“Your ankles will get stronger the more you practice,” Abe says.
I topple over a few times in tree pose and come close to tipping the other yogis over like bowling pins.
“Don’t bring your foot to your thigh like the others. Start here,” he says as he snugs my left heel against the inside of my right ankle. “With time and repetition, you will get the hang of it.”
The lower placement of my foot on my ankle settles my wobble.
He continues, “For now, keep your hands in prayer position in front of your heart. It’s more important to establish your tree roots than to spread your branches.”
I can do that, and the others don’t have to worry about me, Gwen Strong, the human bowling ball.
We work through the other poses without mishap and finish with my favorite corpse pose. Now I know firsthand why my kindergartners loved nap time firsthand. Abe’s soothing voice over the soft music works better than melatonin on me.
“How’s your investigation coming along?” Emelina asks after the others have departed.
“Could be better, could be worse. I’m planning several interviews today, but I have to be careful not to trip over the police investigation.”
“I thought they ruled it a death by suicide,” she says.
“They are still calling it that, but they reopened the investigation to keep a nosy kindergarten teacher from looking at the public records.”
Abe joins us as we finish stacking mats, bolsters, and blankets. “It’s a small town. Somebody will talk to you.”
I think about what he said and have an idea. “You are right, Abe. Somebody will talk to me.”
“When I walked in, I saw Jake with his head on the table. The left side of his face was lying on the table, and blood was dripping to the floor. He wasn’t moving. I checked for a pulse on both his neck and then on his wrist. There was none,” Wendy Gallo tells me.
We are standing in the garage bay of the town’s EMT station. She offered to meet me there to look at my photos. She is short and dark-haired and spends time at the gym when not working shifts as an EMT. “I didn’t want to move the body after determining he was dead. The room still smelled like gunpowder. He was sitting here with his face towards the window. The gun was on the floor here.”
She points to one of my photos and places an X where she saw the gun on the floor. She then initials and dates it for me (Erin’s advice).
“What kind of gun was it?” I ask.
“I don’t know guns. Don’t like them after what I have seen on the job.”
I produce images of a revolver and then a pistol on my phone. She points to the pistol.
“Color?” I ask.
“Black with a wood check grip.”
“Shell casing on the ground?”
“Wasn’t paying attention to that. A guy was standing there in the living room and said he called it in. A girl was in the bedroom. I didn’t see her, only heard her sobbing.” Wendy checks her run report. “The guy’s name is Brian Yelito. He called it in seven minutes after midnight into Saturday morning, said he came into the cabin and saw Jake sitting like that and not moving. About then, Barney showed up.”
“What did he do?”
“I told him that Jake was dead. He told me to back off, then he called the State Police. I called dispatch to call off the ambulance that was en route and told them that there would be no hospital transport. Then I grabbed my gear and walked outside. Beautiful clear night. I looked up at the stars and wondered what was so bad that Jake had to kill himself.”
“How did you know it was Jake?”
“Yelito told me, said he worked with Jake at a body shop.”
“I see,” I say. “Do you know if there was a note?”
“I didn’t see one, but I didn’t look around and I wasn’t the first person there. Those other two were there before me.”
“What happened next?”
“Barney ushered the guy and the girl outside and stood in the doorway. Nobody else was going in unless it was a state trooper. No sense me hanging around, so I left.”
“The girl?” I ask.
“Didn’t get a good look at her, but Barney was talking to them like he knew them.”
“Thanks, Wendy. I appreciate you talking to me. Do you remember who the dispatcher was that night?”
She smiled. “My sister, Lucinda.” You’ve got to love small towns. She checks her watch. “She’s home now. I can call her.”
Wendy wakes up Lucinda and introduces me, then hands me the phone. I taught both not so many years ago.
“Hi, Lucinda,” I say.
“Hi, Mrs. Strong.”
“It’s really sad about Jake, isn’t it?” I ask.
“Yeah, he was a few years ahead of us in school. I almost died when I heard it was him. Too many young people dying in town these days.”
“His mom and dad are having a hard time with it all, and they asked me for help. Do you remember the call?”
“Like it was yesterday. His friend called it in and said that Jake shot himself and was bleeding. He didn’t know the address offhand. Friends and family are like that. They know where to go and how to get there, but don’t know the street address. He went looking for a piece of mail. I could hear a girl crying in the background until he came back on the line and gave me the address. I dispatched the EMTs and Milford Police. Wendy was first on the scene and said that Jake was unresponsive. Officer Barney Williams then asked for the State Police to respond, and Wendy called off the ambulance coming from the hospital.”
“Could you get me times of the calls?” I ask.
“Sure.”
“Anything strike you as unusual about this call?”
“Like what?” she asks.
“Anything to suggest motive?”
“Nope, nobody said anything about Jake leaving a note, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Anybody saying that he didn’t do this to himself?”
There is a pause on the line, and I look at Wendy’s eyes widen in surprise. Wendy shakes her head. Lucinda says, “Nothing like that, Mrs. Strong.”
“Okay.”
“One other thing. About ten minutes before midnight. Mr. Chalmers called in complaining of somebody setting off a firecracker. Said something about the idiot not knowing what time of night it was.”
“He’s Jake’s next-door neighbor, isn’t he?” I ask.
“Yeah, it wasn’t until Jake’s friend called with Jake’s address that I made the connection.”
“Did you mention this coincidence to anybody?” I try to sound nonchalant.
“No, Mrs. Strong. Not until now. Mr. Chalmers calls for any old thing, you know. He’s what we call one of our regulars.”
“Can you get me that time, too?”
“Sure, Mrs. Strong. Glad to help.”
“They had something going on over there that night,” Mr. Chalmers tells me. He is a contemporary of Emelina, must be going on ninety. Tall, rail-thin with a halting gait, he uses his cane to point at his neighbor’s house through the trees. The front door has yellow and black crime scene tape crossing it. Might as well post a sign—STAY OUT, MRS. STRONG!
We are standing on his porch about fifty yards away. He’s old school and would feel uncomfortable with being alone with a woman in his house, so I don’t ask to come in. There is a slight nip in the air this morning. Fall will come later this month, but we do get some brisk mornings in September. Still, I rarely have to worry about covering my garden until Columbus Day.
“I was watching a Rambo movie, and with all the commercials, I got up to pee often enough to look out my window. Things got quiet and most of the cars were gone. I know his truck.” He pointed to the older white Ford F-150. Ken prefers Fords over Chevys, especially the model we are looking at. “I’d seen this movie a million times and know the ending, but I stayed up to finish it and was in the bathroom when I heard the shot. It was the last commercial before the big explosions at the end.”
I cock my head to ask a question, and he picks up on my move. “I called the cops to tell them somebody was shooting off fireworks. Later, when I saw all the police cars and found out what happened, I figured I heard a shot instead.”
“Why’d you think it was fireworks?”
“Didn’t think anybody would be shooting a gun at that hour. Besides, it didn’t sound like a gun, it was more like a pop. Kids are always whooping it up and carrying on in the woods. I call every time something’s not right.”
I nod.
He continues. “When you live next to state game land, you know the sound of gunfire. Lived here for close to twenty-five years. Moved here for the peace and quiet, but when small game season starts, it’s like a shooting gallery out there.” He points to the woodlands leading up to the mountain. “The first day of deer season—forget about it. You hear the shots echoing from dawn to dusk.” He shakes his head.
“Anything unusual that night?” I ask.
Mr. Chalmers tells me, “He was having a party. He had no parties, just has his girlfriend over from time to time. Didn’t know until later that the boy was getting married the next day. What a shame.”
“Does any of this make sense to you, Mr. Chalmers?”
“No, it doesn’t.” He shakes his head again. “Kids nowadays do the damnedest things.”
I didn’t think that Sharon would mind sitting in her car while I talked to Mr. Chalmers, and I knew that it would be awkward talking to him with Jake’s fiancée staring at him. I fill her in on the way to the county highway department. We have an appointment with Jake’s brothers, Dan and Warren Jr., in the yard. I have a question for her though, and I have to be careful how I approach it.
“Becky was to be your maid of honor. When did you guys get close?” I ask.
“When we were growing up. I was friends with lots of girls. As time went by, I was closer with some more than others. Besides school, Becky and I were in youth group at her dad’s church throughout high school. When our friends went away to college and moved away after graduation, we were the only ones left.”
“How did she react when you asked her to be your maid of honor?”
“She was surprised but said she would do it.”
“Sharon, how was she at the rehearsal dinner?”
“She was making eyes at Brian and was getting her courage to chat him up from the free booze. She was playing up the best man-maid of honor thing. He went to Vo-Tech with Jake when we went to the regional high school. Then he and Jake started their body shop. I guess she liked how he grew up.”
I sit quietly, thinking about how I want to phrase my next question. “You were all alone at the viewing and would have been all alone at the funeral and cemetery.” Sometimes a statement will prompt an answer.
“My parents are still upset they are out of all that money for the wedding. They blame Jake for it. Jake’s sisters and brothers circled the wagons around Mabel and Warren.”
“Becky?”
Sharon shrugs as she pulls into the parking lot. “Becky’s all about Becky. She’s a little self-absorbed. The planets and stars revolve around her. I wasn’t expecting any comfort from her, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I don’t feel the need to tell her about Becky’s meltdown at the Dawson home after the interment. Becky had temper tantrums in my classroom. I had more than a few parent-teacher conferences with her folks. In the end, I realized that the man of the cloth couldn’t reconcile that his parenting skills might have something to do with her acting out.
Sharon also doesn’t have to hear from me that her maid of honor believed that Jake would rather blow his brains out than marry her.