“Ouch.” Elizabeth giggled. “Hell hath no fury.” As she scanned the crime photos, which included a close-up of the meat cleaver, the garbage disposal, and Mr. Akbajian’s naked body, minus his private parts, she started humming Chuck Berry’s novelty song “My Ding-A-Ling.”
Comfortable that Mrs. Akbajian had been caught red-handed, literally, she closed the file. She was starting to enjoy her little assignment.
She opened her third and final file—Raymond Miller, unemployed, convicted of first-degree murder. Her jovial mood from the prior case quickly faded as she carefully read the file. Raymond Miller confessed to the killing of a Catholic priest.
The folder contained a manila envelope with the flap sealed by its metal clasps. Elizabeth lifted the envelope and bent up the metal prongs, releasing its hold on the flap, and removed a stack of photos. Father Francis Portillo was discovered naked with his bloody body left hanging on a large black metal gate on an abandoned property on the outskirts of the city. His body bore grotesque gashes, some deep enough to expose muscle and ligaments. His wrists and ankles were bound by rope and lashed to the gate, with his arms spread to the side, forming a sickening scarlet T. The ligature bruising around his wrists and ankles indicated that he had been tied up for an extended period, likely the full three days he had been missing. However, the evidence suggested that he was killed in a different location and left hanging on the gate for display.
There were a series of crime scene photos in both color and black and white, and as Elizabeth flipped through them, the photos almost seemed surreal. The wounds were so graphic, with flesh ripped apart, that it looked more like Halloween macabre created for thrill seekers than a true human body, but then she picked out a haunting black-and-white picture of the priest’s face. A rope tied around Father Portillo’s head held it up so that his vacant eyes stared back at her. A fly was perched on his cheek, feasting on an open wound. Those eyes did not find peace in the end.
Elizabeth placed the photo at the bottom of the pile, fearing his eyes would stay with her long after she closed the file. She selected another depicting the priest’s lower abdomen, where the killer left a distinct mark. A circle containing three congruent triangles with their points joined at the center was deeply carved into the flesh. The triangles were formed by peeling back the skin, creating a stark color contrast. The circle remained flesh colored and the triangles a bloody red where the skin had been torn away. Elizabeth pulled out a sketch that she passed over earlier, now understanding its significance. It was a rendition of the carving on the father’s body.
In other circumstances, the carving might have seemed creative and aesthetic, but on a human body, it was grotesque. She shoved the photographs back into their home inside the envelope and closed her eyes. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and bowed her head. If there was ever a time that a prayer was needed, this was it. After a brief debate on whether to forge on, she sat up and picked up the file again.
The autopsy report indicated that the wounds were likely the result of a rawhide whip, with steel spikes strategically placed near the end. Fragments of the metal were still lodged beneath the priest’s skin, and the spikes accounted for the particularly deep wounds and tearing of the flesh. The medical examiner believed that the carving on the abdomen was likely done postmortem due to the lack of blood compared to the other wounds, and the cause of death was substantial blood loss.
Unable to read on, Elizabeth dropped the documents on her desk and left her office. With no real destination in mind, she walked to the restroom and roughly pushed the door open with her shoulder. She grabbed the cold ceramic of the sink and stared into the mirror mounted on the wall. She barely recognized herself. Her eyes were streaked with red lines, her skin bore red blotches, and her bangs sported a cowlick. She could have gone a lifetime or two without seeing those images.
“Are you okay?” Elizabeth turned to see Amy, SILC’s receptionist and resident mother, standing with the upper half of her body leaning inside the partially opened bathroom door.
“Yeah, thanks. Just looking at a tough case.” She squirmed a bit under Amy’s careful scrutiny.
“Well, Rosa Sanchez is here for you. Do you want to see if she can come back a bit later?”
“No, I’m good. I’ll be right out.”
Amy gave a sympathetic smile and backed out the door.
Elizabeth leveled a glare at her reflection. “Suck it up. It’s not like your husband is beating you and threatening to have you deported.”
*
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Elizabeth said as she strode into the reception area.
Rosa Sanchez stood and pulled her eight-year-old son Hector up by the hand, which nearly caused him to drop his handheld Nintendo DS. “No problem, Attorney Campbell.”
“Hi, Hector, how are you?”
“I’m good,” Hector said with his eyes fixed on his coveted black device.
Rosa removed Hector’s baseball cap from his head. “Hector, please put that away.”
Elizabeth winked at him. “Have you ever played Pac-Man? It’s my favorite.”
“Pac what?” Hector asked, scrunching his nose.
“Oh come on, you know Pac-Man, where the mouth eats the balls.”
Rosa’s eyes grew wide, and Hector simply giggled.
“No, I mean little white balls.” She gestured with her thumb and forefinger to demonstrate the size. She could see Amy with her head resting on the front desk and her shoulders moving up and down, trying to conceal her laughter.
“Oh, never mind,” Elizabeth said as she turned and led the way back to her office. “Sorry, there never seems to be enough space,” she said as she cleared a stack of files resting on her guest chair. “I’ll be right back.” She rolled a second chair in from outside that protested with a high-pitched squeak the entire journey.
Elizabeth pushed the Raymond Miller file to the side and stroked Black Devil as she cautiously sat. She ritualistically patted BD before she lowered herself to its clutches as an offering of goodwill.
“How’s school going, Hector?”
“Good,” came the simple reply.
She realized that her conversation with Hector would be one-sided and gave up. “Why don’t you go back to playing your game while your mom and I talk?”
“Okay.” Hector didn’t have to be told twice and whipped the game out of his sweatshirt pocket.
“Rosa, have you thought of what we talked about?”
She started fretting with the hem of her shirt. “Sí, but it is very hard thing to do.” Her accent became more pronounced.
Rosa had been on the receiving end of her husband’s drunken fists more times than she would admit. She feared her husband Jacob’s fury if she filed for a restraining order. She knew that Jacob didn’t fear losing her. She was expendable. It was Hector he wanted. As cruel as he was to Rosa, he worshipped his son.
“He says he’ll have me deported. I’ll lose Hector.”
Rosa’s mistrust in the legal system was well founded. She’d fled Guatemala when she was seventeen after being raped by her drunken father. When the police brought her back to her father’s home after the attack, she learned that women were merely property in Guatemala and fled, seeking asylum in the United States. Unfortunately, Rosa’s asylum case was mishandled by an unscrupulous legal assistant, better known in the Latin American community as a “notario.” The notario not only took Rosa’s money, but more importantly, because of his incompetence, he took her only chance at an asylum hearing. She never got her day in court and was left with a deportation order. She’d been living under the radar ever since.
Elizabeth glanced at Hector, who was immersed in his electronic world, before she spoke. “I know you’re scared, but he doesn’t have that power over you anymore. You took control the day you walked out the door.”
Rosa looked down at her hands tightly clasped in her lap. “Okay, I can do this.”
“Great, I have the doc
uments ready. I just need you to sign them.” Elizabeth turned to her computer, clicked a few icons, and hit print. “I’ll be right back.” She exited the office and approached the central copy and printing machine, where her printer, along with everyone else’s, was wirelessly connected. She found the intern, Jeff, with his head inside the open door at the center of the machine, pulling large wads of paper from its belly. The toner cartridge and other parts were strewn about the floor around Jeff’s feet like spilled guts.
“This can’t be good,” she mumbled and returned to her office. “I’m sorry. We seem to be having some technical difficulties with our equipment.” That’s an understatement. This place is going to hell in a handbasket. “I can bring the documents by your home this evening when we have things up and running.” More like when I run to Kinko’s and print it out.
“I don’t want to trouble you,” Rosa said with a concerned look.
“It’s no trouble. This way I can get the documents filed tomorrow as I planned.”
“Thank you.”
After escorting Rosa and Hector back to the reception area, Elizabeth proudly carried the “World’s Best Dad” cup to the communal closet for a recharge before resuming the task of going through the Raymond Miller file. She passed Jeff as he continued his struggle with the copy machine, and a loud grinding noise burst from the machine as though the beast had been awoken. Elizabeth paused, unsure if she wanted to get involved.
“Come on, you piece of shit,” Jeff yelled and shook it. The copy machine responded with a deep, angry growling noise, and he jumped back and turned to see Elizabeth watching the display. “That thing just growled at me.”
Clearly not done with its rebellion, the machine started spewing black smoke from its back. “That’s not all,” Elizabeth said, pointing to the copier, and Jeff turned to witness the smoke rising. “Well, don’t just stand there. Unplug it.”
He yanked the power cord from the wall. “Do you want to tell Dan?” he asked hopefully.
“Not on your life,” she said as she walked away.
Elizabeth resumed the task of the Raymond Miller file and reviewed a profile work-up that predicted that the killer was a Caucasian male between twenty-five to forty years of age with a deep hatred for organized religion. Ya think? She read on. The killer had likely been raised in a home that strictly observed Christian practices and harsh penances for any infraction.
Taking into consideration the victim, manner of death by whipping, and the display of his body in a cross formation, the carving was also believed to be religious in nature. A detailed report discussed the history of the triangle as a common Christian symbol of the Holy Trinity or triad of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the number three a lesser-known symbol of the same.
Elizabeth found the profile unremarkable and moved on to the discussion specific to Raymond Miller. A psychological evaluation revealed that Raymond’s IQ was well below normal. Although he was twenty-two when he was arrested, he had the intellect of a child.
Raymond lived in a shed converted to a living space behind his mother’s home. He was unemployed but was known throughout the neighborhood as “the trash digger,” as he supported himself by riffling through trash, looking for recyclables.
What was thought to be a routine call to chase off a vagrant Dumpster diving turned out to be an arrest of a lifetime for a rookie officer. When the officer searched Raymond, he had a set of black rosary beads with a large silver crucifix in his pocket. Testing of the beads revealed traces of blood from Father Francis Portillo.
A search warrant for Raymond’s shed and his mother’s home was easily obtained, although probably not necessary. According to the notes of Detective Patrick Sullivan, Raymond’s mother was more than happy to allow the police to search the premises. Raymond was the only child of Delores Miller, and his father was unknown. Delores relished the attention as the poor mother who had been carrying the burden of a defective son all alone for twenty-two years; however, the photos of the shed put into question how much caring she put into raising him.
The shed was nothing more than a wooden tool shack with weathered boards that offered little insulation. Inside, the shed was surprisingly tidy, with a mattress in one corner covered by stained floral sheets and a blue cotton blanket with cigarette burns throughout. Two wooden crates lined against the opposite wall and contained most of his worldly possessions—a pair of pants, three shirts, a sweatshirt, two pairs of mismatched socks, and three pairs of superhero underwear.
A wooden shelf above the crates held an assortment of Matchbox cars, a box of crayons, a Superman action figure, a small stack of comic books, and a blue toothbrush with a crumpled tube of toothpaste. The walls were decorated with colorful crayon pictures that depicted a life very different from Raymond’s. There were plenty of trees filled with green leaves, neatly kept homes, and a bright yellow sun with a smiley face. In each picture, there were two smiling stick figures holding hands that, based on the height difference, appeared to be parent and child. Each picture was proudly signed by its artist, much like a child would, with uneven lettering and the second letter of his name written backward.
Despite Raymond’s age, he still saw himself as a child. Even with the squalor in which he lived, he held his mother in high regard, as if he were ignorant of his world.
If she had stopped there, she would have been convinced that they had the wrong man. However, concealed under the clothing in one wooden crate was a rusted metal box with a broken latch. The box held a Bible belonging to the priest, another memento from his savagery.
A recorded confession, memorialized in a typed transcript, came shortly after the search of the shed. The confession was simple:
Detective Sullivan: Did you kill Father Francis Portillo?
Raymond Miller: Yes.
Detective Sullivan: Why?
Raymond Miller: To make God happy. Pappy is happy.
Detective Sullivan: What does that mean?
Detective Sullivan: This interview is recorded. Shrugging your shoulders is useless. I’ll ask again, what does that mean? What was that? Oh, never mind.
Knowing that he would never really know why and possibly because he didn’t care why, the detective ended the interview.
In exchange for his confession, the death penalty was taken off the table, and Raymond was now a permanent resident of the state penal institution for life.
*
With a flash drive containing the Rosa Sanchez documents packed into her leather bag, Elizabeth shut down her computer and headed for a gated parking lot a block down from SILC that offered security monitoring of her vehicle. The clinic offered parking for its employees adjacent to the building, but that wasn’t good enough for her baby. She loved her red two-seater BMW Z4 Roadster. There were some definite perks to her trust fund. She loved cars, and in particular, fast cars, and was consequently on a first-name basis with the officers around her home.
After a brief visit to the local Kinko’s, she drove her Roadster down a boulevard that was lined with storefronts much like her clinic. Metal gates were drawn closed for protection. The awnings on the buildings were faded and exhibited a few holes where the weather proved to be unkind. In time for its 100-year anniversary with its multitude of celebratory festivities, the city boasted of a financial revival, an economic boom. Although it was true for many, the inhabitants of this part of town had not fared so well under the economic revolution.
She turned onto a smaller street that contained residential structures where the apartment buildings had more dirt than lawn, and black metal bars were a common feature on the windows of the residences. A group of children played soccer in front of a two-story building, and an errant ball bounced into the street with a young boy closely behind it, causing Elizabeth to hit the brakes. She chose to keep her speed at a pace slightly above a crawl, an unfamiliar feeling to her. The slow speed allowed her to take in the neighborhood, which was a world away from her own community and not even in the s
ame universe as her parents’ home.
As she drove on, she recognized a street name and turned onto the block with rows of simple two-story homes that were likely built in the 40s. Many of the decaying homes had chipped and peeling paint with entire pieces of side paneling missing. She stopped in front of a now familiar address that contained a faded light blue home with a chain link fence surrounding the property and the gate to the walkway missing. The lawn was a sickly yellow with patches of dirt. She sat in her car and debated what to do. Were she religious, she would have deemed it divine intervention. She opened the car door. “To hell with it. Here goes nothing.”
She ascended a set of wooden stairs that creaked to announce her arrival and rang the doorbell, but uncertain as to its working order, followed it with a knock on the door. A woman in a floral dress that hung loosely on her figure pulled open the door.
“Yes?” the woman asked in a curt tone.
“Ms. Miller?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“I’m Elizabeth Campbell. I am an attorney with the Southern Indigent Legal Center. I’ve been asked to review your son Raymond’s case.”
“Why? What good does that do?”
Elizabeth hesitated a moment before responding. “I’m just ensuring that nothing was overlooked.”
Ms. Miller crossed her arms and puffed out, “I’ve helped you people before, and I got nothing from it. They paid me nothing.”
“Paid you nothing?” Elizabeth asked.
Ms. Miller jerked at a small gold cross hanging around her neck and held it between her fingers as she spoke. “I let them come through my home and search that godforsaken shed. What did I get for it? Nothing. That’s what I got.”
“Well, it’s not customary for the police to pay to search a home, ma’am.”
Sins of Our Fathers Page 2