DEATH IN A PARKING LOT: THE LEAST CINEMATIC WAY TO GO

There are ways you expect to die. You could get taken out by an inattentive Amazon van driver while you’re trying to cross the street with an iced coffee in one hand and an overpriced oat-milk croissant in the other. You could keel over from a heart attack because you refuse to acknowledge the sodium content of an entire block of Tillamook sharp cheddar. You could even, if you’re the sort who enjoys making poor decisions, find yourself on the business end of an unlicensed firearm after arguing with a guy named Chad at a Buffalo Wild Wings.

But dying in a Keizer, Oregon parking lot? That’s bleak.

And yet, that’s where Keizer police found a body Sunday morning. Just there. In a parking lot. No Hollywood dramatics. No thrilling final words. Just an end, parked like an abandoned shopping cart someone was too lazy to roll back to the corral.

Police are calling it “suspicious.” Which is a funny way to put it, because of course it’s suspicious. It’s suspicious in the way that a man wearing Crocs to a business meeting is suspicious. In the way that your significant other “just forgot” to mention an ex moved in down the hall. In the way that all deaths in parking lots inherently are.

It happened in the wee hours of the morning, the sort of time when nothing good ever happens unless you’re drunk at a Denny’s. The police responded, as police do, and cordoned off the scene, which I can only assume means someone had to explain to an irritated local that no, they could not get to their Chevy Malibu right now because of the whole dead body thing.

The Keizer Police Department, known for their steadfast ability to look perplexed in front of local news cameras, are working with the Oregon State Police Crime Lab, which is fancy talk for: “We have no idea what happened yet, but we’re going to pretend we do.”

Now, in the grand hierarchy of things that could kill you, “dying in a Keizer parking lot” ranks somewhere between “choking on a Popeyes biscuit with no drink” and “being crushed by a falling vending machine.” It is not a glamorous death. It will not be mythologized. No one’s going to write folk songs about it. But it is an Oregon death, and that alone adds a level of moist, overcast intrigue that you simply do not get in, say, Phoenix.

For now, the investigation continues, and the people of Keizer will return to their daily lives, hoping the next piece of local drama is at least something slightly less unsettling. A rogue alpaca on the loose. A dispute at a Home Depot over the last Weber grill. Something that doesn’t involve a corpse and a crime scene.

Because, if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s this: You never want to be the reason an Albertsons parking lot makes the news.