November 7, 2002

• On the road again -

  
  

  Years ago I started writing a book that I never finished.  It was about a fellow who traveled back in time, then there was an accident and he was stranded, and he freaked out because he was scared of disease in the time of no antibiotics.  It was kind of fun until I got bogged down in the meddle and couldn't resolve the plot problems.  Fugitive got hooked reading the work-in-progress and has been mad at me ever since.

  
  

  I'm going to her house, where she has promised that I WILL keep up the word count on the current book.  She's offered ice cream as encouragement, and threatened that I'll be in charge of a four boy sleep-over if I slack off.

  
  

  I'm working already!

  
  

  Thank you for the encouragement on the snipet I posted yesterday.  Since I'm out of pocket today, I'm offering another excerpt from the writing I did last Saturday.  Please keep in mind as you peek at these bits that the point of NaNoWriMo is to turn out massive word counts without getting bogged down in editing.  I know this will need a lot of editing down the road. 

  
  

  Helen Pierce was running late. She checked her outfit in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs and noticed a stain on the side of her skirt. Of course, since she just dropped her laundry at the cleaners last night there were limited options for a change. At least it was casual Friday, khaki’s wouldn’t be out of place.

  
  

  After dressing for a second time, she was too late for breakfast. She threw a nutrition bar into her briefcase without a glance at the coffeepot. No sense sighing over what she couldn’t have.

  
  

  It wasn’t her week to drive, but Jonathon was having some kind of problem with his car. He usually met her outside the garage, but she didn’t see him when she backed onto the driveway. She wondered if he’d had his coffee this morning. He didn’t like coffee as well as she did, but sometimes he brought travel mugs for each of them. She wished she were the kind of person who ran on a nice comfortable schedule. The office brew tasted faintly of soap, so she refused to drink it. She was lucky to get good coffee more than once or twice in one week. Jonathon had suggested that she could set up her pot the night before, so her coffee would always be ready when she got up, but after the coffee had been sitting there all night, it wasn’t any better than the stuff at the office.

  
  

  She glanced at her watch and thought how odd that they were both late on the same day. In three years, she could only remember one other time he had been late. When she decided to buy the townhouse next door as an investment property, she worried about how she might handle difficult tenants, but Jonathon was the perfect renter. He didn’t throw parties. In fact, as far as Helen knew he didn’t even drink beer. He was quiet. He didn’t ask her to hire expensive labor for things he could fix himself. They drove together to the office where she worked as a human resources manager and he was a computer programmer.

  
  

  She drummed her fingers on the dash, fidgeted with the mirror and changed the radio station to the least offensive morning show. Drive time deejays should be shot, she thought. All that perkiness couldn’t possibly be good for the body. A more sedate speaker delivered the weather and traffic reports, but when the host began to parody a song that she didn’t like to start with, she turned it off. A glance at her watch told her that almost ten more minutes had passed.

  
  

  Maybe Jonathon had overslept? It only took a second to decide the car shouldn’t be left idling. She shivered her way back up the walk and picked up the newspaper still lying by the step. When she knocked on his door, it swung open.

  
  

  The scene in Jonathon’s living room looked like the opening shot of a police drama. Brownish red splatters stained the carpet. A chair from the dining room and scattered papers lay in silence. Helen stood with her hand still upraised as she looked inside. Slowly she craned her head side to side looking for her neighbor. No regular viewer of 'Law and Order' would make the mistake of stepping across the threshold. "Jonathon?" He was nowhere in sight, and he didn’t answer her call.

  
  

  While she waited for the police, Helen went to the kitchen. She measured eight full cups of water, instead of her usual two, and reached past the decaf for regular beans. The coffee hadn’t quite finished dripping when she heard the siren, but it seemed it had been a long time.

  
  

  Another siren sounded in the distance, the curious sing song pattern of notes weaving ever closer. An ambulance stopped in the street beside the police car and two EMT’s carried a stretcher into the house. Another car pulled next to the curb in front of the ambulance. Helen vaguely noticed masculine figures emerging from it, but her attention was fixed on the door of Jonathon’s home.

  
  

  She didn’t recognize any of the officers she saw that day. How odd that she could have lived in Louisville her entire life and know so many people, but not know the men who came that morning. Perhaps it wasn’t reasonable to expect that she would know them, but after seeing the blood Jonathon’s floor, she didn’t care about reason, she wanted a familiar face.

  
  

  "Mrs. Pierce? I’m officer, McPherson." He held a clipboard with a notebook. "Could you tell me what you saw?"

  
  

  "There isn’t much to tell." She took a deep breath. "I waited for Jonathon, that’s Mr. Grace, my neighbor. His first name is Jonathon. He didn’t show up, and that’s just not like him. He’s never late for anything, he never pays late rent, he never sleeps in on the weekend, he’s never sick. He’s a nice guy. I’ve been inside his townhouse a couple times since he moved in, but didn’t see a lot of expensive stuff, so I can’t imagine why anyone would rob him. I suppose he does have a nice computer, he’s a programmer, isn’t it a rule that computer people have to have great systems for their personal use? I went to knock on his door, found it open, saw a mess and something that looked like blood you know?" she paused expectantly but the officer didn’t even nod to confirm her suspicion. "So I came back here and called 911. Would you like some coffee?"

  
  

  "No, thank you" he waved aside the offer and closed his notebook. "I think that tells me what I need to know for now. I’m sure the detective will want to talk with you later. We’d like it if you could hang around this morning, is that a problem?"

  
  

  "No, I’ve already called my assistant. Barb will call me if there’s anything she can’t handle."

  
  

  "That’s good then. Thank you, Mrs. Pierce. You’ve been very helpful."

  
  

  Once Officer McPherson left, Helen’s need to see a familiar face began to grow. Margo was a great best friend, but not much use in a crisis. She was probably serving soft drinks and scotch to nervous passengers about now. "Please turn off all cell phones while the plane is in the air . . . return trays to an upright position … in case of a water landing, your seat can be used as a flotation device."

  
  

  "I need a dog," she said aloud. "I could talk to a dog. A dog wouldn’t be on a shuttle to St. Louis."

  
  

  She stood and looked out the window with her arms hugged across her chest. Where was Jonathon? She hadn’t heard any unusual noise last night. Surely if someone had hurt him, he would have knocked on her door, or shouted for help or something. If someone broke in and killed him, where was his body? Maybe the substance on the carpet wasn’t blood. Maybe he tripped over his chair in the dark, spilled a handful of papers, and … broke a bottle of ketchup. She stopped. That didn’t make any sense.

  
  

  By now several police cars and a van were parked out front. Men and women in latex gloves carried tackle boxes inside. Helen dusted her furniture, and looked out the window. Watered her plants, and looked out the window. Vacuumed the living room even though it didn’t need vacuumed, and looked out the window.

  
  

  The growling of her stomach finally drove her to the kitchen. While leftover kung pao chicken warmed, she took out a bowl and spoon. The timer on the microwave dinged and she reached in to stir the food. The white carton spun around again.

  
  

  "Ding!"

  
  

  It took a second for her to realize that this bell was from the door, not the oven.

  
  

  A nondescript man in jeans and a rumpled tee shirt stood at her door.

  
  

  "Hello?" she said.

  
  

  "Mrs. Pierce?"

  
  

  "Yes, I mean, no, it’s not Mrs., I’m Helen Pierce."

  
  

  "I’m David Anderson, Louisville Police Department." He showed her a detective’s shield. "I understand you made the 911 call this morning."

  
  

  "Yes, Jonathon didn’t show up for carpool."

  
  

  "Ms. Pierce, I’m sorry to have to tell you this. There’s a body inside the house. Can you identify it for us?"

  
  

  "Oh, God, he’s dead." She put a trembling hand over her eyes.

  
  

  "Is he, I mean, is it bad?" She stopped, "That’s a stupid question isn’t it. There isn’t any such thing as good when your neighbor gets killed."

  
  

  "I’ll be right beside you, they have the body on a stretcher now. All you have to do is look at his face."

  
  

  "Okay, Detective, what did you say your name was?"

  
  

  "It’s Anderson, David Anderson."

  
  

  He didn’t touch her, he probably wasn’t even standing close to her, but Helen felt that all the space, all the air around her was taken up and sucked away. Each step toward the door of Jonathon’s house took effort. An invisible wall of resistance seemed to have grown up on the lawn in the past few hours. Or maybe the wall had grown inside her.

  
  

  Fear that Jonathon was dead had been pushed down and held at bay since she first saw the mess in his house. Now that her fear was confirmed it pushed back with vengeance, almost paralyzing her.

  
  

  Detective Anderson led her to a gurney with the ubiquitous black bag she’d seen so many times on television. She hadn’t ever noticed how horrible and impersonal those bags were. No one should ever be zipped inside plastic like so much garbage.

  
  

  The EMT opened the upper portion. At first all she could see was red. She thought maybe she was going to faint, then realized she really was seeing red. Red hair. Jonathon didn’t have red hair. She shook her head and looked at the face.

  
  

  "I’ve never seen this man before."

  • 6:06 am
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