Black-Eyed Susans Read Online Free PDF Page B

center photograph. His arm
     is tossed around a guy in a red-and-gray high school baseball uniform, a little brother,
     maybe. Same good looks, wide-spaced eyes, chiseled cheekbones, café latte skin.
    On the opposite wall: Crime scenes. Gaping
     mouths. Blank eyes. Confused limbs. I don’t linger.
    I flick my head around to a giant erase
     board that is scribbled with some sort of timeline.
    I see my name. Merry’s.
    I open my mouth to speak and find his eyes
     glued to my crossed legs and the patch of bare white thigh above my black boots. I keep
     meaning to let out the hem of this skirt. I scoot my legs under the table. He resumes a
     professional mask.
    “I’m not a client.” I
     swallow a sip of bitter liquid, read the words on the side of the mug.
Lawyers Get
     You Off.
    William follows my eyes. Rolls his.
     “Most of our cups are dirty. Could use a good washing out.” Joking. Letting
     the other moment, the curiosity about what’s under my skirt, pass.
    “I’m fine in here,
     William.”
    “Bill,” he reminds me.
     “Only people over seventy get to call me William.”
    “Did the exhumation Tuesday go as
     planned?” I ask. “They kept it quiet. It didn’t even make the
     papers.”
    “You should know the answer to
     that.”
    “You saw me by the
     tree.”
    “That hair of yours is hard to miss,
     even in the dark.”
    So
he’s
a liar, too. My hair
     is down today, long, curling loosely past my shoulders. Still the same burnt color as
     the sixteen-year-old me. Two nights ago, at the cemetery, it was tucked up tight in my
     daughter Charlie’s black baseball cap.
    “You tricked me,” I say.
     “Nice.”
    I shift uncomfortably in the chair.
     I’m talking to a lawyer, one I haven’t paid a cent to keep my confidences.
     Sure, he could be the boy next door with those doe-y brown eyes and clean-cut hair and
     ears that stick out a little and enormous hands that could cover a grapefruit. The funny
     best friend of the guy you really want, until you realize … oh,
shit.
    He grins. “You look like my little
     sister does right before she slaps me. In answer to your question, a forensic
     anthropologist is getting a look at the bones first. Then Jo and her people step in. She
     would like both of us to watch her techs work the Black-Eyed Susan case next week. Asked
     me to invite you personally. Kind of as a peace offering since she ordered you not to be
     present at the exhumation. She really did feel bad about it.”
    I shiver slightly. There’s no vent, no
     visible source of heat in here. My father used to say that February in Texas is a cold,
     bitter lady. March is when she loses her virginity.
    “Bones are processed every Monday
     morning,” he continues. “Jo had to pull some strings to push the Susans to
     the head of the line. I can pick you up, if you like. The lab’s about twenty
     minutes from your place.”
    “No worry this time about
     contamination?” This had been Joanna’s concern about me officially attending
     the exhuming of the bodies. She didn’t want even the slightest hint of broken
     protocol.
    “We’ll be watching the process
     through a glass window. The new lab is set up as a teaching facility. State-of-the-art.
     Bones are flown in from all over the world. So are students and scientists who want to
     see Jo’s techniques firsthand.” He smiles tightly and picks up hispen. “Want to get started? I’ve got to be somewhere by
     two. For my job that pays the bills.” A corporate mediator, whatever the hell that
     is, according to his law firm’s website. I wonder where he is hiding his suit.
    “Yep. Go ahead.” Spoken much
     more casually than I felt.
    “Your testimony in ’95. Has
     anything changed? Have you remembered anything else in the last seventeen years about
     the attack or your attacker?”
    “No.” I say it firmly.
I am
     willing to help,
I remind myself,
but only to a point.
I have two
     teen-agers to protect, the one I was and the one