All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found (14 page)

In the spring of 2001 we received a memo announcing company-wide layoffs. Two months later another memo appeared in our in-boxes, announcing further staff reductions. The memos kept coming. In July we received one informing us that the indoor plants would no longer be maintained throughout our offices—for a total savings of $40,000 a year. Reporters and editors were urged to pick a plant to babysit if we wished to see it stay, or, failing that, adopt one and take it home. Rumors began to circulate that the company would be sold to a competitor—the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
. In the office cafeteria, reporters and editors had the hangdog look of a dwindling tribe being hunted by enemies with superior weaponry.

That summer I scheduled a trip to New Mexico, while I still possessed the benefit of paid vacations. It was less vacation, though, than reporting mission. I wanted to see the public records on Dan’s death. After years spent imagining and reimagining the scene of his end, I’d finally made peace with the fact that his suicide was the only story that really interested me.

Trouble was, my stance of ambiguity toward it now felt phony; I didn’t know him at all, never really had, probably never would, and what I called ambiguity was just a convenient cover for my ignorance. My mistake, I belatedly realized, was to so fixate on his death that I lost contact with who he’d been in life. The darkness of the act of suicide, the violence of it, the despair it bespoke, the raised middle finger it offered to the world—all that blotted out whatever he’d been while he lived. I couldn’t access him. Too many questions; too few answers. A yawning silence, a black hole: that’s what he’d become, more symbol than flesh.

It was time, at long last, to confront the carnage head-on, to replace all the horrific images of my own devising with the cold, clinical truth. It was time to start at the end and see if I could work backward into his life. Seidel had suggested this in one of his poems, in lines I felt were aimed straight at me:
To start at End / And work back / To the Mouth / Is the start—
. He had all the answers, it seemed, for the questions that gripped me just then.
The best way not to kill yourself / Is to ride a motorcycle very fast. / How to avoid suicide? / Get on and really ride.
I didn’t have a motorcycle but I secured a rental car and took it for a spin on the interstate south of Albuquerque, out beyond Belen, pushing the needle into triple digits. All the while I thought of what I’d find in the files.

That night in my hotel I thought too of my little sister and how she’d reacted in the immediate aftermath of Dan’s suicide. Lisa and I shared a similar calm exterior, an inscrutable demeanor that left our true feelings a mystery to those around us—even, on occasion, to each other. On the day Dan’s body had arrived on a plane from New Mexico, to be driven from Minneapolis to the town in southern Minnesota where our parents lived, Lisa had slipped away unnoticed and paid a visit to Almlie Funeral Home. She told Mr. Almlie that she wanted to view the body. She wanted, for her own peace of mind, to say goodbye in person.

Almlie hesitated before he replied. He understood, he said. He’d probably even feel the same way if he were in her shoes. But the decision to have a closed-casket funeral had been made for good reason.

I don’t care, she said, I need to see him.

He tried to dissuade her. She wouldn’t back down. And so he told her that when he’d finished preparing the body, she could have her wish. He needed a few hours. He’d give her a signal. When he turned on the light above the front door of the funeral home she could enter, but not before. In this way he could honor her request to avoid calling her at our parents’ house and arousing their suspicion. Around nine-thirty or ten o’clock, he said. I should be finished by then.

He paused again, thinking.

Can you identify him by his hands?

Yes, she said.

Beginning around nine-thirty she drove back and forth along the street in front of the funeral home. Fifteen minutes passed, a half hour. She began to think he might go back on his word, or she’d missed his signal and he’d gone home for the night. She parked her car across the street and waited with the radio playing softly, waited what seemed an eternity.

When the light came on, Almlie led her to a room where the coffin stretched against the back wall. The two portions of its lid were open, but the head of the corpse was covered by a cloth. Lisa stepped forward and looked at the pair of hands folded across an unmoving torso. She noted the fine red hair between the knuckles.

Would you mind if I had a little time alone with him? she asked.

He nodded and backed away.

She waited until his footsteps faded down the hallway. When she was sure he was gone, she lifted the cloth to reveal his head. Her first feeling was one of relief that his face was there at all—a conjecture had floated through our extended family that the force of the gunshot had blown it away. His eyes, however, had been removed, the sockets sewn shut. At his right temple was a neat hole the size of a dime, on the left side of his head a much larger hole whose size she did not quantify, only to say that it convinced her he had not suffered, that his death had been instantaneous.

She took a pair of scissors from her pocket and discreetly cut a lock of his hair to give to our mother. She unfolded the cloth and tucked it back in place. She pulled from her purse a letter she’d written him and placed it in the pocket of his blazer, taking care it didn’t protrude and invite attention. She whispered a few final words—I never asked her what she’d said, or what she’d written, and she never volunteered to share—and then she called Almlie back in the room.

When Lisa told me all this, late on the night it happened, I was torn between admiration and jealousy. Admiration for her courage, certainly—a nineteen-year-old woman, nervy as can be in the face of her brother’s ugly death—but also an irrational jealousy at how insistent was her desire to pay last respects. I wondered whether she thought of this act of visitation as a burden she was best equipped to carry, and knowing this she decided to carry it alone; I suspected as much. That was the little sister I’d always known, unafraid of doing what was hard if she thought it was right, with no need for a pat on the back, and no interest in philosophizing about what it meant.

I was jealous, I realized, because I hadn’t thought of it myself. I wondered if it would have made a difference to have seen him in the flesh one last time, to have looked his deed in the face and not just metaphorically, to have told him what I secretly thought of him before he went underground. Maybe. Maybe not. It was too late to find out.

After a lousy night’s sleep in a Motel 6 near the airport, I set out in the morning for the Albuquerque Police Department and the state Office of Medical Investigators, each of which, I’d learned, possessed a report on Dan’s death. I went first to the police, where a records clerk promptly made copies of the file at fifty cents per page, eight pages in all:

The decedent was seated on the living room couch which was against the west wall of the living room. An SKS rifle was found to the immediate right of the decedent between his right arm and right leg. The decedent was attired in green shorts and T-shirt. . . . Several pieces of skull fragments, brain matter and high velocity blood spatter were found throughout the lower level of the apartment. . . .

Later in the report the officer wrote,
I took overall photos of the apartment, exterior and interior
. I asked the clerk if I was entitled to copies of the photos, and she directed me to an office on the second floor called Criminalistics, where I was told the photo lab needed three days to process my order. The photos would be sent to me by mail and arrive in a week to ten days.

Twenty minutes later, on a satellite campus of the University of New Mexico, two men greeted me at the Office of Medical Investigators, the records manager and the doctor who’d performed the autopsy. I’d called ahead to have them pull the file. The records manager was a tall, bearded, solemn, soft-spoken man named Walt, while the medical examiner, Marcus, was genial to the point of oddity, smiling at me, head tilted jauntily, while speaking of the finer points of cranial disfigurement. Walt handed me the autopsy report. I asked him if photos were an additional part of the file, and he said that more than likely they had photos in their archive, unless they were misplaced or damaged in the developing. He promised to check for me and said that if they existed, I did have a right to see them or have them copied. He could mail them to me, in fact.

Marcus grimaced at the thought.

I personally think it’s much better if you sit down with us here and allow us to explain what you’re seeing, he said. The images, from my reading of the report—and I confess I don’t remember this particular case—but the images will likely be very graphic. I’d feel more comfortable showing them to you here than putting them in the mail and having them arrive one day in your mailbox. If you see them and you still want copies, we’ll be happy to have them made and sent to you.

Walt consulted his photo archivist. It turned out the photos were readily accessible, so I agreed to return in two hours for a viewing.

Afternoon cumuli had begun to sprout like enormous white mushrooms over the peaks of the Sandias. The temperature in the valley edged toward one hundred. My palm made a sweaty print on the manila envelope containing the autopsy report. As I walked across campus I felt no urge to open it. My purpose did not demand haste. I wasn’t on a deadline. The freshness of the evidence wasn’t at issue. There was no criminal who at any moment might strike again, no victim in dire need of justice.

I found my way to an asphalt basketball court in the middle of campus. I asked around and learned the circulation desk at the library kept a ball it allowed to be checked out like a book, as long as you left an ID. I dribbled along the sidewalk toward the court. My veins quivered with adrenaline. I began the routine I’d developed as a teenager dreaming of making varsity: a couple of hard runs at the basket, left-hand layup then right, a few short jumpers, little five- and eight-footers kissed off the board, then some turnaround fadeaways from the baseline. Legs limbering and sweat beginning to flow, I drifted out beyond the three-point line, working my way around it right to left, squaring my shoulders before I shot, chasing down the rebound and spinning the ball out in front of me as I sprinted back toward the arc, where I caught the ball and turned, made a quick fake, and stepped one step left or right before leaping and following through, releasing at the apex of the jump, the seams in the ball perpendicular to my fingers—a habit of the purest shooters, the gym rats with an aesthetic devotion to the pretty arc and spin of the perfect jump shot. I was deep inside a trance of fingertip and follow-through and ball and net, the world reduced to a set of internalized geometries, when a tall, broad-shouldered Native American man sauntered onto the court, snared a rebound in his huge hands, and took a shot, banking it in from ten feet out. He wore jeans and a sweaty tank top and had a slightly forward-leaning posture of defiance.

You got a nice shot, he said.

Thanks. You too.

I played some.

Me too. Long time ago.

He laughed and said, I know how it is.

We circled and shot with unspoken playground etiquette, one man rebounding, the other shooting, the shooter entitled to at least five shots and as many beyond that as he could make in a row, the roles switching when the shooter missed. Within twelve feet he was deadly. He always shot while moving to his right. He didn’t dribble well with his left hand. I noticed these things in anticipation of the question he asked a few minutes later, after he’d curled his arm around the ball and wiped the sweat from his brow.

Wanna go one-on-one?

Sure, I said.

Shoot for ball?

Sure. Make-it-take-it to eleven, win by two?

He nodded and took off his shirt. His free throw bounced off the back rim. Mine touched nothing but net. I stepped out beyond the three-point arc. He rolled the ball to me as if it were a bowling ball. I bent to pick it up. He gave me a five-foot cushion, daring me to shoot from where I stood. He’ll learn soon enough, I thought, as I lofted a shot toward the rim.

One-zero, I said.

You like that shot, huh?

I’ll take it if you give it to me.

He rolled the ball toward my feet again, a small taunt, a gesture of disrespect meant to annoy me. I didn’t hesitate this time. I lifted the ball from the asphalt and cocked it above my shoulder and bent at the knees and rose and shot, one fluid motion that lasted half a second.

Two-zero, I said.

He slapped the ball between his hands and mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

Outwardly I projected an air of utter placidity but in my head I talked a silent stream of trash.
You don’t want to set up in my face? I’m gonna shoot you down without breaking a sweat. You’re not even going to get a shot off before it’s over. I’m gonna blank your ass. Eleven-zip, motherfucker.

He bounced the ball to me this time, a token of begrudging respect. I caught it and shot again in a single coiled stroke. He leaped toward me, stretching to block or tip the shot, but he was late by a fraction of a second.

Three-zero.

The freebies were over. He knew he couldn’t give me space. He didn’t bounce or roll the ball, he handed it over from arm’s length. He crowded me and waved his hands in my face. I dribbled backward a couple of steps, slowly, nonchalantly, and when he started moving toward me, his momentum carrying him away from the basket, I made a quick crossover dribble, left to right, and blew past him toward the hoop.

When I’d finished whipping him and we’d shaken hands, we sat in the shade of some trees and shared water from his jug. He said his name was Raymond. I asked him about his job on the campus grounds crew. He’d been doing the same few things every day for five summers now: mowing, trimming trees and bushes, inspecting and maintaining the sprinkler system. Today he’d been repairing a valve in a water line and merely wanted to prolong his break, divert his mind from the boredom of his work. He thanked me for playing with him, shook my hand again very intently, called me a worthy foe.