He shrugged and got up again, pacing, shaking his head.
“I tell you, it’s not for weak stomachs, that’s for sure. Her face looks like hamburger. . .”
“Stop it!”
`And her breasts are chewed up so bad . . .”
Anderson’s eyes filled with tears and she covered her face in her hands.
“Like somebody wasn’t getting their desires satisfied and just exploded in this sexual rage. A real lust-hate thing. And doing that to someone’s face is usually pretty personal: ‘
“Stop it!” Anderson screamed.
Marino got quiet, staring at her in a studious way as if she were a math problem written on a chalkboard.
“Detective Anderson,” I said. “What was Deputy Chief Bray wearing when you came over last night?”
“A light green blouse. Sort of satiny,” her voice trembled and caught. “Black corduroys.”
“Shoes and socks?”
“Ankle boots. Black. And black socks.”
“Jewelry?”
“A ring and a watch.”
“What about underwear, a bra?”
She looked at me and her nose was running and she talked as if she had a cold.
“It’s important I know these things,” I said.
“It’s true about Chuck;” she said instead. “But it wasn’t my idea. It was hers.”
“Bray’s?” I followed where she was going.
“She took me out of vice and put me in homicide. She wanted you a million miles out of the way,” she said to Marino. “She’s been making money off of pills and I don’t. know what all else for a long time, and she took a lot of pills, too, and she wanted you gone.”
She returned her attention to me and wiped her nose ón the back of her hand. I dug in my satchel and handed her tissues.
“She wanted you gone, too,” she said.
“‘That’s been rather obvious,” I replied, and it didn’t seem possible that this person we were talking about was the mauled remains I had examined moments earlier just rooms away in the back of this house.-
“I know she had on a bra,” Anderson then said. “She used to always wear things. Open neck or top buttons undone. And she would lean over so you could see down her shirt. She did it all the time, even at work, because she liked the reaction she got”
“What reaction?” Marino asked.
“Well, people definitely reacted. And skirts with slits that looked normal unless you were sitting in her office with her and she’d cross her legs in certain ways . . . I told her she shouldn’t dress like that.”
“What reaction?” Marino asked again.
“I told her all the time she shouldn’t dress that way.”
“Takes a lot of nerve for a lowly detective to tell a deputy chief how to dress.”
“I didn’t think officers should see her like that, look at her like that.”
“Made you a little jealous, maybe?”
She didn’t answer.
“And I bet she knew it made you jealous, made you really squirm, just fucking miserable and mad, right? Bray got off on it. She’s the type who would. Wind you up and then take your battery out so what you want don’t go nowhere.”
“She had on a black -bra,” Anderson said to me. “It had lace around the top. I don’t know what else she had on.”
“She used the hell out of you, didn’t she?” Marino said. “Made you her drug mule, gofer, little Cinderella on the hearth. What else she ask you to do?”
Anger was beginning to warm up Anderson.
“She make you take her car to be washed? That was the rumor. She made you look like a sucking-up, moonstruck ass-kisser nobody took seriously. Sad thing is, maybe you wouldn’t be such a shitty detective if she’d left you alone. You never even had a chance to find out, not with her keeping you on a leash the way she did. Let me tell you something. Bray was no more going to sleep with you than the man in the moon. People like her don’t sleep with anybody. They’re like snakes. They don’t need nobody else to keep them warm.”
“I hate her,” Anderson said. “She treated me like dirt.”
“Then why’d you keep coming here?” Marino asked.