Page 9 of Body Count

Maybe he heard something in my voice.Maybe it just wasn’t what he was expecting.His good eye opened, and he saw me for the first time.The horror came first, the fear that most people felt—a gut-level terror that this might happen to them too.For Tip, though, a kind of deeper horror followed, and in a dazed voice, he said, “What happened?”

“I cut myself shaving.”

He swallowed, and the sound was painfully dry in the little room.And then, voice trembling, “Is that what I’m going to look like?”

“As pretty as this?In your dreams.”

Shock.Then—well, not a smile, but something like the memory of one.He rolled onto his side to look at me.

“They won’t tell me anything.How bad it is, I mean.”

“That’s because you’re stoned.”

“I wish I were stoned.It still hurts.”

“And you’re in shock.”

“They have to tell me, though, right?I mean, I’m legally an adult.I don’t even have to let my parents in the room if I don’t want.”

“Is that why they’re in the hall?Did you send them to get ice?”

A hint of a flush worked its way up his cheekbones.He mumbled, “You don’t know what it’s like.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Fuck,” Tip said, “I don’t know.”Then a little laugh escaped him.“Usually that works.”

He studied me for a while.

“You can ask,” I said.

“Is that the best they could do?Like, the scars, I mean.”

“I haven’t had the surgery yet.Surgeries.They like to wait until you’re fully healed, and some of these cocksuckers have been taking their sweet-ass time.”

“What about your eye?”

“It works all right.Looks like a dog’s asshole in the morning.”

He seemed to consider me.“You don’t talk like the other detectives.”

“Why should I?”

Tip pursed his lips, as though about to say something, but when he spoke, it was to himself, like he was committing something to memory.“I cut myself shaving.”

“Another good one is ‘I fell off my bike.’”

It was like watching the past play out in the present, the way the shadow of a smile came and went.

“Want to tell me what really happened last night?”I asked.

He smoothed the bedding out again, his eye dropping away from mine.

“It’s like Jordan said—”

“Not that part,” I said.“Start at the beginning.”

“It was just a party.”

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