Robert Parker - Wilderness

It was Wednesday and the sky was a flat acrylic blue when Aaron Newman saw the murder. He was jogging home from the health club along the railroad tracks. His biceps were pumped up from forty-five curls, his pectorals swollen from forty-five bench presses, his latissimus dorsi engorged from forty-five pull downs. His legs felt loose and easy and the sweat seemed to oil the hinges of his body as he ran. His breathing was easy and spring was still left in his calves. Ahead of him, where the road looped in close to the tracks, he saw a tall gaunt man with black hair slicked back fire three shots into the head of a kneeling woman. The gun was short and gray, and after the third shot the man slipped it under his coat and got into a blue Lincoln with an orange vinyl roof and drove away.

The woods were still. There was a locust hum and a bird chatter that Newman didn't recognize. He stood where he had stopped and looked at the woman's body. He was too far to see clearly, but the back of her head was bloody and she was motionless, lying on her side, her knees bent. She looked like a small animal that had been run over on the road. Newman was sure she was dead.

"Jesus Christ," he said.

He began to walk toward her slowly, squinting, fuzzing his vision deliberately so that he didn't have to see the scramble of brains and blood. A crow swooped in from his left and landed on the ground beside the woman's body with a rustle of wings. Newman jumped at the sudden dark flash of life. The bird pecked at the pulpy mass of the woman's head and Newman looked away.

"Jesus Christ," he said. He picked up a pine cone and threw it at the crow; it flared up away from the woman and circled into a tree.

"Nevermore," Newman said.

He stood now directly over the woman, squinting, looking only obliquely at her. He didn't want to touch her. What if he touched her and she were alive with her brains drooling out of the back of her head. If she moved he was afraid he'd bolt. He felt helpless. He wouldn't be able to help her. He'd better run for the cops. It was maybe another mile. That wasn't hard. He'd run thirteen Friday. He'd already run nine today.

Is she dead? they'd say.

I don't know, I didn't dare touch her, he'd say.

And the cops would look at each other. No, it would be too embarrassing. He'd have to touch her. He squatted down on his heels and felt around for her neck, looking at her only sideways with his eyes nearly shut. He felt for the pulse in the carotid artery. The same place he took his own after running. There was no pulse. He made himself feel hard for nearly a minute. Nothing. As he moved his hand he felt something warm and wet and jerked his hand away and rubbed it on the ground without looking. He stood up. The woods were nearly all white pine here, and the sun coming through the trees made a ragged dappled pattern on the woman's white slacks. One shoe was missing. Her toenails were painted maroon.

Newman turned and began to jog down the railroad tracks. As he jogged he could feel the panic build in him, and he ran faster toward the cops.

She was there when he drove back with two local cops. The crows had been at her, and as the patrol car pulled in beside the railroad tracks three crows flew up and went to the trees.

For the two cops it was the first shooting victim they had ever seen.

They had seen bad corpses in car wrecks and people who'd died of heart attacks on the way to the hospital, and once they'd had to remove the remains of an old man who had died three weeks prior. But never before a murder. The murder scared them a little.

The senior officer was Ed Diamond, six and a half years on the force.

Four years of high school, three years in the Army and on the cops. He was not quite twenty-eight.

"Check her, Jim," he said.

Jimmy Tinkham was twenty-six, high school, college, a criminal justice major, and onto the Smithfield force. He was blond. His cheeks were rosy and he shaved three times a week.

He squatted beside her, the big handle of his service revolver sticking out at an odd angle. He felt her neck as Newman had done. Newman liked that. He'd been professional. Like they were.

"Dead and starting to cool," Tinkham said.

Diamond nodded. "I figured," he said. Above them on the tree branch in a row, the crows sat. Their bodies motionless, moving their heads.

"We better run it through," Tinkham said.

Diamond nodded. He took a notebook from his shirt pocket, a pencil from the same pocket. He pushed his campaign hat back on his head a bit more; the Smithfield force wore them in the summer.

"What time you find her?" he said.

Newman shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I left the health club at five. It's about four miles to here. I run ten minute miles. It must have been about twenty of six."

Diamond wrote 5:40 in his notebook. "She just the way you left her?"

"Yes."

"And you saw the man shoot her?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you intervene?"

"It was too quick. I was too far away. It was over before I knew what happened."

"And you didn't get the license number?" "469-AAG," Newman said. He hadn't consciously registered it. It surprised him. But he knew that he noticed things. He always had.

Tinkham raised his eyebrows and stuck out his lower lip.

Diamond said, "Can you give us a description?" "Of him or the car?" Newman said.

"Both. Him first."

"He was tall. Maybe six three, and skinny. No, not skinny, gaunt, but sort of strong looking, like Lincoln, you know?"

Diamond wrote 6'3". Lean. Muscular.

"And his hair was black and slicked back tight against his scalp.

Short. No sideburns. He had on a lime green leisure suit and white shiny loafers with brass tassels."

"And the car?"

"Lincoln, new. Orange roof, blue body. Roof is vinyl." Newman found himself talking like a television cop. Christ, he thought, even here I'm trying to sound right.

"Okay," Diamond said, "now where were you…" "Eddie," Tinkham said. "Why fuck around with that? You know the statics are going to do this and we're not. We don't even have mug books, for cris sake Whyn't you put out a pick-up on the radio for that car with that description. Then we'll inventory the scene so that when some state police corporal shows up here and looks around he won't think we're a couple of fucking assholes."

Diamond nodded and went to the patrol car.

"Aren't you the writer?" Tinkham said.

Newman nodded. "The one," he said.

"Oughta get a few good stories out of this one," Tinkham said.

Newman nodded.

"I see you running every day," Tinkham said. He stood with his back to the dead woman. The earth had rotated a bit and the dappling shadow of the trees fell across the police cruiser, leaving the woman in shade.

"How far you go?" "I do about ten miles," Newman said. "Three days a week I run up to the health club and lift a little."

"Losing any weight?" Tinkham said.

"Yeah. Maybe twenty, twenty-five pounds so far." Newman said. He was conscious of saying yeah. A regular guy. One of the boys. At ease with cops and jocks and guys that played pool for money.

One of the crows made a swoop down over the dead woman and didn't dare.

He kept in the air and circled back up to the tree branch. There were five crows there now.

Diamond came back from the cruiser. "Couple of statics coming down from the Smithfield barracks," he said. "Alden says don't touch anything till they get here."

Tinkham nodded. "You want to write?" he said.