The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline by Lois Lowry

find
a"—she looked at the paper in the dim hall light—"corpus delicti."
    "What's that?"
    "I don't know. Neither does Stacy. But she's positive you have to have one."
    "Read it again, slowly."
    "Corpus delicti." Caroline pronounced the words as precisely as she could.
    "It's Latin," J.P. mused. "And I don't take Latin till next year. But I leafed through Mark Peterson's Latin book once. Let me see it, Caroline. A photographic memory only works if you
see
something."
    She handed him the paper through the crack in the door, and he took it in his giant gloves.
    "Yeah," he said after a moment, and handed the paper back. "Got it. No sweat. We have one."
    "What
is
it?"
    "I don't know what 'delicti' means. That didn't register anything on my photographic memory. But 'corpus' means 'body' in Latin."
    "
Body?
BODY?"
    "Shhhhhh."
    "You found a
body?
" Caroline was trying to be quiet, but she could hear her voice rising shrilly. She backed away from Frederick Fiske's door.
    "Yes. Now go back down and stand guard. I'll be down in a minute."

11
    Caroline was gnawing half-heartedly on a chicken leg when the apartment door finally opened and J.P. came in, carrying the three envelopes carefully in his gloved hands. She glanced behind him nervously, to the hall, but there was nothing there. For a moment she had been afraid that he might have dragged the body down the stairs.
    She locked the door carefully and followed him to the kitchen, where he was returning the gloves to their place under the sink.
    "What did you find? Tell me everything you found. Warn me if there are any gross parts so that I can steel myself."
    J.P. laid the three envelopes in a row on the kitchen table. He sat down and closed his eyes. "I have to reconstruct everything by seeing it again in my mind," he explained.

    "I'm going to take notes. We need it all written down," said Caroline. She sat down across from him with her pencil and paper.
    "Okay. Here goes. First, it's just a studio apartment—just one big room, with a little kitchen area, and a separate bathroom. In the main room it's just your standard stuff. A couch—I think the couch must open into a bed—and a coffee table and a couple of chairs. By the window, there's another table and a chair. He's not very neat. There's a dirty shirt hanging over the back of one chair—"
    "What do you mean, 'dirty'?" asked Caroline. Her pencil was poised over the paper, but she hadn't written anything down yet. "Bloodstains?"
    J.P. shook his head. His eyes were still closed. "No, just dirty like it needs to go to the laundry. There's a cup half-filled with cold coffee on the table by the window. Also on that table is a typewriter and some books and yesterday's newspaper and the letter you read, the one from the agent that says not to use cyanide."
    Caroline wrote that down. "Cyanide letter. Evidence #1."
    "One of the books was a dictionary," J.P. went on, with his forehead wrinkled as he strained in his photographic memory to see the titles. "And one was
History of Baseball,
and one was
Forensic Toxicology—
"
    "Poison book," wrote Caroline. "Evidence #2. It's way overdue at the library by now."
    "—and the last book was
Yeats: The Complete Poems.
"
    "Was there a wastebasket?" Caroline asked. "Did you look through his trash?"
    J.P. opened his eyes. "Today was trash-collection day. All his wastebaskets were empty, except for the one in the kitchen. I'll get to that. I'm still in the main room."
    He closed his eyes again. "A television set. Black and white. On top of the TV was the latest copy of
TV Guide—
"
    "Open?"
    "Yeah. Open to last night's programs. Just some dumb comedies and 'Quincy.'"
    "'Quincy,'" wrote Caroline. "Crime show. Evidence #3."
    "Next, the bathroom," said J.P., with his eyes still closed. "Terry-cloth bathrobe hanging on a hook on the back of the door. Towel. Sponge. Toothbrush, Aim toothpaste. In the medicine cabinet, a razor—"
    "Wait," said Caroline. "Slow down.