Joel Goldman: Chasing The Dead

The woman’s nude body lay faceup on a narrow sandbar in Rock Creek. Her head and torso were cushioned in soft mud jutting out from the edge of the bank. September moonlight flattened against her pale skin, her sightless eyes open and as cold as the lunar gaze. Long black hair fanned out from her face. A gold crucifix was embedded flat against her skin just above the swell of her bruised left breast.

She looked like she’d fallen from the sky. Her arms were flung away from her body, forearms dangling like broken wings. Her legs were flared out from her waist, all four limbs resting in the shallow water on either side of the sandbar.

Jared Bell stared at her. She reminded him of Ali. He knelt and stroked her cheek, letting his hand find her breast, his fingertips curling around the crucifix, prying it loose as a diamondback snake slithered out of the water and across her belly, disappearing downstream.

His eyelids fluttered and closed and he saw Ali again. She was on her knees, hands bound behind her back, a gun pressed against the side of her face, the muzzle buried in her cheek. She looked up at him, her mouth forming a plea — Jared, help me . The gun fired and her head exploded. Jared squeezed his eyes until he saw stars and her ruined face melted away.

He shook his head and opened his eyes. The woman was still in the water. For an instant he didn’t know how he’d gotten there. The recurring flash of uncertainty, of losing himself to another time and place, sent a terrifying jolt through him, as if he’d been struck by lightning. He flung himself backward and into the stream, clutching the crucifix. Breathless, he coughed creek water, wiped his chin, and stuffed the cross in his pocket.

Jared crawled back to the woman, cupping her face in his hands as he muttered apologies. He thought about closing her eyes but didn’t because his grandfather, who had been a preacher, told him when his mother died that her eyes had stayed open so her soul could leave her body, and whatever else he’d done, he didn’t want to risk trapping the woman’s soul.

He climbed up the creek bank, slipping on the mud. He gave her a last look and walked back to his tent, changed out of his wet clothes, and put on jeans and a T-shirt. His sneakers were soaked but he couldn’t do anything about that. They were the only pair of shoes he owned. He took them off, shook out the grit from the creek, and put them back on.

Kaleidoscopic images of the woman and Ali flooded his thoughts, disconnecting him from the here and now. He sat on the tent floor, cross-legged, head in his hands, until the moment passed and he felt anchored again.

Rock Creek was a low-water tributary of the Missouri River that bisected Liberty Park where Jared had pitched his tent. Half a dozen tents were spread out on his side of the creek, all of them dark and quiet, silhouetted in the moonlight, a cool midnight breeze rippling through the grounds. The week before, there had been eight tents. Next week there could be more. It all depended on how full the homeless shelters were, the overflow finding their way to the park.

His tent was closest to the water, the others scattered farther away among the beaten grass, rough brush, and thick woods, including one backing against a towering cliff carved out of a long-ago-excavated hillside.

East of the park were more hills, home to a hardscrabble neighborhood nicknamed Dogpatch, where people lived in flimsy trailers set on concrete blocks and dilapidated houses cockeyed with wood rot and tucked back from rough ribbons of narrow, poorly lit, winding asphalt. Warnings to keep out and beware of dogs were strung from one yard to the next.

I-435, the beltway encircling Kansas City, ran along the west side of the park, filling it with an unrelenting hum that rose to a roar whenever a convoy of eighteen-wheelers rumbled past.

Liberty Park wasn’t a real park, not the kind with sheltered picnic tables, water fountains, and baseball diamonds. It was a hundred acres of forgotten ground on Kansas City’s far eastern edge, wide in the center, tapered at each end. Someone had driven a fence post into the ground and topped it with a plywood rectangle, hand-drawn lettering giving the place its name.

Dry and dressed, Jared headed out of the park, keeping his distance from the other tents, careful not to disturb anyone. He walked a couple of miles until he reached a pay phone bolted to the wall of a shuttered convenience store, picked up the receiver, dialed 911, and waited for someone to answer.

“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher asked.

“I’d like to report a murder.”

The first patrol car pulled into the convenience store parking lot at one a.m. on Tuesday, September 14, fifteen minutes after Jared’s 911 call, the car’s headlights framing Jared. Officer Ernie Schmitt kept his car door between them until he had a better feel for the situation.

“Are you the guy who made the 911 call about a murder?” Schmitt asked.

“Yes, sir. That was me. The body’s in Rock Creek down in Liberty Park.”

“What’s your name?”

“Bell, sir. Jared Bell.”

Ernie Schmitt was a big man, in good enough shape to subdue someone a head shorter and fifty pounds lighter like Jared, though he guessed Jared was a good fifteen, maybe twenty years younger and, with his scrawny frame, could outrun him and could sure as hell shoot him if he was armed.

That Jared had called 911 didn’t eliminate him as a suspect or a threat. It was the middle of the night on a deserted strip of road. A Jackson County sheriff’s deputy had been ambushed after responding to a similar call the year before, Schmitt’s memory of the deputy’s funeral still fresh. He unsnapped the holster of his service pistol, keeping a light grip on the butt. He radioed his dispatcher, advising that he had secured the caller and was waiting for backup and a detective.

“Sit tight, Mr. Bell,” Schmitt said. “A detective will be here soon. You can tell him all about it.”

Jared nodded, lowering himself to the pavement, sitting cross-legged and tapping his hands against his thighs.

By the time Detective Hank Rossi rolled up, the parking lot was filled with two more patrol cruisers and an ambulance. Rossi had been called out the night before, worked a full shift earlier that day, and gone home. Certain he had the night off, he had knocked back a bottle of wine with a rare steak, riding the buzz to bed, digging out of the fog when his phone rang. He braced his lean six-foot frame against the open car door, a dull ache throbbing between his eyes, and steadied himself, apologizing to his dead mother for not taking her advice and becoming a dentist, cursing the nightmares the booze couldn’t subdue.

Rossi and Schmitt had forty-five years in the department between them, long enough for Schmitt to know that Rossi didn’t want him asking Jared any questions other than to establish identity. Schmitt signaled to the other uniforms, Douglas and Lyle, to keep an eye on Jared and met Rossi at his car.

“He’s the caller?” Rossi asked.

“That’s what he says.”

“Who is he?”

“Says his name is Jared Bell.”

“Is that the name on his driver’s license?”

Schmitt smiled. “Doesn’t have one. Only ID he has is a VA card.”

“Did you run him?”

“While you were still getting out of bed. He’s twenty-eight. No priors. No warrants. Guy’s not right, though-I can tell you that much.”

“What do you mean?” Rossi asked.

“Look at him. He’s on another planet: half the time he’s a one-man band playing his knees like they’re fucking bongos. The rest of the time, it’s like he’s somewhere else.”