The Life We Bury (4 page)

Carl Iverson wasn't wearing shoes when they arrested him. I know this because I found a picture of him, barefoot, being led past the remains of a burned-down shed toward a waiting squad car. His hands were cuffed behind his back, his shoulders slumped forward, a plain-clothed detective holding one of his biceps and a uniformed officer holding the other. Iverson wore a simple white t-shirt and blue jeans. His dark, wavy hair was pressed into the side of his head as if the cops had just pulled him out of bed.

I found this picture in the bowels of the University of Minnesota's Wilson library, in a glass-walled archive where thousands of newspapers are stored on microfilm, some dating back to the days of the American Revolution. Unlike the rest of the library, where shelves were filled with stories of the heroic and the famous, the archive room held newspaper articles written by guys with pencils behind their ears and ulcers in their stomachs, articles written about everyday folk—the quiet people. They could never have dreamt that their stories would survive for decades, even centuries, to be read by a guy like me. The archive room had the feel of a tabernacle, with millions of souls packed away on microfilm like incense in tiny jars, waiting for someone to free their essence to be felt, tasted, inhaled again, if only for a moment.

I began with a search for Carl Iverson's name on the Internet. I came up with thousands of hits, but one site had an excerpt from some legal document that referred to an appellate court decision regarding his case. I didn't understand all of the legal jargon, but it gave me a date when the murder took place: October 29, 1980, and it gave me the initials of the murdered girl: C.M.H. That would be enough information to find the story in the newspaper.

I moved from task to task quickly, pressed into efficiency by my brother's unexpected presence in my life, and more than a little flustered at having one more ball to juggle. I found myself thinking about Jeremy and wondering how he was managing back at my apartment. I wondered if my mom's bail hearing would happen by Friday. I had to work at Molly's on Friday and didn't want to go to work and leave Jeremy alone. I needed to get him back to Austin before the weekend. Molly would almost surely fire me if I had to miss work again.

I'd woken Jeremy that morning before I left for school, poured him some cereal, pulled the TV back into the living room, and showed him again how to use the remote. Jeremy was eighteen years old, so it's not that he couldn't pour his own cereal. Yet the unfamiliarity of my apartment would likely have befuddled him. He would go hungry rather than open a strange cupboard door to look for food. I considered skipping my classes that day, but I had already lost too much time procrastinating. I laid out some of Jeremy's favorite DVDs and told him that I would be back in a couple hours. I hoped that he would be okay being alone for that short time, but my concern was growing with every passing minute.

I went into the microfilm stacks, found the reel for the
Minneapolis Tribune
for October 29, 1980, slid it into the reader, and scanned the front page for the story. It was not there. I moved to the following pages and still found no mention of a murder, at least not one that involved a fourteen-year-old girl or the initials C.M.H. I read the entire newspaper and came up blank. I leaned back in my chair, ran a hand through my hair. I was starting to think that the date in the court opinion was wrong. Then it dawned on me. The story would not have made the paper until the next day. I rolled the spool forward to the next day's edition. The top story for October 30, 1980, was a half-page article about a peace treaty between Honduras and El Salvador. Beneath that I found the story I was looking for, a story about a girl murdered and burned in Northeast Minneapolis. The article ran down a sidebar beside a picture of a fire. The picture showed firefighters shooting water on what appeared to be a shed about the size of a single-car garage. The
flames shot skyward a good fifteen feet above the roof, suggesting the photographer had snapped the picture as firefighters were just beginning their efforts to extinguish the flames. The article read:

Human remains found in Pierce Street blaze

Minneapolis police are investigating after charred human remains were discovered yesterday in the debris of a burned tool shed in the Windom Park neighborhood of northeast Minneapolis. Firefighters responding at 4:18 p.m. to reports of a fire in the 1900 block of Pierce Street N.E., arrived to find the tool shed engulfed in flames. Police evacuated neighboring houses while firefighters battled the blaze. Fire Marshal John Vries reports that investigators combing through the debris discovered a charred body amid the rubble. The body has not yet been identified. Police have not ruled out foul play.

The article went on for a few more paragraphs with unimportant details about the estimated damage and the reaction of neighbors.

I printed a copy of the page and then spooled through the microfilm to the next day's edition. In a follow-up article the police confirmed that the body found the day before had been identified as fourteen-year-old Crystal Marie Hagen. The body had been badly burned, and authorities suspected that she had already been dead when the fire was set. The burned-out shed was located next door to the house where Crystal had lived with her mother, Danielle Hagen; her stepfather, Douglas Lockwood; and her stepbrother, Dan Lockwood. Crystal's mother, Danielle, told reporters that they had noticed that Crystal was missing shortly after word spread that a body had been discovered in the debris of the shed. Crystal was positively identified as the deceased using dental records. The article ended with the note that thirty-two-year-old Carl Iverson had been taken into custody for questioning. Iverson lived next door to Crystal Hagen and owned the shed where Hagen's body was found.

Next to this article I found the photograph of the two officers arresting a barefooted Carl Iverson. Using the knobs on the microfilm
reader, I enlarged the picture. The two cops wore coats and gloves, in contrast to Iverson's t-shirt and jeans. The uniformed officer had his gaze set on something behind the photographer. From the hint of sadness in his eyes, I speculated that he might have been looking at Crystal Hagen's family, as they watched the arrest of the monster that killed and burned their daughter. The plain-clothed cop had his mouth open, his jaw slightly crooked, as if he were saying something, maybe even yelling something at Carl Iverson.

Of the three men in the photo, only Carl Iverson looked at the camera. I didn't know what I was expecting to see in his face. How do you hold yourself after committing murder? Do you strut as you walk past the charcoal-black aftermath of the shed where you burned her body? Do you wear a mask of nonchalance and pass by the ruins with no more interest than if you were walking to the corner store for some milk? Or do you flip out with fear, knowing you've been caught, knowing that you've breathed your last measure of freedom and will spend the rest of your life in a cage. When I zoomed in on Carl Iverson's face, on his eyes as he looked at the photographer, I saw no pride, no false calm, and no fear. What I saw was confusion.

There is an odor that permeates old apartment buildings. When I was a kid, I noticed its effect on the people who came by to visit my mother's apartment, that split second of corruption as the taint of decay hits them square in the face, the twitch of the nose, the flutter of blinking, the reining in of the chin. When I was little, that mustiness was what I thought all homes smelled like. Not scented candles or fresh-baked bread, but dirty sneakers and unwashed dishes. By the time I was in junior high, I found myself looking away in embarrassment any time someone came to the door. I swore that when I grew up and got my own apartment, I would get one that smelled of old wood, not old cats.

As it turned out, that was not easy to do on my budget. The triplex apartment building I lived in had an ancient cellar that breathed dankness up through the floorboards, filling the structure with a pungency born of wet dirt mixed with the tang of rotting timber. The odor was strongest immediately inside the common front door where our letter boxes were bolted to the wall. Within that foyer, the steps to my apartment rose to the right, and to the left a door led to the main-floor apartment where a Greek family, the Kostas, lived. Sometimes the aroma of rich cooking spices seeped through that door, mixing with the cellar funk to overwhelm the senses.

I made a point of keeping my apartment clean, vacuuming weekly, washing dishes after every meal; I'd even dusted once in the short time that I had lived there. I wasn't a clean freak by any stretch. I simply refused to let my apartment succumb to its natural state of entropy. I went so far as to plug an air freshener into an electric socket that pumped out spurts of apple and cinnamon to welcome me home every
day. But what caught my attention that day, as I walked through my door, wasn't the pleasantry of the artificial air freshener; it was Jeremy sitting on my couch beside the girl I knew only as L. Nash, and they were giggling.

“Now that's what you call ironic,” L. Nash said.

“Now that's what you call ironic,” Jeremy repeated. Then he and L. Nash broke into another laugh. I recognized the line from Jeremy's
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie. It was another one of Jeremy's favorite lines. They were watching the movie together. Jeremy was sitting, as he usually does, in the center of the couch directly in front of the TV, his feet flat on the floor, his back straight against the curve of the couch back, his hands balled up on his lap where he could fidget with them if needed.

L. Nash sat in the corner of the sofa, her legs crossed over one another, wearing jeans and a blue sweater. Her dark eyes flitted weightlessly as she laughed with Jeremy. I had never seen her smile before, at least not beyond the cursory upturn at the edges of her lips as we passed each other in the hallway. But now her smile transformed her, as if she had grown taller or changed her hair color or something. Her cheeks popped with dimples; her lips seemed redder and softer against the backdrop of her white teeth. Damn, she was cute.

Jeremy and L. Nash looked up at me as if I were a parent intruding upon a slumber party. “Hello?” I said, my tone betraying my confusion. What I wanted to say was “Jeremy, how the hell did you get L. Nash into my apartment and sitting on my couch?”

L. Nash must have seen the confusion on my face because she offered an explanation. “Jeremy was having a little problem with the TV,” she said. “So I came over to help.”

“Problem with the TV?” I said.

“Maybe the TV did not work right,” Jeremy said, his face shifting back to his normal flat affect.

“Jeremy hit the wrong button,” L. Nash said. “He pushed the input button by mistake.”

“Maybe I just pushed the wrong button,” Jeremy said.

“I'm sorry, Buddy,” I said. I had made that mistake a few times myself, accidentally switching the internal input from DVD to VCR, causing the TV to explode with a noisy white static, which had to be a personal hell for Jeremy. “So how did he…I mean who…”

“Maybe Lila fixed it,” Jeremy said.

“Lila.” I said, letting the name rest on the tip of my tongue for a bit. So that's what the L stood for. “I'm Joe, and you've obviously met my brother Jeremy.”

“Yeah,” Lila said. “Jeremy and I are good friends already.”

Jeremy had turned his attention back to his movie, paying no more mind to Lila than he did the wall behind him. Like the idiot I was—a condition often exacerbated by the presence of a female—I decided that my next move would be to rescue Lila from Jeremy, to show her a seat at the adult table, impress her with my wit and charm, and sweep her off her feet. At least, that was my plan.

“Are you surprised that I'm not a serial killer,” I said.

“Serial killer?” Lila looked up at me, confused.

“Last night…you…um…called me Jeffrey Dahmer.”

“Oh…I forgot.” She smiled a half smile, and I scrambled to find a new topic of conversation, having missed the mark with my attempt at humor. “So what do you do when you're not fixing televisions?”

“I'm a student at the U.” Her words slid slowly from her mouth to punctuate that she knew damn well that I knew she was a student. We had passed each other on the stairs many times with textbooks in our hands. Yet, as lame as my overture had been, I had to view it as progress because we were having our first real conversation. I often timed my entrances and exits from the building to coincide with hers—at least to the point where it didn't come across as creepy—and I could no more get her to talk to me than I could mix sunlight with shade. But there we were having a conversation, all because Jeremy hit the wrong button.

“Thanks for helping him out,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“Just being neighborly,” she said and started to stand up.

She was going to leave; I didn't want her to leave. “Let me show you my appreciation,” I said. “Maybe I could take you out to dinner or
something.” My words fell heavy to the ground as soon as they left my mouth.

Lila curled one of her hands into the other, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “That's okay.” Her geniality faded like a toy succumbing to a dead battery, her eyes no longer weightless, her dimples gone. It was as though my words cast a pall over her. “I should get going,” she said.

“You can't leave.”

She started for the door.

“I mean you shouldn't leave,” I said, sounding needier than I intended. “Duty requires that I return the good deed.” I moved toward the door, half blocking her path. “You should at least stay for lunch.”

“I have to get to class,” she said, skirting past me, her shoulder brushing lightly against my arm as she went by. Then she paused at the door, or at least I think she paused. Maybe she was reconsidering my invitation. Maybe she was toying with me. Or, maybe—probably—my imagination was playing a trick on me and she didn't pause at all. I, of course, chose to err on the side of recklessness and press on.

“Let me at least walk you home,” I said.

“It's eight feet away.”

“More like ten feet,” I said, following her into the hallway and closing my door behind me. I wasn't getting anywhere with my feeble banter, so I changed tactics and tried sincerity. “I really appreciate what you did for Jeremy,” I said. “He can be a bit…I don't know, childlike. You see he's…”

“Autistic?” she said. “Yeah, I know. I have a cousin on the spectrum. He's a lot like Jeremy.” Lila leaned against her door, her hand turning the knob.

“Why don't you join us both for dinner tonight,” I said, shredding any semblance of subtlety. “Just my way of saying thanks. I'm making spaghetti.”

She stepped inside her apartment and turned to meet my eyes, her face suddenly serious. “Listen Joe,” she said. “You seem like a nice guy and all, but I'm not looking for a dinner. Not right now. I'm not looking for anything right now. I just want to—”

“No. No, I understand.” I interrupted her. “I thought I'd ask. It's not for me. It's for Jeremy,” I lied. “He's not good at being away from home, and he seemed to like you.”

“Really?” Lila smiled. “You're gonna pimp your brother out like that just so you can cook me a meal?”

“Just being neighborly.” I smiled back.

She started to close the door but hesitated as she turned the idea over in her head a couple times. “Okay,” she said, “one dinner, that's all—for Jeremy.”