Dance of the Bones

C.H.: No, I didn’t. At first I didn’t worry because he said he was going to Arizona and that he’d be back in a -couple of weeks after he did whatever it was he had to do.


S.D.: How was he planning to travel—-by plane? By car?

C.H.: He didn’t have a car or a driver’s license and he didn’t have money for plane fare. I figured he was going to hitchhike.

S.D.: At some point, you must have realized that he was gone for good. Why didn’t you report him missing then?

C.H.: Because the cops would have laughed at me. You can’t go missing from a homeless shelter. Most of the -people in homeless shelters are already missing from somewhere else. Besides, by then, I’d finally tumbled to the fact that he probably had a girlfriend on the side. I figured he’d hooked up with an old flame and that he’d gone back to Arizona to be with her.

S.D.: What girlfriend?

C.H.: I don’t know for sure that she was his girlfriend; I just assumed that’s what she was. A few days after Kenny left town—-after I thought he left town—-one of the guys in the camp, Carl Jacobson, mentioned that he’d seen Kenny with another woman the afternoon of the day he left. Carl claimed he saw them sitting together down by the convention center.

S.D.: Did Mr. Jacobson describe her to you?

C.H.: Sort of. He said she was well dressed and classy looking—-definitely not homeless. I didn’t pay that much attention at the time because, you know, I still thought Kenny would be back when he finished doing whatever it was he had to do. Then later, when he still wasn’t back by the end of May, I realized that he was probably gone for good. That’s when I finally made the connection with the woman from the convention center.

S.D.: Do you know where we can find Mr. Jacobson?

C.H.: No idea. Homeless -people come and go. They don’t leave forwarding addresses.

S.D.: So you don’t know for sure that Mr. Myers and the unidentified woman were involved in a relationship of some kind?

C.H.: I don’t have proof positive, no, but that’s what I believe.

S.D.: You said there were two matching pendants—-engraved pendants. If you were both homeless, where did he get the money to buy them and have them engraved?

C.H.: Beats me. Probably worked as a day laborer somewhere to get it.

S.D.: You mentioned that Mr. Myers had a drinking problem?

C.H.: We both did, but by early spring we were working on getting sober. Then, all of a sudden, he was gone. When I realized he was gone for good, I fell off the wagon in a big way. I was furious that he’d left me for someone else and was spending the happily ever after he’d promised me with her. That’s what I always believed until just now when you told me Kenny was dead. All this time I thought he was alive and well and living with someone else instead of me.

S.D.: Let’s talk about her, then—-that alleged girlfriend. Did Kenneth ever mention other girlfriends by name?

C.H.: No. We never talked about previous relationships. By mutual agreement those were off--limits. But once he was gone and once I suspected another woman might have been involved, I started putting things together and wondering if maybe she was someone he’d knocked up and she’d come to him looking for child support.

S.D.: Did Kenneth ever indicate to you that he had kids?

C.H.: It never came up and I didn’t ask him. Since I didn’t have kids, I assumed he didn’t, either. By the time I was ready to ask those questions, it was too late. He was gone.

S.D.: How long did it take for you to figure out that he wasn’t coming back?