Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

FBI agents, cops, DEA, it didn't matter, we all liked to tell stories. There was no fun in cutting to the chase whether the news was good or bad so there was no point in pushing her.

"What happened to him?"

"He died. Probably yesterday, probably of natural causes but we won't know for certain until we get the autopsy results."

"So why the yellow tape and why did you call me?"

"Come inside."

Mail was stacked like cord wood in the entry hall. More stacks narrowed the passage on the stairs to the second floor.

"The guy was a mail carrier but he never opened his mail?" I asked.

"No. The guy was a mail carrier who stole other people's mail, which he didn't open. It'll take a month or more to sort through all of it, figure out what to throw away and what to try to deliver. Some of this stuff goes back years. A whole lot of people are going to find out whether better late than never really is better. This is just part of it."

We walked into the dining room. The table was buried under a mountain of magazines and catalogs. Foothills made of unopened bills, checks, coupons, sweepstakes, and credit card offers spread from the dining room into the kitchen. Unread love letters, thank-you notes, demands, denials, rejections, acceptances, rants, raves, promises, apologies, and more were piled in silent drifts against windowsills, yellowed and coated with dust.

More mail sealed off bookcases, a fireplace, and a television in the den. The ceiling light was yellow and faint, the walls paneled with dark pine.

Walter Enoch's body, rank with the rotten, gaseous odor of decomposition, was slumped in a recliner upholstered in a blue and red tartan plaid shoved against one wall. His gray, bloodless face was hairless, rutted and ribbed with flesh bunched into ridges around his eyes, stretched thin around his mouth, his cheeks pocked and mottled, the residue of severe burns. A large plastic bin with U.S. POSTAL SERVICE stenciled on the sides sat next to the chair.

"Who found him?" I asked.

"His supervisor came to check on him when he didn't show up for work. When no one answered, he called the cops. They forced the door and the supervisor identified the body. There was no sign of foul play but KCPD treated it as a crime scene because of the stolen mail. That makes it federal so they called the Bureau. I was the first agent on the scene and I found this in his lap."

She handed me a plastic evidence bag containing an empty square-shaped pink envelope, the kind that would be used for a greeting card or personal stationery. It was addressed to me at the house I had lived in before the divorce, the handwriting so familiar it hurt. A postal sticker forwarding it to my new address was pasted beneath the old one. A burst of shakes bolted from my belly to my breast, my question stumbling out of my mouth.

"What was inside the envelope?"

"I don't know. It was empty when I found it. The only name in the return address is the initials MG. Any idea whose initials they are?"

I took a deep breath. "Yeah. MG stands for Monkey Girl. It was a nickname I gave Wendy when she was little. She had a stuffed animal, a monkey that she never let go of. She called it Monkey Girl too. The handwriting is hers."

I didn't tell her that Wendy kept Monkey Girl until the day she died or that I had claimed it as my inheritance. I had pictures of Wendy growing up taken at birthday parties, holidays, and for no reason at all. They chronicled her life, visual confirmation of moments in time. Monkey Girl was more than that. Its fake fur and rubber face was a link between the two of us, an indelible reminder of silly names and games, happy times and infinite possibilities.

"Then take a look at the postmark."

The postmark was hard to read because the ink was smeared and the plastic bag made it look like it was underwater. I held it close, angled it in the light and stopped breathing. The envelope and whatever had been inside it had been mailed to me from New York City a month ago, ten months after I buried my daughter.

"You said that the envelope was empty when you found it."

"And, it was in Enoch's lap."

"Maybe he was reading whatever was inside the envelope when he died," I said.

"Then we should have found it on him or next to him and we didn't. We haven't been through everything in the house, but we didn't find anything on the surface of this mess that matches up with the envelope. And none of the rest of the stolen mail has been opened."

I looked at Ammara, now understanding why she had called me. An empty envelope addressed to me by my deceased daughter was cause enough for an investigation. Finding it in the lap of a dead man whose job was to deliver the mail and whose hobby was stealing the mail but not opening it was a bonanza of coincidences. I hated coincidences. They deceived you with their convenient explanations for things that weren't so easily understood.

"You think someone took whatever was in the envelope?" I asked.

"What do you think?"

I surveyed the mail in the den, thought about the unopened stacks and piles I'd seen in the rest of the house.

"I think that makes the most sense based on what we see so far."

"So do I. If we're right, whoever took your mail could have been here when Walter died."

I nodded. "Most people would have tried to help him, called an ambulance, done something."

"Unless they wanted Enoch to die," Lucy Trent said.

Ammara and I were facing Enoch's body, our backs to Lucy, unaware she was watching and listening. We turned around. She was standing in the entryway from the dining room to the den, one hand in her coat pocket, the other at her side, palming her cell phone, rotating it in a slow arc, the cell phone camera capturing the scene with faint whirrs and clicks. I glanced at Ammara to see whether she realized what Lucy was doing but her eyes were fixed over Lucy's shoulder, searching for the soon-to-be-demoted street cop that let Lucy past the yellow tape.

"There's always that," I said, wondering why Lucy was photographing the scene and why my instincts told me not to bust her.

"I got bored waiting for you in the car," Lucy said.

"Who's she and what's she doing in the middle of my dead man?" Ammara asked me.

"It's complicated," I said.

"Not really," Lucy said as she slipped her phone into the purse slung over her shoulder. "I'm Lucy Trent. I own the house where Jack lives until I kick him out, which could happen sooner rather than later the way things are going. I drove him out here because he was shaking too badly to do it himself. That's not so complicated."

"This is a crime scene," Ammara told her. "Authorized personnel only and you aren't authorized."

Lucy smiled and nodded. "So that's what the dead man means. Crime scene. I like it."

Ammara took two steps toward Lucy. I cut her off, my back to Lucy again. "It's okay."

Ammara leaned in toward me, her voice hard but too quiet for Lucy to hear us. "What do you mean it's okay? This is my scene, not yours. Your invitation didn't include a date."

"Understood," I said, my voice matching hers. "I'll handle it."

"Good. Do it now. I don't want your landlady polluting my crime scene."

I raised my hands in surrender. "No problem. One thing. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep me in the loop."

She took a deep breath. "You know the rules, Jack. You're a civilian. I'll tell you as much as I can without compromising the investigation."

"Which means you think that whatever was in that envelope has something to do with the money the Bureau says Wendy stole. You were at her funeral. You saw the date on the postmark. What? You think she rose from the dead and took the bus to New York so she could mail a letter to me confessing to being a thief and telling me where she hid the money?"