, was to prepare me for the bad news he was about to break upon my currently fragile emotional constitution, the sedation of a delirious cow before sending it to the slaughter.

I’ve not been in a hospital in quite some time. The smell of disinfectant was overwhelming, and it added to the sedative effect. Maybe they didn’t put whatever it is that these establishments put in the water, but in the hundreds of automatic air freshening devices planted on the walls inside the building.

Whatever it was that they put, it might be what’s stopping me from thinking straight, too. Or perhaps it’s just the thought that my wife, my dear, beloved Mona, might be dead that’s unscrewing the bolts in my head.

Down the hallway and up the elevator and down some stairs, and we were soon outside the morgue. Constanza spoke to a nurse on duty, who was already informed in advance, and showed her his identification. We followed her into the room.

The nurse warned that the experience of identifying a dead person has its traumatic effects, et cetera, to which I said that I didn’t have much of a choice, did I? Then the ever tactful cop thanked me and said that I could be helping the department a great deal if I could identify the body, realised what he implied by that, slapped his forehead, and shut the hell up. Good.

The nurse then led me to one of the cold chambers and pulled out a body on the giant drawer-like contraption. Frigid air, so much colder than what was found outside the building, filled the room. I shivered, as much from terror as I did from the sudden, passing chill - I've never seen someone dead like this before, they’re always in suits and dresses and laid to rest peacefully in caskets. I took a very deep breath, closed my eyes, heard only the pounding of my heart once again, walked up to the body, and opened my eyes, looking down.

A very pale female face, darkened a disgusting blue, green and brown hue by the peat waters, stared back at me. The woman’s hair, blonde locks that were once very rich and painstakingly styled and taken care of, was bleached dull and matted. Like most bog bodies, she was perfectly preserved, down to the ghastly expression on her face; unlike the bloated corpses found washed up on beaches and riverbanks, trapped in the time of her death, a living photograph of the moment she was callously dumped by the very same bastards that robbed her of her life. Goddamn, unforgivable, pitiless bastards.

I sobbed uncontrollably, biting my knuckle. Constanza held my shoulder in his hand as I stood there in the morgue, the world around me completely blocked out except for the touch on my shoulder and the woman on the table.

“You okay? Is that your wife?”

A ghost of a smile appeared on my lips, and there weren’t any clowns in sight.

“I’ve never met this woman in my entire life.”

I heard the soft sighs of relief from both the cop and the nurse. Eventually, the crying stopped and I regained my composure.

“Here. Some tissues,” the nurse offered. I gladly took them and cleared the mess from my face. I really needed them. The past couple of hours had been one hell of an emotional rollercoaster ride for me, and it left me nauseating. On my way out of the hospital, I stopped by the restroom to regurgitate my breakfast.