Case File: 32DGO-BN996

A man lays down on a bench under a concrete pavilion overlooking the Kansas River. It's midday, on a Friday, in Lawrence, Kansas, in late May. The weather is clear and sunny. If he hadn’t missed the suboxone handout at the clinic a few blocks over, a nap in the shade would be perfect.

The man stirs. He bites his knuckle, he picks his groin. He reaches into his underwear to claw his anus. A mother and a toddler walk by and watch him bring his fingers to his nose and smell himself.

He sits up, burps. The sores on his hand heal with the lotion in his back pocket. He ignores the urge to walk under the bridge and next to the river to look for needles.

Traffic builds up in the lunch rush back to work. Mass Street breweries and restaurants expel their odors into the sky and into the man’s nostrils. The bench’s hard edges become unbearable. He needs a score.

He crosses the street to Buford Watson Park.

An old acquaintance, Dip, leans against a tree and pees on the ground. The man walks up to him.

“What’s good Dip, any cops or cash today?” the man mutters.

Dip ignores the man and fixes himself before walking north up Kentucky Street towards the river to look for empties or scrabble for handouts.

The man finds a tree and tries to sleep. He dabs lotion under his nostrils to smell the lavender. He nestles his shoulders into the ground.

Not long after drifting off, the man feels a kick to his calf, and he awakes to a police officer standing over him.

“You gotta move, brother,” the officer says.

“I’m not doing anything,” the man says.

“Exactly, just keep moving,” the officer replies.

The man walks a block south along the park. He stops at a bench across from the empty city pool. He applies lotion to his hands again and throws the bottle over the fence into the basin.

He spreads his arms in a T on the bench and stares up at the trees.

After a while he hears the jingle of an ice cream truck. It stops right behind him and the driver dressed in an expensive suit exits the truck. He enters a bright blue house across the street.

The man waits a moment to see if the driver is stopping at his house or making a special delivery. After five minutes the driver does not come out.

The man runs to the truck and enters on the passenger side and looks for money.

In the deck there are two large rectangle stainless steel freezers that hum on the side and in the rear are two, deep square freezers that are off. All but one freezer is padlocked. A large closet restroom sits at the rear exit. The truck smells acidic and sour, like vinegar and sulfur.

The serving window is closed. The cash box underneath the ledge is empty.

“Shit,” the man says.

He opens one freezer to check for money or an ice cream.

The man rattles the other freezers, but the padlocks do not budge.

He sits down in the driver seat to check under the seat and in the side paneling for loose change.

He doesn’t notice the driver exit the house with a large mass wrapped in black plastic and taped at both ends.

“Get the fuck out of the truck,” the driver shouts from the porch.

The man looks once at the driver and puts the truck into drive and peels out. In the side mirror he sees the driver make a call on his cellphone

His mind races, but on instinct he turns left on 6th St. away from the park.

The scrapyard is open until four. The man takes a right on Michigan St. and heads north towards the industrial park. It’s stuffy in the van. The jingle makes it worse.

He pulls over a few blocks down Michigan St. and fiddles with the controls to turn off the jingle. He fears the driver called someone to tail him, and the jingle is broadcasting his location.

Two kids approach him in the driver seat. They tap on the window.

“Can we have four of the SpongeBob Ice Pops, please,” they ask.

“I’m not open right now,” the man says.

“You sound open,” the oldest boy says.

“I’m not, so beat it,” he says.

They roll their eyes and turn and shrug to their mothers watching from bay windows.

The man feels the jingle control button with his foot next to the gas pedal. He silences it with a stomp.

He continues north for a block, and he spots Dip undressing under a large oak tree. Dip is peeling off a suit top and sweatpants and piling them on the sidewalk. With a stick he is trying to pry loose his ankle monitor.

“Dip! I made a score. Grab your shit and get in the truck. We are scrapping,” the man says.

Dip says nothing and hops in the passenger seat.

“I ganked this off some idiot at the park,” the man says.

“Any smokes?” Dip responds.

“No, but check the glovebox,” the man says.

Dip empties papers and manuals and napkins on the floor. They swirl in the cabin. He finds and jingles a set of keys on his fingers.

“Hold those, we need them for the freezers,” the man says.

He turns left on Riverridge Road and then right on Iowa Ave. They arrive at the scrapyard in twenty minutes.

“Strip it quick and get it inside. We can scrap the truck too,” the man says.

While he opens up the truck, the man allows himself to taste the end of his wanton sobriety: a fresh needle and whatever is on the street.

Dip pulls a wad of cigarette butts from his pocket and packs his cheek and starts sucking them until he spits black juice on the floor. He throws the man the keys and slumps into his seat.

“If you won’t help, you're not getting a cut,” the man says. “Go find Junior in the yard and tell him that we are here.”

Dip nods and leaves.

The man unlocks the two squat square freezers first. Both are filled with a putrid smelling liquid that makes him gag.

“How spoiled can ice cream get?” he asks.

He thinks something is moving in the closet. He grabs a bucket and starts filling it with tools and utensils and metal items from the truck. He places the bucket outside for Dip to take inside.

He tries to break the small freezers free, but they don’t budge. He unlocks the large rectangle freezer. The seal sticks as he pulls it upward.

“Maybe this is where you stashed everything,” he says.

When it pops open, he looks down to see another tube wrapped in black plastic bags.

Maybe they are moving drugs, he thinks.

As he rips open the bag and sees empty brown eyes and pale blue frozen head staring at him, another driver dressed in a black suit, steps from the closet with a pistol drawn.

“Close the lid and get in the driver's seat,” the second driver says.

“Take it easy, okay. This is a mistake,” the man says with hands raised.

“Shut the fuck up. Sit down in the driver’s seat,” the second driver says.

The second driver doesn’t lower his pistol and relocks the freezer with the corpse.

Dip returns from the yard and notices the bucket of tools and grabs it without looking at the truck. The man looks down and sees Dip’s ankle monitor flashing blue on the floorboards, obscured from the second driver by litter. The second driver makes a phone call.

“These idiots tried to take it to the junkyard out in the industrial park. Meet us at Kasold and Grand Vista south of I-70. We’ll pop through the subdivision and take 1130 Rd. to the warehouse,” the second driver says. “There are two, but the other one is a burnout, I’m leaving him at the junkyard.”

They leave the junkyard and take the winding paved road. They cross under the overpass after ten minutes. The second driver keeps the pistol in his lap pointed at the man’s pelvis and testicles.

“Slow down and take this right,” the second driver says.

They turn into the Grand Vista subdivision. A black BMW pulls from a street and follows them.

“Don’t try anything. That one of our guys,” the second driver says. “Keep going on this street. through the houses, take a right at the stoplight.”

A school bus flashes red around the bend in the street. A gaggle of children exit into the sidewalks. They notice the ice cream truck and start jumping and waving.

“Keep the jingle off, or you're dead,” the second driver warns.

A police car is parked in a cul-de-sac turnaround on the left that the second driver can’t see.

The man stomps on the jingle button and accelerates past the bus. His heart jerks with the turn of the wheel, and his stomach sinks into his seat. The man clips the extended stop sign of the bus. He ignores the shouts of the second driver mashing the pistol into his ribs. He doesn’t see the speed bump and hits it hard, bouncing the truck's axles roughly into the street.

A terrible odor explodes from the back. The sour acid fills the cabin. He sees in the side mirror he is leaving a trail of it on the road.

The police car flashes its lights and pulls from the cul-de-sac. The trail car accelerates and gets t-boned by the officer, blocking his pursuit.

“Keep driving,” the second driver yells.

The man feels the world shrinking. Children are watching the crashes with their parents. They hold their noses.

The man takes a right and then right again onto 1130 Rd. which leads them out of city limits.

“What are you guys?” the man asked.

“Clean-up,” the second driver says. He presses the piston into the man’s temple. “I am going to kill you once we drop this body off.”

The man hopes for the police for the first time since he was a child. His eyes drift down to the ankle bracelet and its blue pings.

The man pushes his palms into the steering wheel. They drive for half an hour before turning down a gravel road.

Hidden by trees and surrounded by a rusty fence, a blue warehouse sits back two-hundred yards from the entrance.

The man recognizes the first driver from earlier as he enters past the dilapidated guard shack and the first driver closes the fence behind them.

“Thanks for driving,” he says.

The man is pulled from the driver’s seat. The second driver unlocks the freezer and tells the man to grab the body and bring it to the warehouse. He struggles at first. The floor is damp and slick from the mystery acid. He pulls the body free after putting his head on the dead person’s chest and pulling his arms out first.

The first driver drives the truck to a concrete pad wash rack and starts cleaning the truck. The second driver follows behind the man into the warehouse.

Inside is dim. Metal racks line the walls with metal flats that make bulging shelves. In the rear is a crematory oven built into a brick outcropping of the wall. The piping and exhaust flow down into the floor.

The second driver opens the door, and the man drops the body onto a gurney.

“Push him in,” the second driver says.

The gurney slides into a recess below the oven.

The second driver closes the door and presses a green button. The man sees flames flicker from the glass peephole in the door.

“Go outside and get in the freezer in the truck,” the second driver says.

The man needs to escape. He needs time. Someone has to be responding to the ankle bracelet. If he resists or runs, he will be shot in the back.

He hears no sirens as he enters the back of the truck. Soap bubbles drift up from the metal floor. He catches one on his tongue.

The first driver forces him into the freezer.

“Can I have a drink of water,” the man says, stalling.

“Sure,” responds the first driver. “Open up.”

The driver grabs the hose and sprays the man. His wet clothes and skin stick to the sides of the freezer.

“Goodbye little junkie,” the driver says. He slams the lid and snaps the padlock

It is dark, cave like. The heat and sweat of the last hours drain from him. He decides to wait until the truck is moving or he doesn’t hear the drivers to start kicking himself free and break the latch. They are ditching the truck. Somewhere.

He can’t die in a freezer.

After a few minutes the truck starts and rolls forward slowly before it jerks to a sudden stop.

“What the fuck is this,” the first driver says. “Is this your ankle monitor, junkie?”

He hears the muffled exchange between the two drivers.

“They’ll be here any minute.”

“What are we doing with the truck?”

“Ditch it, it’s clean right?”

“Yeah. Except for the junkie.”

“He’s nobody.”

The faint rev of sirens cascades in the distance. The truck idles. The man hears the groan of the transmission and feels the truck lock into gear.

The truck, driverless, slowly catches momentum and picks up speed as it careens forward down the driveway towards the entrance.

The man starts to kick as hard as he can on the lid of the freezer.

The truck accelerates. The man kicks harder. A sliver of light seeps in through the seal of the freezer.

His body shifts into the side of the freezer. The truck gathers inertia down the driveway towards the road. The truck hits the ditch, bounces.

The man slams into the top of the freeze and drops suddenly back to the base. He feels a sharp pain from his left ankle and elbows.

The truck crosses the road and hits the far ditch before tipping over on its side.

The man’s face sticks into the glacial white ice build-up in the freezer. He waits for his body to respond.

The engine grinds to a stop on its side. The freezer silences. His head rings with the whiplash of the wreck. He tries to kick but grunts from the pain in his ankle.

The man is cold. His teeth chatter. The wet, frozen clothes reach down and claw into his bones.

He hears the sirens swirl and grow louder until he hears the skid of gravel as they stop next to the truck. The man hears muffled voices and hurried shouts. Commands and orders from a sergeant or sheriff.

“Check the warehouse.”

“Make a perimeter”

“Call a wrecker for the truck.”

The man hears someone stumbling as they enter the truck deck. They knock on the lid of the freezer in unmetered triplets. He answers the knocking rhythm.

“There is someone in the freezer,” Dip says to someone.

An officer rescues the man from the freezer with a pair of bolt cutters. He is carried by his arms out into the sunny afternoon. He looks back to Dip who searches the ground for his ankle monitor. When he finds it, he raises it above his head and then turns around to be handcuffed by an officer escorting him around the scene.

The man is covered by a blanket. He shivers but feels the sun open his pores. An officer guides Dip down next to him.

“How did you get here?” the man asks.

“They followed the ping to the scrapyard. Why did you leave?” Dip says.

“There was another driver in the truck. He stuck a gun in my face. We stumbled into a fucked up operation. Bodies, guns, disposals,” the man says.

Dip shrugs and looks up to the officer and tells him that the man is the one who stole the truck.

The man looks up at the officer who is watching policemen climb the driveway and enter the warehouse.

“Yeah, I did. But there are real criminals involved here. In that warehouse, you will see what I am talking about,” the man says. “I can identify the drivers once you find them. They can’t be far.”

The officer doesn’t respond but grabs his handcuffs. The man complies and joins his wrists and raises them above his head to be cuffed. Dip asks for a cigarette.

“Easy come, easy go,” Dip says as he crosses his legs and rubs his hand into the road.

“You lose some, you lose some,” the man replies.

They are put into the backs of separate squad cars. More police arrive. The man scoots to the far edge of the seat.

The man wonders about suboxone availability in jail. He stole the truck, but he didn’t hurt anybody. Maybe he will be a witness, spared extended jail time or none at all. Maybe it will be just probation. Maybe a bed at Sacred Word or a dedicated caseworker at Harmony Street Services.

“I wasn’t looking for a handout,” he says proudly to the officer in the front seat. “I just needed money to get on my feet. Those guys out there are the bad guys.”

The officer ignores him and starts driving.

He looks out the window at the passing trees and warehouse and flickering lights. He can see a group of officers laying a large black tube on the ground.

He thinks of his father who used to say, “Always try to be better than you were today. You can always rest easy if you do that.”

The man lays down to take a nap. The gravel road vibrates the seat like a massage chair.

Tomorrow is a new day, full of promises.