I'm pushing shopping carts at the Hadley Walmart, smart guy that I am at almost 60 now, so far ahead in life, and I notice a middle-aged woman behind the wheel of a parked SUV. Sitting upright, head leaning back a little on the headrest, staring at the trailer truck in the next parking area. Back window wet with dew from overnight. A Chevy Tahoe, dry cleaned dresses in their lightly swishing plastic bags hanging from a hook in the back seat, all the windows down, parked a little toward the edge of the lot.
I don't want to tell anybody, don't even really know if she's dead. I been working out here in the parking lot maybe 20 minutes.
I push a line of nested carts away from the outdoor coral and toward the lobby. I look back. No movement. Just sitting there. Nothing. How'd she die. When'd she die. I push the carts into the lobby and go back out thinking about the store's surveillance cameras. the odds.
I collect a few more stray carts, this time wandering a little closer to the vehicle. Still sitting there, no movement. A bald guy, forties, speeds up behind me and slaps on the brakes.
"Is she dead? Hey. Is she dead?"
"I don't know."
"Oh my fucking God she's fucking dead man. Oh shit. Oh fuck." He takes off.
I push more carts back up to the lobby and walk over to my brainless half-asleep teenage supervisor. We have rules to follow about reporting stuff. Chain of command. Can't tell the assistant manager yet.
"Hey. Adam."
He keeps yakking with the hot chick cashier like he never heard me.
"Hey. Adam."
"Yup," he says to me, but keeps grinning at her story about last night's party, leaning on the empty belt where customers place their purchases, shaking his head like he can't believe what she's saying.
I grab his arm and walk him through the automatic doors and tell him I think there's a body in the parking lot. He stops and stares at me, searching my eyes for some sign of mental illness that he's seen described on TV, then follows me to the vehicle.
We get up closer on the driver's side and look at her through the open window like she's a new addition to an aquarium, hands behind our backs. She's wearing little white headphones plugged into her dashboard. She is staring straight ahead. There's a half-smoked cigarette gone out upright between the fingers of her left hand. A dream catcher hangs from the rear view mirror.
Adam calls the assistant manager on the walkie, who comes to the car and starts freaking out, blabbing loud right in our faces about her grandchild that was stillborn a couple of weeks ago. "Oh God, I can't take it," she says. She starts biting on her own finger, crying, and asks someone in the store to call the police.
The local cops fly in. We stand back for a minute, then walk away. A string of store associates, all of them smoking, are lined up a half-dozen parking spaces from the vehicle, jerk-walking back and forth like seagulls at the dump.
I'm handed a voluntary statement form by the fat bruiser no-nonsense cop in black boots. "Fill that out please thank you."
I take the form inside the store to the backroom, to the human resources office, and fill it out on a banquet table. I write down that I noticed a woman who might be dead and told Adam. The store manager, Jenn Ostrowski, an ex-cop herself and friend of Hadley cop Mike Mason, stands behind me. She reads the statement and says good, that's everything they need.
I go back outside, all eyes in the store on me, he's the one who found her. I give the statement to bruiser and walk away to push more carts. Fuck I don't need this shit. Then Massachusetts State Police detectives start arriving in unmarked cars: a woman in a minivan, two or three guys in their Fords, some jacket-and-tie assistant DA from Northampton in a Chevy.
The cop in the minivan with the gold badge around her neck runs the show, takes ten million pictures, is very precise, follows procedure, directs everyone else on the scene. I stay way clear, picking up carts in the other lots. An hour later, a detective walks toward me. He yells hey you, motions me to come to him with his four fingers together like he's directing traffic.
He comes up close to me, shakes my hand. I'm Ricky McMillan, he says. He wears dark sunglasses with lenses that curve out like oily, black bubbles. He removes my statement from a clipboard and starts laughing, scoffing at the statement, and asks if I actually wrote that. Did I really actually write this, he wants to know again. I say yes. He shakes his head and laughs. "Unbelievable," he says, "just unbelievable." He looks out across the lot and says, "Nice job you got here, real success story, pushing shopping carts."
He pivots his head and locks it straight onto mine. "How many times have you been arrested?" he asks.
"You already have that information," I tell him.
He asks again. I tell him again. I tell him I'm not talking to him and walk away. He yells after me that he's not finished with me yet. I say tough, I don't know how she died, so I'm not talking to anyone. He says she might have been murdered.
How many times have you been arrested, he yells. I continue to walk away from him, picking up some carts, saying nothing.
"Did you know Kimberly Williams from Belchertown?" he bellows from a distance.
Detective Ricky walks back to the group, piles into his aging Taurus and flies over to the parking area I'm in. Puts on his blues for effect. Gets out and tells me he has every right to ask me for my driver's license, which I hand to him. He immediately flips it over to make sure I've changed my address on the back, then hands it back.
The store manager, Jenn Ostrowski, comes out and tries to settle things down. Ricky acts like he doesn't know who she is, ignores her. He blurts out, "Yup. Mr. Innocent here. Been arrested before but never guilty. That your problem? Right?" Manager Jenn walks back into the store. Ricky continues to badger me. "You don't want to talk? You want me to go inside and mess with your job?" an apparent threat to get me fired from my low-life job as a cart pusher.
Detective Ricky pushes his sunglasses onto the top of his head, revealing surprisingly sweet, feminine, Hallmark eyes. He jumps back in his Taurus and returns to the huddled group of detectives, but not before he threatens to harass me at home, too.
A Mass Highway truck drives up and hides the SUV behind a set of huge framed tarps. The medical examiner removes the body from the SUV into the back of his pickup truck. All the associates squish their cigarettes and go back inside.
I go back to HR. Carol, the one department manager too tasteful to gather outside complains to the HR woman about how awful it was that all the other associates were gawking at the scene. "Nosy assholes. No sensitivity at all. How'd you like it if you were dead and everyone was staring at you?" She stomps away disgusted.
Late afternoon, I leave work for the day as it gets dark. The cops have been gone for hours. The SUV has been towed away. There is no sign of anything. A man and a woman, holding hands, slowly wander the area where the Tahoe was parked, heads down, scanning the pavement.