The thing about finding a dead body is, you don’t expect it to look so dead. On television, when someone finds a dead body, the first thing they do is start feeling for a pulse. But when I found the dead woman at the bottom of the basement steps outside the First United Methodist Church, I knew without a doubt that she was deader than my split ends, and I couldn’t even see her that well.
Knowing she was already dead didn’t stop me from flapping around the courtyard and yelping like I needed to do something quick, when any idiot could see there was no need to hurry. I yelled these goofy, useless yelps, and hopped around long enough to see that the woman had one arm flung over her head, and her neck crooked in a very disturbing fashion. It occurred to me that she could possibly rise up from her basement resting place and look at me with her dead eyes. We were, after all, on holy ground.
Running anywhere suddenly became a stellar idea.
The closer I got to the heavy wooden doors of the church, the more certain I was that not only had the woman risen, but she was floating right behind me, reaching out a bony finger to touch the back of my neck –
I yanked open the door and spewed forth a string of words I promised I would never say again when I became a Christian. At high volume.
Don Chambers, the associate pastor, and Viv, my octogenarian Alcoholics Anonymous buddy, were passing down the hallway. They stopped and stared at me.
I gulped back the obscenities and focused on conveying what was most important.
“Dead body! Dead body outside! Dead!” I realized my feet were still running in place and I tried to get them to stop, but I had very little control over anything at that point. I did get one nailed down but the other stomped along by itself a couple of times. I jabbed a finger at the door. “Dead body outside.”
“What?” Don and Viv said in unison.
“Dead body at the bottom of the stairs. Dead.”
“Is it Merline Wallace?” Viv asked. “She looked gray last time I saw her.”
Don moved past me toward the door. “Show me.”
I shook my head. “Uh-uh. I’m not going back out there.” My heart was beating so hard I saw spots. “You can’t miss it. It’s the only dead body at the bottom of the bell tower.” I wrapped my arms around my waist and moved away from the door, in case there was a ghastly surprise waiting on the other side.
“Use the phone in my office to call the police,” Don said before he opened the door.
“I want to go too.” Viv shuffled out after Don.
My legs shook as I hurried down the hallway to Don’s office. I grabbed the phone and slid into his chair.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“I’m at First Methodist Church. I need to report –”
Unfortunately, at that moment an image popped into my head of Don’s face when I yanked open that door and screamed the F-word.
Now, something you should know about me: I giggle when I get nervous. And man, was I nervous. Plus, it was kind of funny. Not the dead body, of course, but Don’s expression.
I felt the laughter bubbling up and I cleared my throat. “I found a de-he-he—”
I bit my lip to stifle the giggles.
“Ma’am? Are you there?”
I nodded, my teeth still clamped to my lower lip like I was holding back a tidal wave with a rubber band. It did no good to nod, but I knew the moment I opened my mouth I was going to really let loose. I gripped the edge of the desk so hard my nail beds turned white and I took a deep breath through my nose. There.
“I’m sorry,” I said calmly. “I have found a dead – a dead…body.” My throat closed and my voice shot up on the last word, and uncontrollable giggles overtook me.
“A dead body?” the operator asked, calm as you please. “Male or female?”
“Fe –” was all I could get out.
“And who is calling?”
I cupped my hand over the phone and fought back the giggles to catch my breath. “Salem Grimes.” I stood and paced behind the desk, twisting the phone cord tight around my fingers. I bit my lip again and told myself to breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. Or did I have that backwards? I tried it the other way and ended up snorting into the phone. “Sorry,” I said again.
A fresh wave of giggles threatened to engulf me and I focused on the picture of Don’s family on his desk. His blue-eyed wife and red-haired daughter, the teenage son with his foot propped on a stool behind them, one arm draped across his raised knee, his own brown hair just long enough to say that he might be a preacher’s kid but he was still cool. And behind them Don stood with his arms around them all, looking like he had the best family in town.
I pictured him going home that night to tell them all about the dead body, and later whispering to his wife that Salem Grimes had been so upset she’d screamed the F-word so loud the trustees probably heard it in their meeting on the second floor.
I let out a hoot of laughter and slapped my hand hard over my mouth.
“Ma’am, are you there? I need you to stay on the line. Ma’am?”
I lifted the phone to answer but only got out a strangled noise, so I clapped my hand back over the mouthpiece and fell on my side, helpless and pathetic and just plain weird, giggling because I’d found a dead body. I’m telling you, I’m not all there sometimes.
“Police are on their way,” the dispatcher said. “I need for you to stay on the line, ma’am. Are you in any danger? Salem? Is anyone there with you? I know it’s scary, Salem, but I need you to stay with me.”
I pounded the heel of my hand against my forehead but that didn’t do anything but make my head hurt. I’ve learned that there really isn’t much you can do when one of these laughing fits hit. It’s like what everyone says about a stomach bug. You just have to let it run its course.
So I thought about Don and Viv outside, peering over the iron railing to the bottom of the basement stairs, looking at the woman below. I thought about her, wondered if she had any family.
That did the trick. Nothing funny there. I wiped my eyes and caught my breath. The operator asked me a few more questions that I managed to answer. I heard sirens outside and told her the police had arrived.
I figured as the Finder Of The Body, the police would want to talk to me, so once I’d caught my breath I went back outside. I told myself I had no reason to be nervous about talking to them. I hadn’t done anything wrong – this time.
Still, it’s natural instinct for me to run the other way when I see a cop uniform.
As soon as I rounded the corner, I wished I had run the other way. Of all the people I’d prefer never to see again, Bobby Sloan was at the top of the list. And there he stood, in jeans and a powder blue button-down shirt, next to a patrol officer.
Bobby was one of the reasons I had a fear of the police. Well, that’s not entirely fair. The reason I had a fear of the police is because I had a history of screwing up, and the police had a history of catching me. It wasn’t their fault they were better in their role than I was in mine.
I would rather have seen just about any cop in the world than Bobby, though. We had a history, too, starting with the crush I had had on him from the fifth grade through the eighth grade. Little girls really should be taught not to write notes of undying love and devotion. They always come back to haunt.
The love notes and unreturned adoration would have been reason enough for me to want to duck and hide when I saw him, but unfortunately for me, mine and Bobby’s story didn’t end there. Two years ago, Bobby had been serving arrest warrants and came to my house to pick me up for passing hot checks. I had been drunk and had decided to hide under the bed. It might have worked if I hadn’t had a waterbed. Not one of my brighter moments, but fortunately, not one of my dumbest, either.
So there I had been with Bobby’s hand around my ankle, pulling on me and laughing at me wedged up in the four-inch-wide space I was trying to hide under and hanging on for all I was worth. He tugged hard right about the same time I decided to give it up and let go.
He fell back, which would have been kind of funny, except he fell back into a big pile of dog poop from my roommate’s Rottweiler, and so it was really only funny to Bobby’s fellow officers. While one of them was outside hosing Bobby down and I was being led in handcuffs to the squad car, I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t my dog and that that dog and his nasty habits were one of the reasons I was looking for another place to live. But the look he gave me told me he didn’t really care. In fact, the look he gave me told me he hoped he would never see me again. That hurt, considering I’d pledged my undying love to him practically every day for three solid years.
Now, I just hoped he wouldn’t recognize me. After all, it had been two years, and since I’d quit drinking, I’d replaced Jack Daniels with super-size french fries and gained about thirty pounds. Or forty. Or so. I used to wear my hair long and bleached blonde, but after my last arrest I let the brown grow out and stuck with an easy-to-maintain chin length bob. On a good day, I told myself I could resemble Katie Holmes’ fat cousin.
Bobby took one look at me and said, “Oh no.”
So much for that hope.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I didn’t do anything, Bobby. All I was doing was walking up the sidewalk, I swear.”
“Walking up the sidewalk to a church.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“I can go to church.”
“I know you can.” He looked back over the railing. “Seriously, Salem, what were you doing here?”
“I was going inside. You’d think I was going inside a bar.” Which I was actually not allowed to do. A condition of my probation.
“I would be less surprised.”
I scowled at him. This was one of those times when it was better just to keep my mouth shut.
“Did you see anyone?”
I shook my head.
“Do you know her?” He didn’t take his eyes off me as he motioned with his head toward the stairs.
Again I shook my head. “Why aren’t you wearing a uniform?” Let him be the defensive one for a change.
“Because I’m a detective now. Stay put.” He walked over to a uniformed officer and they talked for a minute.
The uniformed cop came over. He had that same passive, no-need-to-worry-I’m-in-complete-control face that every cop has. “I’m going to need for you to go back to the station with me.”
I took a step backward. “Me? Why?”
“We need to get a statement.”
“I gave my statement to the operator. I found a dead body. End of statement.”
“We need for it to be written down.”
“Fine.” No need to panic. I hadn’t done anything wrong. But I’d made a promise to myself that I was never going to see the inside of a jail again. “I’ll be happy to give you a statement right here. I’m sure Don won’t mind loaning me some paper.”
He put a hand on his hip and looked back at Bobby. Bobby narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin and I knew that whatever passed between them wasn’t in my favor.
The uniform turned back to me. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to come to the station with me.”
I looked at my watch, then read his nametag. “Officer Walters, I have to be at work in half an hour.”
“You can call your boss from the station. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
I was beating a dead horse but couldn’t keep from asking, “Do I really have to?”
Walters nodded. “Are you going to come willingly?”
I bit my lip and looked at Bobby.
“Go, Salem. It’s just a few questions. I’ll be there in a little while.”
I made a face at Walters. “Fine.”
“Thank you.” He touched the small of my back and steered me toward his car. “This way, please.”
Two more patrol cars drove up as we pulled away, followed by the Channel Eleven news van. I sat in the back of the squad car and tried to wrap my arms all the way around my body.
“So this is what these things look like when you’re sober,” I said.
Walters caught my eye in the rearview mirror but didn’t say anything.
I have to say that, all in all, being taken in for questioning is a lot better than being taken in for driving under the influence. I didn’t have to go through the whole fingerprint, smile-for-the-camera, now-blow-into-this-hose routine. I figured I would be taken to one of those little rooms with a table and four chairs and a big one-way mirror like you see on cop shows. Instead, the cop took me to Bobby’s office.
“Detective Sloan should just be a few minutes. Have a seat.”
I sat on the edge of the rolling chair across from Bobby’s desk. “Are we going to wait for him?”
Walters nodded.
“Is that necessary? I mean, isn’t there someone else who can take the statement?” Sitting across the desk from Bobby and facing probing questions wasn’t high on my list of wishes at the moment.
He raised his eyebrows. “You have a problem with Detective Sloan?”
I chewed my lip and didn’t answer. Yes, I had a problem, but not one I wanted to discuss.
“You’ll probably want to call your boss now.” The officer slid the phone across the desk.
I looked at the phone and frowned. This was all so wrong. Now I had to call Flo at Flo’s Bow Wow Barbers and tell her I was going to be late because I was in jail. And no matter how much I assured her I’d done nothing wrong, I was just a witness, she would automatically think I’d been busted. That’s what I would believe.
I raised my chin. “You do it.”
Walters raised his eyebrows again. “I’m sorry?”
“You do it.” I pushed the phone back toward him. “Call for me, let them know I’m going to be late because I witnessed a possible crime and you need to ask me some questions.”
He looked like he was thinking about it. “You really should handle it yourself.”
“If I call, she’s going to think I’ve been arrested and I’m making up some line to cover it up.”
“Why would she think that?”
I shrugged. Why indeed.
He frowned at me for a couple of seconds, then picked up the handset. “What’s the number?”
I gave him the number to the Bow Wow Barbers and he punched it in. “Who do I ask for?”
“Flo.”
He handled it perfectly. Confident, courteous, in command, and yet not overbearing. I wish I could go to the police academy just to learn how they do that.
He hung up and said, “No problem.”
“Maybe next time I have a head cold you could call in sick for me. Last time she wasn’t terribly sympathetic.”
He almost smiled. Then he bent his head over a piece of paper and got to work.
About three lifetimes later Bobby arrived. He walked through the door and Walters jumped up. They stepped out into the hallway and mumble-mumble-mumbled to each other for a few minutes. I looked around the room for an escape. If I could somehow manage to make myself half an inch wide I could squeeze through the air conditioner vent, but that seemed unlikely since I couldn’t even squeeze myself into a size fourteen anymore.
Bobby came in and sat down with an old man groan, which was a little weird because he was anything but an old man. He pushed some papers around for a few seconds as if this was just a normal day at the office and he had nothing pressing to get to. He laid his arms on the desk, clasped his hands together, and looked at me.
“Okay Salem. Tell me why you were at that church.”
“I had a meeting there this morning.”
“A meeting with whom?”
I lifted my chin. “My AA group.”
“Your AA group.”
It’s always a little awkward, telling people you’re an alcoholic. By the time you get to Alcoholics Anonymous you’re much more versed in telling people how you’re not an alcoholic. Then you say you’re going to AA and they get that uncomfortable, oh-that’s-great-but-now-I-have-to-look-away thing. So when I tell people I’m in AA, I automatically lift my chin and start thinking of what I’m going to say to fill the awkward pause after The Revelation.
But Bobby didn’t look away. He just kept staring at me with that same unreadable look. “What time did you get there?”
So that was that. Cat officially out of bag and we’re moving onward. “It was just before ten.” I couldn’t be entirely sure because the clock in my old car was busted.
“Just before ten.”
I nodded.
Bobby asked a lot of questions about who I’d seen, what other cars were around, did I talk to anyone, did I know the girl. I didn’t have a lot of information to give him because pretty much the extent of my involvement was a lot of jumping up and down and yelping.
I answered him as best I could, but I have to admit there was a part of me that was inappropriately studying him. You know how you idolize someone and then you see them years later and realize they weren’t anything special, just a regular person with normal faults? That was so not what I was feeling. In fact, Bobby seemed every bit as larger-than-life to me as he ever had. He still had that air of the supercool dude, confident, in charge, able to save old ladies and run down bad guys without ruffling his just-a-trifle-too-long hair.
Bobby studied some papers on his desk and made a few notes. It took everything I had not to ask what he was writing down.
Shouldn’t he have gotten gray hair and fat by now? I added the years up in my head. I was twenty-eight, so that would make him…thirty-five. I guess he wasn’t that much older than me after all. It had seemed like a lot when the seven years between us was fourth grade to twelfth grade.
Bobby didn’t look older, though, just better. Those lines that bracketed his mouth were deeper, his neck was bigger around so his Adam’s apple no longer stuck out like someone had thrown a boomerang through the back of his neck. He was bigger everywhere, more solid and more there, somehow.
I was bigger, too, unfortunately. I felt like Jabba the Hut spilling out of the chair and onto the floor.
“So you walked up the sidewalk and what happened?”
“I looked down and saw the body –”
“Why did you look down?”
His sudden question made me jump a little. “I – I don’t know. Don’t people just look down sometimes?”
“If there’s a reason to.”
Oh God. Was he saying I was a suspect? My heart began to race again and I felt my fingers clench together like they do when I really really want a drink.
“Did you hear something that made you look down?”
“No.” I didn’t think so.
“See something? Some kind of movement out of the corner of your eye?”
Did I? His intensity was making me nervous. I shook my head. “I don’t remember seeing anything. I just walked by and I looked down because I always look down there when I walk by.”
“Why?”
“Why? Geez, Bobby, you’re making me crazy! Is there some law against looking down?”
He shook his head.
“Then stop it. I always look down at the bottom of those stairs because I’ve always wondered where the door at the bottom of the stairs goes to, that’s all.”
“Then why didn’t you just say so?”
“Because I found a dead body and now I’m at the police station and I’m completely freaked out and not thinking straight!” I took a deep breath and thought maybe I ought to lower my voice since I was on the verge of shrieking. I was almost out of my chair, too, so I scooted my Jabba self back.
“Calm down. Go on,” Bobby said.
But I was afraid to now. “That’s it. That’s all I have to say.”
Bobby tapped a pen on his desk and looked at me.
I tried to cross my legs but with my big thighs that’s kind of hard. I settled for crossing my ankles and raised my eyebrows at Bobby as if I could sit there and have a staring contest with him all day if he wanted to.
“So you’re in AA.”
“Yep.”
He stood. I shot out of my chair and grabbed my purse. “We’re done then? Great. I have to get to work.”
He stopped at the door and stepped aside so I could pass. “So how are you doing?” he asked, his voice a little softer.
He wasn’t asking about my health and well-being, I knew that much. “A hundred and forty-seven days,” I said. “This time.”
He nodded. “That’s good, Salem. That’s really good.” He squeezed my arm.
I am so pathetic. For me, an arm squeeze and a solemn “that’s good” from Bobby Sloan is like what getting a combination Grammy/Oscar/Nobel Prize For Saving The World From Total Destruction would be for anyone else. I felt myself actually grow two inches taller the moment he said that. I mean, can anyone be so needy for praise?
But I have to admit; getting Bobby’s approval was worth finding a dead body.
He asked for my phone number, and for a crazy moment I thought he was asking me out, now that he knew I wouldn’t get drunk and scream at the waitress. Then I realized it was probably just so he could call me about the dead woman. How shallow am I? There’s a family somewhere about to be devastated with tragic news and I’m wondering what I should wear on my date with Bobby. I felt really bad then.
Walters drove me back to my car, and since he’d already told Flo I would be late I figured I had enough time to drive through Wendy’s for lunch. I was supposed to be on a diet, but after the trauma of discovering a dead body and having Bobby see all my fat, I decided I deserved a Big Classic with cheese and french fries.
I ate in my car – as I do a lot – and thought about the poor woman at the bottom of the stairs. When I left the church nobody knew who she was, or even if it had been an accident. That bell tower was tall, forty or fifty feet. If someone fell out of it, all the way to one story below ground level, onto concrete stairs, that would probably be enough to do the job. But somehow I didn’t think it had been an accident. Not from the questions Bobby had asked me.
Who was she? Did she know she was in danger? Did she know today might be the day? Or was she just going along, thinking about what she had to do, matching up the days till payday against the days until the electricity was cut off the way I always was?
Nothing like contemplating sudden death to put you in touch with God. God’s the only thing that makes the whole gruesome dying thing a little better. I know some people who even say they actually look forward to it because they’re so excited about being with God. Myself, I’m a relatively new Christian and nowhere near that point yet. I’d still rather pretend I’m going to live forever. In theory, the idea of eternity in heaven singing God’s praises sounds really good, but when I realize I have to go through the death part to get there, I’m not quite so enamored with the idea.
I was sitting at a red light about to put a french fry dipped in ketchup in my mouth when I was struck by a sudden gruesome image: dead fingers covered with blood. I stared at the fry until the car behind me honked and I realized the light had turned. I felt my stomach turn, not just because of the bloody-finger image but the whole scenario that morning, and dropped the fries back in the bag. I looked down at the burger with one bite gone and thought I was going to hurl right there. It was all I could do to wait till I got to Bow Wow Barbers and not toss it out on the street.
I gulped down bile as I tossed the food and thought that if I found a dead body every day, maybe I could finally stick to a diet.
Frank and Stump were waiting for me on the front deck when I rattled up. Frank is my neighbor and he babysits Stump for me when I can’t take her to work. Yes, I know. I could leave her at home like any normal person would. But Stump has separation issues that cause her to howl and screech bloody murder and then destroy something of mine if I leave her alone. I have to pay Frank in free dinners when he keeps her, but that’s okay. It’s better than wondering all day what she’s going to destroy.
Stump wiggled her short black body and barked hard enough to raise herself onto her back feet when I got out of the car.
“You’re not going to believe what happened today,” I said as I walked up. Stump flipped over onto her back so I could scratch her fat belly.
Frank is a very skinny Hispanic guy with shaggy hair and a mustache like Sonny Bono’s in those old variety shows with Cher. “You killed somebody,” he said.
I froze. “How did you know?”
“It was on the news. How come you’re not in jail?” He didn’t seem particularly worried that he was in the company of a murderer, just curious that I was on the loose.
“They said on the news that I killed somebody?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I think so.”
Frank had lived in Texas all his life and, although he spoke English, his family spoke Spanish at home. English was his second language. Sometimes he got a little crossways in his phrasing. I hoped this was one of those times.
“Someone said on the news that I’d killed someone? Or that I’d found a dead body? Because that’s what actually happened. I didn’t touch anyone. I swear.”
“Maybe that was it, I can’t really remember. Hey, Stump ate a bug today.”
“Stump.” I scratched her belly with both hands, which she loved. She wiggled against the deck and groaned. “You have to stop eating bugs. You’re going to get one that doesn’t agree with you.” I looked at Frank. “What channel was the story on?”
“Eleven. Patrice Watson.”
I don’t watch the news much, so I didn’t know who that was. I checked the clock and decided I’d better watch this, though, just to make sure Frank was mistaken.
I took a quick shower to get the Airedale slobber off me and started dinner while Frank made himself comfortable in my cracked Naugahyde recliner. He turned on one of those crime scene detective shows and I almost burned dinner because I was comparing myself to the woman on the show who was the witness to the crime. Everyone was really sympathetic to her. No one accused her of killing anybody.
After dinner I folded laundry and caught myself looking repeatedly out the window. I realized I was waiting for someone to come take me to jail. I filled Frank in on all the details and he looked sufficiently spooked.
“That’s weird, man.” He shook his head and his hair flopped. “I wonder what happened to her.”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing all day.” I shuddered. I’d been going to that church for less than a year, but it was weird thinking there might be a killer lurking around there.
The detective show went off and the news teaser came on.
“A grisly discovery was made today at a downtown Lubbock church.”
“That’s it!” Frank cried.
“Ssshh!” I ran over and turned up the volume. I expected to see the church or maybe the police spokesman.
Instead my picture flashed on the screen. “A woman was found dead today by this woman…”
I didn’t hear anything after that. It wasn’t just any picture. It was my arrest photo from a year and a half ago. I stared at the picture and for the second time that day and said a word I’d promised I would never say again.