The body lies at the edge of the rocky slope that falls to the sea. Someone's already draped a white sheet over him, but you can see how his toes point peacefully upward, how his soles face the water. As if he settled back to nap and just died.
To the north, the sky clears to a fine, pale blue. The air smells of brine.
"Mrs. Fisher?" The officer's voice conveys both sympathy and impatience. She glances at her iPad. "Meredith Fisher?"
"Audrey Fisher," I tell her. "Her daughter. We spoke on the phone?"
"Where's Meredith Fisher?"
"She's at home. She—um, declined to come."
"Declined?" The officer raises both eyebrows. She's about fifty years old with short steel-wool hair—not somebody you want to disappoint. "You're saying she had something better to do?" The wound throbs on my forehead. I lift my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, which grows hotter by the second as it climbs the sky to my left. The sheet is sharp and white on the grass, like a sail.
“Is it necessary?” I ask. “For Meredith to identify the body?”
The officer rubs the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are weary, like she was up at dawn getting the kids ready for day camp and now this. Dead man parked on a cliff. “Can you identify the body?”
“I guess I can try.”
The officer gives me her best Yoda look—do or do not, there is no try—and tells me to follow her.
Over the phone, the officer gave not a lot of details. Explained the bare bones of the situation in a staccato voice, so as not to arouse emotion. Asked if I could bring Meredith down to identify the body. Of course, I said.
Meredith was still asleep, flat on her back like a vampire in a coffin. I touched her shoulder and she jumped.
What the fuck, Audrey, she said.
I told her what the police officer had told me. The bare bones of the situation. She eased up to a sitting position against the wooden headboard and watched my lips as I broke the news in the same staccato voice as the officer over the phone.
“Meredith? Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
She shrugged. “He was an old man, Audrey. You don’t sound all that shocked.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, next to her leg. “Some lobsterman spotted the body on his way out from Little Bay to check his traps and called it in. That’s what the officer said. They need you to identify the body.”
“Me? Why?”
“He named you next of kin or something. In the note. Found with the body.”
“You mean like a suicide note?”
“I guess that’s what they’re trying to ascertain?”
Meredith turned her face away to stare out the window, where the sun was heaving itself up above the ocean. “You go. I’m staying here.”
“Meredith, it’s the police. I don’t think you can offer your regrets.”
“I’m not offering my regrets. I’m offering you.”
“Meredith,” I said, “why would Harlan Walker refer to you as his next of kin?”
“No idea, honeybee.”
From her tone, I knew I’d have to call in a forklift to get her out of bed. I put on some clothes, swung onto my bicycle, and pedaled downhill to Little Bay Point, where this police officer met me at the front door of Harlan Walker’s rental cottage and introduced herself as Detective Jackson.