The Lost Night (Page 19)

Ew, which? Try who, asshole. I did some searching: “ectomorphic” means thin and delicate; irides are irises. Jargon fogging up such simple truths.

 The teeth are natural. The fingernails are painted purple. There is a small transverse pale linear scar in the lower quadrant of the abdomen. Other distinctive markings are absent on external examination.

I leaned back and breathed heavily. My gut was threatening to take over, an expanding ball of nausea and alarm, but I fought it back with research mode. This is what I do, I told myself. I research.

 RADIOGRAPHS: Postmortem radiographs of the head and neck reveal several radiopaque fragments in the front-right skull/brain. Cranial X-rays demonstrate sizable missile fragments in the central head region with additional fragments in the right forehead region and smaller fragments dispersed throughout the midcranial region.

I searched for “radiopaque” and then felt stupid for not just sounding it out: opaque to an X-ray or similar radiology. Duh.

 INTERNAL EXAMINATION: A 2.5-inch circular area of scalp hemorrhage is present around a gunshot entry wound in the forehead region. Additionally, an individual 3-inch circular scalp hematoma is present over the vertex as well as a hemorrhage surrounding the laceration over the external occipital protuberance. The calvarium is intact. Upon its removal diffuse subarachnoid hemorrhage is evident. The brain weighs 1,280 grams. There is a perforating track through the brain, described below. Other than this, no underlying abnormalities are evident in the brain.

I was shaken enough to pause my reading and search for it: The average weight of an adult female’s brain is 1,198 grams. Smarty Edie.

       PATHOLOGIC DIAGNOSES: Gunshot wound of the head

 Entrance: Side of the head; close range of fire

 Path: Skin and subcutaneous tissue of midline parietal scalp, frontoparietal skull, dura, frontoparietal brain lobes, corpus callosum, base of the skull, hard palate, tongue, and floor of mouth

 Associated injuries: Laceration of the right medial cathus of the eye, extensive skull fractures, and contusions of the left and right periorbital tissue

 Missile: Multiple fragments of copper-colored metal in the brain and sinuses weighing, in aggregate, 162.8 grains

Okay—a handgun bullet would be at least 120, maybe 180 grains. I hated that I knew this, that so much gun information was tucked away in my own brain.

 OPINION: This 23-year-old white female, Edith Iredale, died of a gunshot wound to the head. According to reports, the decedent was found in her apartment with an antique pistol near her body. Autopsy revealed a close-range entrance gunshot wound to the side of the head that fractured the skull and damaged the brain. Fractures at the base of the skull caused the appearance of bruising around both eyes. This gunshot wound also damaged the roof of the mouth (hard palate) and the tongue.

Postmortem toxicological testing revealed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.054. There was a high level of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (202 ng/mL) in the blood.

Whoa. Alcohol I expected, but drugs? I searched for it and it rang a distant bell: Molly, a potent form of MDMA that had a resurgence in the spring of 2009. A fifth of Calhoun’s residents were probably on it on any given Friday. But Edie?

 The presence of gunpowder stippling, gunpowder particles, and soot on the skin surrounding the entrance defects is consistent with a close range of fire (less than 2–3 inches). Gunshot particles deep in the brain tissue suggest a close-range shot consistent with suicide, although accidental death should still be considered a possibility.

I could only skim the rest: section by section descriptions of opening her up with a Y-shape incision, peeling out her organs, weighing them, making pithy observations. Then there was a matrix repeating the levels of drugs and booze in her splayed-open body. The report ended on a note of finality, some of the only improperly used periods capping five pages of sentence fragments:

       CAUSE OF DEATH: Gunshot wound to the head.

 MANNER: Suicide.

I leaned back and breathed deeply through my nose, waiting for my stomach to unclench. Then I opened another file folder: dozens of free-floating emails between the police department and city officials. They swirled like snowflakes, unindexed, and I thought dully of my own emails from that era banging around on my server. I opened one at random: It was a New York City Police Department spokesman telling city employees that Edie probably killed herself. “Police are on the scene of a possible suicide in Bushwick that occurred by 11:30 p.m. I will provide you with updates,” it read. A two-liner, letting everyone know no foul play was suspected.

I clicked on a folder named after the detectives assigned to the case and realized it contained notes from their interviews with us, handwritten in comically terrible handwriting and scanned. There was one from their discussion with me, labeled LBACH, which touched off a strange thrill in my ribs. I opened it and struggled to read the jottings:

       Bach, Lindsay

 #594

 23 yo

 Friend for abt 1 year, met through Sarah

 Call next morning, returned to scene

 Night of incident: Roof w Kotsonis, Kwan, Reed approx 9:30 pm. Drinking beer, gin prep by Reed. Reed left for Matchless 10 (CHK). Grp to concert in 6E approx 11. Took cab home (CHK)

 Fight with Iredale on Saturday 8/15 re: “controlling,” unexpected

 Conf. breakup bw Iredale + Kotsonis around 7/4; cause unknown

 Decedent moody, withdrawn

 Iredale “never used drugs”

I remembered that interview, a few days after Edie’s death: the freezing-cold interrogation room done up to look a little cozy with a coffee machine and ugly cushions on the chairs. I’d felt so young and scared, tempted to ask if I should really be speaking to them without my parents being present.

And the notes were so vague. Had I told the cops that I’d headed to 6E with the crew or that the rest of them went out while I hailed a cab? I scanned the jottings again: interesting that I’d said Kevin had made our first drinks; I thought it was Alex. I looked around for notes from my friends’ questionings and brought up Alex’s, squinting again to read the scrawls:

       Kotsonis, Alex

 #488

 24 yo

 Met Iredale in winter, approx. January 2009, can’t confirm. Building, other apt.

 Dated 3/09-7/09. Lived w Reed, Kwan & Iredale moved in 4/09 (apt 4G, scene of unattended death)

 “Growing apart” no details

 Night of incident: Last saw decedent approx. 5:30 pm. Night of: apt w Bach, Reed, Kwan 9:30, then roof; Reed to Matchless Greenpoint. Drinking gin; no drugs. Left for 6E (CHK) w Kwan and Bach.

I leaned back and pursed my lips around a long, slow exhale. There—Alex knew I went to the show. Although the notes made it sound like we’d gone directly, while the Flip cam video showed I’d made my way from the roof to SAKE. How drunk had we all been? I heard Alex’s voice again, low and trundling: I want that bitch out of my apartment!

I scanned the notes from the interview with Sarah, whose last name they erroneously spelled “Quan” (or, once, “Kwon”) instead of “Kwan.” It started the same as Alex’s and mine—the origin story of their friendship, mention of a meaningless fight not long before, similar memory of the beginning of The Night. Then:

       “Tiny fight” w Bach when Bach left; Quan & Kotsonis to concert apt 6E check.

I read it twice more, my eyes circling back at the end as if it were music and I’d bumped against a repeat symbol. A tiny fight? I thought hard but couldn’t remember anything, either the dustup itself or a later mention of it. There was the burbling sound on the Flip cam video a few minutes in, but nothing I could decipher. Had it happened in my memory’s seams, while we were worm-holing between the roof and the concert? Although she said here in the report, too, that I hadn’t gone along to 6E. A direct contradiction, one the detectives hadn’t caught.

I’d read once that in emotionally distressing moments, your brain can rewrite an ending, stitch together a memory that feels real. After Columbine, for example, the school principal swore he’d made it through a job interview with a potential new teacher and had offered him a gig, while everyone else—the candidate, his secretary—insisted he hadn’t gotten nearly that far. Distressed, we construct realities that feel just as real as the world around us. Whose brain had concocted a new version of that night—mine or Sarah’s?

I kneaded the back of my neck. All these factoids, all these nuggets I took such pleasure in uncovering as a fact-checker—not pleasure, exactly, more like scratching an itch, stamping out a red-hot drive to know, discover, confirm. Making the world orderly and predictable and objectively real. I’d always assumed I’d wound up as a fact-checker by accident, when there were more open roles in research than in the features department. But maybe some part of me had always been scratching away, clawing at the coating over things I’d forgotten.

I pulled my messages up in front of the detectives’ notes and texted Sarah: “Can you call me?” I stared at the screen, willing the bubble to appear that would mean she was responding, but…nothing. I thought briefly of looking at her social feeds, trying to gauge where she was right now, why she was taking so long to reply. In 2009, it was harder to keep tabs on people. You had to wait for them to come to you. I suddenly remembered long nights of drawing out text conversations with boys—seeing their responses, setting my phone down, sipping a beer, and taking three hours to respond. Just ’cause.