by Marie Marini
I was so engrossed in my work that I didn’t realize Darren had stopped breathing. No matter really. Since he was dead, I decided to go ahead and have a look at the spinal cord all the way up in the neck, I didn’t remove the rest of the spine but just made some cuts to have a look at where the accident happened. I saw where my fabulous shoe had done the damage and it was amazing that one little size six high-heel could do that. There were a few nerves that looked to be intact and for a moment I considered that perhaps Darren could feel pain at times, maybe only in certain body parts. The body would decompose quickly, and I didn’t want that stink in the cabin, so I needed to get this done as quickly as possible.
I had some blue tarps in the back of my truck. Getting him off the table and onto the tarp wasn’t easy. Without a spine, he was just one big spaghetti noodle. He reminded me of the kid that got hit by the truck. At one point in the struggle his face touched his butt, that just grossed me out. I got him into the truck and headed for the Everglades. Darren was just a lump of meat. The gators would take him, bones and all, and leave nothing behind. Kind of like the lions and the Christians. I would have to be brave and wait until I knew the gators had taken him, though. As it turned out I had to bait the gators a little bit to get them interested. I could see two big old boys out there, but they were keeping their distance. I cut off his penis and testicles in one piece using the scalpel and threw them to the nearest gator. That did the trick. When I left, they had pulled him underwater and were thrashing around. Gators will grab the flesh and roll to tear it off. There was plenty of rolling going on, so I decided it was time for me to roll.
I cried the whole way home. It was like losing my Daddy all over again. There was heartbreak there but also relief.
God has a reason for everything. I had learned so much about spinal cord injuries and spinal anatomy. I was definitely going to go to nursing school.
I felt the moment I died. I felt the moment the tether to this body was severed and I was free. I saw my Dad. The man I never really knew and who never really knew me. I saw something die in his eyes when a stranger sat down in his house and told him that the Police in Florida had been in touch and they found ‘something.’ I saw him struggle to talk, to breathe and I saw the moment he realized he would be the one to tell my Mom and sister. I saw my Mom crumble to the ground like a marionette when she heard the news. They sedated her and put her to bed in a zombie state. My sister, Loren, was numb, going through the motions, not really taking anything in. I was finally free of my traitorous body. To be able to move on I had to let go of my emotional self.
I never said goodbye to my family when I left the house that day, so maybe it was my own fault that I wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye one last time. I was grateful for one thing; they would never know the details of my last few months.
It was Detective John Holbert’s first week of retirement. His wife Teresa had surprised him with a second-hand Airboat. John always wanted to Gator hunt; he was a redneck at heart. She had sorted out the permit for him and hooked him up with some semi-professionals to help. Gator season ends November first, so he only had a couple of weeks to go and was anxious to get out there. That’s how John ended up out on his first gator hunt when they found Darren, or what was left of him. I got the call to go out there at two a.m.
When I got there it was a mess. The Everglades is never an easy crime scene to work. At two in the morning with spotlights, ninety percent humidity and over eighty degrees it was brutal. Mosquitos were feasting on me. They had pulled him out of the water and had his remains on John’s airboat. John was looking a bit green, which was a BIG indicator that this was bad. The two semi-pro hunters Jack and Eamonn, sons of Irish immigrants and tough as nails were done throwing up and desperate to leave. They had been interviewed on scene and we had their contact information. When I arrived they had just been released. I approached the scene with trepidation. It looked like he had been in the water for between twenty-four and thirty-six hours. His arms and legs were gone and most of his lower torso. What was left of his organs were hanging out of the cavity that used to be his lower body. The face was so bloated and distorted from being in the water that he could have been a local, a homeless man, anyone. I had a sinking feeling that this was our missing money man.
Crime scene forensics and Pathology forensics work closely together to put the pieces together and get a good picture of what happened so that the detectives can then do their part. John had called his boss and asked that I be involved on this one. I was called to go in and talk to Assistant Chief of Police David Wong. By the end of a grueling interview, he agreed to let me be involved in the investigation but warned me not to get ahead of myself. I was told to run everything by the lead detective, Mike Garbanzo, and “don’t fuck it up.” Mike is a huge lunk of a stereotypical Italian. They call him the Bean, because of his name not his physique. I’d never worked with him before. He had the reputation for being easy to get along with but also that he would throw you under the bus in a heartbeat. I’d definitely get the blame if things went wrong. When I got a look at the body, the spine had been surgically removed. There were surgical incisions in the neck, too, but the vertebrae were still there. THAT was not a gator. We had to use dental records to identify Darren. We didn’t have any fingers for prints. I was glad I wasn’t the one who had to call Mr. Mayhew. The Chief did it since this was now such a high profile case. Mr. Mayhew wouldn’t be able to see his son for one last time.
I kept the trailer. I didn’t have the heart to sell it and I don’t think anyone would want to buy it anyway. Life went on. I grieved the loss of my love silently. No-one knew of my heartache. Just like when Daddy died.
I was alone with my grief but that was okay. Sometimes I would go to the trailer and talk out loud to Darren as if he was still there. I told Darren the rest of the story after Dad died and Sam showed up about a week later with three of his loser friends. I’m just going to write it all down here in this journal. The therapist says not to leave anything out but there is a lot I don’t remember. When I told Sam about Dad he laughed and yelled to his friends to go get some beer; we were celebrating. He dragged me into the living room by the hair. He was strong for someone so skinny. His wavy dark hair was long and greasy and fell over his eyes as he growled inches from my face, “finally bitch it’s my turn!” One guy had left to go get the beer.
I don’t remember all the details of what they did to me. They were drunk and high on something they were smoking in a glass pipe. Sam stripped me naked, I was fighting and scratching at him the whole time. He punched me in the head a few times until I stopped screaming. I screamed again when he penetrated my ass. It hurt real bad and it wasn’t right what he was doing. The beer guy came back but he never really joined in with the others. He just kind of held back. They took pictures with their cell phones. I remember wondering randomly where the hell Sam got a cell phone. I don’t remember much after that until I woke up in hospital. They told me that they had to take my uterus. I hate feeling stupid but they could see in my face I didn’t know what a uterus was so they explained that I would never be able to have kids. I didn’t care, I thought at the time that I would be a horrible mom anyway. The cops told me they think one of the guys freaked out and called 911. Three guys were seen running from the scene, but they never caught any of them. They did find a cell phone that one of them dropped and they were working on getting calls and photos from it. I was in the hospital for about a month and then put straight into a foster home.
It was weird living in a house instead of a trailer, wearing shoes every day, having my own bedroom. I kept waiting for them to send me back or for the husband to ask me to do stuff for him. Neither of those things happened.
Tricia said when I settled down there were times I would sleep for days. I guess looking back I had never felt safe, not once in my life until I had a bedroom of my own with a lock on it. Tricia was bossy and sassy and it was crazy to me th
at her husband Keith didn’t just smack her sometimes. When Tricia got sassy, he would just laugh. She didn’t even cook for him. So weird at first…but I liked it. She coached me and helped me study. I’m everything I am today thanks to her and my Daddy. I was never close to anyone else in the foster family, so after Tricia died I packed up and moved to Florida. I think I mentioned before Keith tried to keep in touch for a while. I just stopped taking his calls until he stopped calling.
We were studying advanced Anatomy and Physiology at nursing school. I already had a good basis from paramedic school but some other students were learning for the first time. I tried to be patient while they caught up. We learned about the layers of skin and their purpose and in lab, we looked at some slides where we could see the root of the hair and the cell structure. Since I was a firefighter, I wanted to see what those layers looked like after a burn. We were using pig skin and chicken skin. I wanted to see real human skin, but the professor assured us it was just the same. That pissed me off. No way was human skin the same as pig skin or chicken skin. That’s like saying people are the same as dirty animals. Sometimes professors talk like we’re stupid. I hate that.
I had a curious nature. I just like to see how things work for myself. We had the opportunity to spend the day in the Medical Examiners’ office once every semester and potentially observe an autopsy. I was hoping they would allow me to do a little more than observe. There were four Medical Examiners for Palm Beach County at the time. Only one of them was a woman, Ms. J.C. Crawley. She had won awards and written books. She was someone I could admire. J.C. knew how hard it was to be a woman in a male-dominated industry. She was super smart, independent and had worked harder than any man to get that job. Just like me.
The family didn’t want a service in Florida, they just wanted Darren cremated and they would grieve him at home. Chief Wong talked to Mr. Mayhew, tried to have him reconsider. It was a well-known fact that killers often attended the funeral of the victim. Eventually, they conceded that they would have a small gathering at the chapel in the Boca Raton Resort where they were staying. We quickly arranged for details to be posted in local newspapers and online obituaries. I called in a favor with a friend at News Channel 5, Jen Davis had been in my class in middle school. We had stayed in touch all those years. She said she would squeeze in a blurb on the local TV station. It was a long shot, but we had no leads, no information. The autopsy revealed that he was dead before he hit the water, but not before his spinal vertebrae were surgically removed. There were a couple of large gators near the body. They were captured and euthanized. From the remains in the stomachs of the gators, pathology was trying to piece Darren back together before releasing him to the morgue. The part that really got to me was that it appeared the genitals were removed and fed to the gators separately from the rest of the body. They were cut from the body with a sharp object in one piece, testicles and penis. Other pieces of flesh had tooth marks and tearing consistent with the thrashing of a gator. The genitals were swallowed whole.
The story was beyond horrific. We were trying to keep the details from the media at least until the family could be flown back to Seattle and away from this circus. There were some tire tracks near the find, a large SUV. The tires were custom for a Honda Pilot. There are thousands in Florida. I could only hope we would catch a break at the service.
It was a Thursday night at the end of October, not quite Halloween but the horror wasn’t lost on anyone. Still hot as hell and humid. I was hanging at the back of the chapel with John. Even after retirement, he was looking out for me. He was one of the best and I was grateful that he was here to help. His eyes might see something I would miss. The Bean was dismissive at best. He considered this whole case a waste of time, no way were we going to catch the killer. In his opinion, this was all a political show for the family and he would play the game and bury the case as soon as they left. He walked around the lobby not even trying to conceal his badge and weapon. He left with the family, escorting them to their rooms as soon as the service was over.
The Boca Raton Resort and Club is a huge sprawling metropolis of a complex centered around a 27-story tower painted pink. It was opened in 1926 as the Cloister Inn and at the time of the funeral was owned by Waldorf Astoria. The chapel was poetically positioned in a portion of the complex called the cloisters. It was as ritzy as it sounds and more. Multi-million-dollar yachts docked at the Marina behind the main building. Within the understated chapel, there was a simple cross with a white cloth draped over it.. A large picture of Darren demanded your attention to the right of the cross. He looked cold but happy as he smiled from the deck of a small sailboat.
Mom was pale and hunched over, the weight of the loss apparent in her posture. Dad stood shoulders back, proud and stoic but as the pastor spoke those broad shoulders shook with the efforts of holding back all that pain. Darren’s sister Loren was lovely, her long dark hair caught the light and made her ethereal. She wore a simple black dress and had a shawl wrapped around her. She held onto the shawl as if to lose it would be to lose Darren all over again. All three held hands with white-knuckle grips.
As expected, few people showed up. Darren didn’t have time to get to know anyone here in Florida. There were two men who turned out to be Red Bull employees who worked with him on occasion. Jane Harrison, the neighbor from the complex he lived in, came. She looked comfortable in this arena, unlike the Red Bull reps. She came from money and belonged with money. Her outfit was simple but elegant, understated as a lot of rich people are. When the short service was over and everyone left, John spotted a petite woman loitering outside the chapel. She was barely five feet, brown hair, pixie cut. She was dressed in black yoga pants and a black blouse that looked too big for her. She was distinctly uncomfortable in this environment and for someone so small she stood out like a sore thumb. From a distance we watched the young woman open the chapel door just enough to admit her slight frame and disappear inside. John looked at me and raised one eyebrow. We gave her a few minutes before I started to move towards the door. Just then she came out. She was visibly upset as she scurried off towards the entrance of the hotel. I easily caught up. I was pretty sure this was Kris. I had only spoken to her on the phone but from the description, I was pretty sure that this was her.
I called her name and she turned. Even in a distraught state, she was stunning. She wore little to no makeup and her skin shone. I introduced myself and she startled just a little bit. I offered my condolences. She seemed very upset for someone she only dated twice. Kris told me that the last funeral she attended was her father’s when she was orphaned at 13. A lot of memories came flooding back. I could understand that.
She had amazing eyes, the color was so indistinct. Sometimes green, or hazel and there was a moment her eyes just got really dark. I led her to a chair in the lobby where we could talk for a minute or two. There was a glass coffee table and four plush wingback chairs. Within a minute a pitcher of water and two glasses magically appeared. The service here was impeccable.
She was clearly uncomfortable in this place. As we talked, I felt drawn to her. I could see why Darren would have been impressed by her. As she spoke of Darren and their all too brief relationship, the lamp beside her started to hum loudly, then buzz. The light got impossibly bright for a second before the bulb exploded. Staff appeared from nowhere to clean up the mess. When they left I looked up to see Kris smiling. She had a deep dimple on one cheek and her eyes were a shimmering green filled with tears.
“Do you believe in God, Detective? In the power of Jesus?” She leaned toward me. I was a bit thrown off by the exploding bulb and that smile I’m not sure I even answered her. She said, “I do. I believe in God the Father Almighty, God of all that is. Seen and unseen.” With that, she excused herself and quickly left. I managed to get myself to the door in time to see her climb into a white Honda Pilot and drive off.
I met back up with John and told him the whole thing. He was
super suspicious of her, but I found myself making excuses. I liked her. Yes, there were some inconsistencies, but she was a firefighter. She was one of our own. And yeah, it was weird that she wore yoga pants to a funeral but I was glad she did when I saw her from behind as she climbed into the cab of her car. She had just gotten off shift and wanted to show her respects, but quietly. Sure, it was also a little weird that she was so upset over someone she only dated a couple of times. But when she explained about her dad, it just made sense. I know I shouldn’t say this but she was tiny; I just couldn’t see how she would be able to disable a 5’11 man of 185 pounds who worked out on a regular basis. And then there was the Honda Pilot…
