Just a few days before Thanksgiving, the fires of Ferguson, Missouri, arose for a second time. A grand jury empaneled to decide the fate of Darren Wilson, the police officer who had shot and killed Michael Brown, reached its decision not to indict. Even prior to the county prosecutor’s announcement of the grand jury’s decision, protesters had been chanting No peace no justice before a phalanx of heavily armed police officers in downtown Ferguson. As news of the verdict spread, bottles and rocks sailed through the air. More violent agitators set police cars on fire and smashed store windows in a grim reprise of the August rioting in response to the teenager’s body left in the middle of Canfield Drive for four hours. Shots echoed through nearby streets. On rooftops, self-proclaimed Oath Keepers, dressed in paramilitary attire and carrying long guns, kept watch as they had done since regular protests began. Ferguson’s mayor pleaded on the phone with the governor for the National Guard, while protestors shut down Interstate 44 in the St. Louis city limits near the site of a more recent police killing of a Black man. In major cities throughout the Republic peaceful protesters assembled in solidarity while agitators skulked. President Barack Obama appeared on television later that evening to call for “care and restraint” from law enforcement.

Sometime overnight, away from the concentrated clamor and chaos on the city’s main street, Ferguson resident DeJuan Dellwood was shot in the head. His body was dumped inside a car that was subsequently set on fire—far from the fires in the streets of the infamous suburb where he lived. Early the next morning, a Tuesday, his charred remains were discovered in the Columbia Bottom by a Ferguson woman there to walk her dog and try to clear her head from the events of the night before.

***

On Friday of that week, just a few blocks from the site of protesters’ confrontation with police, Serene and her crew of fellow activists met at a pub on Ferguson’s main strip. The words “SEASON’S GREETINGS,” shaped in garland and tiny lights, stretched across the street. The tear gas and smoke that had engulfed that festive message had blown away days before. The debris beneath it had been gathered and dumped, and the gaps in neighboring storefront glass had been boarded up. In bright sunshine, volunteers were already painting messages of peace and racial harmony atop the plywood. Serene and her companions, after their respective tense, dispiriting Thanksgiving gatherings, were meeting the next day to strategize, but the talk had bogged down in the circumstances of Dellwood’s gruesome death. Their drinks sat on the table, half drunk.

Serene was Black, while two of her companions were white allies from more affluent parts of St. Louis County, and the third, of mixed race, the daughter of a long-term St. Louis City alderman, had gone to the same high school as the white women through the voluntary desegregation program. The three were all abuzz about the killing, their emotions bubbling on the verge of spilling over into the foaming ardor that only true crime can incite. Serene hesitated to mention any connection to DeJuan Dellwood, instead nodding and humming her concern as her companions suggested a police cover-up of his death. She was not so sure Dellwood had done anything to attract police attention in the way they suspected—as some prime mover of protest who needed to be eliminated. Serene knew him from around well enough to understand he was not someone to rise—or perhaps sink—to the level of extra-judicial execution by cop. She was unsettled by the glib way her acquaintances tossed around theories. It did not occur to them that he might have been taken out by gangster rivals. She decided to keep to herself the fact of at least two other deaths carried out in a similar manner that year—well before Mike Brown had even been killed. Her information would only fuel their conspiratorial tendencies despite the kinks in the timeline. And she wasn’t sure that she could disclose to them that she was the one who had found Dellwood’s body.

Just that Monday, the night of the verdict, Serene had returned after midnight to the apartment she shared with her grandmother and younger brother. After she quietly closed and locked the front door, her Pomeranian came trotting up to her. She could tell by its posture and the guttural tones brewing in its throat that it was about to bark, so she gently held its muzzle while she petted and shushed it. Her family members were both asleep on the couch in the front room, the glowing flicker from the TV illuminating their forms. Her grandmother sat snug under an afghan with her head back, mouth slightly open, her glasses resting on the tip of her nose. A more complete image of a grandmother couldn’t be found, and Serene felt a simultaneous softening and tightening in her chest. Her younger brother, just nine years old, lay against his grandmother in the contorted position of rest that only the young can achieve comfortably. Serene placed her coat over him, then turned away to shut off the TV.

At some earlier point her grandmother must have muted the volume and then fallen asleep. Not wanting to disturb her, Serene left the remote where it rested under her hand. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was reporting, registering concern and fatigue on his leonine face, the crawl underneath him announcing atrocities in other parts of the world. The closed captioning was on, as usual for Serene’s hearing-impaired grandmother. Serene watched the butchered transcription appear and disappear in little black bars. Blitzer was talking with a correspondent who was reporting from a street in Ferguson. Serene recognized the chop suey restaurant in the strip mall behind him. The intense light of the camera caused his breath to appear as little geysers that the wind twisted away over his shoulder. She felt along the edge of the TV and, finding the power button, turned it off. She couldn’t wait to collapse into sleep.

After brushing her teeth and urinating, Serene lay on the twin bed in her little room and willed sleep upon herself. She didn’t want to process what she had seen that night nor towards what end these fresh disappointments and angers in her community might accumulate. She just wanted unconsciousness to take her down.

Twenty minutes later, frustrated and mumbling, she got out of bed and opened the top drawer of her dresser. Underneath rolled socks, she found her dugout, a one-hitter, and a lighter. She had been too exhausted to contemplate smoking previously, but now she craved the dank, velvet river of smoldering weed that would reach every capillary in her lungs and suffuse her body with a warm, tranquil high. She smoked a couple of overpacked hits, trying not to cough and possibly awaken anyone. Returning to her bed, she lay back and looked up at the textured ceiling. The streetlight outside caused the venetian blinds to glow, imparting a lunar quality to the ceiling’s bumpy terrain. Serene studied the contours until she felt her eyes growing heavy. She was briefly startled into alertness by her Pomeranian jumping onto the bed with her, and then sleep sealed her up.

Serene awoke to a change in the room’s light a few hours later. One hand fumbled around in the covers until she found her phone. Only 6:43. She rolled on her side, away from the window, and shut her eyes again. Her Pomeranian yipped, practically in her ear. Reluctantly, Serene reopened her eyes. The dog, Matilda, looked up at her expectantly. Likely the dog had not relieved herself since well before Serene’s brother and grandmother fell asleep on the couch. Serene swore, flung back the covers, and planted her feet onto the low-pile carpet. She still had one sock on somehow.

She pushed down on one of the blinds’ slats and looked outside at the parking lot, quiet in the early light. The empty spaces showed deep cracks in the asphalt, which was blanched in spots and buckled in wavy patterns. Someone had parked right in front of the overfull trash dumpster despite numerous signs warning against blocking it. Someone else had missed the edge of their parking space and gone half a car-length into the grass where Serene normally let Matilda do her business. She turned her back on the depressing scene. If only Mat could wait, if she could just grab another hour of rest. And then flash-bulb images imprinted upon her mind’s eye from the previous night flared again: cars on fire, people running, shadowy figures throwing objects towards police, and so much smoke hovering in the chill, damp air. Her ears rang from the hours of chanting and shouting, the intermittent bangs of tear gas guns and windows shattering. Despite her heavy feeling of sleeplessness, she knew of only one place to go where she could clear her mind.

After dressing, Serene stepped carefully down the short hallway and into the front room. At some point in the wee hours her grandmother had woken up and gotten her brother to bed. Or maybe he woke up first and helped her. He was at the age when he was beginning to understand how reciprocity worked in a family. Serene saw the afghan folded neatly on the couch and her own coat hanging up in the small entryway. It would be easier to let them sleep and just leave a note. She couldn’t imagine mustering the energy to give her grandmother the rundown on the night even though she had texted her hourly updates to assure her that she was safe.

In the kitchen, Serene grabbed a cherry Pop Tart and a Powerade. The dry erase board attached to the refrigerator displayed some outdated grocery items written on it. Serene cleared those words off with her index finger and wrote a note to her grandmother, alerting her to where she was going and when she expected to be back. When she capped the marker and looked down, Matilda was at her feet, giving her the look that precipitated a barking spell. Serene had a small window to get the dog leashed up and out before her yaps would wake the rest of the family.

Behind the apartment complex, Matilda walked right up to the bumper of the car that had overzealously parked in her territory, squatted down beneath it, and emptied her little bladder. She turned and kicked her hind paws, bits of dead grass and a cigarette butt striking the car’s underside. Her mission completed, she looked up at Serene as though for further instructions. Serene smiled and scooped her up. Her Honda Fit was just a few spaces down.

She drove to West Florissant Avenue, then took it north. Up ahead she saw the community college, where she took occasional classes, and felt a pang as she remembered how disappointed her grandmother was that she hadn’t returned that fall. Besides working at a nail salon, she had devoted nearly the rest of her waking time to activism following the death of Mike Brown. She tamped the anxious feeling down and ascended the on-ramp to I-270.

Serene mixed in with commuters and some reckless drivers speeding and weaving even at that early hour. The morning sun was low, rising in the northeast due to the lateness of the season. The highway briefly edged the suburb of Black Jack before entering Spanish Lake. Serene took the exit at Riverview Boulevard, just north of the water treatment plant. The area always depressed her. Truck depots, heavy industry, and rundown corner taverns packed the river side, while across the street, dilapidated, tightly-clustered houses clung to the base of a steep slope that ran up to I-70. Locals referred to that stretch of the interstate as it reached downtown the “depressed section”—not because of its appearance, but because it sank down below grade before entering the downtown area and severing it from the riverfront. But it was certainly depressing.

Serene followed Riverview Drive northward. Unlike most area street names, which tended towards the ridiculous (“Villa Capri,” “Stag’s Leap,” “Balmoral Estates”), Riverview possessed an actual river view. It followed the Mississippi for a time before unexpectedly trading the light industrial for the agricultural and veering off course from the river. The fields alongside the road were fallow this time of year, their tawny stubble suiting occasional collapsed barns and weathered outbuildings from a former time.

Serene turned to enter Columbia Bottom. For a moment she entertained the image of her grandmother in her house coat, tut-tutting as she read the note left on the dry erase board. Granny didn’t like her going there, or didn’t quite understand it, even though Serene had often gone fishing in the Bottoms with her grandfather as a child.

The paved road soon split before a huge, flat plain of mottled crop remnants. Flooding had enriched the area forever, and despite the levee, seasonal floods encouraged along by pump for conservation reasons still admitted some water. Farmers who won bids to grow crops there contracted to leave a certain amount of wheat or corn or soy behind for wildlife. A sign apprised her that duck hunting was due to begin that coming weekend. But as it was a Tuesday, Serene saw no cars in the visitors’ center parking lot. She took the right fork onto a gravel road.

“ALL POOLS THIS WAY” read another sign, a wooden one painted brown with letters carved in yellow—typical Conservation Department design. She felt comforted by it, though she had never seen any of the pools it indicated; she guessed they were associated with duck hunting and were probably just shallow ponds. The first time she had taken Matilda to walk in the Bottoms, almost every trailhead sign proclaimed that only those with hunting licenses were permitted any further. Now she knew the area well enough to be able to walk where the vast quietness could absorb her without fear of some authority shaking her down.

Dust rose up ahead, and the headlights of a pickup truck emerged from it. Serene flicked her eyes over to the other driver as they drew closer to each other. It was a white man wearing a seed cap and big glasses and sporting a handle bar mustache. He gave her the country wave of one index finger lifted off his steering wheel and, registering it too late, she waved like an idiot right as they passed. She watched the truck in her rearview. Gravel dust settled atop the broken plant stems on both shoulders. How suddenly she had entered the country.

Up ahead was an old windbreak of trees Serene had dubbed Blackbird Row. She didn’t know if the birds that roosted there were actual blackbirds; she just liked the fairy tale notion of them. Whenever she slowed her car, hoping to stop and listen to their chatter, they would inevitably fly off, coordinating their flight by some magic act as they gyrated away across the fields. If the light were right, whole swaths of the swarm would seem to disappear as she watched them edge on. There were no birds there today.

The gravel road began to turn north again. A muddy spur departed from it on the right to go over a short but steep earthen levee. The spur terminated not long after in an improvised parking area at the head of one of the few public use trails. Serene didn’t think anyone would be there today, and that was her ultimate destination, but first she wanted to complete the long, circuitous tour of the Bottoms. The peaceful desolation of the terrain was beginning to work on her. After she orbited scores of acres of yet more fallow fields, the gravel road became paved again for some unknown reason. Serene followed it to its terminus above the concrete boat ramp that gave access to the final stretch of the Missouri River.

At the top of the ramp, not far from which was the fishing pier she had visited with her grandfather, she parked her Fit. Again, no other cars were around. Matilda sprang instantly into Serene’s lap, practically hopping up and down in the small space. Serene unbuckled her seat belt, cooed at Mat, and clutched the dog to herself as she opened her car door. After she set her down, they descended the ramp.

The river here was dark brown, deep, and silent, as though it absorbed both light and sound. Then the quiet was slowly interrupted by the suggestion of a distant buzzing motor. Serene looked both ways along the river. As the sound grew, she saw nothing. But when she looked up, she spied a single-engine plane following the course of the river, high above the tree line on the northern bank. Instead of wheels, it had large pontoons, such as a catamaran might have. Then the plane plummeted, heading towards the water. Serene felt her heart speed up. Was she going to witness a crash? Oh my God, what would she do if so? Her terror increased as the plane fell lower and lower. Then its nose rose as it approached the surface of the water before landing with a little splash. It remained upright and intact. She realized it was a seaplane.

The plane floated along for a few moments, the prop still spinning. She heard it throttle up and, less than a minute later, it rose again above the river. The plane leveled off further downstream before descending for another water landing just before the river’s final bend. Then, it floated out of view.

That was weird. Serene had only seen seaplanes in movies and TV shows, and always in some exotic place like the Florida Keys or the Caribbean. Was that even legal? Matilda yapped at the interruption of their walk, so she continued on to the bottom of the boat ramp. The dog took a few sips of the river water, then backed away as some of it lapped her paws. She looked up at Serene. Serene was gazing at the concrete fishing pier, which had seen better days. A couple of its stout metal railings were misshapen as though something large had collided with them. She noted tangles of driftwood and debris collected around the footings. She said a quiet hello to her Pops.

“Okay, let’s go back.”

They returned to the car, Serene thinking about the plane.

She drove back along the paved road, followed it as it turned to gravel, and then took the steep spur over the levee towards the little parking area at the trailhead. She could see a black car parked up ahead, partially obscured by some low shrubbery. Damn. She was really hoping to have the place to herself. She was glad she had Matilda with her—not so much for protection but to mollify any white couple, especially an older one, she might encounter. The women in particular would unpurse their lips and exclaim with exaggerated delight at the Pomeranian, their husbands smiling uncertainly while Serene gave out Matilda’s name, age, and breed—the comforting shibboleth for any encounter with a stranger who might wonder what she was doing there.

Serene decided to park alongside the road on the grassy shoulder some ways above the parked car. It felt rude to park right on top of it. From past experience, she intuited she was not the only person who liked to come to the Bottoms without others in their business. Matilda leaped into her lap again, delighted to extend their outing. They exited the car.

As they descended the incline, the black car appeared from behind its screen of shrubbery. Serene froze. The car was not painted black but was instead scorched all over but for its windows, which were blown out. Even the taillights had shattered. The tires were flat and melted. Derelict, even burned cars were not uncommon in her experience. They dotted I-70 on the shoulders and were later stacked in the many salvage yards that lined the interstate’s outer roads. But she had come here to escape such images. And no one would deposit a burned car so far away as this unless it was deliberate.

Serene pulled out her phone and began recording.

“Okay, this is Serene, y’all. I’m here in the Columbia Bottoms, and look, here’s this straight-up burned-out car, like, completely destroyed. Look at the tires even. I’m gonna get a closer look.”

She took a few more steps forward.

“I don’t know if this is, like, a crime scene or what, so I’m not gonna get too close.”

The smell of burnt rubber and other incinerated compounds reached her nose.

“Damn, it sure smell, y’all. I’m definitely keeping back.” She waited a beat. “Well, maybe just a little closer.”

Matilda pulled on the leash, no doubt the stench affecting her delicate nostrils.

“It’s okay, girl, just a little farther. Here, I’m gonna zoom in a bit.”

Serene switched the phone to her other hand, letting the loop of Matilda’s leash drop around her wrist. She zoomed in.

“Okay, here’s a good look at it. Check it out. Completely burned out. I’m surprised it didn’t set any of this grass on fire.”

The light breeze shifted, bringing a more intense smell to her.

“Wow, I think this thing’s still hot. For real. The breeze just changed and I could feel some heat. It do smell, though.”

Serene zoomed in as much as she could so that the front seat of the car filled the frame.

“I don’t see anybody, so that’s good.” She gave a nervous laugh.

She panned to the back seat.

“Oh my God.”

Despite herself, Serene took a couple steps closer.

“There’s something in there.”

A lumpy form lay across the back seat. From her vantage point, she could just see part of it. Like the rest of the car, the form was charred.

“Okay, guys, I’m going just a little bit further. Um, wish me luck.”

A superfluous comment, for she was merely recording, not live-streaming.

As Serene got to within fifteen feet of the car, she could see that some of the nearby dry grass had caught fire. Evidently, the saturated ground had stopped the spread of flames. Serene saw fresh footprints next to a puddle.

“I’m not gonna lie, this is a little scary.”

Serene looked closely at the zoomed-in image on her phone.

“Hold on, there’s something kinda white in there.”

Serene tapped the screen to sharpen the focus on the white stroke near one side of the blackened form.

The camera jumped in her hand.

“Oh, my God, it’s a hand! It’s a freakin’ skeleton! It’s someone’s finger bones!”

Serene turned and ran back up the incline towards her car. She practically dragged Matilda behind her, the little dog’s legs too short to match her speed. Serene stooped down to grab hold of Mat and kept running. Her phone recorded the harried images of sky and ground, the impact of her feet striking wet earth and gravel, the sound of her car door opening and slamming shut. Then Serene ended the recording on an accidental close-up view of her steering wheel.

She backed up over the berm without thinking about what might be on the other side, skidded into a turn onto the gravel road, and tore off in the direction of the Bottoms’ entrance. She had never driven so fast over gravel, and she nearly slid off the road on the first turn. As she passed Blackbird Row, the birds that had gathered there since she had first passed flew off in a hurry of squawks and wing flutter. Her front wheels kicked gravel as they sought purchase on the paved road at speed. When she reached the front entrance, she slammed the brakes right on the white line next to the stop sign. Columbia Bottom Road was empty in both directions. Stillness reigned. The overcast sky had consumed the sun.

Serene became aware that Mat was barking at her in distress. She reached over to pet the Pomeranian, and the dog leaped into her lap and began licking her chin. Serene felt anger inflame her face. She felt ripped off by her simple attempt to find a moment’s peace. She felt like crying.

Her phone was tucked under one thigh. She attempted to send the video she had just taken to her squad, but she had only one bar. The upload line stalled after the first increment. She was breathing heavily, unable and unwilling to calm herself down. She swiped to quit the message app and glared through the window. The stillness and absence of traffic was total. But for the car running and Matilda making low whimpers at her, there was no sound. Serene longed to be transported back to her apartment, to her grandmother’s arms and Oh, baby.

She knew what she had to do, but she didn’t want to do it. She was loath to even consider it. In fact, she had never done it in her life, but she felt an absolute necessity to do it now.

Serene took a deep breath and called the police.