In the Belly of Jonah

by Brannan, Sandra

  Linwood released the trigger, pulled off the safety goggles, and stared at the hole in the swinging carcass.

  Dr. Johnson whistled. “That’s amazing.”She moved past him and tackled the dog until she had brought it to a standstill. She studied the hole from both sides. “Ready for the cadaver?”

  Her partner nodded.

  Snapping open her cell phone before she was even out of the room, Dr. Johnson told someone with the Denver city morgue to bring the cadaver downtown to the Federal Building.

  Within an hour, Jack Linwood was helping Dr. Berta Johnson position the cadaver against the back wall of the ballistics room in a seated position, arms hoisted overhead and tethered to the ceiling hooks. When they were ready, Linwood instructed Dr. Johnson to release the compressor to wide open. He moved to within six feet of the cadaver, positioned himself, and pulled the trigger, making a circle in the cadaver’s torso. Water, tissue, and bone fragments sprayed in all directions, the cadaver jerking from the initial pressure. He didn’t remember dropping the wand once again or hearing the clatter as it hit the floor.

  He had performed dozens of tests before in this lab, but never one like this. The destruction he had caused was staggering, and he would not soon forget the sight, the sound, and the smell that had resulted. Unfortunately. He stood staring at the cadaver for several seconds, shocked by what he had just done.

  Dr. Johnson was crouched by the cadaver, poking and prodding and studying this creation. She was kneeling in the carnage. The room was designed for ballistics, not for water tests, and they would have to mop up the room when they were done. Water, bones, tissues, and all.

  The absurdity of seeing the petite woman in her navy blue suit and matching pumps kneeling in the mess next to the naked cadaver with a hole through his chest was almost too much for Linwood to comprehend. Then she looked at him and smiled.

  “Jack, you did it! This is it! The Venus de Milo killer is using water to butcher his victims,” she concluded. He would have sworn ten years fell away from her face with that single statement. “You’re a genius.”

  He didn’t feel like a genius. After all, he’d been so busy trying to build the contraption, he hadn’t thought about the real objective of matching up water slices with cadaver tissue or correlating how that must have played out with the teenagers at Platteville or the college basketball star in Fort Collins. What that monster de Milo must do, see, smell, and touch when he’s butchering his victims. Horrid.

  “You okay, Jack? You’re looking a little green.”

  He nodded, warding off the bile that rose in his throat. Dr. Johnson was used to this. He was used to seeing presliced tissue, bone, and matter samples neatly placed between slides or growing in petri dishes. He wondered how Dr. Johnson managed to disconnect from all this and how he could learn to do the same in time. And he better be quick about it.

  One good thing about Bureau work was that he could always find someone who could teach him more than he thought he was capable of doing.

  “Look at the bone fragments. Same as the ones collected at the crime scene in the shallow waters at Horsetooth?”

  He nodded.

  Dr. Johnson added excitedly, “Well then, let’s call the photographer in on this and cut off the arm and leg. We’re going to need the comparison as evidence in court when we catch this guy.”

  I HADN’T BEEN OUT in the plant all morning.

  Knowing that Jill’s coworkers would be here until their shift ended at six tonight, I had plenty of time to catch up on paperwork and still see them later in the day. I hadn’t even seen Joe because, like me, he often used Saturday mornings to catch up on all the paperwork.

  It was nearly noon, and I’d finished my variance report on the quarry and plant for the first six months of the year, comparing the budget to actual financials and relating my findings to my predictions for the balance of the year. It felt good to get something accomplished with no interruptions for a change.

  As I walked over to Joe’s office, I enjoyed the fresh air, heat, and sunshine on this glorious June day. The trailer was empty. Joe was not in the office. He’s probably making his rounds through the quarry or talking with the plant guys on their lunch break, I thought. I walked back to the scale, through the warehouse, and out to the plant, climbing the metal stairs up to the control room. Joe was reading the operational reports near the control panel while Allan, Greg, Oliver, and Kyle ate their lunches at the small lunch table.

  “Hi, guys.”

  The door closed behind me with a soft bump, shutting out the noise of the plant behind me. I pulled my earplugs out and stuffed them in my pocket.

  “Hey, Liv,” Joe answered. The others grunted their hellos. Still down about Jill’s murder.

  “Mind if I chew the fat with you while you eat?” I asked the four men at the table.

  Joe looked over at me and I gestured to him to come have a seat with us. He did.

  “How are you guys? I mean, really?”

  Mumbles and groans—all noncommittal.

  “Oliver?”

  He lowered his sandwich and raised his eyes. “Not worth shit.”

  The others got a kick out of that. So did I.

  “Me neither,” I added. “Greg?”

  “I think Oliver said it all.”

  “Allan?”

  He was the team leader for a reason. I needed him to set the pace before I asked Kyle, knowing he had been the closest of all of them to Jill.

  “It’s kind of like a bad dream for me. Sometimes I can just go about my day, get my work done, and think about what I’m going to have for dinner or do with my kids on my days off. Then I start feeling guilty, and it’s like I’m being selfish or something, all wrapped up in my world and not really giving Jill the credit she’s due by mourning and stuff.”

  The others nodded, eyes cast down in the direction of their sandwiches.

  “I feel the same way. I just finished my budget review this morning and was feeling pretty proud of myself until I thought of you guys and Jill. I was embarrassed that I took a moment to celebrate and feel happy about something so petty in the big scheme of things. But then on my way over here, I was thinking that if I were Jill and I’d been the one who was murdered, I wouldn’t want you guys wasting a whole lot of time mourning over me. In fact, if you did anything but enjoy life all the more, squeeze those kids harder, and kiss your wives more often, I’d have to come back and kick your asses.”

  That made them laugh.

  Oliver said, “And you’re not telling stories there.”

  “That’s right,” Allan said.

  Joe nodded. “Jill wouldn’t want us to be all mope and sorrow about this.”

  Kyle continued to eat in silence, avoiding eye contact with any of us.

  “Kyle?” I pressed.

  He put his sandwich down and crossed his arms. “Well, she sure as hell wouldn’t want us partying about it either. I mean, shit, guys, the monster who hacked Jill up is still out there running free.”

  “True,” I said.

  The mood darkened once again. I let it. It was better to let them stew in it a bit longer. “Any of you know if Jill had any enemies?”

  “Who would be an enemy of Jill’s? She was nice and sweet, kindhearted and gentle . . . ” Kyle drifted.

  “Anyone who she was mad at or afraid of this summer?”

  Most of them shook their heads.

  “It wasn’t like that, boss,” Allan said. “We don’t talk about those personal things much around here. More like where we went hunting, a game on TV, or what movies we saw.”

  “Ever talk about books?” I asked.

  “Books? We don’t read no stinking books,”Oliver said, mimicking a line from an old western. The others chuckled and the mood began to lift again.

  “Did Jill ever read during lunch or on breaks?”

  “Never,” Kyle said.

  “I never saw her reading,” Allan added.

  Oliver and Greg shook their heads.
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  “Did Jill ever mention a book called Crime and Punishment to any of you?” I asked.

  They all nodded, sat a little straighter in their chairs, and stared at me.

  “Yeah, last week,” Allan said.

  “Saturday, at dinner break,” Oliver mentioned.

  “Noon?” I asked, making sure his dinner was my lunch, and my dinner was his supper.

  He nodded.

  Kyle asked, “How did you know about that?”

  “Found a paperback copy in her locker,” I said nonchalantly, trying to make it look like it was nothing. Joe was on to me. I could tell he knew there was something more to my questions. “What’d she say about it?”

  Kyle was the first to answer. “She asked if any of us had read it before.”

  “She was trying to find out what it was about,” Oliver added.

  “Anybody tell her?”

  They all looked at Greg.

  He shook his head. “Not me. I told her it’d been a while since I read it, but that it was about this thieving, murdering college boy who thought he was above the law and clever enough not to get caught. He hadn’t counted on the fact that his conscience would nearly kill him and that his mind ended up being worse than prison.”

  I was impressed by his simple yet accurate synopsis. “How did Jill respond to that?”

  “She freaked and said she was going to, quote, ‘burn the wicked book,’” Allan added.

  “She freaked?” I asked.

  Oliver nodded. “She didn’t even finish her lunch. She grabbed her hard hat and went back to work before break was even over.”

  I looked at Kyle, knowing that when he was loading trucks under the silos he was the closest, physically, to where Jill worked over in the warehouse. “Did you talk to her later that day about it?”

  Kyle cocked his head. “Not about that. She was upset. In between trucks, I went over to the bagger twice to check on her. She was still mad the first time I went over.”

  “Mad at Oliver?”

  “No, about the stupid book. It set her off. She made a big deal about throwing the book away or burning it. She even mentioned tossing it in the dryer.”

  Our dryer drives off the moisture from our rock but would more than likely incinerate a book, I thought.

  “Burning it?”

  They all nodded.

  It was making sense. The guy named Jonah must have given the book to Jill with the note in it. I wondered if the guy, Jonah, was a college student who also thought he was above the law, smart enough to get away with murder. If I were Jill, I would have been mad at a veiled threat like that too.

  “When did you see her that afternoon, Kyle?”

  “Around two, then again around four thirty. She was much better at four thirty,” Kyle said.

  “And great at quitting time,” Allan added.

  They all nodded.

  “What did you think, Joe? You were the last to be with her,” Greg said.

  “I agree,” Joe said, his cheeks reddening. “She was in a good mood that evening. Didn’t seem angry at all to me. Not even a little.”

  Yet she had left the book and the note behind, in her locker, not to have access again to them until the following Wednesday. So, she must not have intended to report the incident to the police. Or maybe she just forgot it. Like she had her necklace. The necklace her mother said she took everywhere. She must have been really shaken up by the book and letter. Maybe she did forget the book after all.

  Not likely, though. Especially considering how all the guys said it had consumed her all day.

  Maybe she was worried her roommate would find it and ask a lot of questions she wasn’t willing to answer. Maybe she was trying to keep it safe from someone trying to retrieve it. Maybe she was deciding whether or not to report it to the police and wanted it out of sight, out of mind, so she could have time to make her decision. Maybe she didn’t want a jealous boyfriend stumbling across it and getting the wrong idea about her and this crazy guy.

  And it made sense as to why, after a long day of stewing over the book and the letter, Jill would take the opportunity to thank Joe, to kiss his cheek, to reach out to a good, thoughtful man who wanted nothing from her but to do her best at work.

  All speculation. I’d never know why now. It wasn’t like I could ask her. Jill was gone.

  “Did she ever mention a boyfriend?”

  Everyone shook his head. Kyle blushed.

  “What?” I asked Kyle.

  “She didn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said. Because of the awkward silence, he was compelled to add, “She told me she broke up with a guy last summer who she’d been dating for over a year and hadn’t dated since. She was more interested in getting through school.”

  “Ever talk about friends?”

  “Not much,” Allan said.

  Kyle added, “I saw her once at Washington’s with a bunch of other kids on a Saturday night. They looked like college buddies.”

  “Washington’s. Huh,” I said. “A bunch of girls?”

  “Girls and guys. Seemed like a tight bunch. About ten of them or so,”Kyle added.

  “Ever mention anyone named Jonah?”

  They all sat up again, staring at me. I had hit another nerve.

  “Again, last week,” Allan said. “At lunch. Before the book.”

  Oliver jerked a thumb in Allan’s direction. “She asked the reverend here about Jonah the biblical character and what he was famous for.”

  “What’d you say?” I asked Allan.

  Allan looked around at his other team members. They nudged him to tell me.

  “I told her . . . I said that Jonah was one of the prophets in the Old Testament. He was a reluctant prophet that God had a lot of trouble convincing to do his will. A troublemaker of sorts. So, God convinces Jonah to obey him by sending him some not-so-subtle messages, like strong winds and violent storms to change the direction of his ship because he went the opposite way God told him to go. The sailors throw Jonah overboard, thinking he’s the trouble, and God makes a big fish swallow him.

  “So, Jonah lives in the belly of this whale for three days, until it pukes him up on shore. Jonah finally obeys God and gives the gloom and doom warning he’s supposed to give to this city. But the people actually listen and change their ways, so God doesn’t punish them like he told Jonah he would do. So Jonah gets all pissed because he really wanted to see these people suffer, not change. He goes off and pouts, whining about being angry at God and wanting to die, missing the whole point of God being omnipotent, benevolent, and forgiving. I don’t think Jonah ever gets it, because most of the time it’s all about his big diva attitude.”

  “And you told Jill all this?” I asked.

  “Yeah, before she asked her question about the book. I told her that everyone remembers the story in the Bible about Jonah being swallowed by a whale, but few recall that Jonah was a jerk and God didn’t save him from the whale. God told the whale to eat him so God would have Jonah’s full attention. But it didn’t work.”

  “In the belly of a whale,” I said, and wondered if there were a connection between the story and the letter from Jonah and Jill’s belly having been removed. The peal of the phone near the control panel startled me. As Allan moved to pick it up, it stopped mid-ring. He settled back into his chair, and the room settled into silence.

  “Why all the questions?” Kyle asked.

  “Just curious,” I added. “Joe and I cleared out Jill’s locker yesterday and it was harder than I thought to touch her personal items, knowing what happened to her since she was last here. I was just hoping you guys could lift my spirits by telling me something I didn’t know about her. So thanks.”

  “No problem,” Allan said.

  Greg offered Joe and me a Twinkie. I ate both Joe’s and mine. I tend to eat when I’m stressed, nervous, or in this case, anxious. Joe tends to do the opposite—namely, not eat at all. The fellas
finished their lunches and were about to go back to work.

  “Detective Brandt called and left a message that he’d like all of us to be available to talk with him about Jill sometime on Monday. It’s your day off, but would you be willing to come in around ten or so that morning?”

  Each one nodded without hesitation.

  “Plan on a few hours, because they may want to talk with you individually.” More nods. A few of them donned their hard hats and made for the door. I added, “By the way, guys. Don’t tell anyone this, because the police aren’t releasing the information yet. It might be helpful in their investigation, and we don’t want to screw it up for them. But you all should know, if it gives you any comfort at all, Jill was not sexually molested in any way.”

  They were all relieved by the news, even joyous. Kyle’s eyes filled with tears, and he gave me a thankful nod before hurrying out the door to load trucks.

  Joe hung back with Allan to go over the week’s production reports, and I walked back to my office. Terry was cleaning the glass on the reclamation and environmental awards our company had earned over the years. When I passed by and patted him on the back, he asked, “Did you get your call?”

  “What call?”

  “The one I forwarded up to the control room,” he added.

  “When?”

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  I shook my head. Then I remembered the call where the caller apparently hung up before giving Allan the chance to answer. “Did they say who it was?”

  “Nope,”he said. “Some guy asking for Liv Bergen. I told him you were in the plant and that I’d transfer him to you.”

  “Recognize the voice? Customer? Vendor? Employee?”

  “Nope, nope, nope, and nope,” he said with a grin.

  “Salesman,” I grinned back.

  “Probably.”

  “Thanks, Terry. When are you getting out of here today?”

  “Pretty soon.”

  “Thanks for coming in. Go enjoy your family and this wonderful weekend.”