things to do in Denver when you're dead

This is an absolutely true story. I have delayed writing about it for a week because I was so freaked out by the whole thing. Everything else in this blog is going to be about a dead body and I don't want to get the usual "you ruined my lunch" emails. If dead bodies freak you out, stopreading here. I'm serious.

Still reading? Okay then.

Last Tuesday I was heading to work, as usual, rolling out of my alley around 830 am to avoid traffic on I-25. I will pause here to mention this is your final warning. I pulled to the end of my alley, which backs up to a tall wooden fence that runs along the alley and turns perpendicularly down 28th street, which is the street where the alley empties. As I pulled up to 28th street, right past where the fence turns at a 90 degree angle, I looked both left and right as I always do before I pull out onto the street. Then I looked left again because there was a man laying propped up against a shopping cart that was full of one large black grocery bag, two smaller silver bags, some Target shopping bags,and a jacket. The shopping cart was blue and was from the local Safeway.His head was at a weird angle against the fence, with his back propped up against the bottom metal part of the cart, and at first I thought he was staring at me. Then I realized he was dead. As I was processing that two people walked by this guy and didn't even notice him.

I backed my car up, pulled into my garage, and tried to think of what to do. I decided to walk to the end of the alley and look at him a little closer. After looking at him from about 10 feet away it was pretty easy to confirm that he was dead. I went into my garage and called 911. I was told to call a number for the local cop shop (apparently in Denver dead bodies don't rate as an emergency worthy of the 911 operator). I called the cop shop (located, I would like to point out, about 8 blocks from my house). The woman who answered the phone didn't even take a report at first, and then she kept asking me if I was sure he was dead, as if a very sick or passed out guy on the sidewalk was okay. When I started pushing back that it was (at this point) 9 in the morning and there was a dead body laying on the sidewalk 3 blocks from an elementary school the woman I talked to agreed to dispatch a cop.

The strange thing about dead bodies is that you can't help but look at them. I sat in my house for 10 minutes waiting for a cop. Then I started worrying he might be at the body so I went out to the fence again. The guy was covered in vomit (later I was told he probably died of a drug overdose). He was a Hispanic guy, obviously homeless (thus the shopping cart), but I couldn't figure out why he died where he did. There are so many other good areas of the city to pass into oblivion, or where ever you think your religious choice is going to direct you. And it kind of freaked me out that his eyes were open, as well as his mouth, and he looked like he was about to say something stupid, like "nice ass senorita".

For 45 minutes I did a circuit between the body and my living room because I had a compulsive need to keep looking at the guy, I guess the same way people look at dead animals on the side of the road. Finally my doorbell rang, and I opened the door to find a cop. On a bicycle. As I was processing his poor choice of vehicles he said "Okay, so where's the body?" I thought it was quite obvious where the body was, and further had told the dispatcher where it was. But I walked the cop over to the guy, listening to the annoying clicking of his gears.

The cop stood there looking at the body for what seemed like five minutes. "So" I asked the cop, hoping to nudge him into activity. "Are you going to dispatch an ambulance or something?" I figured he would not be able to prop the guy up on his bike rack in order to get him to a morgue but for some reason the image of the cop riding around on his bike with the body seemed very funny. I looked down at the sidewalk and tried not to giggle or do anything that would make me seem crazy.
"Wellllll, we're REALLY busy right now." The cop looked bored. It was a bit hard to believe that on a beautiful Tuesday morning (at this point almost 930) Denver's finest had so many things going on that they couldn't cruise by and pick up this poor dead person.

"So how long is he going to, um, stay here?" I asked, as if he had a hotel reservation that had been over extended. The cop turned his back to me and started talking into this little radio thing he had on his shoulder. He walked down the sidewalk away from us, as if worried we might overhear something important, even though one of us was dead and wouldn't be hearing anything, at least in the traditional sense, ever again. It was dawning on me that there might be a reason why no one else had called the cops.

In the end I went to work, Mr. Law Enforcement gone, the body still laying against the fence. The cop hadn't even covered him up with anything. When I got home that afternoon, the body was gone but the cart and bags were still there against the fence. I called the police back again and asked them to come get the guy's things. Then I went climbing and by the time I got home from that the bags were gone but the cart was still there. The cart was finally gone by the next morning. It's possible the guy's things were removed by some other homeless person, I don't know. It seems strange that they would take the guy's body but leave potential evidence as to why he died laying around the neighborhood, but this is also the same police force that almost shot me one night when I was walking down my street.

This morning, almost a week later, I got a call from a cop asking if I had anything more to add about the dead guy. I said I didn't and asked if he had anything to add. He told me he couldn't discuss the case, as if it were the Jon Benet murder case or something. Frankly, I'm shocked I got a call at all.

In any case, the lesson learned is don't die in the city...