Body Work - By Sara Paretsky

1

Dead in the Alley

Nadia Guaman died in my arms. Seconds after I left Club Gouge, I heard gunshots, screams, squealing tires, from the alley behind the building. I ran across the parking lot, slipping on gravel and ruts, and found Nadia crumpled on the dirty ice. Blood was flowing from her chest in a thick tide.

I ripped off my scarf and opened her coat. The wound was high in her chest—too high, I knew that—but I still made a pad of my scarf and pressed it against her. Keeping pressure on the pad, I struggled out of my coat and placed it under her. Left hand on chest, right hand underneath, pushing my coat against the exit wound. Without looking up or stopping the pressure, I shouted at the people surging around us to call 911, now, at once.

Nadia’s eyes flickered open as I cradled her. The ghost of a smile flickered at the sides of her wide mouth. “Alley. Alley.”

“Shhh, Nadia, save your strength.”

I thought it was a good sign, a hopeful sign, that she spoke, and I kept pushing against her wound, singing snatches of a cradle song, trying to keep us both calm. When the paramedics arrived, and pried my hands free from her wounds, they shook their heads. She’d been dead for several minutes already.

I started to shiver. It was only when the medics forced me to my feet that I felt the January wind cut into my bones. The medics brought me into the ambulance but left Nadia lying on the ground, waiting for a tech team to photograph her. The crew wrapped a blanket around me and gave me hot sweet coffee from their own thermos.

“You did the best that could be done. No one could have done more.” The tech was short and muscular, with wiry red hair. “She was bleeding out within minutes of being shot. I’m guessing the bullet nicked a major vein, but the ME will tell us more. Was she a friend?”

I shook my head. We’d barely spoken, and at that point, in fact, I only knew her first name.

A cop poked his head through the open ambulance door. “You the gal that put her coat on the dead girl?”

Dead woman, I started to say, but I was too exhausted to fight that battle tonight. Nadia was dead, and whatever one called her, it wouldn’t bring her back to life. I didn’t move from the bench facing the stretcher but croaked out a yes.

“Can we talk inside, ma’am?” the cop said. “The EMTs are going to take the dead girl to the morgue as soon as the photo team is through, and it’s five degrees here in the parking lot.”

I handed the blanket back to the ambulance crew and let the cop give me a hand as I jumped off the back. Nadia was lying where I’d left her, her face silver under the blue strobes, the blood on her chest black. My coat was still underneath her. I walked over and fished my car and house keys from the pockets, despite outcries from the evidence team. My handbag was lying a few feet from the “dead woman,” I muttered out loud. I picked up the bag, also against the outraged shouts of the officer in charge.

“That’s evidence.”

“It’s my handbag, which I dropped when I was performing first aid. You don’t need it and I do.” I turned on my heel and walked back into the Club Gouge. The bag was handmade from red leather, an apology of sorts from the friend of a dead missing person, and I wasn’t going to risk losing it or my wallet in an evidence locker.

Everyone who’d been in the club or the parking lot, except those crafty enough to escape ahead of the team in blue, had been herded into the building. A minute before, I’d been too cold, but the club atmosphere, hot, nearly airless, made me ill. I started to sweat, and fought a rising tide of nausea.

The club staff, including my cousin Petra, were huddled by the bar. After a moment, when I decided I wasn’t going to vomit, I shoved my way through the crowd to Petra’s side.

“Vic, what happened?” Petra’s blue eyes were wide with fear. “You’re covered with blood.”

I looked down and saw Nadia’s blood on my jeans and sweater, on my hands. My scalp crawled: maybe her blood was in my hair.

“Someone shot a woman as she left the club,” I said.

“Was it—who was it?”

“I heard