Shot In Detroit Read online

  “Probably there’s not a person in the world I could identify by their feet. Maybe a few by hands though.” I said this more to myself, almost forgetting Derek behind me.

  “I think I’d know my mom’s feet,” Derek said, stubbing out his cigarette. “She hardly ever wears shoes inside.” He walked around his piece, admiring it again. “Her toes kind of point up—like some kind of leprechaun.” There was an affection in his voice I envied.

  I wondered if I’d know Bunny’s hands or feet. Not unless they were clad in orthopedic shoes.

  “Well, you can’t take a picture if you’re going to call the police today,” he repeated.

  I started to raise the camera, and he made a lunge, nearly knocking it out of my hands. “Are you going to call?”

  I shook my head. “Hey, let me use a couple of those lanterns, will you?”

  I angled them to provide some oblique illumination, wanting those iron nails to show up, wanting them highlighted. Once again, I wished I’d brought a better camera along. I gave some thought to setting up a sort of tripod; Derek probably had something I could use. But I certainly couldn’t set up the Deardorff or any larger camera. There was no time and it’d bring too quick a response if someone saw me trooping through the park with it.

  I started snapping pictures from far enough away to get the whole sculpture in, closing in on it slowly. The close-ups were amazing. Maybe I had a future as a crime-scene photographer.

  “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

  Sir Cecil Beaton

  “Violet, it’s me. Got something to show you.”

  It was Diogenes—later that morning. “First promise me it’s not a dead body. Or any part of one.”

  The image of those hands and feet with the huge iron nails piercing the flesh was more unsettling by the hour. Apparently, I had limits after all. And excised body parts might be it. Maybe the memory would be less chilling once I was done developing the film. Surely, it would make them seem more ordinary. I could file the pictures away and forget about it, because let’s face it, what could I do with them? But I was going to finish what I’d started—like it or not. These photos would be a test of my skills, of whether I had any.

  “Now that you mention it…” Di laughed heartily, and I yanked the phone away from my ear, grimacing. “I do have one or two.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “The bodies in question have been dead a long time. Besides, I thought dead bodies were your new interest. I expected kisses all around.” He made the appropriate sounds.

  “Kiss, kiss, yourself. Is it bones? A skeleton?”

  He wouldn’t say.

  “Sure, I’ll take a look,” I finally agreed. “Do you want me to drive to your place?”

  I wanted to get to work on the extremities photos, and Di lived out near Ann Arbor. Driving out there would eat up the whole day.

  “Nah, I’ll come over later if you’re gonna be around. Maybe you can cook me a meal. We’ll call it a dinner date.”

  “Like you’d want to eat anything I could cook. Don’t you have to work today? Oh, right, it’s Sunday.” The B team took over in Di’s kitchen on Sundays. “Will Alberto be joining us?”

  “He makes his weekly trek to his mother’s kitchen for empanadas on Sundays. Apparently, I don’t have her touch.”

  We agreed on a time and I hung up, starting for the darkroom. The phone rang again. It was Derek Olsen.

  “The guy’s head washed onto the beach about ten o’clock last night. I ran down as soon as I saw the lights and heard the ruckus. But it was too late. Someone had already called the cops. Three squad cars pulled up a few minute after I arrived. Not a scene I’d want to see again.”

  “I’d have thought you’d be ready to put it right up with the hands.”

  The thought of it was repulsive, like those heads on pikes in old gladiator movies. There was no beauty in mutilated bodies; the extremities on Derek’s sculpture settled it. Bodies had to be intact and cared for. Bill made them art. Or my camera did.

  “I’m not talking about the head being sickening,” Derek said, chuckling. “I’m talking about the crowds. People were barfin’ right and left. That’s what I meant.”

  “The head washed onto the shore?” I pictured it coming in like a bowling ball, but could that be right?

  “Nah. Got caught on a floating tree limb. Guy had long hair and it’d tangled around the limb—knotted tight. Wish I’d gotten to the scene first.” Derek’s teeth were chattering like little maracas. “It was certainly el stinko along that piece of shoreline. Between the one thing and the other.”

  I kept picturing the head nailed to Derek’s sculpture and swallowed hard. “What did he look like—other than the long hair?”

  “Looked kind of Asian, but maybe it was bloat. Youngish, maybe late twenties, full-faced but clean-shaven. Weird greenish-gray color—like the feet. Couldn’t get close enough after the first minute or two to see good. It was dark. No stars nor moon.”

  “Did you tell the cops about the hands and feet?” It would’ve been the perfect time.

  “I thought about telling ’em. Went back to my usual spot, sat on a rock, and gave it some thought. Guess I’ll probably have to tell them soon. Some dude will see the fuckers hangin’ there and call it in.” He sounded morose. “I could take them down, save it for later. Rehang it all when the hullabaloo dies down.”

  Hullabaloo? “I think you’d better get to the cops first. The longer you wait, the worse it’ll look.”

  This guy seemed to have no idea he was going to be suspect #1.

  I could picture the cops thinking he’d killed the guy so he could hang the hands and feet. Like Jesus. Or like Ed Gein, who’d killed women in Wisconsin to make costumes from their skins, masks from their faces.

  And my tenuous involvement with Derek and his shenanigans might look like more than it was. This kid was trouble—I’d ignored the signs. And now he was starting to get to me emotionally. What if the cops thought he’d killed for his art? Or mine? I remembered my last encounter with the Detroit police—they immediately saw me as a threat. A marginal person who might do something just like this. And how the hell would they see him? Derek in jail was a thought that made my stomach hurt.

  Derek sighed heavily. “Maybe I will. I’m home for lunch today, but when I get back down there I’ll go over to the harbormaster’s office.”

  “Right in the middle of this…hullabaloo…you went home for lunch?” He was completely nuts.

  “Promised my mom. She made shrimp salad. And the big shrimp, not the bitty bay kind. With walnuts.” He hung up after saying, “But I’ll call it in or find a cop on the island before the day’s out.”

  Shrimp salad. I hung up too, doubting he’d call anyone or go anywhere. Once again, I headed for the darkroom. The phone rang again. It was Ted Ernst, the gallery owner.

  “Look, a new issue occurred to me last night.” He paused. “Well, that’s not exactly true. I was having dinner with my attorney, and she raised a question we hadn’t considered.”

  “About the exhibit?”

  I was on pins and needles now. Would these alarming calls never stop? I shuffled through the kitchen drawer to see if I had any grass. Zero.

  “Right. She told me we need to get your undertaker friend to agree in writing he won’t make any financial demands. You’ll have to get him to sign a contract spelling it out.” He paused. “If you want to go forward with this show, that is.”

  “You don’t know Bill…” I started to say. “He’d never…”

  “No, I don’t know Bill. Which is why I have to protect myself.” Ted cleared his throat. “And you too. We both need protection.”

  I took a deep breath. “Are you certain you can sell these pictures, Ted? I mean I hate to bring this up with him if it’s not going to even be an is
sue.” I moved the phone to my other ear. “I’m sure he’s never once thought about making money from my photos. He’s not like—”

  “Nobody’s ‘like that’ until the chance to be ‘like that’ comes up. Look, I can’t take risks if I’m gonna to spend money on advertising and go for a classy opening.” Not for the first time, it occurred to me that people who used the word “classy” seldom were. “And yes, I do think money will change hands,” Ted went on. “A guy in New York’s interested already. A little gallery in Hell’s Kitchen—but an up-and-coming one. And my attorney brought up the possibility of a book deal. She has connections with Random House. Had you thought about a book?”

  Shit. I hadn’t thought about a book. Well, maybe a catalog like the ones the better galleries put out, but a book? I’d have to ask Bill to sign the contract, but maybe not yet. Maybe I could take a few more photographs first.

  “I’m on thin ice with him already, Ted. If I bring this contract up, it might be the end of—of his involvement.”

  And Bill’s involvement was the only way to get the photos. It wasn’t like a million morticians were ready to let people photograph their work. And certainly none of them prepared bodies the way Bill did. It came back to his special touch. I was so close now, so close to a degree of success. Was it wrong to value it so highly? My hands balled up at the thought of it.

  “How many finished pieces do you have?”

  “Just five. And one of them is pretty dicey. I wasn’t supposed to take the picture and the family certainly didn’t sign off on it.” I didn’t tell Ted it was the famous rap star that was iffy.

  “Five, huh? Still time, I guess. But you’ll have to have him sign the papers eventually. I’ll have them drawn up and you can wait for the right minute. Maybe after a particularly good…”

  “Don’t even say it.”

  Don’t say it because that part of our relationship had pretty much come to a halt. I wondered if married couples who worked together suffered a fall-off of interest in the bedroom. I mean how much time can you spend together without growing bored? Except, I wasn’t bored at all. Why wasn’t I? Usually I was long gone by now. And, in my heart, I knew it wasn’t because of the access to Bill’s loved ones.

  I couldn’t get my mind off Derek Olsen either, wondering if he’d kept his promise and called the cops. I picked up the phone two or three times but was unable to decide whether to call Derek or the police. Eventually I returned to the darkroom and finished the morning’s shoot.

  When I saw my work, I had to sit down. The hands and feet in the early morning gray had a medieval look, which was almost elegant. They looked less waxy than I’d expected: more real. Derek’s crazy-ass concrete hulk made an effective background, looking like stone as it did. Like a cool arty graveyard near the water. Like a Greek or Roman cemetery.

  Di arrived a few minutes early, his arms full of food and what looked like a library book. “Let me get dinner started and then we can talk,” he said, heading for the kitchen.

  I watched mutely as he prepared an elaborate marinade and dumped a piece of fish into it.

  “Damn, got any shallots?” he asked, hunting in his netted bag.

  “Maybe—what are they?” I began to hunt through the jars.

  He shook his head and went forward without them. “Won’t be the same though.”

  “I’ll never know the difference.”

  “Sadly, that’s probably true.”

  Looking for soap and finding none, he used dish detergent to wash his hands. Holding the plastic bottle up to the light, he said, “This looks like it’s been here since the W administration. Look at the price! Ever wash dishes? You stand at the sink and eat food out of a carton, don’t you?” I shrugged. “Okay, enough with the insults. Let’s take a look at the book now. I picked it up at the DPL.” I must have looked blankly at him because he continued, “Detroit Public Library. That big building across from the Institute of Art? On Woodward. Santa Parade starts there?”

  “I know, I know. You ran the letters together and threw me off. DPL. Right.”

  I sat down next to him on the sofa and he opened the book. I looked at the title: The Wisconsin Death Trip.

  “I remembered it yesterday afternoon. Hadn’t thought of the book in years.” He flipped over a few pages. “See, it was published way back in seventy-three. I was like twelve when I came across it and immediately got off on it. Intrigued might be a better word.”

  He continued turning pages, and suddenly my interest rose when I saw a photograph of a horse with a ghostly mane nearly enveloping its head. A few pages later a series of photographs of dead infants caught my attention.

  “Jeez. Are you going to explain what this is?” I asked, staring at a picture of twin babies in matching caskets.

  More ghostly babies turned up on the following pages, and groups of people with faces circled or enlarged above the group shot. Along with the photos, hundreds of newspaper items about inexplicable activities in that area filled the book. Stories about houses burning down, incest, rapes, suicides, cross-dressing, acts of violence against strangers and friends, obscene letters, insanity hearings, and deaths: so many deaths.

  “I’ll leave the book with you, but the story is the people who lived in this part of Wisconsin went crazy in the late eighteen hundreds. These pictures were almost all taken by the town photographer.” Diogenes smiled. “So you’re not the first one to take pictures of the dead.”

  “But what started this? This death trip?”

  “The theory is that an outbreak of financial failures, along with the deaths of dozens of children from influenza and typhoid, sparked mass hysteria. Lesy, the author, hypothesizes that when large numbers of children die before their parents, a sort of insanity can take hold. Very Freudian, our Michael Lesy.” He turned a few pages. “Look at these faces. Don’t most of them look distressed or insane?”

  He’d turned to a photograph of a woman wearing a large hat draped in snakes. On the next page, a girl tossed a bouquet into a lake.

  “Try reading a newspaper with stories like this all the time,” he said, pointing to article after article of financial failure, death, fires, and violence. “And because the deaths came so quickly, these small Wisconsin towns became places of perpetual mourning. Death rituals became their life.” He paused. “The sense of doom must’ve been overwhelming.”

  “Kind of like now in Detroit, right? Or even in the world as a whole-especially in black communities. How did he do it? I can’t imagine taking pictures of dead children day after day. Or the families mourning them.” I paused. “Hey, you’re not equating me with this, I hope?” Despite myself I kept turning the pages. “I’d never photograph dead children for a profit—or for art. Is that how you see me?”

  “What if Bill had first asked you to take a photograph of a child instead of the soccer player?”

  “Rugby.” I shook my head, almost positive I’d have refused. “I may have taken a picture for his family, but never would have imagined making it a project.” I hoped this was true. “I couldn’t do it. Not without going mad.”

  “Of course not. I remembered the book and thought you might get a kick out of finding yourself in good company. There’s a documentary about it too.”

  “One guy took all of these photos?”

  “Charles Van Schaick, the town photographer. Took thousands of pictures between the years 1890 and 1910. He got paid to take pictures so he did. Like the newspaper writer got paid for his articles. I wonder if both men went nuts before it was over.”

  “The photographs don’t seem particularly artistic, but they’re certainly competent—given the time especially.” I looked at another photo—four men standing in front of four deer heads. “Clearly he wasn’t planning on mounting a show.”

  Di chuckled obligingly. “Maybe he knew his limits.”

  “So what am I to take away from this, Di? What lesson should I learn?”

  “I’m concerned you’re too invested in death. Li
ke the good people of Wisconsin, you’re becoming obsessed. On a death trip of your own.”

  “Like Charles Van Schaick?”

  “No. Van Schaick was recording events like any town photographer—it was his job. The goings-on in his town happened to be about death over those years. I doubt he sought it out.”

  “I’m doing it as an artist. I know that sounds snotty or arrogant, but…”

  “Okay. That’s my sermon for the day.” Di got up and went into the kitchen. “Got a grill pan?”

  “What do you think?” In a few minutes, I smelled fish and limes and heard the sound of chopping, but I was lost in the book.

  Detroit News: Detroit firefighter Peter Oberon died last night from injuries received while he was on duty at a hotel fire six weeks ago. Oberon, age 34, was a thirteen-year veteran of Ladder 14 and had been twice commended for valor in his years of service to the City. Oberon was a second-generation firefighter. Memorial donations can be made to the Detroit Children’s Hospital Burn Center.

  (August 2011)

  “Miss Hart?”

  I nodded, looking warily into my hallway at a man wearing a black linen jacket, an expensive-looking striped tie, and a crisp white shirt despite the summer heat. He didn’t look like the sort of guy who’d be up to no good but you never knew.

  “Joe Saad.”

  I took his hand.

  “I’m an inspector with the Detroit Police Department.” He flashed a badge in my face.

  I smiled, trying for one engaging enough to win him over. Unfortunately, Inspector Saad continued to look grim, immune to smiles.

  “Yes?” Was I supposed to know why he was here? Of course, I did. There was one chance in a thousand it was something other than those body parts that brought him here. Had I paid my delinquent parking fines? When had I last contributed to the Police Athletic League? Did cops still have Policemen’s Balls?