Jodi Lee - Ante Mortem

Nick studied Isaac for a moment before speaking. “Take this. I can’t explain more. I’d be in deep shit if someone knew I copied that.” He pushed a small envelope with a bulge in the middle across the table.

“What is it?” Isaac asked.

“Just watch it. I don’t know if it will help, but it will make you think.” Nick looked into Isaac’s brown, almost black eyes before he pushed from the table, muttered, “good luck” and slipped out of the door.

Isaac picked up the envelope and tore off a corner. A little black bullet—a plastic flash drive—fell out and rattled on the table.

On the computer monitor, he watched the pixilated Anne Renner cross the street from Larry’s Market to the new playground. He looked at the picture of Anne above his desk, the smiling photo snapped at a picnic last summer. His eyes came back to the screen. Evidently Nick—or a friend of his, while operating the security camera in Larry’s parking lot, caught Anne and followed her. Isaac didn’t want to know why. The perspective zoomed closer until she nearly filled the screen. The image was blurry and a little grainy—especially after the zoom—but it was clearly Anne. Isaac recognized her coat and knew her walk. He watched as the video Anne passed behind a row of bushes, emerging on the other side as she cut across the basketball court.

And then she was gone.

Not gone as in a dark figure leapt from behind the bushes and kidnapped her gone. Not gone as in she walked out of the frame gone. Just gone, snap. Isaac’s stomach went cold, and his hand tightened on the mouse. He leaned forward, scrutinizing the monitor as he clicked the rewind icon. The mystery happened in reverse—one moment no Anne, then she walked backwards across the open slab.

He paused the video, reduced the frame rate, and played back the scene. Anne walked across the concrete again, and then disappeared. At the reduced frame rate, half of normal speed, Isaac noticed something. He reversed the clip again, set the disappearance to loop, and played back. The small, monochrome Anne vanished again and again until he clicked pause, and advanced frame by frame. One frame she took a step, in the next her face changed—a dark blotch where her open mouth would be, almost a look of surprise. Something lined and grey seemed wrapped around her ankles, but the image was too rough to make out enough detail. In the following frame, Anne’s body seemed half devoured by the court. She was totally gone when he advanced another frame. Isaac hunched even closer to the screen. His stomach vaulted and blood thickened.

He sat there clicking forward and back, entranced by the odd sequence of images: one frame surprised, the next half gone, and finally no sign of her. He studied the time stamp on the video—6:49 PM. She would have been on time.

Snatching his cell phone from his desk, he punched the number for Larry’s Market. He stood and began pacing in his small apartment.

“Hello, Larry’s. How can I help you?” a withered voice asked.

“Yeah, hi. Can I speak with Nick.”

“Nick? We don’t have a Nick here.”

Isaac slumped into his old rust-red recliner. “A security guy—Nick?”

“I’m sorry. Our security guy quit yesterday, but I don’t remember his name. Moving out of town, I guess.”

“Thanks,” Isaac muttered.

“Sorry buddy.”

“Look, calm down Mr. Bauer,” the sergeant, a ruddy-faced man with bushy moustache and eyebrows, placed one hand on Isaac’s thin shoulder, urging him to sit in a nearby chair. “We looked at the video. It must be a hoax.”

“Hoax?” Isaac’s voice was distant and disbelieving.

“Look, you get some two-bit hooligan who knows a little about digital video, and you can come up with all sorts of odd mash-ups.” The sergeant leaned on the edge of his desk. “You’ve been posting these flyers all over town, right?”

“Yeah,” Isaac said. He took the seat as the police officer suggested.

“Some wacko does a little doctoring with a surveillance video, and wham. They know they’ve got you.” He grabbed the flash drive from his desk. “We’re going to keep this, if you don’t mind. Evidence and all. But I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sorry some jerk had to yank your chain like that.”

Isaac’s face was pale, lost in thought. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah. Kind of a raw deal.”

He drove to the playground after leaving the police station. The concrete slab stretched away from the sidewalk, looking pale and insignificant in the late afternoon light. Isaac stepped from his car, looked across the street at Larry’s, and noticed the high lamppost that was home to the small, seeing eye of a security camera.

He stepped away from his car, and shivered because of the cold fingers in the air. Isaac’s shoes whispered through the grass and then tapped lightly on concrete as he stepped onto the court. The breeze faded, leaving the playground in silence. A dog barked in the distance.

“It’s not a goddamn hoax,” Isaac said aloud, kicking at the edge of the grey concrete. The wind jumped at him again, and he thought a voice whispered Anne’s name.

Isaac hadn’t been in the Springdale Public Library since high school, and that had only been because his art teacher required a journal entry detailing the interior architecture of the Carnegie building. When he asked if he could read old articles from the Sentinel online, a friendly librarian laughed and ferried him into a dark room lined with shelves full of musty folios containing the last thirty years of the local paper. He was looking for anything about that playground.

After an hour of old, yellowed newsprint, Isaac found what he was looking for: on the front page of a Sentinel from the previous year, a picture of five men in hard hats stood in the center of a vast expanse of grey concrete. The caption read, “Conco Pours Slab for Donated Playground.” As the Sentinel was a small paper, the picture was only accompanied by a brief article, but Isaac had what he needed. An old buddy from high school, Jarrod, started working for Conco after dropping out of college.

He left the dusty interior of the library after saying a cursory thank you to the librarian. Outside of the dark building, the day was cold but clear with a bright sun hanging in a brilliant blue. As he walked to his car parked on the street, Isaac flipped open his cell phone, dialed for information, and requested the listing for Jarrod Wagner in Springdale.

After three rings, a voice muttered “hi” on the other end of the call.

Isaac, now sitting in his car as a shelter from the cold outside, said, “Hey, this is Isaac, Isaac Bauer. Am I talking to Jarrod?”

“Isaac. Holy shit. Meg—you know the curly brunette down at the Tasty Pastry—she said she saw you the other day. How long have you been back in town?”

“A few months, sort of. I still commute.” Isaac felt dizzy and awkward, talking to someone from whom he had grown apart after college and starting a career. “Look, Jarrod. I don’t know if you’ve seen my flyers.”

The line was silent for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, hell of a deal,” Jarrod muttered. “Look, I’m sorry buddy, I should have called, just to send some sympathy, you know. I didn’t know what to say.”

Isaac closed his eyes. “Can you help me now? Do you still work for Conco?”

More silence, then: “No… not anymore.”

“I see. Were you working for them when they poured the playground last year?”

“Yeah. Look, if you want to know about that playground, I can’t tell you much,” Jarrod’s voice shook slightly and he rushed his words. “Conco was just a subcontractor. Evergreen Development, they donated everything, part of a deal they had with the city. That’s all I know.”