Page 42 of The Grave Artist

“You remember anything else about him? Jewelry, scars, tattoos, cell phone?”

A pause. “No. Definitely no tats. I always notice body art.”

“Did you see him with anyone else?” Heron asked.

He’d be thinking of Ms. POI.

Who was maybe a wit.

Maybe something more.

Sylvie seemed to think it over before responding, “No.”

“Did you see him later?” Carmen asked. “After he walked away.”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t.”

“What did his voice sound like?”

“A man’s voice. I don’t know. No accent or anything if that’s what you mean.”

“Exactly.”

Heron asked, “You saw the hearse that started driving by itself?”

“Yeah, totally fu—totally friggin’ weird.”

“When he left you, did he walk in the direction of the hearse?”

“I ... geez. I don’t know.”

“Hey, listen, Sylvie. You’re being super helpful.”

Heron posed a question. “Did you see a woman in black heels with a red stripe down the back?”

“No.” The girl’s voice brightened. “But I would’ve remembered those.”

Carmen then asked the ever-important final question in an interview. “Anything else?”

A pause, then: “Yeah. It was funny.”

“Go on.”

“Yeah. He wasn’t a perv.”

“Honey!” her mother said.

“Mom,” she said, sighing. “Come on.”

Heron was about to ask her to explain but stopped when Carmen lifted a hand. He understood. This topic was a topic discussed among women.

“Okay, I’m, like, a teenager, right?” Sylvie said. “And we get ... girls, mostly, we get guys coming up to us—sometimes older dudes like this guy’s age—and they act all nice and smiley and chatty, you know. But we justtotallyknow they’re pervs. You can tell. We call it our pedar.”

Carmen thought she understood but got clarification anyway. “Pedar?”

“Pedophile radar,” Sylvie said. “Like a built-in perv detector. Only this dude wasn’t that way at all. Which I thought was funny, because why come up tome, some stranger at a funeral and just go ‘Hey there.’ I was thinking he wanted something. But notthat. You know what I mean?”

Carmen jotted this down too. Was it significant? She had a feeling it was, but nothing immediately came to mind.