inside, some of them in the living room but most of them in the kitchen.
“In there,” someone said, indicating the kitchen, so she and Mike joined the crowd grouped along the cabinets and around the small eat-in table. The dead man lay awkwardly on his side in the middle of the floor, facing away from her. A chair and trash can had been knocked over, and no one had picked them up. The air was ripe with the odors of death and Sela gulped, then tried to breathe only through her mouth.
Trey Foster was propped against the sink; when he saw Sela he straightened and said, “We haven’t moved anything. The guy’s pistol is lying right there, no one has touched it. He got off a shot, the bullet went through the wall.”
They had all watched so many police procedural shows on television that, overall accuracy aside, none of them were about to touch a weapon that had been used in a crime. In other circumstances, Sela would have smiled. Instead she tried not to look at the body, and focused on the people standing around who were all watching her, waiting for guidance.
“There isn’t a lot we can do,” she said. “Does anyone here have their cell phone with them? No? Then someone find one, and take the man’s picture. Also get a picture of the bullet hole in the wall. Better yet, see if you can find a regular camera. I’ll talk to Jim and Mary Alice, and write down their account of what happened.” She paused, trying to think of what else might be done, wishing someone else would step up and take charge. No one did. “Is there any way we can take the guy’s fingerprints? I don’t know what good it will do, but it seems sensible.”
A few people shrugged. A man who had been a park ranger before retiring several years back said, “Maybe an index card and some graphite scraped from a pencil. Or ink, if we can find some.”
A woman said, “Mary Alice has one of those rolling things that she used to black out her address and info on papers she was throwing away. I’ll go ask her where she keeps it.” She slipped away through the crowd.
“Is there anything else, other than burying him?” Sela asked, looking around.
“Not that I can think of,” Mike said. “You have it covered.”
Trey looked down at the body. “I hate to waste good wood building a coffin for someone who would rob old people and try to kill them, but it don’t seem right to just dump him in a hole so I’ll get it done. I can’t waterproof it, so we’ll need to bury him somewhere he doesn’t pollute the water supply.”
Sela blinked at the pragmatic outlook. But pragmatism was what they needed to get through this crisis, both the immediate one and the ongoing one of having no electricity.
“If y’all can handle the pictures and the fingerprinting, I’ll go talk to Jim and Mary Alice.” She looked at Mike and he nodded, indicating they’d get it done.
She went next door to find Jim and Mary Alice huddled in the neighbor’s living room, a single quilt wrapped around both of them because they were both barefoot and in their nightclothes, Jim in pajamas and Mary Alice in a nightgown. The house didn’t have a fireplace, and Sela wondered how the people who lived here were keeping warm. She made a mental note to ask, once this crisis was taken care of.
Quietly she asked if anyone had a pen and paper, and when that was in hand she sat down beside the old couple.
“Am I going to jail?” Jim asked, his thin voice quivering.
“Lord, no!” Sela’s response was automatic. “You did exactly what you had to do, to protect yourself and Mary Alice.” In other times and other places his worry would have been justified, but not here, and not now.
Mary Alice burst into tears and fiercely hugged Jim. “Thank God, thank God,” she said over and over.
Something else occurred to Sela, and she hoped this was the last “something else.” Getting up, she went over to a group of women standing in the kitchen, where a coffeepot was heating over a camp stove. In a low voice she said, “Once the men get the body moved out of the house, is anyone willing to go over and clean up the kitchen? Mary Alice shouldn’t have to deal with that.”