by Joel Goldman
CHASING THE DEAD
Joel Goldman
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CHASING THE DEAD
By Joel Goldman
Chapter One
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.”
Chapter Two
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.”
Jared was sitting cross-legged on the pavement, his face blank, staring into the darkness outside the circle of squad cars.
“Man’s eccentric. Doesn’t make him crazy. He volunteer anything?”
“Just that he’s the one who made the 911 call about a body in Rock Creek where it runs through Liberty Park. Figured to let you ask the rest of the questions.”
Rossi sighed, scratching the scruff on his chin. “Great. That’s all I need: a midnight stroll among the dead and the deadbeats.”
“Don’t forget the pervs. Every time we make a sweep down there, we get a couple of sex offenders who forgot to register.”
“Maybe they figure Liberty Park isn’t much of an address.”
“Could be worse. Could be Dogpatch instead. Start knocking on those doors in the middle of the night and you’re just as likely to get shot as have a damn pit bull take a chunk out of your ass.”
Rossi shook his head. “Can’t be helped, since we’ll have to canvass Dogpatch and find out if any of the neighborhood women have gone missing.”
“Like they’d tell us. More likely they’d shoot us for trespassing.”
“Call dispatch and ask for any detectives and uniforms they can send us. We’ll need help with the campers in Liberty Park and the friendly folks in Dogpatch.”
The officers guarding Jared stepped aside when Rossi approached. Jared jumped to his feet, holding his arms stiff at his sides, straining to stay still. Rossi thought he was trying not to salute, though the military impulse looked out of place with the rest of him. His hair was a ragged mop, his face was splotched with irregular patches of whiskers, and he reeked of sour sweat, missing only the boozy tang Rossi expected from someone living in Liberty Park.
“I’m Detective Rossi.”
“Yes, sir,” Jared said.
“Officer Schmitt tells me you were in the service.”
“Army. Did a tour in Afghanistan.”
“Mind if I have a look at your VA card?”
Jared handed it to him. It was one of the new cards, the ones that omitted social security numbers and dates of birth, limiting the information on the card to a name, photograph, and special eligibility indicators—Service Connected, Purple Heart, and Former POW—if applicable. Jared Bell had been awarded the Purple Heart.
Rossi returned the card. “Purple Heart, huh? How’d it happen?”
“I took a round in my gut.”
Jared pulled up his T-shirt, showing Rossi a ridged, ropy scar running six inches across his belly, a field-surgery souvenir.
“I got my scar in the first Gulf War,” Rossi said. Though he’d served, he hadn’t been wounded, telling the lie to build trust and rapport. “Sniper nicked me in the ass, not bad enough for a medal. Did you get him?”
Jared shook his head. “Not yet, but I’ll get him one day.”
“How you going to do that? Reenlist?”
“No, sir. Just talk, I guess. I see him all the time in my dreams, that and a lot of other shit,” he said, dragging both hands down the sides of his nose and over his mouth, then shaking his head. “Maybe I’ll get him one of these nights. That’s all. How about you, sir? Did you get yours?”
“I didn’t, but some soldiers in a helicopter gunship took him out.”
“Good for them, sir.”
Rossi studied the face on the ID, wondering how long it had been since the photograph had been taken. The man in the picture had steady, confident eyes and a square jaw. The man who’d made the 911 call looked lost, his mouth open in a loose grin, jittery and shuffling his feet, dreaming about killing an enemy who was half a world away and probably dead by now anyway.
“So I’m guessing this body you found wasn’t the first one you’ve ever seen.”
“No, sir. I’ve seen a bunch.”
“What can you tell me about this one?”
“Not much, sir. Just that she’s in the creek and she’s dead.”
“How’d you happen to find her?”
“I was sleeping in my tent and got up to take a leak. I did my business and decided to walk a little bit cause I don’t sleep so good. I was down along the creek when I seen her.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
“She was on her back, looking straight up at me; at least that’s what it seemed like to me.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I was pretty sure she was dead, but I wanted to be sure—you know what I mean, just in case she wasn’t. So I got down in the water and she was dead all right.”
“What makes you think she was murdered?”
“There was marks all around her neck, like she was strangled.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, sir, she wasn’t wearing any clothes.”
“I’d say those are pretty good reasons. Thanks for calling it in. Can you show us where you found her?”
Jared nodded. “That’s why I called you. Nobody should be left like that.”
Chapter Three
THEY PARKED ON THE NORTH END of Liberty Park, police and paramedics leaving their emergency flashers on to warn approaching cars—red, white, and blue streamers splitting the darkness as they formed a circle around Rossi, waiting for instructions.
“I want to get a look at the body, but we have to be careful with the people in those tents,” Rossi said. “If they fit the homeless profile, some of them may be crazy, some of them may be armed, some of them may be wanted, and some of them may be all three. So be careful. Their first instinct may be to shoot or run, and their second will be to keep their mouths shut. We can’t make them talk, but we can hold on to them long enough to give them a chance to tell us if they heard or saw something.”
“No way to know how many people are down there or where they are. The woods are kind of thick in parts. How do you want to handle it?” Schmitt asked.
“You and the EMTs come with me. Everyone else, gather whoever is camping out. Keep them calm, don’t let them talk to each other, and don’t let them back in their tents until we figure out if we need to search them.”
He shined a flashlight toward the park.
“Okay, Jared, show us how you found her, starting from your tent.”
“My tent?”
“Yeah, I want to see things the way you saw them. You started out from your tent, so that’s what we’ll do.”
Jared nodded, swallowing, jutting his chin out and in like a turtle poking its head in and out of its shell. “You got it, sir.”
Rossi knew that Jared wouldn’t be the first or last to kill someone and report the crime, enjoying the spotlight much as the arsonist who helps put out the fire. Letting Jared lead the way would give him the chance to show off and make a mistake that might expose him as the killer. Rossi and Schmitt flanked him as they entered the park, stopping at a dome-shaped tent.
“This is it, my tent,” Jared said.
Rossi nodded at Schmitt, who took up station at the entrance, arms crossed.
“What’s he doing?” Jared asked Rossi, pointing at Schmitt.
Rossi smiled, putting his arm across Jared’s shoulders. “Making sure no one bothers your stuff while we’re busy with this dead body of yours.”
Jared wriggled away from Rossi, staring at Schmitt, mouth agape, eyes wild.
“Everything I got’s in that tent. I don’t want him or nobody else messin’ with my stuff.”
Rossi figured that by now Jared was sorry he’d called 911. People like him always were. Thinking they were doing the right thing or not thinking at all, and before they knew what hit them, they were caught in a trap they’d set for themselves without realizing it.
“Hey, don’t worry,” Rossi said. “Just do your duty, soldier.”
Jared took a deep breath and pointed downstream.
“She’s over there.”
“Take the point,” Rossi told him, motioning to the paramedics to fall in behind him. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Jared wal
ked straight from his tent to the edge of the creek, turning north and taking a few steps downstream before Rossi stopped him.
“Is this the route you took? Right along the creek here?”
He didn’t turn around. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s real helpful, Jared. How about we keep a little farther from the edge. You know this area but I don’t, and it’s dark. I don’t want to take a chance I might slip and fall in the creek and you’d have to pull me out.”
Rossi was a little unsure of his footing after drinking his way through his late dinner, but he had other reasons for cautioning Jared. He wanted Jared to believe that he was depending on him, giving Jared another reason to trust him. It was like telling a woman he’d just met in a bar that she was the best thing that had happened to him all day. And he wanted to make sure they didn’t contaminate the scene by trampling the exact route Jared had taken.
Jared moved inland about ten feet. Rossi followed him, sweeping his flashlight along the edge of the creek. The grass was upright, dew glistening on each blade, none of it matted with Jared’s footprints, as it would have been if he’d taken that route. He grunted, satisfied he’d caught Jared in his first lie. Rossi counted their steps, measuring each pace at three feet, until Jared stopped, close to seven hundred feet north of his tent.
“She’s over there,” Jared said, cocking his head toward the creek, keeping his distance.
Rossi scanned the landscape behind him, checking sight lines for possible witnesses. It was empty. The tents on the east side were behind them to the south. He shined his light across the water. Wherever the nearest tent on the west side was, it was beyond the reach of his flashlight.
“Stay here,” Rossi said.
Chapter Four
ROSSI WALKED TO THE CREEK BANK and turned off his flashlight, wanting to see the body the same way Jared claimed to have seen it. It was an hour and a half since Jared had called 911, longer since he had found her. The moon was lower in the sky but still shining.
