“DJ will handle the morgue visit.” Donny lifts his mug to her. “She can choose who she brings.”
Griffin mouths ‘Fuck you’ at DJ, who blows him a kiss.
“The bodies are at Pittsburgh Memorial,” Nico says, opening a folder and handing the entire thing to DJ. “I made a call. They’re expecting two research fellows from Penn State at the autopsy this afternoon at three. You, and whoever you choose to go with you.”
I shift forward on the couch, clasping my hands together. “Can I go?”
“I didn’t realize ghost hunting required so much reading,” I admit, as DJ leads me back to the library.
“Ghost hunting is 90% research, 9% waiting around, and 1% action,” she says.
I must make a face because she gives me a sympathetic look.
“I know. It’s unfortunate. But I’ve never listened to any of Alan Morrow’s interview tapes. Benji’s listened to every tape in here and can give you exact details of them when you ask. He’s insane.”
“He sounds like he would have been the more logical choice to go with you.”
“Benji sweats when he lies—like, alot—so he’s not good at collecting information under false pretenses. Plus, he’s the baby of the team, and still nervous about doing field work, so he’sonly gone into the field when shadowing Nico. I’m hoping Benji will feel up for shadowing Griffin or me soon—otherwise, it’ll be a long time before he gets the experience he needs.” DJ sets a folder on the table, along with an old cassette tape. “The FBI interviewed Morrow extensively after his capture. If we’re going to listen for his voice at the morgue, we should know what we’re listening for.”
I point out that he’d be possessing someone, so it actually wouldn’t be his voice at all, but DJ reminds me that his speechpatternswould be the same and spends a good fifteen minutes giving me a complicated background on forensic linguistics before pressing play. The voices are tinny, like they’re speaking through soup cans connected by a string.
“Mr. Morrow,” a male voice says. “In your research on interpersonal relationships, what patterns have you observed?”
Silence stretches long enough to make me wonder if the tape is broken. Then, a voice so quiet that I have to lean closer to the speaker to hear it: “People lie about the nature of their attachments.”
The hairs on my arms stand up. Morrow’s voice is measured, almost professorial, and it’s so high-pitched that it sounds squeaky. I wonder if he’s trying to make himself sound less threatening on purpose.
“Could you elaborate?”
“What most people call love is only a chemical abnormality in the brain.”
DJ fast-forwards through sections of silence, stopping when Morrow speaks again.
“If a person were to design an experiment to test this hypothesis,” the interviewer says, “how would they select participants?”
“Well, obviously, this person would need first to identify subjects who demonstrated strong emotional bonds.” Hepauses, and I can almost hear him thinking. “The entire purpose of the study demands subjects who truly believe their connections are unbreakable.”
DJ hits pause, turning to me. “See how he uses big words like he’s trying to sound smart, but he’s so readily playing into what the interviewer is asking him? The interviewer is being so obvious about the framing, and Morrow is falling for it. He may be technically smart, but he’s not actually that emotionally smart.”
She keeps playing the tape. Morrow never raises his voice. Never shows emotion. I’ve seen this kind of detachment on the face of Stanley Daniels when he stared at crime scene photos. He was completely impassive, as if it didn’t register to him that what he did was wrong. Or if it did, he didn’t care.
“Do you guys have interviews with other killers?” I ask.
DJ gives me an understanding smile. “Killers like Stanley Daniels?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t have anything on him. From what I know, he refused to speak after his arrest and maintained complete silence through his trial and time in prison.”
I nod, trying to hide my disappointment. Hearing his voice would change nothing. It wouldn’t answer the question that’s haunted me for seven years: Why my family?
I flatten the pencil skirt DJ loaned me, trying to tug it down another impossible inch. The navy blouse she gave me offers no protection from the cold, and there’s so much makeup caked on my face that I’m pretty sure I could scrape it off with a butter knife. DJ twisted my hair into some kind of professional knotthat she managed to create with just three bobby pins and what might have been actual magic.
The wind in the hospital parking lot tries its best to destroy DJ’s handiwork, and I press both hands to my head. “The wind is going to ruin my hair.”
“Your hair’s not going anywhere.” DJ comes up in front of me and flattens the flyaways on top of my head. “I used enough hairspray to shellac a boat.”
My reflection in the van window doesn’t look like me. I look older. Resemble someone with a job I’d need at least a high school degree to do. I wonder what that would be like.
