11.1 Finding body

The first time I saw Celeste, I was walking the dog. In fact, it was Lizzie who discovered her body.
Lizzie and I went jogging along the Mystic a few mornings a week. We had the routine down. We’d jog along the river to the Wellington subway stop, sometimes grab a Krispie Kreme or two, and always their dark coffee, and take the subway back home.
Lizzie was one of those dogs that were oblivious to everything except what she was focusing on. A friend of mine has a Black Lab named Ranger, and when you jog with him, most of your attention is focused on keeping Ranger away from the other joggers, keeping him moving and not sniffing each and every tree along the way, and, when jogging by the river, keeping him out of the water. Lizzie, on the other hand, wouldn’t notice a thing unless it interrupted her pace or mine.
So, it was unusual when she veered off the muddy jogging path, that morning. Unusual enough that instead of tugging her leash to get her back on the path and running, I followed her cautiously in the rocky underbrush between the jogging trail and the slope that led up to the Revere Beach Parkway. Cautiously because even though the area had been cleaned up a lot in the last few years, I still jogged with pepper spray, and the woods nearby was a known haven for the local high school and college kids looking to get drunk or high.
I looked around, very wary, and then slowly walked into the underbrush, where Lizzie was sniffing at something behind a large boulder. “Oh shit,” I thought when I first saw her. She was slumped behind the boulder, head between her knees like she was trying to steady her head from some dizziness.
“I’m sorry – are you ok?” I said. Talk about uncomfortable. I tried to pull Lizzie away, but she was straining at the leash enough that I couldn’t keep her away and still try to help the poor girl on the ground.
“Lizzie – sit,” I barked. Lizzie hadn’t acted like this since she was a puppy. Normally she was well-trained to the extreme. Lizzie sat, but still leaned toward us, panting excitedly.
“Are you all right?” I asked. Even with Lizzie’s attentions, the girl on the ground didn’t move at all. I crouched down, and slightly shook the girl. She toppled over onto her side.
“Oh shit,” I said aloud, this time. Lizzie pulled the leash out of my hands, and continued to sniff at the girl’s body, licking her face and hands as if trying to wake her up.
I reached for the girl’s wrist, hoping to find a pulse. Maybe she was just really drunk and passed out. Maybe she was in a coma from an overdose. Or, as I realized when I discovered the slit wrists, maybe she was dead.
I fumbled for a minute in the pockets of my jogging shorts, looking for my cell phone. Finally, not finding it, I started screaming. “Help! Help! Somebody call nine one one!”
In the distance, I heard some guy yell, “Shut the fuck up, lady! It’s seven fucking o’clock in the goddamn morning.”
I kept screaming, and eventually I heard sirens in the distance. It wouldn’t have really surprised me if someone had just called to shut me up.
“My dog – her name is Lizzie – she found her. And she was just sitting there, with her head between her legs. The girl, I mean, not Lizzie. Lizzie was sniffing at her, and she didn’t react at all, but I thought she was passed out or in an OD coma. I patted her shoulder to try and wake her up, and she fell over, and that’s when I realized she was dead,” I told the EMT who was staffing the ambulance at the scene. And then one police officer. And then another. And then a third.
Eventually, they stopped asking me questions, and just let me sit there while they investigated the scene, taped it off, and all that stuff that you see on CSI that you don’t think they really do. Finally one of the officers realized that I was still there and asked me if I wanted a ride home.
“No, I can walk,” I said. I was still a little shaken, and wanted some time to calm down. “Who was she, though? Do you know?”