Kingston Noir (17 page)

INTERNAL EXAMINATION

HEAD—CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM: Subsequent autopsy shows a broken hyoid bone. Hemorrhaging from Abrasions A and B penetrate the skin and subdermal tissues of the neck.

SKELETAL SYSTEM: The hyoid bone is fractured.

RESPIRATORY SYSTEM—THROAT STRUCTURES:
The oral cavity shows no lesions. Petechial hemorrhaging is present in the mucosa of the lips and the interior of the mouth. Otherwise, the mucosa is intact and there are no injuries to the lips, teeth, or gums. There is no obstruction of the airway. The mucosa of the epiglottis, glottis, piriform sinuses, trachea, and major bronchi are anatomic. No injuries are seen and there are no mucosal lesions. The hyoid bone, the thyroid, and the cricoid cartilages are fractured.

Grace flipped back to the first page, then looked down at her desk.

—Richardson, the printer cartridge run out of ink again? she said.

—Huh? What? No, I don’t think so. The printer woulda make some noise. The page not clear?

—The page very clear, but the report missing one or two.

—What on the last page?

—The cricoid cartilages are fractured.

—No, that is it. Cause of death: strangulation by hand.

—And that’s it?

—That’s it.

—Oh.

—Where you heading off to? Date tonight with that man of yours? That you people from America call it? A date?

—Jamaican just like you Richardson. You fishing for something?

—Ha, ha. I thought you were leaving.

—Soon, but me forget something.

—Well, me gone, my girl. See you tomorrow.

—Later, Richardson.

She couldn’t stand when the four-eyed, fat son of a bitch called her
girl
. He’d been calling her girl ever since the hospital promoted her over him, and that was nearly a year ago. He’d said it to a coworker, who then told her that he said it was only because she got her medical degree in fucking foreign that they promoted her. That, and because she was clearly fucking the Right Honourable Mr. Mark Barracat, the director of public prosecution, you should see how them close, he call her every morning, you know? She is also a lesbian.

Grace kept glancing at her watch until twenty minutes were gone. The lazy fucker had left by now. Richardson was always lazy. There weren’t many doctors trained to perform autopsies these days, so she was stuck with him. But he always preferred to stop the autopsy as soon as the first credible cause of death jumped out into the open and exposed itself. This wouldn’t be the first time she went back downstairs to finish the job he started, and it was not as if he would check back to find that his reports were filed twice as long. Besides, his conclusions were right, just lacking in detail. But this was the worst, with a full half of the report incomplete. No toxicology request, no blood work, no contents of the stomach, no lung investigation—and for a high school girl found murdered with her panties half off, no investigation of the genitalia or anus. There was enough negligence here to acquit a criminal caught on video. She buttoned her coat and went downstairs.

She pulled out the slab with Janet Stenton’s body. Other than a direct light over the corpse, the room was dark. She checked the neck herself and saw all that Richardson mentioned in the report. She saw the bite mark above the girl’s nipple and the scratch marks on her thighs, everything almost making a V to her center that screamed,
Look at me, read me, read the final page!
His report had mentioned a scar on her right knee, but it was a bruise, not a scar, and in the harsh fluorescent light it looked green. She grabbed a tweezer and a magnifying glass.

—Fucking idiot. Fucking fool. Either that or this man clearly never see more than one or two vagina in him life.

Grass. Recently fertilized, a lawn where people bothered to fertilize grass. Grass also stuck out from under toenails, so plainly green that she wondered if Richardson had looked anywhere below Janet Stenton’s knee. Grass in her toenails and in a fresh bruise on her knee. She was running, probably in a garden recently watered, and fell. Her fingernails had no dirt or grass but somebody had scrubbed them down with an abrasive, scouring pad maybe. They smelled of Pinesol. The marks on her thighs looked like fingernail scratches, and unless Janet Stenton had a truly disgusting habit, tufts of pubic hair were ripped out by someone else. Grace went over to the door and switched on the overhead lamp. She grabbed the phone on the wall.

—Hey, you have a rape kit upstairs there? … Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Look, I’ve been trying to leave from five… Right, like you don’t know why me down here when I already have a man doing autopsy. Anyway, you have a rape kit?

Grace began to work.

Petechial hemmorhage in the conjunctiva confirmed that she was strangled, but sperm in her vagina, along with Pinesol, meant she was raped and the perpetrator tried to wash away himself post mortem with household cleaner. Or themselves. She took swabs for analysis. She had been raped, more than once, by more than three men, some more forceful than others. The girl was damaged, inside and out. Her chest was still white from baby powder. Grace combed through her arm and pubic hair and collected loose strands for the microscope in the lab right next to hers. Several hairs appeared to match but several did not. Grace took swabs for analysis. She put the hairs in rape kit packets. She made smears of Janet’s body and sealed those in packets as well. She clipped her nails and cut locks of hair. Grace would have to send everything off for DNA testing, a process that still took too long.

She was just about to return to the locker, but a new smell bothered her. No, not new, it had come in faint waves which she’d assumed to be something that Richardson left behind, maybe in the waste paper basket, by the door. Peanut, maybe some shells that he tossed, or a peanut butter sandwich he gave up on. He had a way of eating in the lab that made her sick if she thought about it too long. Grace had almost forgotten about it again when she turned Janet Stenton over.

—Jesus Christ, sweet girl. Sweet Jesus.

Me not going run again me not going run again me not going run yes me like Ketel One no not straight not straight me throat burning not straight not straight yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no me want me mother me want me mother me want me mother. Me want me mother.

This is what Ruth Stenton wore on the way to the post office on the same day that Grace McDonald said
Sweet Jesus
like she believed in God: white leather string slippers that wrapped three times around her ankles and exposed her dark purple nail polish. A black skirt that crested right above the knee but itched, and made scratchy sounds whenever her hands brushed the black velvet stripes. Her sister, the one working for that old woman in New York, had sent it down through Federal Express for the funeral. Ruth had told her not to send nothing through that rassclaat post office because them mangy-foot bitch will thief just bout everything that send from foreign except for book. She hissed, seeing herself in the glass door as she stepped inside.

—Me have this pink slip for a letter, she said to the first clerk in the window.

—There is a line, ma’am.

—Oh, excuse me, please.

Ruth went to the back of the line convinced that everybody was now watching her. Damn woman embarrass her so. And look pon the bitch too. She can’t even spend little bit of her pay to style her hair, and her red blouse soon pink because she don’t know how to wash. This was the kind of woman that don’t care bout no man because she can’t get one. But then maybe she be the one who better off. Only one thing turn a girl from a good girl who love her mother to a backtalking, whoring slut in just one summer, and that was man.

This was not what Ruth had planned. Janet was supposed to go after man, yes, and a man from uptown too. But she was to make sure she get something before she give up the punani. She, Ruth, taught her that from she was eleven. No matter how broke you be or how ugly God make you, you have something that all man in Jamaica want, even the battymen, when them trying to throw the battyboy stink off themself. But first you ask for some Kentucky and Canei before him take you home. Then a box to take home for your family. Then money for just one thing at the supermarket, like cereal, then start to rub you wrist or you finger like you missing something (but not the ring finger cause that going scare them), rub it until he buy you a nice little bracelet, then tell him how you fraid that somebody going see it and rob you and kill you so you going keep it somewhere safe and special, special like him, then you take it to jewelry store and sell it to them Syrian people and give the money to your mother.

But the damn girl never do any such thing. Keeping all the money for herself, saying that she working herself out of this fucking ghetto and nobody going stop her, least of all some damn woman who want to whore out her own daughter, like that was true. The plan was never to whore her out but for her to use the little thing she got to get what she want, and once she get it, don’t ignore the woman who still work hard, with no man to help her to send you to good school, you dutty stinking ungrateful little bitch.

She searched all over the house for that girl’s money, under her dresser, in that shoe box from the shoes she bought her seven years ago. Her school bag, the perfume boxes that she kept under her bed. She knew all the places, checking as she did every few months for ganja or some nasty book, or a love letter from some man, maybe the new teacher. Between the mattress and the divan, every one of her shoes, including the high heels that this man buy for her. Maybe it wasn’t the school teacher since everybody knew that teacher didn’t make no money. Maybe it was a man that she didn’t want to know that she come from the ghetto and who would want that anyway, since once he see that she was a ghetto girl all he would want was the ghetto slam in exchange for two-meal deal at Burger King. Stupid girl, thinking that man was going take her out of something. You had to use the man to take
yourself
out, something she herself could have done when she had the chance but she made that chance go stale and that man was now in New York since 1979. By 1984 he stopped promising to send for her and the pickney. By 1987 he stopped sending money every other month, and by 1990 all letters and telegrams to his address in New York returned to sender. And after all that, the dutty stinking little bitch, that woman—no, that child, that girl, my girl, my girly girl girl, oh God—

—Ma’am, we don’t have all day and people behind you.

—W-What? Oh, sorry. Sorry. Me have this pink slip for a parcel.

—Let me see it. Is not a parcel, is a registered letter.

—What that mean?

—Means it’s registered. Wait here, please.

Ruth waited until she returned home to open the envelope. It was bigger than she expected, the size of Janet’s composition book, and brown. The weight in her hand felt strange, not like a letter or a Christmas card. She ripped it open and money scattered around the bedroom. She counted it four times, each time disbelieving it more and more. She checked the envelope for return address but there was none. She panicked, wondering if she was being watched, and stooped down to the floor to count the rest of it. Her other children would be home in a few hours. She counted thirteen thousand dollars.

This is the exact account of the phone call between Grace and Mr. Barracat, the dee pee pee, the day after Grace said
Sweet Jesus
like she believed in God and Ruth Stenton counted out thirteen thousand dollars—November 2—over a week after Janet’s body was found.

—Good afternoon, Mr. Barracat.

—How you knew it was me?

—Well, nobody else calls me before my morning coffee, sir.

—Hell hath no fury like a McDonald? Anyway, what is this big folder business you leave on my desk?

—What? You mean the autopsy? I’m still waiting on toxicology. And a positive ID on further things found inside her. Don’t even start to talk bout DNA.

—I don’t know why you even bothered. We got a confession from last week.

—A confession?

—Baby, even the
Star
and the
Gleaner
know about it, and as usual, you don’t. You know, McDonald, they call it having a life. Take your backside out of work every now and then.

—What you mean by confession, sir? Who confessed?

—The sky juice vendor who use to sell outside Immaculate High School gate. He strangled her.

—Him and who else?

—What you mean?

—He said he strangled her?

—Yeah man. Grab her from behind then carry her into Water Lane to rape her, but she put up a fight and he strangled her.

—He raped her?

—No.

—No?

—Well, of course the son of a bitch tried to, but she kicked him in the balls. God bless the poor girl.

—Mr. Barracat, you read my report?

—Grace, you know how many sons of bitches I have today that claiming they innocent? I have one who film himself and the four schoolboys he invite into his minibus to rape a schoolgirl and he pleaded not guilty anyway. Thank God for one who finds himself guilty before I have to tell him.

—This girl was not murdered in Water Lane. And she was raped.

—Maybe she was going home from a night orgy.

—Sir, I don’t think that’s funny. Please read my report. The only thing in the man’s confession that matches the report is the strangulation. And she was raped.

—Fine. He raped her. Shouldn’t be a problem getting him to confess to that too, but who fucking cares? We got the son of a bitch on murder anyway.

—There is no way he acted alone, sir. Not unless he raped her multiple times—

—So him rape her multiple times. The brethren can stan pon it long, as the ghetto people say.

—Each time with a different penis? And unless grass growing in Water Lane now, she was never there. And for God’s sake, this sky juice man kill a girl, then somehow find a brand-new Moroccan rug, not some hire purchase layaway rug, Mr. Barracat, a real Moroccan rug from fucking Morocco, and wrap her in it? You know that rug cost more than my year’s rent?