Fire Flies

by Marie Marini

  I made my notes and reported everything back to The Bean who laughed and told me to write it up and put it on his desk. He said it would help fatten the file up a little bit.

  I saw on the news that they were having a service for my Darren. Of course it was at the swanky Boca Resort where I could just blend right in, right? GOD! I would still get so mad about the money issue. I guess when he was falling in love with me he didn’t want to mess it up, so he just kept it a secret. I had to forgive him.

  I didn’t have time to go shopping for funeral clothes. That would be a sinful waste anyway I would never wear them again. I had black flats and yoga pants and I found a black blouse at Goodwill for a couple of bucks. It was too big but it would do. I would only be there for 10 minutes tops.

  I sat at the bar of the fancy schmancy restaurant just off the lobby and ordered a seltzer and cranberry, waiting for everyone to leave after the service. Can you believe they charge $4.75 for soda water? What the hell! You can get a 12 pack of cans at the Piggly Wiggly in Atlanta for $3.99. Rich people are so fucking stupid. After the service was over and the few people who showed up had left, I gave it a few more minutes then slipped into the chapel. The huge picture of my Darren was like a punch to the gut. That was the way I wanted to remember him, that’s how he looked at the park when we went biking and kayaking. He was happy and healthy and… wait a minute. I just realized he was on a sailboat in the picture. Oh perfect! Just another reminder of this secret life he didn’t tell me about. I guess I’m lucky I had him to myself for a couple of months and got to know him as a real person without all the frills and decorations that his money provided.

  God, he was cute. I even considered masturbating right there in front of his picture. I took a picture of it with my phone. I could do that later, not here. He had turned me into this horny as hell teenager. I never had those crazy college years everyone talks about, but Darren had brought that out in me.

  I missed him. He taught me love that I had never known.

  I was hightailing it for the door, just desperate to be out of there when someone called my name. He introduced himself as Detective Rivera. I thought “so this was the nosy little fucker that had been sniffing around my house.” I was mad! I don’t know who he thought he was questioning me in the lobby like that. He looked like one of the suicide bomber fuckers who hate America. I reined it in like a champ and stayed focused. I shook his hand firmly and smiled like an old friend. I played my part like a pro. Any actor would get a nomination for that performance.

  “Detective Rivera, good to meet you. Sorry, I’m such a mess, just got off shift. You know how that is.” I could turn on the charm when I had to. I could play this to my advantage and find out what the cops know so I don’t get myself in trouble. When the light bulb exploded, I just knew it was Darren letting me know he was there and that he didn’t like this guy. Before I left, I quoted the Apostles Creed to the heathen. I believe in a God of ALL things, those seen and those unseen. Darren is the unseen, but I can feel him, I know he’s with me every day. I expected I’d see Jesus again, but that might be a good thing. He could be useful. I was making plans again. That always made me feel more in control.

  Another month went by and the newspapers lost interest. The Mayhews went home to Seattle to grieve their son and piece together their new normal. No new leads and more cases every day. Gang activity was ramping up again and we had a whole spate of car break-ins at the mall running up to the holiday season. The mayor wanted that nipped in the bud as quickly as possible and was still on the rampage about gang activity. The Bean benched this case just as fast as he could just like he said he would. Darren Mayhew was old news. I had resigned myself to the fact that this case would never be solved unless the killer struck again and we could make some connections. If this psycho was feeding his victims to the gators, there might already be lots of other victims. People go missing every day in South Florida. It’s such a transient place. People come for all kinds of reasons, not least of all because they want anonymity, they want to disappear. There could be someone out there who is giving them just that. There was nothing more I could do about Darren Mayhew. I had read the file, examined every scrap of forensic evidence. I had exhausted my resources and myself and I had nothing. It was time to let it go.

  Thanksgiving was coming up and I would be spending it with Steph, Pete and the girls in Nokomis. I had been working so many crazy hours lately I needed my girl time to get back on track and let go of this stuff. I had already made plans to have someone cover the on-call so I could get away, so unless some huge case broke I was free.

  The day before Thanksgiving was the Annual Turkey Bowl Challenge where the Cops took on the Firefighters for a charity football game. There’s lots of smack talking and posturing, challenges and teasing but at the end of the day they raise a lot of money for charity. The PD give their winnings to the local Boys and Girls Club, which works tirelessly to keep the inner city kids away from the gangs that are springing up everywhere. They really do a great job with the at-risk kids, getting them involved in sports and mentoring them. The Firefighters give their winnings to Burn Camp, a summer camp for kids with burns where they can meet people with similar stories and issues, get the support they need and have some fun without anyone staring at them. I stepped in at the last minute to replace Loren Cumberland who tore his ACL. I was hoping to get through the game without breaking anything myself. I was in good shape, but I hadn’t played football since college. The girls would be merciless if I couldn’t dance at the beach.

  I got there a little early and was running a couple of laps to warm up when I saw Kris. She was setting up a table for the Fire Benevolent Fund to sell raffle tickets and t-shirts. She was no longer part of an investigation, so there was no reason why I couldn’t say hi. I jogged over to the table and picked up a box of t-shirts from the van she was unloading. She startled a little when she recognized me.

  “Hey, how you doing Detective? You can put that box right there for me.” She nodded indicating under the table on the right. I put the box down and reached for another box. “Jesus,” I said, “my name is Jesus. We’re both off the clock Lieutenant.”

  She laughed “Fair play Jesus, are you playing today?”

  I groaned. “Yes, I am. Let’s hope I don’t make too much of a fool of myself. Will you do me a favor and send me a signal if I do?”

  She laughed. “Of course, what kind of a sign?” She flipped me the bird. “Does this work?” She laughed. “You are the enemy you know!”

  I laughed and said, “Okay, I deserved that.“

  We talked a little as she let me help her unload the van and I thought that maybe she even flirted a little with me. She told me she didn’t usually do this stuff, she was busy with Nursing School, but the holidays could be kind of lonely so she thought this would help. She said her Captain at the station is always making comments about her not connecting with the guys and not getting involved so she was making an effort.

  Some of my guys arrived and were ribbing me about consorting with the enemy so I excused myself to get ready for the game. I saw John in the stands and waved over to him. I hoped he would come to the Alehouse after the game. I caught Kris looking at me a couple of times. She was definitely flirting. I broke away from the guys and went back to the table.

  “Kris, a bunch of us are going for a light refreshment at the Alehouse afterwards. You can critique my game over a cold beer? Think about it!”

  I ran off back to the game before she could answer.

  The holidays were coming up fast. Darren was old news. Not that the holidays meant much to me, I usually volunteer to work them so they think I’m a team player and I was being generous in letting the guys with kids have Christmas with the family. I really didn’t care about their family dinner and Santa and all that shit. I just would rather be busy and there was no school over the holidays. I still prayed for Tricia, Darren, and Daddy ev
ery day, the three people who had made me who I was.

  I missed having someone to talk to about the things that most people wouldn’t understand. Although what happened started with an accident, Darren understood me. He let me talk it out. If it wasn’t for Darren and all that happened, I doubt I would have gone back to school. I was studying really hard and it was going well. I already had all the general education classes from my paramedic degree so I could go straight into the nursing stuff. And since I only work one day every four, I had time to do the fast track.

  Captain Luca at the station was becoming a real bore with his lectures about ‘connecting’ with people. I didn’t need to ‘connect’ to do my job, but I couldn’t tell him that. I needed to tell him what he wanted to hear. Sometimes they get so emotionally involved. It’s stupid. Just because I don’t look at the baby pictures and don’t care about their kids’ college dreams or what nursing home they put their aging parents in…BLAH! So much of it is political and you have to pretend. I knew how to pretend, I had been doing that my whole life. So I started signing up for some of the charity stuff. I even got involved in the burn camp that summer, those poor little bastards. I visited the burn unit at the hospital. Do you know they have to do surgery to split the skin because it tightens up so much they can’t bend their joints? They use wire brushes to remove the dead skin and strip away all the burn tissue. You should hear them scream! I don’t know if I could do that kind of nursing. I couldn’t deal with the kids screaming. Adults maybe but not kids.

  Nursing school gave me an excuse to avoid the drink invitations to bars from the work guys. I didn’t want to hang out with these people and I didn’t drink. I know they judged me, they thought they were better than me. I heard them talking in the kitchen one day and they were saying that I was the one with attitude, that I walked around with a chip on my shoulder. They loved to turn everything around on me. I couldn’t trust them and I didn’t tell them a thing, not a thing about the real me. This is exactly why my relationship with Darren was so perfect. He wouldn’t betray me. He wouldn’t leave me. I could trust him with everything.

  I was volunteering when that detective started sniffing around me. He came jogging over, all ‘look at me’. I knew I had to play nice and besides, I could use someone on the inside to make sure they didn’t suspect anything. Like I said before, some guys are so easy to play. They want to feel all masterful and protect the little lady. It’s child’s play to be the damsel when you’re my size. To be honest this guy gave me the creeps. He reminded me of this picture I saw at school when I was a kid. The teacher said it was what Jesus really could have looked like and it was this Indian guy with these little curls down the side of his face and he had a funny looking hat on. I just laughed out loud. Mrs. McNellis was mad at me and spent extra time trying to convince me that this is what Jesus looked like, that he was a Jew from the middle east. I told my Daddy all about it when I got home and he said, “well what do the teachers know.” We had a picture of the REAL Jesus in the house, you know the one with the sweet face and piercing blue eyes and the long beard. I think that’s why I disliked this guy so much, he felt like an imposter.

  Between work, school, clinicals at the hospital and trying to do some community stuff to keep my Captain off my back I barely had time to think about Darren. I was itching to learn more, all the things I learned from Darren about spinal cord injury just made me more curious. My favorite part of nursing school was our day assigned to the Medical Examiner’s Office. I got lucky and got to work with J. C. She was an amazing teacher and even let me weigh the organs. The dead bodies kind of freaked everyone out but after burying my own Daddy dead bodies didn’t scare me much. I liked the peace and quiet of the lab during autopsy, the clinical dissection, and trying to figure out what they died of.

  Darren had to be autopsied too. Or at least the parts that the gators didn’t eat. I wondered what they made of all that, if there was enough left to identify him was there enough to know he had a spinal cord injury and spinal surgery? It was kind of a thrill to think that I knew the answers and they didn’t. There was no way they could know what happened.

  Maybe that is why I decided to play along with Jesus, to see if he would tell me anything about the investigation. I wanted to know what kind of things might indicate ‘foul play’. Did they even use that expression or was that just in the movies? How did they determine Darren’s death was a homicide? That’s what the papers called it. But it was just a beautiful accident, a twist of fate that brought us together. It was inevitable that he would die. We both knew that from the moment his neck broke, but God gave us some precious time to love each other and teach each other. I taught him about God. He taught me about spinal cord injury and patience. And sex. Darren taught me that I could enjoy sex, that I could be in control and it could be wonderful. I missed that too, the sex. It wouldn’t be as much fun with someone else. With someone who could move.

  I was working the weekend before Thanksgiving when we got a call to one of the Country music clubs in the area. I had never been to one. Turned out to be one of the hardest calls of my life. It was just a bar fight, a broken nose, a head wound. Not a big deal medically. What stopped my heart was the club. It was loud and trashy as most bar scenes are, but the number of rednecks was overwhelming. It was like being transported back to the Georgia trailer park. A bunch of barely legal drinking-age boys driving lifted trucks with confederate flags. Drunk and stupid trying to impress the barely-clothed sluts. I got out of there as fast as I could.

  It was after that call I got the idea to buy an old ambulance at the vehicle auction in West Palm Beach. I learned so much from Darren but there was so much still to learn. If I could figure out how to immobilize someone, I could easily sedate him with IV meds. But making sure he stayed sedated long enough to get him to the trailer and sever his spinal cord, that would be the tricky part. I couldn’t take a chance using my heels. This time it would be clinical and controlled. Staying under the radar so no one would suspect me or connect me to another disappearance. It wouldn’t be easy but God I missed having someone to talk to and the sex…

  I had just stumbled on a gold mine of perfectly good specimens. God knows I would be doing the world a favor taking some of those guys out. It was a win-win as far as I was concerned.

  But first I had to flirt with Jesus and get him to trust me. I went back to the Alehouse after the Thanksgiving game. Turns out this is where a lot of the CSI and detectives like to hang out on a Friday night. It was loud and intimidating. Lots of guys pumped with adrenaline and testosterone talking smack. I hated it! When guys get all pumped up like this, bad things happen. I had to stay focused, I had a reason to be there and it wasn’t for these morons. The Firefighters had won the game and were loud and obnoxious about it. I flirted with Jesus and before I left he had asked and I had agreed to go out with him.

  Kris did show up at the Alehouse. I didn’t think she would. She was seriously flirting with me now and John was giving me the stink eye. He had seen us talking before the game and had no hesitation in telling me to stay away from her. He ‘reminded me’ (his words) that she was still a person of interest in the investigation. Our conversation got a little hot when I reminded HIM that the investigation had been benched. Then she walked in and after the flirting started, John left in a sour mood. I understood his concerns, some of the details didn’t add up and there were inconsistencies in her story. If she only dated Darren twice why did she go the funeral? Why was she so upset? I get the thing about her dad’s funeral, but wouldn’t she be over it by now? Then again, I’ve never lost a parent so I really can’t judge. And she drove a Honda Pilot with standard wheels. I had asked one of the research detectives, Dave Barretta, to look into her family for me as a favor just to tie up some loose ends. Dave came back with some information on her adopted family but very little on the birth parents. Despite the little clues, I just didn’t see any real cause for concern. It’s true I’d beco
me a bit smitten with her. Maybe that played a role in how I saw things. I was new at detective work and looking back maybe I should have done things differently.

  Kris agreed to go out with me and told me to call her. “I think you have my number,” she said over her shoulder as she left. The holiday season was looking up. I hated the holidays when I wasn’t dating anyone. I was always the third wheel, the odd man out. Usually hanging out with the girls while Steph and Mom discussed baking tips and Dad and the good Dr. talked about the state of the healthcare system. Neither subject thrilled me so I ended up talking Power Rangers with my girls. I had introduced them to the Power Rangers last year when I just couldn’t take any more Peppa the Pig and Teletubbies. Maybe by Christmas I could ask Kris to deal with the family thing, but just having someone to talk about and talk to at the holidays always made it more fun.

  I called Kris the next day on my way to Nokomis and she agreed to meet me at Boston’s in Delray for dinner on Saturday night. It was right on the A1A with an ocean view. Potentially romantic, but still casual enough if the sparks didn’t fly. I was thankful that I wasn’t meeting her for Thanksgiving; my poor old body was aching after the game. I took a couple of good hits. Dancing at the beach was a challenge and the girls were jumping all over me when they saw my weakness. They squealed with delight at my aching muscles.

  Thanksgiving was great. Mom and Dad had driven over on Tuesday and Mom and Steph had done an amazing job cooking as always. Steph was trying a new pumpkin pie recipe out that totally bombed but she had a back-up pie just in case. Typical Steph, she was the most thoughtful, generous person I knew yet she constantly doubted herself. She never thought she was good enough. I wondered on more than one occasion if her husband wasn’t as supportive as he liked to appear. If maybe he was responsible for her lack of self-esteem and confidence. Maybe because she worked from home she didn’t feel valued.