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He almost gives it. Stupid. “The body’s located behind an abandoned Texaco station in the town of Gunnel.”
“Sir, may I please have your name?”
“You go up County Road F. You’ll come to a rise. The gas station is at the top.”
“Sir—”
“Just listen. The body is behind the station, all right? A dog was chewing on the hand of whoever’s buried there. It’s a woman or maybe a girl. I covered her hand with a trash barrel, but the dog’ll get that off pretty soon.”
“Sir, I need your name and the location you’re calling fr—”
“Gunnel. County Road F, about three miles in from the highway. Behind the Texaco station. Get her out of there. Please. Someone’ll be missing her.”
He ends the call. His heart is triphammering in his chest. His face is wet with sweat and his shirt is damp with it. He feels like he’s just run a marathon, and the burner phone feels radioactive in his hand. He takes it to the trash barrel between the picnic tables, dumps it in, thinks better of it, fishes it out, wipes it all over on his shirt, and tosses it in again. He’s five miles down the road before recalling—also from some TV show or other—that he maybe should have taken out the SIM card. Whatever that is. But he’s not going back now. He doesn’t think the police can trace calls made from burner phones anyway, but he’s not going to risk going back to the scene of the crime.
What crime? You reported a crime, for God’s sake!
Nevertheless, all he wants is to go home and sit in front of the television and forget this ever happened. He thinks about eating the lunch he packed, but has no appetite.
9
Now that his drinking days are over, Danny doesn’t sleep in even on the weekends. Sunday morning he’s up at six-thirty, eats a bowl of cereal, and turns on the KSNB Morning Report at seven. The big story is a nine-car pileup on I-70 west of Wilson. Nothing about a body being discovered behind an abandoned gas station. He’s about to turn the TV off when the Sunday morning anchor, who probably needs to show ID to get a beer in a bar, says, “This just in. We have a report that a body has been discovered buried behind an empty building in the small town of Gunnel, not far from the Nebraska state line. Police have closed off a county road just north of town and the site is under investigation. We’ll update this story on our website and on the evening news.”
Danny goes to the station’s website several times as the morning progresses, also the website of KAAS out of Salina. At quarter of noon the KAAS website adds a forty-second clip of police cars blocking the entrance to County Road F. There’s one other addition to the story he saw on the morning newscast: the body is said to be that of a woman. Which isn’t news to Danny.
He goes across the trailer park to see Becky. He gets a nice hug from her daughter, a nine-year-old cutie named Darla Jean. Becky asks if he wants to go out and get a bag of burgers at Snack Shack. “You can take my car,” she says.
“I want to go, too!” Darla Jean says.
“All right,” Becky says, “but you go and change your shirt first. That one’s all smutty.”
“She doesn’t need to change,” Danny says. “I’ll just drive through.”
They get the burgers, plus fries and limeades, and eat in the shade behind Becky’s trailer. It’s nice there. Becky has a jacaranda tree that she has to water all the time. Because, she says, “This kind of flora don’t belong in Kansas.” She asks if there’s something on his mind, because she twice has to repeat things she’s told him. “Either that or you’re going senile.”
“Just thinking about what I’ve got on for next week,” he says.
“You sure you’re not thinking about Margie?”
“Talked to her yesterday,” Danny says. “She thinks her boyfriend’s gonna pop the question.”
“Are you still carrying a torch for her? Is that it?”
Danny laughs. “Not likely.”
“Danny!” Darla Jean shouts. “Watch me do a double somersault!”
So he does.
10
That night KSNB has a reporter on the scene. She looks unsure of herself—definitely weekend help. She’s standing in front of the police cars blocking County Road F from the turnout.
“Following an anonymous tip, KHP troopers were called to a deserted gas station in the town of Gunnel late yesterday afternoon. They discovered the body of an unidentified female buried behind the station, which…” She consults her notes and brushes hair out of her eyes. “… which closed in 2012 when Route 119 was widened to four lanes. If the woman has been identified, KHP isn’t saying. Certainly her identity won’t be released to the press pending notification of next-of-kin. Police are not saying if she was murdered, either, but given this isolated location…” She shrugs, as if to say what else? “Back to you, Pete.”
She’ll be identified soon enough, Danny thinks. The important thing is he hasn’t been ID’d. He is just “an anonymous tipster.”
My good deed for the year, he thinks. And who says no good deed goes unpunished?
