Nancy Bartholomew - Sophie's Last Stand

“I was…I was working in the backyard….” I clutched the cell phone, pressing it to my ear. I kept gulping, swallowing, standing there in the weeds, staring at the ground and trying not to lose control. “You know, hacking at those vines so I could get to the trash pile and haul it out to the bin.”

“Yeah?” Joey didn’t get impatient like Pa would’ve done; he let me tell the story in my own time and manner.

“I hit something, Joe, with the machete, and when I did…” I swallowed very hard, looked at the long, thin blade stuck where it had landed, and tried to continue. “It, like, sank into something—you know, something soft?”

“Sophie,” Joe said, “tell me about it.”

“Joey, there’s someone dead in my backyard. I was just chopping weeds and I hit her. Joey, I think I might’ve killed somebody.”

I heard him exhale. “I’m coming,” he said, and hung up.

I stood there as if the gravity of the universe was pinning me to the planet, and stared at the body in front of me. If I’d really thought about it, I would’ve realized that she was probably dead before I hit her. How else could she have come to my backyard, rolled up in dark green plastic and positioned herself beneath bushes and weeds, waiting for my impending discovery? Who alive or conscious would wait for death like that?

Besides, there was no blood when I hit her. I mean, I knew, instantly, that I’d hit something that was flesh and blood. I shuddered because I could still feel the initial hit and then the sinking in of the blade. I’d knelt down, tugged at the plastic and fell backward as it gave in my hand, revealing the slim arm of a woman, the side of her body exposed to the bright morning sunlight.

That’s when I’d called Joe. Now I looked back at her and realized how I’d known she was dead. It was the paleness of her skin, an ashy-gray tone that live bodies just don’t have. The machete blade stuck upright from the middle of her chest, but there was no blood. I reached down nonetheless and touched her forearm. It was cool, even on a hot summer’s morning. She was definitely dead.

I lifted the cell phone once again and punched in 9-1-1. I drew in my breath and forced myself to say the words slowly and clearly. “My name is Sophie Mazaratti, I live at 618 West Lyndon Street and I have just found a dead woman in my backyard.”

It didn’t take much beyond that to get the ball rolling. The police station is only two blocks away. I live in the highest crime area in town. Three cruisers were in my driveway before I could hang up. The officers found me still rooted to the spot, the cell phone clutched in my hand and the body sprawled out in front of me.

“Jesus,” the first one said.

I crossed myself and turned around to face him. He looked like a kid, like he wasn’t old enough to shave. His eyes were huge when he saw the body, and he stopped just as I had, frozen, his ruddy complexion paling as the reality of what he was seeing hit him.

I could see his fingers twitch and he seemed to want to unsnap his gun even though a gun would be no protection against a dead body. He looked at me. I didn’t look like a threat—at least, I hoped not. I could see my reflection mirrored in the window of his squad car. I looked like the Blessed Virgin only with dark, curly hair and blue eyes. I can’t help that I look like a kindergarten teacher, and at this moment I was actually thankful. With a dead body in the backyard and my fingerprints on the machete, innocent and harmless were just the qualities I needed to portray to this trigger-happy first responder.

The young cop’s partner arrived, paired up with two other cops from the two other cars. Everybody was young and anxious and clearly experiencing something out of the ordinary. Hell, a machete sticking out of a body, that’s not ordinary in almost anyone’s experience. The three other cops stopped short in a clump of dark uniforms and aviator sunglasses. Two were women. One of the women was tall and big-boned, but the other one, a blonde, was about my size. I found myself ridiculously thinking, I could take her. What is it about cops that make people start feeling claustrophobic?

“Did you call us?” the blonde asked.

I looked back at the body. I sort of figured that part would be obvious. Who else was gonna call, the victim? “Yeah. I’m Sophie Mazaratti and that, there, is a dead body.”

One of the men snickered softly, then spoke into the microphone clipped to the front of his uniform. In the distance a siren wail started, then stopped. Dead. No need to rush—time was no longer a concern.

“Ma’am,” the big woman said, “why don’t you come with me and I’ll take your statement.” She looked at the first officer, the young redheaded boy. “LaSalle, secure the scene.” She looked past him, over the fence, into the neighboring backyard and on toward the projects. She was formulating an opinion.

Joey arrived right after she asked, “Was the machete already in her chest or did you do that?” I didn’t like her tone.

Joey reached my side just as I was answering her. “Yeah, well, I figured since she was already dead I might as well chop her up so’s she’d fit in the trash can better.”

“Soph,” Joe cautioned. “Let it rest.”

I turned around and went to him, right into the strong arms of my brother. “Joe, she’s a fucking idiot who’s trying to get wise,” I muttered in his ear. “I was just letting her know I don’t play.”

“Enough,” he whispered. “Let me talk to her.”

He turned away from me, loosening his grip and taking a step to offer his hand to the cop. “I’m Joe Mazaratti, Sophie’s brother. Listen, she’s a little upset. I mean, it’s a dead body. I guess I don’t have to tell you we’re not used to this sort of situation.”

The officer shook Joe’s hand. She wasn’t charmed yet, but she was on the slippery slope headed downhill to him. Women couldn’t resist Joe. I don’t know what it is. He’s good-looking enough, but he’s going bald. Personally, I think it’s his eyes. He’s got the Mazaratti eyes—intense, warm—and when he finally smiles at you, it’s like winning a prize. Of course, it could just be that Joe’s a nice guy and it’s genuine with him. If he likes you, you know it.

Joe was reading her nameplate. “Officer Melton?” He sounded the name out slowly and smiled. “How can we be of further assistance? You want Sophie here to come down to the station? You want something to drink, water? Move our cars? What?”

Melton, given too many options, hesitated briefly. “No, Mr. Mazaratti, if y’all could just wait on the front porch, or inside the house, that’s all we need right now. They’ll send out a couple of detectives and they’ll probably want to talk to Ms. Mazaratti, ask her a few questions.”

She didn’t even look at me now. It was all Joe. But that was fine by me. I was watching the cops string yellow crime scene tape across my backyard and feeling like everything was happening at the other end of a tunnel.

Joe took me by the arm and walked around the side of the house, up to the front porch steps. We climbed them and slowly sank down onto the top riser. Joey waited until Officer Melton joined the others in the backyard before he asked for the full story. He made me tell him twice, asking questions until at last I could see he was satisfied and had an accurate picture in his head of the events leading up to my finding the body.

“You don’t know who it is or anything, do you?”

I frowned at him. “Joey, I don’t know hardly anybody in this town but you guys. Besides, all I saw was an arm. It’s kind of hard to identify somebody by their arm, although she did have a kind of unusual arm.”

Joey was on it. “What do you mean unusual?”

“Well, she had this kind of tattoo on her knuckles,” I said. “Letters, you know, spelling out a word.”

“What word?”

“Hate. And then there was a, like, dragon symbol above that, on the back of her hand, but kind of small, toward her thumb.”

“You’re right,” Joe said. “That’s weird for here, but up North, you know that would be considered normal.” He laughed then and I had to laugh with him. It was eerie, laughing in the presence of a dead body, but it was like laughing in church—you know you shouldn’t, and that just makes it all the funnier.

The detectives pulling up in their unmarked, but totally obvious, sedan must’ve thought we were crazy. I saw the driver look up with a puzzled expression, check something on a piece of paper and then look back at the house. He was probably thinking he had the wrong address, what with us laughing like that, but the cop cars in the driveway confirmed it. They were on the scene with lunatics.

The crime scene van pulled right up in front of them and two technicians piled out and scurried up the driveway. If Joey’s stifled laughter and my giggles seemed odd, they weren’t stopping to mull it over. They had business in the backyard and time was wasting.

The detectives, though, were cooler. Detectives don’t rush. Rushing means you’re not in control, and I knew from Philly that detectives were always in control. The doors to the sedan slowly swung open and the two men got out of the car, the driver for a moment obscuring my view of the second detective.

The driver, a reed-thin older man, moved and started walking up the walkway. The second detective followed, head down and face partially obscured as he spoke into his cell phone. But even from a distance, even with his head down, I felt the shock of recognition. Mr. Wonderful was about to walk back into my life and this time I couldn’t run away.

He saw Joe first. I stayed on the porch, half-hidden by the overgrown magnolia tree, half hiding behind the porch pillar, watching. It had been almost six weeks since that first meeting in the tiny chapel, since the day I’d passed him on the sidewalk like there wasn’t a thing to it but two strangers smiling politely. Now here he was, poised on the edge of my life, about to change everything. But it was Joe he recognized.

I watched the detective snap the cell phone shut and follow his partner toward Joe, who stood in the driveway. Mr. Wonderful wore dark, well-tailored trousers, a white starched shirt and a subdued red tie. It picked up the intense gray color of his eyes, deepening them. His skin was darker, more tanned, as if he’d spent even more time outdoors since I’d first seen him. He moved like an athlete, graceful but with a coiled energy that seemed ready to spring forth at any opportunity.

I saw the detective’s eyes light on my brother, and the broad smile that had first drawn me to him appeared, un-checked, as if he had forgotten that this was a homicide scene and not just a chance meeting between two friends on the street.

Joe had the same sort of smile on his face, easy and warm. As I watched, he clasped Mr. Wonderful’s hand, then drew him in and hugged him, the way we do family or close friends up North.

Italians don’t love casually. We take hostages. You are either all the way in with us or a stranger. There is no phony Southern “Y’all come back now, hear?” If we don’t want to see you again, we don’t invite you back. I could tell just by watching that Joe knew this guy, knew him well and liked him. My heart flipped over and I rubbed my palms across my thighs, smoothing the fabric of my faded overalls.

“It’s a mess,” I heard Joe say. “My sister Sophie just moved down from Philly…gonna live in her dream house…now this. Marone.”

Mr. Wonderful was looking at the scene, over Joe’s shoulder, not seeing me there on the porch. He shook his head, agreeing with my brother.