This is an edited excerpt from the beginning chapters of Lee Goodman's novel "Indefensible," a new legal mystery published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. It's the first published novel for Goodman, who's at work on a sequel.
Says Goodman: "Though I've lived in this state for nearly 40 years, I decided not to locate the story in Alaska. For the backdrop of the story I had in mind the depressed cities of the Northeast, where defunct factories have left the economy in shambles.
"I hadn't originally planned to write legal mystery. In fact, I didn't expect to be a writer at all. I studied biology in college, then, much later, went back for a law degree. As a writer I was aiming towards social commentary of some sort until I realized what a great metaphor legal drama is for almost everything; within the walls of the courthouse you'll always find judgment, moral ambiguity, suspense, good and evil, redemption and condemnation, punishment and victimization, privilege and want, trauma and exultation.
"Besides writing, I make my living as a commercial fisherman."
Goodman is on an authors' panel at the Alaska Writers Guild Conference, starting at 1:20 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Anchorage.
Chapter 1
I don't honestly expect to find a body. Someone has to go look, though, and on a day like this — the first Friday in June with the memory of cold winter lost beneath the trilling surface of summer — volunteers abound. Carpe diem; I have been offered an excuse to spend a couple of hours in sunshiny woods.
We take the river road to the highway, passing century-old mill buildings. Some are crumbling, encircled by chain-link and razor wire, and others are merely shuttered. They seem to stretch for miles, rotting corpses of an old economy, lining the banks of the Aponak River.
The westbound ramp will clog to a standstill by mid afternoon, everyone going to lakes or mountains, but it's early now and I speed around the curve with tires squealing. On the highway, other travelers are making an early break from the city. Some have windows open, husbands driving while their pretty wives ride shotgun with hair blowing in the wind and flip-flopped feet up on the dash. Kids ride in back with Nintendos and iPhones, ball caps pulled low. A dog in a minivan paints the rear window with slobber as I pull alongside, and a boy presses his face to the side window and watches me. He thinks I'm a criminal because I'm at the wheel of my Volvo wagon doing 20 mph over the limit with the troopers behind me, blue-and-reds flashing, and behind them is the coroner's van (just in case), its antennas bending in the wind. I slow enough to give the boy a goofy, cross-eyed look, and he responds with a smile so huge and gap-toothed that I'm laughing out loud with my head pressed back against the seat. The boy laughs too, and his mom, fresh from the pages of L.L. Bean's summer catalogue, looks over and we exchange knowing, parental smiles. Then I speed away.
"Oh, God," says my daughter Lizzy in contempt of my inexplicably good mood, "you're such a …weirdo."
I look in the rearview for a glimpse of her complex smile. Lizzy is 14. Everything is a test.
"I've never seen a dead body before," Lizzy says.
"Redundant," I answer. "The word 'body' implies it's dead."
She thinks for a second, then snaps, "That is so not true, like, in health class they used to say, 'At a certain age you begin to notice mysterious changes in your body'" (This last part she squawks in her old-biddy voice). "So are we all, like, dead?"
"Point taken," I say, "but in any case, you're not going to see any dead body. You're staying in the car. And there might not even be a body." I look at Cassandra, who is in the front seat beside me. Cassandra smiles and says, "I guess we'll see."
If I really believed for a second we'd find a body, I wouldn't have come myself, and I certainly wouldn't have brought Lizzy. Crime scenes aren't places for teenage daughters. But with Cassandra here beside me, I need to pretend there's a possibility. Cassandra is a civilian. I've known her for less than two hours. She is dressed in olive cargo pants with the cuffs tucked inside white socks. She wears a tight pink tee, which would look so silly on a woman her age — early 40s — that she also wears a loose, unbuttoned work shirt over it, changing it from inappropriately adolescent to enticingly youthful. She is a younger version of my ex-wife Flora, Lizzy's mom.
Cassandra was bird watching at sunrise out in the reservoir district. She says she came across two men filling in a freshly dug hole in the woods. It looked suspicious. The men didn't see her, and she scooted back to town to tell authorities.
• • • •
At the reservoir district Cassandra directs me along miles of rural roads to where she'd parked her car this morning. I put two wheels on the shoulder and turn off the engine. Heat waves rise from the asphalt, which is black and silver in the sun, and the sun catches on wings of butterflies crossing from the weeds on one side of the road to the weeds on the other. My window is open, and for a second I hear the trills and rattles of bugs doing whatever they do on hot woodsy spring days (eating one another and mating, most likely). "How peaceful," I say in the second before the other cars pull up behind and my rearview lights up like the Vegas strip.
The bugs are drowned out by police radios, and car doors, and the swish-swish jingle of cops scurrying back and forth.
"Listen up," Captain Dorsey says to his men. "We'll walk, eyes open for anything obvious, do a good survey before we dig. Leave it all untainted for forensics, in case we actually find something."
I say, "You're the boss, Captain. Just tell us what to do." The truth is, I don't know squat about field work and investigation. I'm just a prosecutor and administrator, Dorsey is the one with expertise, manpower, and high-tech laboratories.
Dorsey doesn't acknowledge my comment, but his granite jaw softens.
Six cars are parked behind mine: two marked State Police cars, Dorsey's black sedan, the black van, a pickup truck pulling a four-wheeler on a trailer, and the local sheriff's. The sheriff is already standing in the middle of the road in his many-pocketed vest, ready to direct traffic. Never mind that this road probably averages one car a week in the busy season.
We start into the woods. Dorsey, Cassandra, Chip and I walk in front, but the trail narrows immediately, and Chip drops back. Cassandra, leans in, puts a hand on my shoulder and whispers, "I'll be pretty embarrassed if there's nothing here."
She seems at home in the woods, instinctively turning towards bird songs coming from the trees, and regarding flowers and shrubs with a knowledgeable eye.
"There," she says suddenly. Everyone stops. "No, no," she says, "just the bird. Hermit thrush. A pebble in a drainpipe. Listen."
Tinga tinga tinga tinga ting.
It is a descending note. Dorsey tries to catch my eye with a "civilians are such idiots" glance, but I avoid him. Chip tips his head sideways, listening to the bird, and says, more to himself than to us, "Drainpipe: exactly. That's brilliant."
We walk in silence until Cassandra tells us we're getting close. She identifies a few landmarks, and finally she says, "Right here." Dorsey pokes at the ground with a shovel. We establish what seems to be the perimeter of the disturbed area, but it's been skillfully concealed, so we can't be sure. One of the troopers lays out a tarp for the dirt, and they start digging. There is a sudden feeling of solemnity. The sense of adventure I'd felt earlier dies as the diggers work. The sound of their shovels, the labored breathing as they dig, the notes of another thrush coming from the woods -- it all comes together. I suddenly understand that there will be a body. Everything has fallen into place too easily for it to be otherwise. The sod has clearly been removed and then replaced: the underlying dirt is loose, the grass matted. I look at Cassandra and she is ashen. I have the strange urge to take her hand, but of course I don't. Digging takes longer than I would expect, and there is almost a sense of release when the shovels hit something. Now the men work more carefully, clearing dirt away with hands and trowels, almost lovingly, and the shape of a body takes form in dark relief against the shadowy bottom of the hole.
Lee Goodman is an Anchorage author.