In the Belly of Jonah

by Brannan, Sandra

  “What a relief.”

  Joe’s head snapped back and his eyebrow arched with confusion.

  “I thought something ominous had happened between you and Jill.”

  “Something did happen, Liv.”

  “Something innocent, Joe. It was just a young girl thanking a gallant cowboy for all his kindness over the past month. She had no idea how shy, guarded, and painfully old-fashioned you are, Joe. Jill is—was—just trying to show you her gratitude. Nothing sexual was meant by it.”

  Joe was surprised by my response. He grimaced as he struggled with the word. “Sexual?”

  “I’m sorry, Joe. This new generation just has a different way of interacting. Lots of hugs, lots of physical contact.”

  He shook his head. “That’s what Cathy said. And she laughed at me.”

  “Sorry, Joe, really, but it struck me as a bit funny too somehow.”

  “Funny,” he scoffed.

  “Well, maybe not funny. More like relief. Like I said, I really thought something ominous or horrible had happened that night.”

  “That wasn’t horrible enough? She kisses me on the cheek, says ‘Thanks,’ I walk away from her saying nothing, and now she’s dead. I see no humor, no relief. I see nothing but horrible.”

  He was right. Jill was dead. There was nothing funny about this situation.

  “You did nothing wrong, Joe. Neither did Jill. She was just thanking you and—”

  Joe’s speakerphone interrupted us with an alarming beep. “Boss?”

  “Yes, Terry?” I answered.

  “There’s a woman here to see you. Says it’s urgent.”

  I looked at Joe, who was already shaking off his earlier confession. “Did she tell you what it’s about?”

  Terry’s tinny voice came across the wire. “She said it’s about Jill Brannigan.”

  THE BAR WAS ROCKING.

  For a college town, Fort Collins had a downtown scene that was as diverse as the students who attended the university there. Normally they would have hung out at Washington’s or Nate’s, grabbed a pizza at Sporty’s, or quaffed a margarita and a platter of nachos at Tia Louisa’s when a change of scenery was in order. But today was different. Habits were discarded, caution thrown to the wind. The whole gang was hanging out at Martini’s, a bar that was usually frequented by the business set on Mondays through Fridays and was never a college haunt.

  Those of the female persuasion were already halfway to drunk; the males, halfway to horny. He himself was admittedly already aroused. What a day. What a trip. What a life.

  The atmosphere on campus, still teeming with eager students despite its being a summer session, was morose because of the news of Jill’s death. Yesterday morning seemed like lifetimes ago. Well, at least one lifetime ago, he thought. The saving grace for this dismal morning of unproductive, ill-attended classes was the rush of adrenaline from rumors that had raced throughout campus. It was the hot topic of conversation in the commons, the halls, the classrooms. It was so hard to concentrate. He wanted to hear every juicy detail that was being discussed. Every class had centered on what had happened to Jill Brannigan. One of them. One of his gang.

  She was missing her own party. The partying, the drinking—this was all for her. A celebration of her life. And, of course, it was a way to drown the gang’s sorrows over her death.

  “Jill will be missed,” the crowd would chant, then chug-a-lug.

  “Jill will be missed,” he had added quietly.

  Kari Smithson had started all of this. Between her and Julia’s roommate, the entire school had known about Jill by the start of one o’clock classes yesterday, causing the school to cancel classes today until Monday. Now his Thursday had turned into the gang’s Friday. The authorities had notified the family and Jill’s roommate. And it took everything Kari had not to stop everyone on campus and individually share the story of her roommate’s disappearance and eventual murder. Discretion was not one of Kari’s fortes. Nor was vanity, since crying turned her otherwise comeliness into homeliness. Snot and tears smeared her blotchy cheeks. At least grief added some color to her pallid complexion. This was Kari’s fifteen minutes of fame, he realized, as some of the students told and retold the story that it was Kari who had reported Jill missing on Tuesday.

  By comparison, Kari’s roommate was gorgeous. Jill’s body had been rock solid. Her skin, smooth and clear. Her long hair, brown. A perfect shade of brown. He had been able to spend many hours with Jill between Monday night and Wednesday morning. Several of those hours had been glorious, the crescendo the fisherman’s discovery later that same morning.

  He took a sip of his water, to which he’d asked the bartender to add a twist of lime. The rest of the gang always believed he was drinking a vodka or gin and tonic.

  He also took in the scene. Females gyrating to the music while expertly keeping their martini glasses upright; males straddling them from behind, leaving their drinks at the bar so as not to distract their focus.

  “Hey,” the redhead said as she sidled up to him at the bar. “Buy me a drink?”

  “Absolutely,” he said to her, signaling the bartender. “You look like a chocolate martini girl to me. Am I right?”

  “Right as rain, big guy,” she said, flashing a dazzling smile.

  He was indeed fully aroused, both by her curvaceous body and with the euphoria of brilliance and power.

  “Aren’t you in my eleven o’clock class?”

  “Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she said, accepting the chocolate martini from the bartender and taking a delicate sip.

  “I thought so,” he said, turning his wrist to note the time. Lifting his glass to her, he added, “To skipping class.”

  She giggled. “To skipping.” She polished off the entire chocolate martini.

  With her long red hair, her impish grin, and her devious green eyes, she reminded him of his model near Platteville. She was a firecracker.

  He loved women. Truly loved them. Every one of them. He enjoyed their uniqueness and their sameness. Every woman he’d ever met was like a precious snowflake. No two were quite the same, yet they all brought much needed relief into his desert-like life with their individuality. Women were a gift from God. A blessing. Just as Eve was a gift for Adam. Few men regarded women with such delicate wonder and gratefulness.

  He did.

  Women were his life, his passion, his motivation. They were a vision to him and should be regarded as if each were a fine piece of art to behold and admire. His mother had taught him that. She herself was a magnum opus.

  He sipped his water and ordered her another round.

  “I love chocolate,” she said. “Do you like chocolate?”

  He hesitated. Chocolate was brown, he thought. Twirling the ice in his empty tumbler, he answered, “Depends on what kind.”

  She leaned in close enough to whisper, “Let’s start with chocolate syrup. My name is Tina.”

  It took just one more chocolate martini before she suggested going to his place. He wasn’t sure what she intended, but he had a good idea and was eager to find out. He slid off his stool, gave a wave to the gang, and placed his hand on the small of Tina’s back.

  “Let’s ride,” he said.

  “I intend to,” she giggled again.

  Noon rides are quite pleasant, he thought to himself later, and he wondered if that was every coed’s interpretation of a lunch date. After insisting that he crank up the stereo in his car, she had expertly performed a striptease, placed her mouth on him, and worked both of them into an explosive orgasm before offering a “Toodles”on her way out the door and back to her car. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. And he was truly thankful.

  After her departure, he drove to his house—which no one knew he owned and certainly would never think he could afford. Blaming a roommate and lack of privacy, he never brought women home to have sex. He had good reason. Parking in the two-car garage, he hurried through the door and escaped to his darkroom in the basement to retrieve his lat
est work.

  He slid the print into an eight-by-ten frame and carried it upstairs to his bedroom.

  “Masterpiece,” he said, admiring the photograph as he added it to the gallery of five other framed prints hanging on his bedroom wall.

  The photo had been taken of the girl from behind. His attention was drawn to the knot of brown hair, noticeable beneath the cloth wrapped around her face and head despite the gaping rectangle cut in the girl’s midriff.

  “Breathtaking.”

  He moved quickly down the stairs into his den, where he sat at his computer and typed the word “Nutrition”on the keyboard. Then he placed a sheet of labels in the feed while the printer whirred to life. He peeled the label from the sheet and went back into his bedroom, affixing the label at the base of the new photo.

  He stood back to admire his work. All expertly matted and framed, two rows with three pictures each. Ordered, labeled, and perfectly displayed. Self-Portrait. Mother. Sister. Masturbator. Bather. And now Nutrition.

  He picked up the glass of scotch he had placed on his dresser and lifted it toward the gallery. “To perfection,” he toasted.

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY I have to do this,” I protested, trying to keep up with her.

  “The family is traveling from Wisconsin and won’t be in until later this afternoon,” the policewoman said. “Jill’s roommate upchucked before she ever left the waiting area, and Jill’s little sister, Julia, refused to come in at all. We need to move on with the investigation and have a positive identification.”

  I was feeling froggy. “Well, how in the hell do you know this is Jill if no one has identified her yet?”

  From her expression, I knew I wasn’t earning any brownie points.

  “Look,” I continued, “I get motion sickness, really easily. I rode with you all the way from the quarry to Denver in the back of your cruiser like I was some criminal or something. I’m not at my peak here. I am constantly ralphing up my socks whenever I travel. If Jill’s roommate and sister didn’t want to be here, then maybe I shouldn’t be here either.”

  “Well, you’re in luck. Only a few more feet to travel and we’re there,”said the officer as she slid her card in the ID slot beside the door. The lock clicked open and a buzzer sounded. The policewoman held the door for me and motioned me inside.

  “Shit,” is all I said, which brought her a smile.

  The room was large and tiled in grays and white. A few chairs were clustered in both corners; there was a window on one wall. I could hear it before I saw it. The gurney was being wheeled around the corner of the concrete divider splitting the room, presumably from the body refrigerators located on the other side. I didn’t want to find out if my presumptions were right. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

  The man pushing the gurney wore a gown, gloves, cap, booties, and mask, as if he were a surgeon. My eyes just kept staring at the masked surgeon, refusing to fall to the gurney. All I kept seeing in my mind’s eye was the Humpty Dumpty character falling off the wall at Storybook Island in my hometown of Rapid City. And for some sick reason, what crossed my mind was to demand that this guy put Humpty Dumpty—my friend Jill—back together again or I was going to have to kick his sorry ass.

  The policewoman touched my arm just above the elbow, and suddenly I was back in the room again. This gray-and-white antiseptic locker room of sorts. Except it didn’t have lockers, it had body refrigerators. And it didn’t smell of sweaty clothes and moldy shoes, it smelled of formaldehyde and ammonia. I didn’t want to look away from the surgeon’s face any more than I had wanted to see my naked teammates taking showers after practice or games. I was indeed going to be sick.

  For the first time, the policewoman’s voice was tender. “Liv?”

  I stood staring at the man in the mask and said nothing.

  “Liv, this is the coroner’s assistant, Mark Blumenthal.”

  Not one of the king’s men?

  Mark asked, “First time?”

  I nodded.

  He smiled. “She is still completely covered. I have pulled back the sheet just enough for you to see her face.”

  Like that would help.

  I had avoided funerals all my life, and at those I was forced to attend, I made sure I had a reason to disappear when it came time to walk by and gawk at the deceased. So yeah, it was my first time ever to see a dead person. Shit. I am almost thirty and I’ve never seen a corpse. How I had managed to avoid that all these years I’ll never know. It freaked me out when at age sixteen I saw my grandpa lean down to kiss my dead grandma while she lay in her casket. Romantic, yet creepy at the same time. I must have watched too many Creature Feature episodes when I was a kid.

  I slowly lowered my eyes down Mark’s torso, not really noticing where my eyes were so much as focusing on where they were not. I willed myself to rein in my peripheral vision so I wouldn’t have to see Jill before my eyes were ready. What must have seemed like eons later, my eyes finally rested on Jill’s angelic face. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a cold shower, her long brown hair stringy, her skin gray, her lips slightly parted, her bulging eyes closed as if in deep, childlike sleep.

  An incredible calm settled in my chest, my mind resting on the images of Jill during her interview, bagging fifty-pound bags of pulverized limestone one after another, eating lunch with the other employees on her shift, smiling and laughing at their stories and jokes. Jill so full of life, now so empty of it.

  “That’s her,” I said. My words sounded distant and small.

  The policewoman nudged me. “That’s Jill Brannigan?”

  “That’s Jill Brannigan.”

  Joe was waiting for me in the lobby and he walked me to his truck. Thank God for small favors and thank Joe for following me down here!

  “I’m taking you home,” was all he said.

  I didn’t argue with him. I was feeling unlike myself: unsure, dizzy, a little out of control. I don’t remember what or if he said anything to me during the long drive back to Fort Collins or while walking me to my front door, but I was thankful he was there for me. I couldn’t go back to work. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t like me to miss work. Ever. But I’d never had someone I knew be a murder victim before. Never had an employee die by a butcher’s hand. Never seen a dead body. I just sat in my living room, staring at the television for what must have been hours. The television wasn’t even turned on. The ringing in my ear turned out not to be my imagination as I first thought.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Liv?” asked a voice that was vaguely familiar.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “Lisa Henry. From UW.”

  My mind quickly scrolled through my college days—the faces of teachers, roommates, classmates, and friends—and landed successfully on a picture of my teammates. I had played basketball with Lisa Henry in Laramie. She was two years ahead of me, and the most intelligent athlete I ever met during college. Lisa was nearly six feet tall, had long black hair and striking robin’s-egg blue eyes, and could have been a model. Plus, she was a helluva starting forward.

  “Do you remember me, Liv?”

  “Of course I do, Lisa,” I said, even though I hadn’t seen her since I walked off the court my sophomore year, which would have been almost ten years ago. “How’s Elsa?”

  Elsa, a guard like me, had been Lisa’s roommate and best friend during college.

  “Great! She has two kids already,” Lisa said.

  “Jeez, and I’m not even married,”I remarked, not knowing why I found it so important to share that tidbit about my life. Maybe it was because I’d always wondered if Elsa and Lisa were an item. Being so surprised by the news that Elsa was married, with kids, I wanted Lisa to make no mistake that my sexual preference was for men, too. I truly felt in those undergrad days, especially when I was with fellow athletes, that I was in the minority when it came to that particular issue.

  “Me neither,” Lisa added. “Liv, I was wondering if I could t
alk with you.”

  “Talk? With me?” I was confused. I had been giving my money to the alumni association ever since graduating from the University of Wyoming, but I hadn’t responded to any of the special invitations to come back and play demonstration basketball games or to help get donations for the athletic department. “Hey, Lisa, I just don’t have the time to do more fund-raising than I’m already—”

  “No, no,” she laughed. “This isn’t about the Cowgirls, Liv. I’m getting hounded, too, believe me.”

  “Then what’s it about?”

  “Jill Brannigan.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it. I eventually managed, “How did you ... why did you call me?”

  “Because you were her boss. You and Joe Renker. I want to talk with you about her if you have time.”

  My mind had trouble computing. Lisa Henry, Jill Brannigan. Both basketball players, but at different colleges and years apart. Different last names. Nothing was adding up. “Are you related to Jill somehow?”

  “No,” she said. Before I could protest that I would not talk with her about this if she were a journalist or part of the media in any way, Lisa added, “I’m with the FBI.”

  “FBI?”

  “Federal Bureau—”

  “I know, I know. My question was more along the lines of how the hell you got from the court as a UW Cowgirl to the FBI. I would have expected you to be a model or an actress or something exotic.”

  That made her laugh. “I’m serious, Lisa.”

  “Thanks, Liv,”Lisa responded. “You always could make me laugh. And you’re now running your own mining company. Good for you.”

  “Not quite,” I corrected. “I’m just a division manager for our Colorado sites.”

  “Same, same. You always were goal-oriented, not to mention being the one who brought the team’s grade point average up.”

  “I thought that was your role.”