In the Belly of Jonah

by Brannan, Sandra

  If I remembered correctly, Lisa had been almost a straight-A student who then studied for the LSATs with her heart set on being accepted into UW’s law school. No easy feat even for someone with her intelligence.

  “Will you meet with me, Liv?”

  “Sure, Lisa,” I said. “What day works for you? I’m at home so I don’t have my schedule here in front of me, but I could—”

  “I’ll be over in ten minutes,” she said.

  “But you don’t even know where I—”

  The dial tone buzzed in my ear before I ever finished my sentence.

  She must have been at the corner of Drake and College, because Lisa was at my door within five minutes. I swung the door wide and gave her a big hug. She was a vision of beauty, as always: tall, lean, with a timid smile,

  yet her face revealed confidence because of her piercing eyes.

  “Come in, please,” I told her.

  It took us a few minutes to catch up on the past ten years and everything we’d been up to. I talked her into having lunch, and we made turkey and avocado sandwiches with a smear of cottage cheese.

  “I thought you were in pre-law?”

  Lisa finished her bite. “I was. I took as much psychology as I could to be a better trial attorney, which is what I thought I wanted to do, only to find out I loved psychology.”

  “So you got your doctorate in psychology instead?”

  “Behavioral. This sandwich is good.”

  “Help yourself.”

  She made herself a second one.

  “You were always forgetting to eat. That’s how you stayed—and stay—so slim,” I said.

  “And you were always so thoughtful and well prepared. That’s why you had a cabinet full of good food to eat no matter what time of day or night we all crashed at your dorm room,” she countered. “Nothing ever changes, huh?”

  “Yes, it does. You’re an FBI agent. Amazing.” I worked the last few bites of my cottage cheese as she devoured her second sandwich. “How long have you been living in Fort Collins?”

  Lisa shook her head. “D.C. Five years. Profiling as part of the Behavioral Assessment Unit of the Special Investigations Branch. I’m just working with the Denver office on a case they’ve been following. Ever heard of Special Agent Streeter Pierce?”

  I shook my head.

  “He’s a legend. And incredibly handsome,” Lisa added. “I’m lucky to be working with him on this case.”

  He must have been something special because, although Lisa was a stunner, I never saw her date and never heard her mention any interest in men. She never seemed to stray from her goals, which didn’t seem to include marriage or children.

  “Cool,” was all I managed.

  I’d always wanted to be an FBI agent. My softball coach in high school was an FBI agent, and I had a deep admiration for him both as a coach and as a human being. Class act.

  “So how does that fit with Jill Brannigan? And when did it become the FBI’s case?” “It’s not, yet. And me first,” she said, dusting the crumbs off her hands and pushing her plate aside. “I have some questions for you.”

  She pulled out a pen and a pad of paper from her satchel and dated the top of the sheet, writing my name beneath and the time of day. Organized.

  “When did you last see Jill?”

  I looked over at the clock. It was three. “About four hours ago.” Lisa stopped writing and looked up at me. I added, “I had to ID the body.

  ”Her face collapsed. “So sorry, Liv.”

  “Me too. Before that, the last time I saw Jill would have been ... what is this, Thursday?”I was struggling to remember anything since this morning, let alone how to count backward. “About five days ago. Last Saturday.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “At work. She is—was—on day shift Wednesday through Saturday, so it would have been the last day of her shift last week. I went into the plant to talk with Allan, our team leader for that shift, around two o’clock. I must have talked with Allan about an hour, then did a quick inspection around the plant during which I stopped to talk with Jill. That would have been around three thirty or so.”

  “Where was she?”

  “In the warehouse. Bagging,” I said.

  “What’s bagging?” Lisa asked.

  “We mine high-grade calcium limestone at our quarry between here and Laramie on U.S. Highway 287. At the plant, we pulverize the limestone so that it’s small enough to be suspended in liquid. You know, like flour or face powder. Our smallest product is called #325, which means there are three hundred and twenty-five holes in a one-inch square and the material is fine enough to pass through those holes. At least that’s the basic concept.”

  I caught myself delving too much into the details, like always. I kept hearing my little brother Jens saying, “Forty-thousand-foot view, Boots. Give me the forty-thousand-foot view.” Translation: stick with the big picture, sister.

  To my surprise, Lisa’s eyes hadn’t glazed over out of boredom; instead she asked, “Why does it need to be so minute? Why do you need to suspend it in liquid?”

  I smiled. “Our biggest market for the high-grade limestone is for agricultural feed as a calcium supplement. The limestone has to be so small it suspends in the liquid feeds for the cows that drink it. Make sense?”

  “Perfectly,” Lisa said, jotting notes as I talked.

  “We either ship the limestone to the customers in a pneumatic truck, meaning a container that can be pressurized so the material can be blown into and out of the vessel, or it can be shipped in bags. We bag the materials in fifty-pound paper bags up to one-hundred-pound paper bags or as much as one thousand pounds in a canvas bag.”

  “Wow. Nearly half a ton?”

  “Sometimes almost three-quarters of a ton is bagged for the customer in the super sacks, as we call them. Just depends.”

  Lisa shook her head. “And Jill was filling these bags? By herself?”

  “Well, the super sacks can be tricky for one person to handle because they require a forklift for each bag, but she could manage the paper bags, sure. She filled and palletized most of those by herself.”

  “All with the aid of machines?” Lisa pressed.

  “Well, not really. We have an antiquated system, so Jill had to manhandle each bag onto the pallet. Four to six bags to each layer, with about ten to twelve layers high on each pallet.”

  “Whoa. So Jill did this all day long? Moving fifty- to one-hundredpound bags onto pallets? Twelve hours a day, four days a week?”

  “Not all day long, but a large part of it. To give her a break, the team would ask her to charge the bins with feedstone, meaning she would drive the loader for a while, or to help with maintenance or loading the pneumatic trucks.”

  Forty-thousand feet, Liv. Give Lisa the big picture.

  Based on her expression, I wondered what industry jargon I had used that didn’t sit well with Lisa.

  “So let me get this straight. Out of forty-eight hours a week, how many hours would you say she was manhandling bags?”

  I thought about that. “I would say approximately twenty-four to twenty-eight. Why?”

  Lisa sat back in the chair and tapped the pen against her chin. “Think about it, Liv. Jill was a basketball player. Six feet, six one. Weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, all lean muscle mass, right?”

  “Dripping wet,” I said. “I don’t understand these coaches. They want their players so thin nowadays. How do they hold their positions under the net?”

  “Right,” Lisa said. “And you’ve got her moving how much weight in a day? What did you say, palletize?”

  “Palletizing. You know, putting stuff on pallets, the kind you see at warehouse-type grocery stores? The super centers? Things are stored on them and they’re maneuvered easily by a forklift. Jill was palletizing the bags, which means she was twisting and stacking those bags to position them on the pallet. The pallet sits on a spring about waist high. Let’s say twelve to eighteen bags an h
our for fifty-pound bags. Take fifteen bags times fifty pounds times twenty-five hours a week and—”

  “That means she moved over nine tons a week,” Lisa calculated. “For the past . . . how long did you say she had worked there?”

  “Seven weeks,” I said. “Shit, you’re still a human calculator, aren’t you?”

  “And you’ve never succeeded with your New Year’s resolution to stop swearing, have you?”

  “It’s my perpetual resolution,” I grinned. I was watching her jot the numbers we had just discussed into her notepad. “Where are you going with this, Lisa?”

  “My point is that Jill was strong. Extremely strong.”

  “And?” I pressed.

  “And she didn’t fight back. Think about it. Ten years ago, when we were in great shape, we were strong. Wouldn’t we have fought an attacker?”she asked.

  “Maybe she knew him,” I suggested.

  Lisa blinked. “Could be. Maybe she didn’t think she was in danger because she knew the guy. Or maybe he sedated her before she knew what was happening.”

  “Sedated? She was poisoned to death?” I asked, wishing I had read the entire article this morning.

  Lisa leaned forward. “It was a drug overdose. Please don’t repeat that. It’s not public knowledge. I’m just brainstorming here.”

  I gave her the zipped-lip signal and encouraged her to continue by saying, “So, there was nothing under her fingernails, no defensive wounds on her hands, considering she was hacked up with a knife or something?”

  Lisa pushed away from the table and walked into the living room. I stacked the dishes in the sink while she paced. I joined her in the living room and plopped myself on the couch. She walked over to me and leaned over, pointing an accusing finger. “Did the coroner tell you all that while you were identifying the body today?”

  “No, I just . . . well, you said she didn’t fight back. I guess I read too many crime novels or something. Watch too many of those police and court shows. I was just asking.”

  Lisa’s face softened and she plopped on the couch beside me. “Sorry. This case is just driving me nuts and I’ve been at it way too long. I’m starting to let paranoia get the best of me.”

  “Too long?” I asked. “Jill was just found yesterday.”

  Lisa sighed and rose to her feet. “I’ve got to go check into a hotel before they’re all snatched up by the media.”

  “You can stay here,” I offered. I was confused by the exasperation I sensed in Lisa. And curious.

  “I’m sorry, Liv,” she said. “We just got started on the questions and I have to go.”

  She was out the door before I was able to lodge a single protest.

  AS I FINISHED MY last stretch after an hour and a half of lifting weights and doing the treadmill hill climb, I heard the knock. I took the stairs from the basement two at a time, feeling the ache in my hamstrings, and jogged to the front door midway up the stairs of my split-level house.

  “Hi,” Lisa said, appearing a bit sheepish.

  “Hotels are all booked,” I surmised.

  “You got it. Offer still good for me to hang with you?”

  I smiled and swung the door wide. “Only if you let me take a shower before I cook you some dinner.”

  She heaved a duffle bag off her shoulder and said, “I’ll do you one better. How about I make you dinner while you’re in the shower?”

  “Sounds like a deal,”I said. I led her up to the main floor and down the hall and pointed to the room on the right. “Spare bedroom. It’s all yours. Bathroom is right next to it and I’m across the hall.”

  The warm shower relaxed the tight muscles in my shoulders and neck. I felt like staying in there forever, but I knew Lisa was knocking around in my unfamiliar kitchen and probably needed some help preparing dinner. I towel-dried my hair and pulled on some jeans, a T-shirt, my boots, and a Rushmore hockey team hoodie. I looked in the mirror and told myself I was getting too old to wear hoodies and needed to invest in some big-girl clothes one of these days.

  The aroma wafting through the hall was amazing. I was mistaken to have thought I needed to cut my shower short. Lisa clearly knew her way around any kitchen.

  “What’s that heavenly aroma?” I asked as I entered the kitchen.

  I hadn’t smelled food this tantalizing since the last time I was home. My mother was an incredible cook. Nine hungry kids to feed and I guess you learn quickly what sells and what doesn’t. Her food was always made from scratch and rivaled the finest meals from any gourmet chef.

  “Broiled chicken with lemon pepper and stir-fry mixed vegetables,”Lisa said, popping a raw mushroom into her mouth while she fixed our plates.

  “I could have sworn I smelled melting cheese,” I said, gawking at the colorful dish of hot, healthy food.

  Lisa pulled the cookie sheet from the oven. “Parmesan cookies for our salads.”

  “Yum,” I drooled. “Where did you learn how to cook like this?”

  “My mom,” Lisa said, flipping two crisp cheese cookies onto the top of each green salad.

  “Wish I’d paid more attention with mine,” I said.

  I tended not to take the extra step of putting effort toward an appealing presentation of whatever I prepared. This looked, smelled, and tasted incredible—perhaps because I hadn’t had to cook it myself.

  Over a bite of chicken, I asked, “Okay, Lisa. Give. What’s up with the drug overdose? Jill wasn’t the kind who’d use drugs. And how long have you been working this case? Are we talking serial killer here?”

  Lisa carefully speared a strip of yellow pepper and cut it in half before eating it. She was stalling. Maybe she was thinking about what she was going to say. Or whether she was going to let me in on the story at all. Buckled brows, tight lips, she chewed—at a rate of about thirty chews per bite. I couldn’t see how a small piece of pepper could withstand such a grind. More stalling. I could almost hear the wheels turning in that unbelievable brain of hers.

  “A bit too much, I think,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Soy sauce. I put a little too much soy sauce on the vegetables, didn’t I?”

  She was messing with me and I wasn’t in the mood. I ignored her and drained my Coors Light. I got up from the table and washed my dinner and salad plates, as well as the cooking pots. By the time I was done, Lisa had brought her dish to the sink and started drying.

  “Do you still like brownies?”I asked. Even though I wasn’t quite finished with my sulking, I wasn’t about to let her in on my shame for feeling that way toward her for shutting me out. After all, it was none of my business.

  She said, “Uh-huh.”

  I pulled a box down from the cupboard and poured the mix into a bowl. I was fuming. And I was avoiding Lisa. I don’t know why. I knew Lisa couldn’t jeopardize the case by divulging to an old college friend any information she’d gathered as an FBI agent, but it still bugged the living shit out of me. Strategizing and solving puzzles was my passion, and I wanted to help. Taking my aggression out on the poor batter, I finished stirring, spooned the batter into a pan, and popped it into the oven. I set the timer for twenty-five minutes, determined not to overbake them. Then I grabbed two more beers and joined Lisa in the living room, reminding myself that what Lisa needed from me right now was a friend, not a whiny brat.

  “Okay, so what can I do to help?” I proffered.

  “This is a good start,”she said, grabbing the beer I handed her and taking a long pull. “Tell me about Jill. When did you meet her?”

  I took a long swig, too. My mind flashed back to a moment I shared with Jill about a week after she started. She was wrestling with a half-filled bag of limestone against the air blowing from the load spout. I showed her how to position the bag sleeve on the spout and get a tight seal, and I was rewarded with a wide smile of relief that brightened her face. We spent the next fifteen minutes comparing notes about the conflicts unique to a student athlete and marveling at how many of the coaches
in the conference were still the same. And the agony of waiting to be asked out on a date by guys who aren’t totally repulsed or intimidated by female athletes.

  “She was great, Lisa. I met her about three and half months ago. Mid-April. Every spring we interview candidates that the athletic directors from both CSU and UW select for our summer internships. They ask companies like ours to find physical work at higher pay to help their athletes, many of whom are less wealthy students on scholarship. Like I told you earlier, bagging limestone at our plant is great strength training in the off-season. We had four interviews set up at UW, all football players, and six interviews set up at CSU. We narrowed the field to two from each school and Jill was one of them.”

  “The lone woman?” Lisa asked, grabbing her pad and pen off the kitchen table.

  “One other candidate was a female volleyball player, but Jill was the only one hired.” I took another drink of beer. “Being a woman in the mining industry is no cakewalk. Guys giving each other shit, pushing each other to the limits to see if one will crack or break. With women, it’s an even tougher initiation. The men don’t like whiners, geeks, or wimps and assume women won’t carry their weight. Most can’t. Or at the very least, most of the guys think women working in these tough conditions will run whining to the supervisor the first time things get tough. Jill took it all in stride. She dished it right back to them and fit in like one of the guys. They all liked her. I liked her. She didn’t complain about the conditions: how dusty it was, how tough the work was, how much work had to get done. She just got it done, you know?”

  We drank our beers in silence. The room was beginning to smell like freshly baked brownies. It was nice to have someone to talk to for a change. Made me think Frances—my closest sister, both in age and in friendship—was right, always asking me when I planned on getting married. Maybe I should consider at least getting a dog.

  “She was strong, took no guff, so why didn’t she fight back when she was abducted?” Lisa finally asked.

  She was once again confiding in me. It felt good. She was beginning to trust me. I rattled off some brainstormed thoughts that came to mind. “She didn’t feel the need to fight because she was with a friend. Or she didn’t have the opportunity to fight because she was blindsided. Or she was so drugged up she couldn’t do anything but drool all over herself. Or she refused to fight because he threatened her with something worse.”