"Listen, Dan, I need to talk to Sarah. Like I said, it's an emergency."
"She's just coming out of the M. E.'s office. What is it this time? The house on fire or something? Fire trucks on the way?"
"Put her on the fucking phone, Dan."
"Yeah, sure, fuck you, too. Hang on."
Sarah took the phone. "Hello?"
"It's me."
"What is it? What did you say to Dan, to make him tell you to fuck off? He hardly knows you. If he did, I could understand."
"Look, something's happened. You know that environmentalist guy? The one who wants to save the creek?"
"No."
"Spender. Samuel Spender. Didn't I tell you about running into him when I went over to the sales office the other day?"
"Oh yeah, I remember. That's when you asked me about those other names. Benny something, and Carpington. So?"
She still had a tone. I said, "That's right." I took a breath. At my feet, Spender's battered head slowly listed to the left. "The thing is, I'm down by the creek, I was doing my walk -"
"Must be nice."
"And I found him here. In the creek. He's dead."
Sarah paused. "What?"
"He's dead. I just dragged him out of the water. He's dead, Sarah."
"Is this another one of your tricks? Because if it is, I swear to God, I don't know what the hell you're trying to prove this time."
"It's not a trick. I'm standing here, right over him. He's dead like I'm a jerk."
I heard Sarah breathe out. "Whoa. Have you called the cops?"
"No. I called you first."
Sarah didn't question that.
"Okay," she said. "I'll send someone out, and a shooter." Photographer. "Call the cops as soon as you hang up, but you should write us something, freelance, about six hundred words, what it's like, finding a body, how you discovered it, how -"
"I know the drill, Sarah."
"Okay." A pause. "You're okay, right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Call me back when you can."
I hit the "end" button and then punched in 911. I told the operator what I'd found, where I was, and promised to stay put until police arrived. Moments later I heard a siren, then car doors opening and closing beyond a ridge of trees. "In here!" I called.
There were two officers who responded at first. A male-and-female team. The woman, decked out in full uniform and belt and gun, with dark hair tucked up under her official-looking hat, took me aside.
"I'm Officer Greslow," she said. "You found the body like that?"
"No," I said, and explained.
"So you moved the body." I nodded. Officer Greslow didn't look very happy with me.
"His face was in the water, I was afraid maybe it had just happened, so I pulled him out. But once I had him out, I could see that Mr. Spender was, you know, dead."
"Mr. Spender? You knew this man?"
"Well, I knew who he was. It's Samuel Spender. He's some environmental guy? He had this association, to protect the creek? You know, fighting the developers?" God. I had fallen into Valley Girl up-speak, ending all my sentences with question marks. Somehow, it made me sound guilty of something.
"And you're a member of this association?"
"No. He was going around the neighborhood - I live just up there, over the hill, in one of the finished sections of the development - collecting names on a petition to stop houses from being built down around the creek here."
"Did you sign it?"
"Uh, no, no I didn't."
"So you didn't like what Mr. Spender was doing?"
"No no, it wasn't that at all. I just, I don't know, I didn't really care, I guess. Not at the time. Listen, what do you think happened to him?"
She glanced back at the scene. There were more cops now, a couple of them putting up yellow police tape. "It's a bit early."
"He might have tripped," I said. "On a rock or something, maybe he tripped, hit the back of his head, then rolled over into the water."
"Maybe."
"You think someone killed him?" I asked. "Because, you know, I mean, the whole reason we moved out here, well, it was to get away from this kind of thing. I'm sure it was just an accident, because, well -"
Something had caught Officer Greslow's eye. Two people coming through the woods, one holding a camera.
"Fucking press," she said. "How'd they find out about this so fast?"
I said nothing.
o o o
After Officer Greslow finished with her questions, she turned me over to a detective who asked me the same things all over again, plus what I did, how long I'd lived in the neighborhood, why I was down by the creek, what I'd had for breakfast. Really. He let me go after about ninety minutes, but not before reaming me out for walking all around the crime scene and possibly obscuring important footprints around where Samuel Spender had gone into the drink. The reporter and photographer from The Metropolitan left the scene before I did, and I suspected they'd be waiting for me out by the road when I came out, but they weren't.
I called Sarah on my cell. "They're finally done with me."
"You okay?"
"Yeah."