Chutes and Ladder

by Marc Jedel

  For some time, I stayed where I was, staring at the ground but not seeing anything.

  “Excuse me. I understand you discovered the body?” A female deputy stood in front of me.

  “Larry.” My friend had a name.

  The deputy squinted at me. “Larry, do you have a last name and some ID?”

  Now she was just being dumb. “I’m not Larry. He’s Larry. Or he was.” My voice caught in my throat.

  “You knew him?” Her eyebrows rose in surprise.

  This was getting annoying. “Well, of course. I’ve known him since college. He’s in my poker group, although he isn’t any good. He still owes me from last time.” I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t see him again. I reached into my jacket for a bandana, which had been on the required packing list, to wipe away the tears that threatened to spill out of my eyes.

  “Sir! Remove your hands from your pockets slowly and stand up.” She had backed up a step and was pointing her gun at me.

  I jumped to my feet with my hands in the air. “Whoa! What’s going on? Why are you pointing your gun at me?”

  “Sir, calm down. And don’t move.” She gestured to her partner, a stocky Asian officer, who hurried over to us.

  He approached me from the side, careful not to get between her gun and me. Then he grabbed my arms, holding them in one strong hand behind me while patting me down.

  “What are you doing? I didn’t do anything.” Adrenalin raced through my body.

  He pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and held it behind me.

  “Hey, that’s mine. You can’t take my wallet.” My voice rose as all my pent-up emotions flowed out.

  “Marty Golden,” he announced to his partner after checking out my driver’s license.

  “What’s Larry’s last name?” she asked me.

  “Cohen. Can’t you check his license without attacking me?” I tugged my hands, trying to free myself from the deputy’s grasp.

  “He didn’t have any ID on him,” he said, releasing me.

  “So how much money did he owe you? And where were you earlier this morning?” the female deputy asked as she lowered her gun.

  I bristled at the implied accusation. “Maybe twenty dollars, if that. I’ve been here with the Girl Scouts all morning until I found him.”

  “You’re a Girl Scout, huh?” She still sounded skeptical. “Is your friend a Girl Scout too? What was he doing here?”

  If she was trying to provoke me, it was working. “I don’t know. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to figure out?”

  “You’re a wise guy, is that it? You think this is funny? What part of the Girl Scout activities included walking by yourself a half mile away on a trail that led straight to your friend?”

  I blushed. “I … I was not the best with the campsite chores so the troop leader sent me to do something else on my own. Ask her.”

  “Oh, we will.” The female deputy put her gun away, but not her attitude. “If he’s such a good friend, why’d you nail him with your vomit? Twice. Is that how you treat your friends?”

  I snapped, “It was only once. It sure wasn’t part of my day’s plan to throw up all over a dead friend lying in the middle of a forest and then get accosted by some two-bit county deputies.”

  The male deputy grabbed my shirt and pulled me close enough that I could smell the coffee on his breath. “Watch your step, buddy.” He stared at me with cold, dark eyes for a moment before pushing me away. “Crawl back under your rock and don’t bother anyone.” He tossed my wallet to the ground.

  My brain caught up before my mouth sounded off again, so I decided not to point out that if I hadn’t been watching my step, I wouldn’t have found Larry at all.

  The deputies put their heads together before the woman took out a notebook and wrote something in it.

  I hoped today wouldn’t end with me visiting the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s office.

  Turning their backs on me, the deputies walked off together toward the girls and moms, who were still gaping at us from the picnic tables.

  This left me alone to wonder what had happened to Larry’s wallet. And Larry.

  Much of the next few hours flew by in a blur. I stayed on my rock, looking away from the trail and watching the trees sway in the breeze. Larry and I had first met during freshman year in college when we lived next door to each other in the same dorm. We became friends and had stayed in contact over all these years. Although he’d moved around a bit, he had lived in Silicon Valley for at least a decade.

  As the sheriffs led the paramedics down the trail to the body, the moms resumed their camping preparations. The girls flitted around, helping and gossiping.

  Seeing the coast had cleared, Skye wandered over with some of her friends, who were whispering to each other and pretending to ignore my presence. Surprised that Skye was still willing to talk to someone deemed a Girl Scout pariah, I looked up at her without speaking.

  “Are you okay, Uncle Marty?” she asked as her friends quieted behind her.

  “Maybe not the best. Larry is—or, I guess, was—a good friend of mine.” My voice caught in my throat.

  Skye surprised me again by leaning in and giving me a quick hug.

  As I hugged her back, I glanced up at the other girls. They were edging away from us, looking uncomfortable, no longer sure if they wanted to hang around this unseemly display of familial affection toward an unstable uncle. Too many unpredictable things had happened around me even for Girl Scouts who were taught to “be prepared.” Or maybe that was the Boy Scouts?

  I couldn’t even remember the right motto.

  A few of the girls started to shift their feet, preparing to ditch their friend and see if something more interesting was happening near the swarm of police, paramedics, and medical examiners.

  I continued, “I think I upset the deputies. I was going to show them pictures of Larry from a special app on my phone, but I don’t think they want to talk to me now.”

  Over Skye’s shoulder, several of the girls glanced at each other, suddenly looking more alert. The curly-haired redhead who had gotten sprayed with orange soda raised her eyebrows and asked, “Can we see the pictures?”

  The whole clump of girls swayed forward, apprehensive yet eager to see pictures of a dead person since their mothers had banned them from approaching Larry’s body.

  Maybe it wasn’t my smartest move, but these girls had all seen plenty of dead bodies on TV and in the movies, and those were often far more gruesome than Larry, with blood, gore, and missing body parts. Larry just looked asleep under the trees. Besides, I hadn’t had a chance to look at the pictures either. The app’s sample images had resembled forensics from one of those criminal investigation shows.

  Figuring there wouldn’t be any harm in it, I took out my phone, flicked on the volume, and held it so we could all see as I opened the app again.

  The girls stepped forward in anticipation, forming a tight knot around Skye and me.

  My phone buzzed and a voice said, “Seek urgent medical attention.”

  I almost dropped the phone until realizing that the app had completed its analysis and was providing its diagnosis. Guess the engineers had never intended it to assess a dead body. Knowing how these things work in companies, I figured their lawyers instructed the engineers not to give a customer any scary results. That would be bad for customer satisfaction.

  Better to leave the bad news to an actual doctor. Or lawyer. But if the app wouldn’t tell me that a cold body was dead, would it inform me of other serious conditions it detected? What was the use of having an app that didn’t give you accurate and important information?

  “Uncle Marty!” Skye interrupted my train of thought.

  I’d distracted myself again. This happened on a regular basis. The girls were looking at me with puzzled expressions as they waited impatiently to see something exciting. I flicked the screen to reveal the first image.

  An infrared image of Larry appeared. His body, mostly tinted in
unnatural-looking shades of green and blue, had blotchy streaks of brighter yellow and red on his arms, starting from the backs of his wrists. On the infrared image, none of Larry’s features were distinct. Only his outlined body, colored like a rainbow, showed on the screen.

  The redhead said, “Cool,” and leaned in even closer.

  Another girl, wearing a faded Girl Scout hat over a blonde ponytail, said, “Eww, that’s gross, not cool.” She left the circle and trotted back to the tents.

  “What’s that?” asked the redhead, pointing to the blotchy yellow and red area on Larry’s arms.

  The other girls leaned over to see closer, our heads almost touching as we huddled over the phone.

  I zoomed in to see the blotches expand on the unnatural blue body. “That must be his sunburn.”

  As I spoke, the unlikelihood of the situation struck me. Larry worked in a lab all week. Today was Saturday, and I’d found him no later than ten o’clock this morning. If he’d gone hiking earlier today, he couldn’t have gotten sunburnt before dying. The sun had barely burned off the heavy fog when we got to the campground. It was possible he took yesterday off and got sunburnt then, but he’d talked about how busy things were at work since he started on the special project.

  Since the Santa Cruz County deputies didn’t seem willing to talk to me again, I needed to call Mace and ask him to look into Larry’s sunburn and whether he’d taken Friday off work.

  Mace Jackson, a sergeant in the San Jose Police Department, served as my imaginary action-hero partner. He looked like an action hero, even if he might not agree to the partner part. Only last month he had helped me save Laney from a homicidal psychopath. Afterwards, he’d gotten some good press, so I was sure he’d be ready to talk to me again.

  “What are you doing?” asked an adult voice in a strident tone.

  I looked up to see the mom with the puffy jacket and curly red hair standing in front of me, frowning and staring at me intensely. Preoccupied with thoughts of Larry’s sunburn and Mace, I hadn’t noticed anyone approaching us.

  “Showing pictures of Larry from my special app,” I answered with enthusiasm as I looked down at my phone again. This app had really cool technology. I couldn’t figure out how they processed the different images without my phone needing special lenses. I’d have to do some internet research when I got home.

  “You’re what?” Her voice grew louder as her eyebrows rose and her expression turned simultaneously astonished and angry.

  Hearing her anger, I looked up, my thoughts still stuck on the app. “It’s like one of those tricorders,” I answered in a weak voice.

  I should have kept my mouth shut. There was no way to dig myself out of this grave, so to speak.

  “I …” She tried to speak to me, then gave up and redirected her energy to the clump of girls around me. She grabbed her daughter by the arm and yanked her away from me. “Let’s go, girls, you need to come with me.” She shooed the girls away, even Skye, who wasn’t hers to shoo.

  “From Star Trek,” I mumbled to no one.

  As Skye walked away, she looked back at me and gave me a grin and a small wave.

  I’d recovered some status with her and her friends by showing them a dead body. Too bad it happened to be Larry.

  A minute after the group reached the rest of the troop, Mrs. Payne broke away and strode over to me, whistle bouncing on her chest.

  I braced myself for a tongue lashing. Or being forced to do push-ups.

  “Mr. Golden, I think it’s best if you head home now.” From Mrs. Payne’s expression, it was clear that puffy-jacket mom had tattled on me.

  “But Skye’s been looking forward to this campout for weeks.” I wasn’t thinking straight or I’d have taken the excuse to bail on the Girl Scouts, their B.I.F.F.Y., and the whole camping business. I still liked their cookies, though.

  She put her hands on her hips. “She can stay. You need to go.”

  “What?” I didn’t understand. Laney had coerced me into coming as Skye’s chaperone, a requirement for her to participate in this long-awaited weekend’s activities.

  “We’ll take care of Skye and bring her back tomorrow. You go. Now.”

  I might not pick up on social cues at all the appropriate times, but even an idiot could tell she didn’t want me here.

  Without answering aloud, I nodded. In silence, we walked back to the tables where I said goodbye to Skye, picked up my things, and left the campground.

  In the parking lot, my Rover app told me a car wouldn’t arrive to take me home for at least thirty minutes. Even with Rover’s expanding market, it didn’t make sense to keep a shared car idling in the middle of the Santa Cruz Mountains on the off chance that a client standing in an isolated campground needed a ride.

  No longer feeling like interacting with anyone, I stayed out in the parking lot, standing on the far side of the ambulance, out of sight. Even before I discovered Larry, today had been headed into the toilet, or, rather, the B.I.F.F.Y.—which was even worse.

  I decided to call Mace while I waited, but he didn’t answer, probably because he was busy with another case. I had just started to leave him a message when the paramedics surprised me by pushing a gurney around the back of the ambulance. I dropped my phone in the middle of my message, then accidentally disconnected the call when I picked it back up.

  The EMTs, both trim and sporting crewcuts, laughed at my clumsiness as they opened the back of the ambulance and loaded Larry’s body. One of them said, “Boy, you really pissed off Chung.”

  “Who?” I pissed off lots of people so it was helpful to keep them straight.

  “The deputy you spoke to,” he said, as if that would narrow things down for me. “If I were you, I’d leave now so he doesn’t give you a ticket or arrest you for something. He and his partner are not pleased with you.”

  I sighed. “I’m waiting for my ride, but it will be at least thirty minutes.”

  “Well, I suppose we could give you a ride.” He looked at his partner, who shrugged.

  “Thanks. That would be great.” The sooner I got out of here, the better. I canceled my Rover car.

  “Don’t say thanks yet,” said the other EMT as he took a step back from me. “You smell like vomit, so you’re riding in the back with him.” He jabbed a finger at Larry’s shrouded body. “And you haven’t seen how my partner drives.” Shaking his head, he laughed at his own joke as he helped his partner load the gurney into the back before climbing into the passenger seat.

  I rode in the back, alone with my thoughts and Larry, while clinging to the seat during the roller coaster ride along Highway 17 and breathing through my mouth.

  3

  Sunday Morning

  The phone woke me earlier on Sunday than I’d planned to get up. “Hello,” I mumbled.

  “Hi, Marty, this is Lauren. Isn’t this the most terrible news? I’m all broken up. Did you … did you really find him?” The voice was loud and way too energetic for a Sunday morning.

  “Who is this?” I mumbled again as I sat up and wiped my face with my other hand.

  “Marty! It’s me. Lauren, Lauren Cohen.”

  “Lori?”

  “I go by Lauren now. It sounds much more elegant than Lori. Don’t you think?” Lauren actually waited for a response.

  “Oh. Sure.” She called to ask me about her name change? Focusing instead on her brother, I said, “I’m sorry for your loss.” It was formulaic, but I didn’t know what else to say. I hadn’t seen Lori … Lauren … since graduating from college. Two years younger than Larry and me, she’d been excited to go out with me, a junior, when she first got to college. After a couple of dates, the excitement wore off and she dumped me when she decided she could do better. “How’d you get my number?”

  “The police gave it to me. They called me last night to tell me about Larry. I asked them if they knew of any of Larry’s friends in town and they told me you had found him.”

  “Yeah.” I had not slept well last night,
waking up several times with thoughts of Larry and feeling phantom leaves and bugs crawling over me in my dreams.

  “So, can you do it?”

  My mind must have wandered. “What? Sorry. Do what?”

  “Still going off in your own world, huh? Well, anyway, I asked if you could stop by his house today and help his neighbor set it up for a shiva memorial service.”

  Shiva was sort of a Jewish memorial condolence call after the funeral to Larry’s family and the bereaved mourners. Typically, there would be a short prayer service for the deceased, followed by food—a requirement for all Jewish events. It might have been one of the Ten Commandments. Sometimes you needed food to plan upcoming Jewish events that involved more food. Then, everyone talked about what they would eat at their next meal. This was especially true during a Jewish family get-together for a wedding, bar mitzvah, shiva, Mahjong game, or any other random family event.

  I scratched my head in confusion. “I thought the police said they’d be doing an autopsy before releasing his body. Did they finish it so fast? And isn’t there supposed to be a funeral before the shiva?” Although I was no religious expert, some things were pretty straightforward, even to me.

  “You know, that rabbi up there in San Jose was very accommodating. He said we could hold a shiva-like ceremony on Monday since we don’t know when they’ll release his body. The rabbi said it’s good to get the grieving process started right away.”

  Lauren’s peppy voice sounded as if she was anything but grieving. I was starting to get a headache, so I rubbed my temples and tried to concentrate.

  She continued, “And we’re leaving for vacation on Tuesday, so I need to get this taken care of before our flight.”

  I sighed. “Okay, I’ll go over there this morning.”

  “Hawaii. We’ve got this amazing condo for the week, right on the beach.” As my actual response registered, Lauren added, “Great. Thanks, Marty. I’ll see you tomorrow night. It’ll be great to catch up after all these years. I’ve gotta go now, though. I’ve got a million errands to take care of before our vacation.” She sighed. “And now I have to take this trip to San Jose.” She hung up before I could say goodbye.