17 October 2007

Overhead Image



I saw the police on Monday, the day the death was discovered by the larger community.

There had been a suspicion that something was wrong for several days before the discovery. Ruth is Big Pink's dayshift Concierge. She does not drive, and consequently has a better handle on the neighborhood than many of the residents of the proud tower who travel only in splendid isolation in their motorcars.

She noticed something in the air, standing at the bus stop on the service drive at the end of her shift, as early as last week. She chalked it up to the application of fertilizer that comes each fall as part of putting the grounds to bed for the season.

She was right in some ways.

The service drive fronts the great canyon of Route 50, which at this point in its great sweep westward is six roaring lanes of traffic gouged deep into Virginia's red soil, flattening the natural curve of the highland on which Big Pink sits.

Although the posted speed limit is modest, drivers take advantage of the long straight-away to hurtle at interstate speeds under Glebe Road. I thought that might be what the Police were doing, setting up a speed trap to snarl the unwary on their way out to Fairfax County.

Two officers were working the problem when I approached on Monday afternoon, their cruiser parked diagonally across the entryway to the garden apartments on the corner. The woman stood on the concrete of the overpass, while the man leaned over the guardrail, looking down.

I passed them without incident, wondering about the County fitness standards. They both were very large people in their uniforms and bullet-proof vests. I was wheeling the gray car into Big Pink's drive when the male officer stood up and I saw that the device in his hands was not a speed-gun but a digital camera.

I did not think much of it until I called Ruth from the office to ask if I had been placed on report by Leo the Engineer. It was the semi-annual inspection of the convector units in all the apartments on the fourth floor that morning, and lost in mysteries of ancient missile technology, had fled the building without moving the furniture away from the radiator.

I hoped I was not in trouble, and though she assured me that there were not consequences to my mental lapse, she seemed distracted and not her normal cheerful self. When I saw her again, I asked if I had caught her at a bad time.

She smiled and said, “No, it was just all the commotion about the dead man. It had us a little flustered.”

I was startled by that, and naturally asked for the whole story. The details were sketchy outside of the police investigation. A County crew had made the discovery during routine brush cutting; the smell had attracted them and the regular Police were summoned; crime scene tapes were strung and a perimeter established to keep the small crowd of retirees at bay; the Fire Department was dispatched with a specialized hoist and body bag; Paramedics went over the parapet and confirmed the source of the odor and extracted the corpse.

That is as much as anyone knew, and speculation was all that remained. I went back to Fred's office. He is a large and jovial man with a sly sense of humor. He retired from the Phone Company years ago, and his new career is as Big Pink's building manager, the Mayor of the campus.

He rolled his eyes. Being just outside the perimeter and on County land, there had been no mention by the authorities of a recovery operation. With the number of retirees in the building, it is not uncommon for the ambulances to arrive at the front entrance, lights on but no sirens.

He noted the passage of the emergency vehicles through the window of his office, which looks out over the back parking lot. A conscientious administrator, he naturally went outside to investigate and seen if any of his tenants on the first floor had expired; he mentioned the possible candidates and I nodded in agreement.

He followed the lights around the building to the scene of activity just across the Service Drive.

“There are three theories,” he said. “It might be a pedestrian who got hit and thrown over the rail, or a pedestrian from down on Route 50 who was thrown into the bushes down below.” He made a church steeple with his fingers in front of his nose. “Or, of course, it could have been one of the homeless who was living down there and just died.”

I asked him if the body could have been dumped after an altercation elsewhere, and he said he didn't know. Just that it was male.

I went upstairs and got out of my work-clothes and into my walking togs. First stop on the evening walk was a visit to the crime scene, and a personal investigation.

I walked from the main entrance of the building, across the manicured grounds and under the ornamental foliage to the service drive. I crossed over to the narrow verge of grass, now neatly trimmed. I was careful to lean away from the road, since I did not want to be hit and thrown over the side; the drivers move fast as they accelerate up the ramp onto the highway.

I looked down from a position near where I had seen the policeman the day before. Something moved at the base of the concrete wall, startling me.

It was a squirrel, one of the dark ones that is actively foraging for winter food. Leaning forward again I saw that part of the mystery was solved.

Below was a little campsite. An awning of plastic sheet was slung from the bushes, and a bedraggled mattress was partly below it. There has been no rain for a month, and the cover was unnecessarily in the unseasonable heat. Trash bags and water jugs were strewn around the camp. The bushes obscured the view completely from the high-speed traffic and the view from above was one that had to be made with deliberation.

I followed the guardrail until the concrete stopped and a well-worn spot of earth showed how the campers gained access. Another, less well developed camp was about thirty feet away from the mattress, leaves gathered as a nest and a few dozen empty large bottles of Schlitz Malt Liquor marking the spot.

I did not go down. The overhead image was enough for me.

I went on to my normal walk, the sun lowering in the West. Homeless men, living at the base of the wall in front of Big Pink. I tumbled that thought over as I walked. Did the occupant of the second camp want to move up to the comfort of a dirty bed? Could there have been a malt-fueled altercation in the night, next to the whizzing cars?

Was there just a man dying alone on his mattress? Either way, I stayed up long enough to catch the local news to see if the local media had picked up the story.

The death passed without remark or comment, and I went to my own bed under a strong, thick roof.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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