Chasing The Dead (John Standard Book 1)

Book summary

In "Chasing The Dead," John Standard, a freelance writer, embarks on a quest to uncover the truth about Allison Shafer's fate. He initially believed he had chronicled her tragic end due to cancer and physician-assisted suicide. However, doubts emerge as her gangster boyfriend suspects a hoax. This gripping journey spans continents as Standard races to determine whether Allison is truly alive or dead, with his own life hanging in the balance.

Excerpt from Chasing The Dead (John Standard Book 1)

John. The world’s most common name. John Smith. John Doe.

John Q. Public. Dear John. Juan in Mexico and Spain. Ian in Great Britain. Giovanni in Italy. The name of four American presidents and twenty-three popes if you include the two John Pauls. The name whores give their clients and homeowners give their bathrooms.

Standard. As in basic, normal, typical. The name of newspapers in Great Britain, Zimbabwe, and Montana. Standard time. Standard fare. A word that inspires neither greatness nor pity—only shallow feelings of something ordinary.

That would be him, he thought. John Standard.

Or at least the old him.

Just a guy trying to knock out a living, writing declarative sentences with enough facts, figures, and quotes to satisfy low-paid editors at obscure websites and interest readers who confuse opinions with facts. Someone who used to get up in the morning to have coffee with his wife and drive into the city to a designated parking spot out of the rain. On weekends, it was a barbecue with the neighbors or season tickets to Trail Blazers basketball or University of Oregon football (Go Ducks).

Then it all changed.

No, change is too easy a word. More like meltdown, disintegration, total self-destruction, the lifestyle equivalent of genetic realignment. A descent to the bottom in the fraction of the time it took to get to the top.

Standard’s job at a Portland, Oregon, daily newspaper was gone along with his wife, the Blazers and Duck tickets (Gone Ducks), and the house. That left him in a three-room apartment, with a view of an air shaft and on a first name basis with mice, centipedes, and sugar ants. His new best friend was a former circus midget turned website designer. His girlfriend was a receptionist who once did lap dances in a strip club on SE Foster Road. He wrote on a five-year-old laptop by the light of a 65-watt bulb, and cruised Costco for lunches of free samples of freeze-dried burritos served by women wearing hairnets.

As bad as it sounded, Standard had persisted in pounding out a life that had achieved a certain comfortable rhythm and simplicity to it. A few bucks here and there from a wire service in need of a stringer, a magazine looking for a fanciful freelance travel piece, a website looking for fake news, or a company wanting to use editorial pages to defend itself against allegations of rat turds in its all-natural granola.

And then she showed up.

Just thinking about it made the whole thing sound like something a drunk would mutter to a bartender at closing time. Some poor schmuck with a sad, trite tale about a woman who screws up his life so bad he feels compelled to seek solace from an uncaring barkeep in a cross-town bar that catered to pathetic losers.

It sounded that way because it was true.

It started on a January day when the outside temperature hovered near freezing, turning the incessant winter rain into anemic flurries of sparse snowflakes that disappeared against the window. For Oregonians who didn’t ski or fish for steelhead, it was a day to hunker down and wait out the last two months of soggy winter, all the time hoping the rivers didn’t flood.

Standard had wasted half a day struggling to turn a rainy weekend in a yurt in a state park into an airline magazine article that would appeal to passengers on a flight to Hawaii. Fortunately, the building’s furnace seemed to be having a better day, which meant the temperature in the apartment hovered around seventy degrees instead of the usual fifty. There was no in-between.

He greeted the knock on the door with dread, expecting anything from a process server to a Jehovah’s Witness. Not even close.

She was a stunning blonde with a small but mesmerizing gap between her front teeth, an intriguing flaw that added to her beauty and mystery. Revealed with a tight smile, the imperfection stood out in plain sight, proudly proclaiming: “This is what's wrong with me. What's wrong with you?”

Plenty, Standard thought, but he didn’t like sharing his life with strangers.

The tight smile disappeared and, just for a moment, it looked like she was going to apologize for bothering him. Instead, she remained rigid and elegant in her black cashmere coat, matching hat, and fur-lined boots. Standard got the impression that, if he touched her, she would either scream and run away or shatter into a million pieces.

Finally, she looked past him into the dingy apartment then glanced in both directions up and down the hallway. He held back the urge to reassure her that the cockroaches, homeless winos, and other vermin didn’t come out much during the day.

“Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

“I am, if you’re John Standard.”

She flashed frosty blue eyes. Sapphires on a white sand beach. She was tall, just half a head less than Standard’s six feet. He guessed her age at late twenties and her background as privileged. That meant Standard had ten years on her and might have once shared a similar lifestyle, probably in Dunthorpe, the West Hills, or maybe the same leafy southeast Portland neighborhood where he’d once lived.

A knit cap dotted with raindrops covered the tops of her ears. She pulled it off to reveal a jumble of shoulder-length hair made limp and unruly by the weather. When she shook her head, large hoop earrings winked from behind the wheat-colored strands. The cold outside had colored her cheeks a red made more vivid by her pale skin. Her face had a sallow look, like a fashion model with no back teeth and a weeklong case of the flu. Her thin lips were a faded pink. “Would you like to come in?” She didn’t move.

Standard made it a practice of never apologizing for the apartment’s condition. Most people didn’t understand the effort that went into finding tattered furniture, unframed movie posters, and threadbare rugs good enough to go with the dingy yellow wallpaper. Then there was always that difficult search for cement blocks and boards to make bookshelves. It wasn’t like Drexel Heritage carried this stuff.

“Perhaps you’d be more comfortable somewhere else. There’s a wine bar on the corner. You’ll have to buy.”

The offer hung in the air for a moment before the thin smile returned to provide another glimpse of the hypnotizing gap in her teeth. “No, this is fine.”

Standard took a step back. She walked in and glanced at the furniture, carefully assessing each tattered piece before settling onto the orange, crushed-velvet couch. Standard pulled a chair over from the desk. They sat facing each other, locked in an awkward silence. She glanced around the room some more, her eyes wandering over to the computer, the battered office chair, the cluttered desk, and the ancient portable television on top of the cheap veneer dresser. If she had a verdict on him or the surroundings, she kept it to herself.

She unbuttoned her coat but left it on. Underneath, was more black—a knit business suit that looked a size too big and hid her figure the way a sheet hides a chair in a closed-up house.

“I assume you’re here for a reason?” Standard said.

“I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude. My name is Allison Shafer, but I like to be called Allie.” Her voice had a hint of a long-neglected southern drawl. Something far southeast, he thought. Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia. She looked at him to make sure he’d signed on to the use of her desired nickname.

“As in McGraw?”

“No.” She spelled it slowly enough that Standard felt he should be taking notes. She settled back into the couch, apparently no longer afraid that it would bite back. The steam radiator in the corner let out a slow, patient hiss. “I’m going to do something, and I want you to help me with it.”

Standard stared at her. He didn’t get much walk-in business, and certainly not from someone who looked or dressed like Allie Shafer.

“And what would it be?” he asked.

She pulled off her leather gloves, one finger at a time, to reveal a diamond tennis bracelet and graceful fingers with no rings. Her nails were professionally manicured, not the kind done at home on Sunday night while watching 60 Minutes.

“Before I tell you, I need your absolute guarantee that, if you don't want to do what I ask, then you'll not tell anyone else that I was here or what we talked about.” She paused long enough to check for a reaction. Standard gave her nothing to check. “If you don't agree to that, then I'm afraid our business is concluded.”

Standard’s first inclination was the same as with all ultimatums he’d received in his life: thank her for stopping by and show her to the door. But he didn't. Maybe it was the possibility of making a buck. More likely it was Allie Shafer, herself, and that damn gap in her teeth that kept calling to him. Maybe it was just that she was beautiful.

“First, let's make it clear what I do. You did come here looking for a writer?”

“I'm in the right place, but you are a hard man to find. Have you considered a listing in the Yellow Pages? Facebook? Maybe a website? Twitter?” His answer was an icy stare. “I wanted to find you because I remember reading your articles when you worked for the newspaper, and I've seen your stories in that local tabloid, Inside Oregon I think it’s called. I need someone who can write with passion and clarity, someone who can make people understand complicated things. I think you’re that person.”

She was peeing on his leg. He couldn’t wait to find out why. “How did you find me?”

“I called the newspaper where you used to work. I got somebody who knows you. He told me where you were.”

“He?”

“I didn’t catch his name.”

“He probably didn’t give it to you. I’m not exactly remembered there with any great fondness.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” she said. “Anyway, I’m here.”

“And why would that be, exactly?”

“Do you agree to my conditions, to not say anything if you don’t want to do what I ask?”

“Does it pay?”

“I would think so, but that depends on you.”

“Okay then. Let’s hear it.”

“There’s one more thing we need to get straight first. I don't want my life turned into a circus, with lots of helicopters and television cameras or those anchor people with all that hairspray and false sincerity.”

She wrinkled her nose to register her disgust. The move was cute. It made Standard that much more eager to hear what she had to say and see what made her think it was worthy of all the press attention.

Time to play along.

“I know,” he said. “I hate that, too. Especially that hairspray thing.”

“I don't know what I'd do if word of this got out and reporters were hanging around outside my house. Do you know what that would be like, to have something personal become utterly public?” He nodded yes. “You do? Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

She shrugged and twisted her gloves. Her eyes took another lap around the apartment then stopped, apparently finding solace in the cheap The Maltese Falcon movie poster on the wall next to the desk. Standard waited, playing Humphrey Bogart to her Mary Astor.

“What I want are things done on my terms, so that the world will understand why people in my position do what they do. I think you'll respect that. At least I hope you will.”

“So, what are we talking about here?” he said, trying not to sound impatient.

“I'm going to kill myself, and I want you to write about it.”