“I’m sorry,” a White Shirt tells the man and his son. “She’d been responding well to the lorazepam. I’m not sure what triggered this outburst.”
“That’s okay,” the father replies. The boy says nothing, though his face is as white as those of the dolls that surround him. The dark fog has disappeared.
“I’m so sorry you both had to see this. But I think it would be best if we cut this visit short and give her more time to rest.” The man nods and gently ushers his son out of the room.
With one final effort, the woman’s eyes fly open. She lifts her head over the sea of White Shirts attending to her and stares directly at me. In her eyes there is desperation but also a sudden realization of my purpose here in this room of one hundred and eight dolls.
“I am so sorry,” she whispers, imploring. “Please. Please protect him. Please…” The words trail off. Her head lolls to one side and her eyes fall shut. Within seconds, the drugs have taken their toll, and she is fast asleep.
The boy is frightened. He keeps glancing back at his unconscious mother, who is now being lifted by one of the bigger White Shirts onto her small bed.
“What did she mean?” he asks. His father looks at him. “Was she talking about me? Who was she talking to?”
“Your mother isn’t well, Tark,” the man tells him. “You shouldn’t take to heart anything she says while she’s in this condition. We just came at a bad time.”
“We always come at a bad time!” the boy responds with violence in his voice. “What is it about me that she hates so much, that she can’t even stand the sight of me?”
“Tark…I…”“Forget it. Just forget it. I’m getting out of here.” The boy brushes past his father and tears down the hall. Several of the patients jeer and cheer him on as he runs by, but the boy does not pay attention.
“Tarquin!” His father takes off after him. A woman reading a newspaper on a nearby bench lowers it to stare at the retreating visitors and then at me.
“Mad people,” she observes sagely. “They’re all mad.”Then she grins to show off rotting teeth, and she winks at me. “Not like us, dearie,” she coos. “Never like us.”
This little town is not known for its displays of violence, and so the murder takes them by surprise.
It starts with the man who trudges into the block of apartments that litter the side of one street with gray. The man pauses by door 6A and pounds on the frame like he expects the wood to fall away from the force of his fists alone.
“Hey, Mosses!” he roars. “Mosses, open the fuckin’ door and give me my money, you sonofabitch!”
If there is anyone alive inside, they do not answer. The knocking grows furious, violent.
“That’s it, you fuckin’ bastard! I want you the hell out of my place! I don’t fucking care if you gotta sleep in the gutters tonight!” He yanks out a set of keys and fits one into the lock. He twists the doorknob and all but kicks the door open.
The rumors spread: first like tiny ripples, then growing until they overlap into wider spirals of gossip.
The first thing that people are told is that “there is a dead man in the Holly Oaks apartments.”
The second thing they will be told is that “his face is bloated, like he was held underwater for a very long time.” And yet there is not a drop of water on or around him, nothing to suggest foul play other than the appearance he presents. That is why the apartment manager, whose name is Shamrock, throws up all over the stair banister in his fruitless bid to escape the room and his first sight of the body, spattering an unfortunate couple standing below.
The police come next. They park their sirens in front of the building and mark off the area with yellow tape. “You can’t go in there,” one policewoman says to passers-by and curious onlookers, as the other officers cordon off the scene. “This is a crime scene.” They turn down interviews by reporters. “We cannot divulge anything more specific until after a full investigation has taken place.”
Some of the reporters showed up before the police arrived. “This is Cynthia Silvia from WTV Channel 6,”one reporter tells the camera and the world watching through the lens. I count them—the police, the growing number of people. I drift past the camera and peer into the frame, though no one notices. “Very little information has been released so far, though the police believe this to be a homicide by a person or persons unknown. We’ll update you as soon as we know more…”
“A thirty-five-year-old man was found dead in his apartment this morning. Sources tell us he may have been dead for days, though the police have yet to release any information corroborating this…”
“This marks the first homicide case in Applegate in almost ten years. Not much is known about the victim, thirty-five-year-old Blake
Mosses. He was a loner, according to his neighbors, and lived in Holly Oaks for only six months before his body was found…”
“This is Cooper Wilkes of ANTV Channel 5 News, reporting live from Holly Oaks…”
“This is Tracy Palmeri, Channel 2 News. Back to you, Jeff.”It would surprise these reporters to know that few stories begin with death. Often, they start with grief.
This story starts hundreds of miles away, where a small town in South Carolina gathers to pray for a young girl who has been missing for four months and who will never return home, although they do not realize it. Posters of her decorate every inch of tree and wall, and her sweet, gap-toothed smile enchants those who care enough to take a cursory glance. Her parents, a listless bearded man and a weeping woman, clasp hands as they implore the public to help in the search, knowing that in time their daughter will slip through their fingers and disappear into the archives of unexplained cases and old news.
The reports are different here from at Holly Oaks.“Officers from two counties are continuing the search for elevenyear-old Madeleine Lindgren, who disappeared in May. Police have set up an AMBER Alert for the missing girl, and so far, thousands of tips have come through the hotline…”
“The police say they are going through every piece of information that passes through the channels but admit that, with the number of tips coming in everyday, filtering through the information will take time. More than a hundred officers and volunteers have joined in the search for little Madeleine…”
“If you have any information related to this case, please call the following numbers: 242-45…”
Strings of a story move through states and cities, leaving parts of the story at every stop. People find themselves at the beginning of a tale without an end, or in a middle that neither starts nor finishes, or at a conclusion that knows no beginning. Only two have read this story in its entirety, can quote it from cover to cover, and had been there from introduction to curtain fall.
One is the Stained Shirt Man that people are now calling Blake Mosses.
I am the other. And when the news provides no other answers, gossip takes center stage.
For the neighbors at Holly Oaks apartments, it is their moment to shine. “Always knew he was a bad seed,” says Greta Grunberg from 6D, who said no such thing to anyone until after the fact. “Skulking up and down the stairs, never leaving the room for days. He was going to come to a bad end, I always thought.”