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“I won’t lie to you. The white guy with the beard, wears an Army jacket with a flag patch?”
“Colt. Yeah. I know him. He’s not a friend. You with the gov’ment trying to fuck him over?”
“No. I’m trying to help him like we’re trying to help others here.” I was losing her. Her eyes darted around, and she was on the verge of bolting.
Will whispered, “You got this, Vi. Speak the truth.”
He said that often, to “speak the truth” because so often social workers or volunteers lied to the homeless. Promised one thing, didn’t deliver. Came by with food, but no real help.
I squatted next to her. She smelled of urine, but I resisted stepping back. “I’m looking for my mother. Her name is Jane. She’s in her fifties, has blond hair but it’s mostly gray. Hazel eyes like mine.” She looked like anyone, I thought. “She had this really heavy fake fur coat, dark red, she always has it with her. And a scar on her cheek.” I traced my finger along my cheekbone to mimic where my mom had been cut by a junkie two years ago.
“Jane,” Sissy said, scratching the back of her neck.
“Yes. Colt said you knew her.”
“I remember her.”
“She was here?”
Sissy shrugged. “Here, gone.”
I blinked back tears I didn’t want to shed. “Did she say where she planned to go? She doesn’t have a car. Maybe she went down the beach?”
“No, she’s gone gone. Forever gone.”
“No,” I said before I realized the word came out of my mouth.
“Sorry,” she said and closed her eyes.
I didn’t move. I wanted to shake this woman and scream at her to tell me what happened to my mother.
Will pulled me up, and I whirled around and pushed him away. “What does that mean? What the fuck does forever mean?”
“Let’s go.”
“I have to find her!”
“Please,” he said quietly.
I looked at Will and saw compassion, not pity. Understanding, not frustration. I followed him.
Will didn’t take me home. Instead, he drove to the Los Angeles County Morgue. I didn’t want to go in.
“All the dead pass through here,” he said. “Either she’s here or she isn’t. If you’d rather not know, I’ll take you home.”
I got out of the car without saying anything. Followed Will to the main entrance. He rang a bell before someone opened the door. “Thank you, Shelley,” Will said to the woman who answered.
Shelley was in her fifties, petite, with short gray hair and eyes to match. She wore scrubs. I realized then that the morgue was closed to the public on Saturdays, but Will knew someone who worked here—someone who was willing to do him this favor.
“We’re looking for Violet’s mother. She may not have been identified.”
“What’s the name?” Shelley asked as she walked around to a desk and sat in front of a computer.
“Halliday,” I said with a croak. I spelled the name. “Jane Elizabeth Halliday.”
“No one by that name here.”
“Do you have an unidentified homeless female in her fifties?” Will said. “She wouldn’t have been here longer than two months.” They kept John and Jane Does in the crypt for one year before burying them in a county plot.
