The Loss of What We Never Had
Carolyn Thorman
© Copyright Carolyn Thorman 2019
Black Rose Writing | Texas
© 2019 by Carolyn Thorman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.
First digital version
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Print ISBN: 978-1-68433-409-4
PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING
www.blackrosewriting.com
Print edition produced in the United States of America
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Recommended Reading
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Note from the Author
About the Author
BRW Info
1
The severed head of a Muslim woman lay in the weeds. No body, just the head, face-up, dark eyes accusing the sky. A hajib caught on a nearby cactus fluttered like a gold butterfly in the Mediterranean wind. Sand dried on the woman’s forehead and on the blue triangles tattooed on her cheeks. I say woman, but she was more a girl, eighteen, maybe twenty. My Weimaraner, Mozart, sniffed the ground where a shoulder would have been, and I reined him in. As a doctor, I’d treated accident victims, terminal illnesses so I’d seen my share of bodily-carnage. But this… Sleek blue flies lazily circled the woman’s lip. There would be eggs. My mouth burned with gastric acid. My stomach clenched into a fist. My vision blurred. When the only woman in my surgical rotation group, I’d perfected techniques to control nausea—don’t gag, don’t swallow, spit. The police; I needed them here, now. Except now of all days to have left my phone on the kitchen counter. When I met with the police, they would expect objectivity; a physician’s clinical impressions of the scene.
I forced myself to look down at the victim’s smooth olive skin, trying to pinpoint exactly where the sword or hatchet—or maybe a garrote—had struck. Third vertebrae? The site of the wound covered in sand as if the killer had deliberately buried the stem of the spine. From the tattoos, I assumed the woman was a Berber from the Rif Mountains in Morocco, about fourteen miles across the Straits of Gibraltar. Maybe she was an illegal immigrant crossing into Spain, maybe she had gotten herself mixed up with a human trafficker. In Texas, we call them coyotes.
The ground around the remains was rusty-red and wet. It occurred to me the killer might still be lurking in the tall tangled grass. I scanned the beach. No joggers. No morning hikers. Only the Mediterranean shimmering along the horizon like the silver blade of a knife.
Mozart lunged at a gecko. “Knock it off, dammit.” A jerk of the leash and he reared spun a half-circle, and dropped to all fours. Then realizing my frazzled nerves were overcoming my civility, I apologized. “This isn’t the doggie’s fault.”
A gust smelling of fish lifted strands of the victim’s black hairs from her temple. Why was the braid still intact? A handle while the killer worked? Another wave of nausea. I spat out a mouthful of bile and wiped my mouth on my sleeve, thinking how throwing up is such a useless defense against emotional trauma. The problem isn’t in the stomach, it’s in the brain.
I wrapped the leash around my wrist. “We’re out of here.”
Turning to leave, I saw the trampled footprints and broken branches. The girl was a fighter. It looked as if the two ruts marked the trajectory of the feet as her body was dragged off. Why did the killer leave the head? Could be the monster was an Islamaphobe making a sick political statement. Or this was an honor killing, punishment for some sort of unauthorized sexual event on her part—or alleged to have been on her part. The victim might have pissed off a husband or father who left her head as a message. Or a warning.
I assumed police procedures in Spain were similar to those back home in Texas. I paused for a last look to be sure I hadn’t missed something that would be useful to the authorities. A final glance at the victim’s eyes and all at once, I was overcome with the weird feeling I had seen this face before. Impossible. Chalk it up to temporary disorientation. I groped through my pockets for a cigarette, thought better of it and took out a blister pack of Valium I bought from the waiter in a tapas bar. The pill went down without water.
Once more, I started to leave, then hesitated. It seemed crass, downright immoral to abandon her here, so vulnerable, and exposed. Hesitating, knowing full well I shouldn’t disturb a crime scene, on the spur of the moment, I decided respect for the deceased trumped police protocol. I walked over and untangled the hajib from the cactus shrub and draped it over her face, tucking it securely under her hair. Not to conceal the poor soul’s identity, but to honor her death. I crossed myself with all the reverence I could muster, through the helplessness I felt.
Just as I returned to the path, Mozart leaped forward, his paws churning sand, seventy pounds of dog scrambling for traction. A few feet beyond the clearing, a man stood half-hidden in the weeds. He was tall, at least a head taller than the five-foot-high esparto stalks. His features blurred in the shadows of shifting leaves. All I could make out was dark hair and a red sweatshirt with its hood thrown back. For a minute he remained stock still, then took off through the crackling underbrush. For certain, he saw the head and had a good view of me watching him. Would he assume I was the killer? That’s the case, he’d have to believe my hundred and fifteen pounds or so could manage a struggling victim while executing a clean cut. A normal guy would have joined me, yelled, or whipped out his mobile. But his creepy sneaking in the weeds. But the way he flailed at the stalks… my gut said this was the killer. And anxiety and paranoia would make him think I could finger him in a police line-up. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. A guy who killed once—go figure.
The short-cut to my apartment hugs the service road of the A7 that runs from Cadiz to Barcelona. Mozart’s ears blew flat with each passing truck. Diesel fumes served as a proxy for air. Amazing, how despite a decapitated head bleeding out on a beach, the world appeared as I’d last seen it. The planet humming along as usual, indifferent to the outrage of an execution-style death. My high-rise was still standing. The stork’s nest was still intact atop the tiled roof. The cafes, boutiques, and bars on the ground floor waiting for customers.
A marble pillar stood at the entrance to Puerto Esperanza, the name above a logo of a lion prancing through flames. A row of wrought iron benches faced the promenade. I collapsed more than sat, and leaned back, relieved the tourists and baby carriages had retreated to their air-conditioned vacation rentals. My skin tingled as if an insect crawled the back of my neck. I turned half expecting a man in a red hoodie loomed over my shoulder. Who was the victim, and where was the rest of her? My mind circled possibilities. It could be that he decapitator was a terrorist with the jihadist cell rumored to be based in Marbella. Or, another possibility, the killer was one of the deranged Christian fanatics calling themselves the Knights of Constancia, the crackpot Catholic outfit hell-bent on kicking Muslims out of Spain.
A light breeze stirred the palms. A sparrow bounced through freshly mowed grass. Gradually the horror of the head and fear of the killer were losing their grip. My mind resumed its orderly pace and coalesced around one comforting thought—tomorrow I would be high-tailing it home. My hearing before the Texas Board of Psychiatry to defend my license was three days away, and I needed to be there. My passport was in the carry-on, along with Mozart’s photo ID ready to be clipped to his crate in the Malaga airport. Bills and apartment rent pro-rated and paid. And last night, I authorized my estate agent to market Dad’s property.
When I came to the coast two weeks ago, I hired Zacharias DeLeon, a Spanish land developer to renovate and sell my deceased father’s summer home. The trip to Spain to administer the sale was a favor to my mother as I wasn’t a beneficiary of Dad’s will. But that was another issue. Right now, the problem was to unload the property at a decent price. Fortunately, Zak was perfectly capable of managing the deal without me.
The iron slats of the bench were hot as a griddle, and I slid to the far end shaded by palms. Thoughts of Zak merged with images of the bloody sand, the churned earth, and the woman’s face. Only all of a sudden in my memory the gold hajib was not on the ground but draped over the girl’s hair. Because for sure the face on the beach was the same face belonging to the woman I’d seen last night when Zak and I were in the restaurant. Coincidence? You bet. But there it was. I closed my eyes to perfect the recollection.
. . . . .
Zak and I were finishing coffee when a Cadillac SUV bumped onto the sidewalk and stopped directly in front of the Gato Gordo’s floor to ceiling window. A tall, dark-skinned Arab in a leather jacket over a tee-shirt climbed out of the driver’s seat and sauntered inside as if he owned the place. A slender woman in a black kaftan followed a few deferential steps behind. She’s was in a gold scarf, and like many women from the Rif Mountains, blue triangles were tattooed on her cheeks. The Arab parked her at a corner table and returned to ours. “Good evening,” he said in careful English.
Zak threw down his napkin and barked, “How did you know I was here?”
“I find what I need.”
“You don’t need a thing,” Zak said.
“Yes, I do. What you owe me and more.”
Zak drew his wallet from his hip pocket and fished out a handful of euros. The Arab counted slowly, bill-by-bill, then looked up. “Not long enough.”
Zak turned away and lifted his coffee cup.
The Arab’s voice was calm, reasonable. “I need petrol to get the woman where she wanted to go.”
I pretended not to listen, nor speculate on what Zak was talking about when he said, “Which isn’t very far.”
The Arab studied the euros in his hand. “But there is over-the-time.”
“Shut up,” Zak said.
Except for a missing incisor, the Arab’s dazzling smile would have been perfect. “Please remember,” he said, “you know what I know about our secret of where she’s going to go to be with her baby.”
Zak sighed, took out his wallet again and handed the Arab a few more bills. I faked interest in the bullfighting poster behind the bar. The Arab bowed with his hand over his heart and threaded his way through the cluster of tables, where the woman sat huddled in the corner. When she adjusted the hijab, I caught a glimpse of her long braid.
Zak’s eyes followed the Arab’s departure, then he leaned closer to me. “Sorry for the interruption. The guy put a new transmission in the company truck and says he paid out of pocket more than what I gave him. “
Zak’s lie not one bit convincing. He patted my hand and launched into a lengthy diatribe against Arabs who cheat, and Moroccan Arabs whom he said are the worst of the lot.
I cut him short. “We’d best be going.”
. . . . .
I got up from the bench and gathered strength to move on. Panting, Mozart struggled to his feet. “You can finish your nap at home.”
The noon sun blazed a path through the trees. The earth sweltered and gasped while it burned to a crisp. A white utility truck barreled down the A7. Heatwaves curled up from the asphalt like tiny cobras, and a shrub of yellow Heliopolis trembled in the dust. Incredible to think that only yesterday the Muslim woman had been relegated to a corner table where she sat as if resigned to the anger she might have overheard, and to the angry world into which she was born. How quietly she sat, calm, at peace as if already dead and above it all.
2
The afternoon heat overpowered the asthmatic air-conditioner in the lobby of my building, where the smell of roach spray competed with the smell of bleach. The queasiness in my gut stayed with me as I led Mozart past the elevator, which he hates, and up the narrow stairs.
My apartment was on the fourth floor, my neighbor, Casey, had a two-bedroom on the third. His door with the spray of silk flowers over the brass plaque read Harold L. Crandall, and under it, Casey O’Brannigan. Although his name suggested Ireland, he said he was from Cardiff. I gathered he was about thirty-five, around my age, and until a few months ago had been some sort of analyst with Her Majesty’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. He quit to become an ex-pat in Spain with his partner, Harold, a nice guy, twenty years older than Casey, an American who this time of day would be manning the bookshop he owned in the port.
I knocked. No answer. Casey was skittish about opening the door to strangers. “It’s me, Paige,” I called hoping my voice carried through the heavy oak. “Paige Glasgow, your American upstairs neighbor who—”
“No need to shout.” Casey cracked the door, then swung it wide open. “Christ on a bike. Here, I’ll take Mister Mo.” He grabbed the collar. “What have you been into?” He held Mozart while he closed the door, then let him loose. “Look at your hair,” he said. “And blimey if I don’t see sweat. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
Casey glanced at my foot, and I leaned to brush off my sneaker. “Probably dried blood,” I s
aid. “No, it’s only sand.”
“Why’d you say blood?”
“It was all over the ground.”
“Where?”
“I’ll explain in a minute. Right now, can you go with me to the Guardia Civil to report a murder?”
“What the devil—? Whose?”
“If you’re not busy because my Spanish is terrible. If you’re tied up, it’s okay to say no.”
He glanced at the front of his shirt. “Let me get into something a bit smarter.”
“We don’t have time.”
“Only be a minute.”
The tails of his wrinkled button-down shirt hung outside his jeans, the trendy British schoolboy disguise that went along with his tousled brown hair and round blue eyes—doll’s eyes I imagined would open and close automatically if I tipped his head. I say disguise because something about him didn’t ring true, a lack of authenticity, an overeager desire to impress. His sound-bites of wisdom not as spontaneous as he’d like others to believe. And the way he checked his pulse every few hours. ‘Doing it since a nipper,’ he had explained.
Really? A habit a bit too sophisticated for a kid. Nevertheless, Casey was a good neighbor and a good sport.
“Meanwhile, go sit down,” he said. “You look like the dog’s dinner.”
I chose the wing-backed chair, and Mozart leaped onto the sofa. Casey left the bedroom door slightly ajar. “I can hear you,” he called. “And I’m listening. What happened? Where?”
I kept it bare bones: the head, the guy in the weeds—”
Casey interrupted, “Did you sick up?”
“Almost. Why I chose psychiatry rather than surgery, what my father wanted me to do.”
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