Emerson Ward Mysteries

Chapter 1

If George Saunders had been lucky as well as cautious that Tuesday, he might not have ended up lying on the pavement, an ever-widening pool of his own blood oozing beneath him like primordial pitch, reflecting black under the leaden sky of early morning. Then again, maybe no amount of luck could have saved him. Whoever had gotten to him had wanted him badly.

His body – most of it – had been found in Montrose Park, near the lake. A shotgun blast had turned his knee to hamburger. Second shotgun blast had torn off his right arm at the shoulder. Probably ended up as fish food – it wasn’t found anywhere near the body. The third load of shot had blown away most of his face. It was several days before the body was positively identified.
* * * *

I know you’re not supposed to love two people at the same time, but sometimes you don’t have a choice. I was madly in love with Nell Reilly. And I was in love with our two-year-old daughter Emily. Still am. The problem was we weren’t together. Nell insisted on maintaining her independence, which meant we led these separate, but equal lives that, to my mind, suited neither of us.

After a lifetime of bachelorhood, of drifting in and out of love and casual affairs, I had fallen hard for Nell. Hard enough that I was ready to give up the comforts of my solitary existence for a life with someone, a partnership. Hard enough that in my early forties I suddenly became a father, happily mired in a sea of dirty diapers, bottles, books and baby toys. But we weren’t together, and I was alone.

I knew a George Saunders, so the story on a back page of the metro section of the Sunday Tribune caught my eye. My stomach grumbled indignantly as I read the rehashed particulars of his death. Happy news, apparently, is boring. Sensationalism is addictive, so the media feed us daily doses of fires, beatings, shootings, the twisted wreckage of fatal car crashes. The flotsam of lives destroyed by greed, jealousy, anger, madness and natural disaster. Life would be mundane without the terrorist threat of impending nuclear holocaust. Newspapers would be thin without an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Television anchors would have little to say without a Darfur, a pitched Congressional battle over the imminent demise of Social Security, the destructive power of a tsunami or a hurricane.

A cynic might say it’s all about selling us whiter clothes, new cars, fresher breath. We’re hooked on bad news, on tragedy, on the dark, macabre side of human nature. And while we sit transfixed with morbid fascination, clever marketers blithely and deftly throw commercial messages at our sensory receptors. It’s only natural. We slow down to gawk at the fender-bender because we’re so damn glad it’s not us.

I like to think there’s another reason we’re drawn to life’s misfortunes. I enjoy a feel-good story as much as the next guy. Too much of a bad thing can be depressing, overwhelming. Makes us want to shut out the rest of the world. After all, life isn’t fair. It’s random and capricious. Most of the bad things that happen in the world are just bad luck. But life is beautiful, too. It’s the sound of a smiling baby gurgling. The sight of birds on the wing in an azure sky. The fecund scent of moss and pine and decaying leaves in a forest after a spring rain. The touch of a snowflake against your cheek or the brush of a lover’s lips against yours.

Every once in a while, stories of adversity stir up something inside of me. Call it moral outrage. Righteous indignation. Call it being just plain pissed off. Sometimes the hard luck tales make me want to do something to fix it, to make the world a better place. If nothing else, it makes me want to better myself, be a little more compassionate, take a little more time to anger at bad drivers and inconsiderate shoppers. And maybe that’s the good side of bad news.

That Sunday was sunny. One of those rare, warm March days designed to make me forget the rain of the previous week and the inevitable early April snowstorm yet to come. A day too beautiful to contemplate tragedies. But sitting in the sun on my bricked garden terrace with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, my curiosity was piqued. The name in the article had tried knobs and opened some of the cupboards of memory. I wondered if I’d known the man who’d died on gray pavement under a gray sky. Hard to picture the George Saunders I’d known finding himself in the awkward position of staring down the muzzle of a shotgun.

Shrug the shoulders, turn the page. Look at all the pretty pictures in the travel section. Turn up a corner of the mouth in wry amusement at something in the entertainment section. Think sunny thoughts on a sunny day. Anything to keep from wondering what my baby girl and her mother were doing without me.

The tinkle of the bell on the back gate disrupted all that sunshine. An elfin face peered through the iron grate set in the wooden door. Familiarity stirring up something long buried. A rush of indeterminate feelings flitted past in a dark blur like bats in a cave. For a moment I was yanked back in time and space. I gripped the back of the deck chair and stood. Shook off the shadows of the past.

I unlatched the gate. Wordlessly, she stepped through the open doorway and wrapped her arms around my waist. Buried a tear-stained face in my shirt and sobbed, slender shoulders heaving. I felt the wetness of her tears on my skin as they soaked through the thin cotton shirt. First warm, then cold as they dried in the soft breeze.

Her shaggy crop of dark hair barely came to my sternum. I stood there awkwardly, arms dangling, as she clung to me. Cautiously, I put one hand in the middle of her back. Patted her gently. Too high, someone once told me, and it’s paternal. Too low, they think you’re trying to grab ass. I aimed a little high, stroked her hair with the other.

The bits and pieces of flesh and gristle and bone the medical examiner’s office picked up in Montrose Park five days earlier had been the remains of the George Saunders I’d known. Now, I was afraid the ninety-nine pounds of tearful, willful woman clinging to me was going to ask me to fix it. How can I put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, Mitzi? How can I fix it? I can’t. But I held her anyway until the sobs slowly subsided, soothed her with little murmurs like I would little Emily.