Dig (Morgue Mama Mysteries)

by C. R. Corwin

  “Do you think he was really joking—or really telling the truth?” I asked.

  “I think he was really doing both,” he said. “Archaeologists, if they can manage it, work in the historic periods that fascinate them the most.”

  The wind was picking up. I zipped my jacket as high as it would go and pulled in my neck like a snapping turtle. “You consider the 1950s an historic period, do you?”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “No offense, but, yeah, I do. Treating the recent past like the ancient past is what the field of garbology is all about.” He gave me a primer on the subject: “The guru of the whole movement is Dr. William Rathje of the University of Arizona. He made his bones studying the burial sites of the ancient Mayan Indians. Then in the early seventies he started the Garbage Project. He applied modern archaeological techniques to studying present-day waste in landfills. He studied what households were buying and discarding. What impact modern consumption habits were having on the nation’s health and on the environment.”

  I felt a few sprinkles of rain on my face. I dug the plastic rain hat out of my pocket and pulled apart its accordion-like folds. I wrapped it around my head. I can only imagine how ghastly I looked. “Well, it sounds like a lot of fun,” I said.

  Andrew was much too young to carry emergency rainwear with him. He let the drops soak his hair. “It’s also a lot of hard work. Tedious work. In order to get to the stuff from the fifties we have to dig down through the garbage from the sixties and seventies. And there was a lot of garbage in those decades.”

  “How well I remember.”

  My joke went right over his head. “And you can’t just toss the stuff from the sixties and seventies aside,” he said. “It’s got to be sorted through and cataloged just like the fifties’ stuff. The way you draw conclusions about one decade is to compare it to other decades.”

  “That makes sense.”

  He had more: “And the layers of garbage aren’t predictable. Garbage was dumped and bulldozed. Older stuff pushed up, newer stuff pushed down. So it’s easy to get decades mixed up.”

  I tried another joke. “You’re telling me.”

  That one sailed as high over his noggin as the first one.

  We circled through the excavated squares, as if there was actually something to see. The raindrops were getting fatter. “You think it’s really necessary to burrow into stinky landfills to learn that America is happily eating itself into oblivion?” I asked.

  “Perception is an important tool, but it can’t hold a candle to a trowel,” he said. “There’s a big difference between what people consume and what they think they consume.”

  He was in teaching mode. I knew I’d have to stand there and listen no matter how waterlogged I got. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “You bet it’s true. For example, Mrs. Sprowls, what percentage of the waste put in landfills do you suppose is made up of disposable diapers, Styrofoam and fast-food packaging?”

  I hate those kind of questions, don’t you? No matter what number you guess, high or low, you’ll be wrong and feel like an imbecile. “One hundred percent?” I asked sarcastically.

  There was a flash of annoyance in his eyes. “Actually, it’s just three percent.”

  I acted quickly to repair the damage. “That’s amazing.”

  The rain was coming down harder. Without saying a word we agreed to head for the car. “So while plastic is a problem it’s not the real problem,” he said as we hurried along. “The real problem is paper. It makes up forty to fifty percent of the waste stream.”

  “Any idea how much of that is newspaper?” I asked.

  It was an opportunity to get back at me and he took it. “Too much.”

  We reached the rim of the landfill and started down, once again past the spot where someone had skillfully put a bullet in the back of Sweet Gordon’s skull. More than likely someone he trusted. “Tell me, Andrew, did you ever get the feeling that Gordon was digging for something in particular?”

  “That may have gotten him killed, you mean?”

  “Well, yes.”

  His entire body seemed to shrug. “I’ve been wondering about that like everybody else.”

  “Everybody else, Andrew?”

  “The police. Professor Glass. That woman from the bookstore.”

  “And just what do you tell them?”

  The annoyance seeped back into his eyes. “Like I said, Professor Sweet was interested in everything from the fifties.” Before I could apologize for my inquisitiveness, he conjured up a memory that made him smile. “Every day he’d walk from square to square, asking the dig teams the same question in that same Mr. Rogers way he had: ‘Anything interesting today, boys and girls? Old soda pop bottles? Betsy Wetsy Dolls? Perhaps an old cocoa can or two?’ We all knew it so well, we’d say it along with him, like a mantra.”

  We reached my car. We were soaked. By the time we reached the main road my threadbare car seats were soaked, too. We splashed through the puddles and headed north toward Hannawa. I was still full of questions: “You must have been frantic when you couldn’t find him.”

  “Not really. It was odd that he didn’t show for his eight o’clock class but—”

  “Friday morning, right?”

  “Yeah. I just figured he’d overslept or he was sick or something.”

  “You were a student in that class?”

  He nodded. “The Making and Breaking of Archaeological Doctrine.”

  “So what did you do when he didn’t show?”

  “You know—the old ten minute rule.”

  “If the professor doesn’t show up in ten minutes you take off like a P-92?”

  I’d succeeded in baffling him again. “Take off like a P-92?”

  I laughed at myself. “If I get any older I won’t be able to communicate at all. It’s an old saying, Andrew. The P-92 was a real fast airplane when I was a kid.”

  He said “Oh” and I said, “So where’d you take off to?”

  “I figured I’d better check in with Karen, the department secretary. I thought maybe if he was sick he might’ve left word for me to teach his one o’clock.”

  “He wouldn’t have called you directly?”

  “He’d never missed a class before. I wasn’t sure.”

  “So you were just being a dutiful graduate assistant?”

  “Right—but Karen said she hadn’t heard from him either.”

  “Was she concerned?”

  “She’d figured he was in class.”

  The rain had slowed enough for me to put my wipers on low. “Is that when you started looking for him?”

  “Sort of. I called his house and left a message on his answering machine. And then I hung out in his office for a couple hours and studied, in case he showed up. Then I had a quick lunch out of the vending machines downstairs.”

  “Then taught his one o’clock class?”

  “Babysat was more like it. Then I taught my own two o’clock and after that I drove over to his house. The doors were locked and the porch light was on and his car wasn’t in the drive.”

  “You try to talk to his neighbors?”

  “No—I still didn’t think anything was wrong.”

  “But you were looking for him,” I pointed out. “You must have been a little worried.”

  “I guess I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong. But who knows? Maybe he had a family emergency and had to leave town? It sure didn’t occur to me he might be lying dead somewhere.”

  We crossed back over Killbuck Creek. The water under the bridge was brown and rising. That end of the county has a lot of low, flat valleys. If the rain continued—and it looked like it might—there’d be a flood story for someone to write that night. “When exactly did you find Gordon’s car?”

  “Not until the next morning. When I was running.”

  “So that’s how you stay so skinny.”

  “You think I’m skinny?”

  “I think you’re skinnier than m
e,” I said. “You didn’t try to contact him Friday night then?”

  “I did try to call Karen once more before going to work. But she’d already snuck out for the day.”

  “I didn’t know you worked.”

  “I deliver pizzas on weekends. Papa John’s on Fridays. Domino’s on Saturdays. Sometimes on Sundays for Carlo’s. It’s amazing how much tip money you can make if you’re willing to sacrifice your social life.”

  I took that to mean he didn’t have a girlfriend. “So you saw Gordon’s car while you were running?”

  “That’s why the police are so suspicious of me. They think it’s all a little too neat.”

  “Have they actually said that to you?”

  “Not in so many words. But they’re sort of scientists, too, aren’t they? They come up with a hypothesis and see if the evidence supports it. So they’re thinking, ‘Hey now! How convenient is that? The kid first finds the professor’s car and then his body. Maybe it’s part of some wily plan to make himself look helpful instead of guilty.’”

  I figured it would be better to drive in silence for a while. Good gravy, what if Andrew Holloway III did kill Gordon? What if his finding Gordon’s car and then his body was indeed part of a wily plan to hide his guilt? What if his agreeing to take me to the landfill was also part of that plan? To turn me into a collaborating witness? To show the consistency of his story? I pictured myself on the witness stand, some smart-ass assistant city prosecutor making me look like a total doofus. “Was he there for his Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday classes?” I finally asked. “Assuming he had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday classes.”

  “He didn’t teach Tuesdays and Thursdays. But I saw him that Thursday.”

  “That Thursday before he disappeared, you mean?”

  “We met at Wendy’s for lunch like always.”

  “Like always?”

  “We met at Wendy’s every Thursday at noon,” he said. “We’d talk about the classes I was teaching and the classes I was taking. We’d talk about his plans for the summer dig. He liked their chili.”

  Finally I had an opportunity to ask a question I’d been itching to ask all morning. “That particular Thursday would have been the day after the Kerouac Thing. You go to that?”

  “No way. I went the year before. It was really lame.”

  “Watching a lot of moldy oldies trying to relive their golden bohemian youths, you mean?”

  He blushed. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. That’s exactly why I stopped going.”

  “He was really into all that beat generation stuff. Professor Glass, too.”

  The next question came out of my mouth all by itself. “Speaking of Professor Glass—you know about their cheeseburger argument?”

  “Everybody knows about the cheeseburger argument.”

  “Did Gordon bring it up at Wendy’s? I understand they got into it at the Kerouac Thing.”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “He say anything at all about the party?”

  “Just that I’d missed a groovy evening.”

  “He actually said groovy?”

  “He was always using goofy words like that.”

  My mind drifted to all the wonderful late-night talks Sweet Gordon and I had in college. How the hip words of our generation sounded even hipper when he said them. How much I liked him, even though I was hopelessly in love with Lawrence Sprowls. “Did he seem okay to you that day?” I asked Andrew.

  “A little wasted maybe. But for the most part he was his jolly old self.”

  We reached Hannawa and inched through the heavy, noontime traffic toward West Tuckman. “Where’d you grow up, Andrew? Your voice has sort of a southern Ohio twang to it.”

  “Circleville.”

  “Oh, the annual pumpkin festival! That must be fun!”

  “It’s a riot,” he said. His voice that told me that he was not exactly proud to be from a town that celebrates pumpkins.

  “I’m from LaFargeville, New York,” I said in the same voice. “Three hundred people. Seven thousand cows.”

  I didn’t take the same route back to the college. Instead I took the Indian Creek Parkway and wound through the bare oaks toward the athletic fields at the northern edge of the campus. It’s a somewhat isolated area, flatter than a pancake, separated from the campus and its adjoining residential streets by the creek and a long shale ridge. There are soccer and lacrosse fields there, the practice fields for the track and football teams, tennis courts, a winding asphalt jogging path, and, of course, the four back-to-back baseball fields where Dale Marabout told me Andrew had found Gordon’s car. Like the Wooster Pike landfill, it would be a perfect place to go unnoticed, especially in March when every day is shittier than the last. “I hope you don’t mind,” I said.

  What could he say? We were already there, pulling into the parking lot alongside the baseball fields. “Where exactly was Gordon’s car?” I asked.

  He pointed. “In front of the restrooms there.”

  I drove up to the restrooms and stopped. We were a good two hundred yards from the jogging path, which presumably Andrew was using for his morning run. “You were able to recognize his car from quite a distance,” I said. My question sounded an awful lot like a police question and I immediately wished I’d asked it less skeptically.

  “Professor Sweet drove an old pea-green Country Squire station wagon, the kind with fake wood panels on the sides. Big as a battleship. Not too many of those on the road anymore.”

  It sounded reasonable. There weren’t too many 1987 Dodge Shadows on the road anymore either. “I’m sure you were relieved to see his car.”

  “I figured maybe he was around here somewhere,” said Andrew. “Using the restroom. Hiking along the creek or something. But his car doors were unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. And his briefcase was on the back seat. His whole life was in that bag.”

  “Now you got frantic?”

  “I checked the restrooms—both sides—and yelled his name. I got in his car and started it—I thought maybe he’d had car trouble—and it ran just fine. Then I ran back to my apartment and got my car. I drove to his house again and then came back to the ball fields. I drove all over the place.”

  “And then you drove out to the landfill?”

  Andrew’s head bounced up and down like a basketball.

  “I think I would have called the police first,” I said.

  He raked back his wet hair. “I almost did. But I felt a little foolish, know what I’m saying? Like I was overreacting. I thought maybe he’d arranged to meet somebody here and drove out to the dig with them. He was always going out there. Even in the winter. I just wanted to make sure he was okay.”

  Up to that point Andrew’s story had made sense to me. Now I could see why the police were interested in him. Why would he think Gordon was at the landfill if his car was here? With the doors unlocked and keys in the ignition? With his briefcase on the back seat? Wouldn’t Andrew suspect foul play by now? Wouldn’t he call the police by now? Even the dopey campus police? No matter how foolish he felt? There simply had to be more to the story, even if this Andrew J. Holloway III was telling the truth. “I apologize for putting you through all this again,” I said.

  He tried to smile. “I know I don’t have the greatest alibi,” he said. “I can account for the hours I take classes and teach, and deliver pizzas, but I spend an awful lot of time alone in my apartment.”

  I drove him back to Menominee Hall.

  Chapter 6

  Tuesday, March 20

  After dropping Andrew off, I drove to Artie’s for a few things. I bought a half-pound of smoked turkey breast, a few slices of baby Swiss, a bag of freshly baked croissants, and a big jug of laundry detergent. When I got home I put three strips of bacon in the microwave. While they shriveled, I sliced one of the croissants. I piled the bottom half high with turkey and cheese. I squeezed a thick squiggle of horseradish sauce onto the top half. I pi
led the bacon in the middle and carefully put the croissant back together, so the pointy ends matched. I searched the shelves in the refrigerator door and behind my sticky, almost-empty bottle of maple syrup found a lone pickle spear swimming in a jar of green juice. I poured myself a glass of skim milk. I put it all on a tray and headed for the basement. Not to do the laundry. To conduct an archaeological dig of my own.

  In the old days the morgue was a sea of filing cabinets. Stories were clipped from the paper, dated, and stuffed into manila envelopes. The envelopes were stuffed into the cabinets, alphabetically, sometimes by subject, sometimes by people’s last names. Finding what you wanted was always an adventure. Now we store everything in cyberspace. Bink-bink-bink on your keyboard and a story that might have taken you an hour to find in the old cabinets is hovering in front of your nose. Eric Chen, meanwhile, is slowly transferring all of the old files onto computer disks. As soon as he finishes with one of the old cabinets, that cabinet, files and all, goes straight into the back seat of my Dodge Shadow, and then down my basement steps. I bet I’ve got fifty of them down there. A few are painted an ugly green but most are what we used to call battleship gray. They are all exactly five feet high and 18 inches wide. They all have four deep drawers that require a determined tug to get open. Two or three nights a week—even when I’m not looking for anything in particular—I go down there and sift through the old clippings, remembering things I’d forgotten, stuffing my brain with things I never knew. I know it doesn’t say much about my social life but I just love it.

  I put my lunch on the old chrome-legged kitchen table I keep by the dryer, pulled on the light, and headed for the D drawers.

  Why the D drawers?

  One reason was to see if any stories had ever been filed under Dumps, although that seemed unlikely. I couldn’t remember ever filing anything under that category in my forty-odd years in the morgue. But I knew The Herald-Union had written about the David Delarosa murder. There would be plenty in the D drawers about that.

  Andrew, you see, had pointed me in a direction I was already beginning to point myself. But it wasn’t any of the interesting facts he told me about landfills, or archaeological techniques, or even the condition of Gordon’s body that got my mind working. It was his perceptions—which was ironic given his high-minded declaration that “perception doesn’t hold a candle to a trowel.”