Free Life Sentences by Alice Blanchard Page B

knew he was lying. Her fingers twitched. "Look, I need
your help, Ms. Hubbard." "Please call me Daisy," she said.
"'Ms. Hubbard' sounds like a kindergarten teacher."
    "Okay, Daisy. I need you to
come down to the apartment with me and identify some of your sister's belongings.
Do you think you can handle it?" "No," she said. "But
I'll go anyway."

3.
    Detective Makowski touched his
brakes at the bottom of Kester Street, then took
a right onto Godschalk , where the brown lawns were
dappled with sunlight. The Sea Breeze was flat-roofed and peach-colored
with mostly pre-owned cars parked out front. Dead weeds hugged the building
in those hard-to-reach places, and a dozen bouncy, smooth-skinned Hispanic
kids shot hoops in the vacant lot next door. When their basketball rolled
across the dead grass toward the walkway, Detective Makowski punted
it back to them. This is Anna's place ,
Daisy thought numbly. Anna spent the
last ten months of her life on this street, living in this building. Her apprehension grew incrementally as they climbed the cement steps
and rang the superintendent's doorbell. After a moment, the whine of
the buzzer broke the lock's hold, and Detective Makowski held the door
open for her. "After you," he said, as if they were on a date.
    The blunt-faced superintendent
greeted them in the lobby. He had patent-leather hair and spoke in loud
letters, and Daisy hated him almost instantly for having failed to protect
her sister. "She was a very nice person," he said. "Always
polite and considerate. We had a tenant OD on drugs last year, but murder? Sheesh . That's never happened before."
    "This isn't a homicide investigation."
Detective Makowski snatched the keys away. "Thanks. I'll take it
from here."
    She followed him up a flight of
stairs, then down a fake-plush hallway, where they stopped in front of a
recessed door with yellow crime tape stretched across it. "The
tech team's been through the place already," he said, ripping off
the tape and fumbling for the keys. "So it's kind of a mess." He
pushed the door open, then stepped aside.
    Daisy paused on the threshold of a
sunny one-bedroom and thought she could detect traces of Anna in the
swirl of strange smells. The white walls were coated with blue fingerprint
powder, and dozens of trash bags lined the front hallway, waiting to be taken
out.
    Detective Makowski located the
thermostat and turned the air-conditioning on high. The blinds were rolled
up, letting in broad patches of sunlight that heated the living room like
a pizza oven. She couldn't bear the sight of the blue sky through the wide
windows. Anna's blue sky. The popcorn ceiling was cracked and watermarked
in places, chips of plaster dotting the slate-colored carpeting. It made
her sad to think that her sister had been living under the illusion that
she was creating a whole new life for herself.
    "The contents of her mailbox
were four and a half weeks old," Detective Makowski said.
"The earliest postmark was February 21."
    "So you think that's when she
disappeared?"
    "Could be. Was it her habit to
check the mail every day?"
    "Back home she'd practically
ambush the mailman." Daisy drew numbly into herself. "Where
are the bloodstains?"
    "Right over here."
    She followed him into the kitchen,
where she bumped her head on a wrought-iron chandelier. It swung back
and forth on its creaking chain until she steadied it with her hand. The
detective switched on the light, and cockroaches scattered every
which way. Blue fingerprint powder covered the backsplash, the windowsills
and stove. In the aluminum sink was a pile of dirty dishes, all the water
bled out.
    "The place didn't look ransacked
when I initially entered it," he said. "Just messy. No signs of
disarray. No attempted staging of the area." He pointed at the floor.
"We found the bloodstains on an area rug right here. It's down at
the lab, being processed."
    She felt an icy finger trailing up
and down her spine. "Maybe she cut herself. It's so near the sink.