Body of a Girl
Chapter One
This has been a summer of murders. Memphis is so hot people
move like they're wearing something heavier than their skin. I can't
help but feel that these things are connected. I can't put this in the
stories I write. It's not fact. It's not true, in the way we mean true at
the newspaper, which is that we got someone else to say it.
There are reporters at this newspaper whose whole job it is to interview
zoo workers about new baby animals. One guy wrote a
three-part series about how to avoid the lunch rush at the fast-food
drive-thru. I'm the one the cops like to show photographs of raped
and beaten women, looking at me out of the corner of their eyes to
see if I can take it. "Okay," I always say, when I think I've looked at
them long enough. "I see." I work the police beat. ... read full excerpt from Body of a Girl ebook