Chapter 5-1
2007 Words
bySean was running late even before he ran into the corpse.
It hadn’t been the alarm’s fault. His phone had rung smack on time, and he popped out of bed like a fireman. But it was just one of those mornings when everything moved in slow motion. He sat down with coffee and half a microwaved burrito, then saw it was already quarter past six. To reach work by seven he would have to take off now.
The burrito returned to the fridge. He grabbed his bike and went out the door, then rushed back for his mask. Can’t go to work with a n***d face in this wonderful summer of 2020.
Where the hell had he put it last night? He would have to use the spare he kept in his locker, which made his ears bleed by the end of the shift.
It was Covid’s fault that he was late. Not that Mr. Crocasta would buy that. “No excuses,” he would say. “You do or you don’t do.” Sounding just like Yoda.
Sean was pedaling as fast as he could when he turned onto the Whatcom Creek Trail, the fastest way to get from downtown to Electric Avenue where the Lunchbox was located.
It was a sunny day, bright even through his sunglasses. There were two underpasses, first under the southbound highway, and then under the north. Both were short but pitch black compared to outside, and when he entered the second, he never saw the body until he ran into it.
Sean flew, landed on a mucky spot that kept him from breaking anything, and rolled another two yards. He rose, swearing. Shedding his helmet, he fumbled around for his bicycle, pulled it up by the handlebars and almost tripped over something.
He reached down. God! It was a person.
God!“Mister, you okay?”
Sean touched the man’s cheek. No mask, was his first thought, quickly followed by: He’s cold. He’s dead.
No mask,He’s cold. He’s dead.In a weird way that was a relief. The man surely couldn’t have gone cold in the ten seconds since Sean hit him. He must have been dead for, what? Hours?
Didn’t matter. The smart thing was to haul a*s before someone saw him. The fact that he had nothing to do with the man’s death wouldn’t stop the police from making his life hell.
Sean pushed his bike. The front wheel wouldn’t roll. Damn it.
Damn it.He closed his eyes. They were beginning to adjust to the dark, but he could not be certain that parts of his bike hadn’t fallen off. He might leave traces.
That changed things.
He pulled out his phone. There was no signal in the underpass, so he stepped out into the bright sunlight with one eye shut. That would keep one eye adapted for the darkness, a trick he had learned from a guy in stir for house robbery.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
“Yeah. I just found a dead body.”
“Where are you, sir?”
“Under the overpass. Or in the underpass. I-5 on the Whatcom Creek Trail.”
“That’s off Meador?”
“Right.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
Sean hesitated. But they already had his phone number, didn’t they? “Sean Palient. Like Patient, but with an L.”
“Please wait there. Officers will arrive within ten minutes.”
“Right.”
He killed the phone and started toward the body.
No. Try to think ahead for once.
Back to the sunny world of phone signals. He called the Lunchbox.
“You’re late,” Mr. Crocasta said.
“Yeah. I found a dead body. The cops told me to wait here.”
“You…” For once the little man seemed lost for words. “You don’t have the imagination to make that up, do you?”
How could you answer that? “Also, my bike’s busted. I don’t know when I’ll be there.”
The boss sighed. “Get here when you can. And I want the phone number of the cop you talk to.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man was tougher than his parole officer.
Back in the underpass Sean opened his left eye. Son of a g*n, the trick really worked. He could see in the dark.
The body was there, still dead. It was an old dude, maybe fifty. One of his eyes was staring at the ceiling, the other half closed, as if he had been trying the same dark-adopted maneuver. On the north side of the tunnel the creek went by, beyond a fence. He saw ducks in the water, minding their own business. But on the south side there were boulders, piled five feet high, and the dead man was lying against one in an impossible pose, a dried puddle of blood under his head.
He wore a black sports coat with a black shirt under it. Jeans and polished dressed shoes. The corpse must have been one of the best-dressed men in this casual city.
The flap of the coat was open, and Sean could see something sticking out of the pocket. A wallet.
Damn.
Damn.Sean’s hands were suddenly sweaty. How many hours of pay was he going to miss for this?
No sign of the cops. No siren, no footsteps coming up the trail.
Sean pulled out the wallet and flipped it open.
The driver’s license said the man was Hector Whiteshaw. He carried fifty-four dollars.
Sean took the two twenties and the ten, leaving the four singles. He dropped the wallet next to the man.
He rolled the bills up tight and wedged them into a bottom corner of his bike panier. Then he went to the other end of the underpass, sat against the wall, and waited.
The cops arrived about five minutes later, two patrolmen. They had their hands on their holsters.
“You Mr. Patient?” asked the gray-haired cop.
“Palient, yeah.” He kept his hands far from his body. “Okay if I stand up?”
“Okay. You don’t have a mask?”
“Sorry. Left home without it.”
“Here.” He gave Sean a cheap paper one.
“Thanks.”
The younger cop, with a big moustache, knelt by Hector Whiteshaw. “He’s dead. Call it in. How’d you find the body, sir?”
“I rode over him in the dark. Screwed up my bicycle.”
The older cop had finished his phone call. “Step out here, sir.”
Sean stepped into the light. The patrolman looked him up and down. “You had a fall. Are you all right? Did you bang your head?”
“No. I had my helmet on.”
“You should replace it,” the younger cop said. He was taking pictures with his phone. “Always replace a helmet after a crash.”
“Thanks. I didn’t know that.”
“The fire department has helmets to give away.”
“Really? That’s cool.”
“Let me see your hands,” said the older cop.
“They’re okay.” Sean flexed them.
“Yeah. No bruises.” He was examining the knuckles.
Sean realized he was checking to see if Sean had been in a fight. Well, screw him. He had lost some skin on a palm in the fall, but nobody could mistake that for the results of a punch, could they?
“What have we got, Lopez?”
Two men in coats and ties, obviously plainclothes cops, were coming down the trail.
The older patrolman explained things quickly. He referred to Sean as a witness, not a suspect, which was a relief.
The new men said they were Detectives Kanon and Lawton. Kanon was short, stocky, and wore a black suit. His mask as also black. “What were you doing on your bike this morning? You a health nut?”
“On my way to work. The Lunchbox over on Electric.”
That caught their attention.
Lawton was tall and had sandy hair. He wore a gray bandanna as a mask. “Crocasta still hiring ex-cons?”
“Yes, sir. I served a year for car theft. I’m on parole.”
“Now you’re stealing bicycles,” Kanon said. “That’s coming down in the world.”
In prison you learned when to shut up.
Lawton was squatting beside the body. “Did you touch anything, Mr. Palient?”
“Yeah. I touched him to see if he was alive.”
“And was his wallet like this?”
“No. It was hanging out of his jacket, so I pulled it out.”
“Yeah?” Kanon said. “What did you take from it?”
Sean met his eyes. “Nothing, sir. My cousin has diabetes. He carries a medical card in case of emergencies. I thought this guy might have something like that.”
The cop raised an eyebrow. “What kind of emergency would matter now? The guy’s skull was bashed in.”
He shrugged. “I’m not a doctor.”
“Touch anything else?”
“No, sir.”
“Could this be natural causes?” Lawton asked, apparently of himself. “Out for a stroll in the dark and tripped?”
“He hit his head damned hard for a stumble,” Kanon said.
“No mask, either.”
“If I was walking in the dark alone, I wouldn’t use one.” He looked back at Sean. “Did you see—”
Then the ambulance people rushed in.
“Get gone,” Kanon said. “We’ve got your home and work addresses and your phone number, right? Just don’t disappear.”
“Wait,” Lawton said. “Here are our business cards. In case you think of something else.”
Sean walked his bike out of the underpass and down the trail. In the bright light he could see that it wasn’t badly damaged. Just a bent fender he could pull away from the tire.
He startled peddling. He would be about an hour and ten minutes late. Mr. Crocasta would dock him the full two hours. That means he was out twenty-seven bucks for his good deed.
Subtract that from the fifty he had taken from the wallet, and he was twenty-three ahead. Not bad.
“Where’s your mask?” That was Mr. Crocasta ’s greeting.
Sean had taken off the itchy blue paper one after locking up his bike. “It got messed up at the crime scene. I’ve got a spare in my locker.”
“Crime scene?” The short man’s eyes widened. “What have you done now, Palient?”
Mr. Crocasta hired ex-cons because they were cheap and put up with his crap. But he also liked to associate with bad guys, from a distance.
Sean told him what had happened, playing up the blood and the cops. The old man loved it.
After hearing every detail, he snorted. “Enough. Get your mask and your apron. You’re in the weeds.”
“Okay, boss.”
In the kitchen Mickey and Jaybee looked up. “What did you get up to this time?” said the cook. “The croaker says the cops think you killed somebody?”
“Ran my bike over a corpse.”
“Oh my God!” Jaybee said. Her hands rushed up to her mask. “That’s awful.”
“You’re not supposed to touch your face.”
“Right.”
Was she smiling under the mask? He couldn’t tell. Her eyes were wide and focused on him. That was good.
“Let’s get to work,” Mickey said.
Sean was having trouble concentrating, which slowed things down, but fortunately it was a light day. Unfortunately, there had been a lot of those. Mr. Crocasta was complaining about not making the nut. If somebody got laid off or lost hours, it would be Sean.
- Writer
