“I thought you would kiss me.”
He turned off the headlights and ignition. “Like this?”
The kiss was long, slow, and warm.
“No,” she finally gasped, “not quite like that.”
She closed her eyes and lifted her mouth.
He tried again.
“Can I come in?” he finally asked.
“It’s already late and I’m due in the office early. But this evening has been an experience. Promise me something?”
“If I can.”
“No more secrets?”
“No secrets,” he said, and sealed it with a kiss.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Delighted to have the last word, Laura and Casey enjoyed collaborating on their suicide note.
Many such notes are cruelly calculated to leave a legacy of guilt to the living. In their case it was appropriate.
Venturi encouraged them to keep it short and simple—and to leave their fingerprints all over it. Literally.
It didn’t take long to produce a final, so to speak, draft.
To whom it may concern,
By the time you read this we will be dead.
It seemed like a dream come true, that justice had finally triumphed when we were released and the world knew what we knew from the start, that we were innocent, always innocent. But our dream of justice became a nightmare. We have been repeatedly threatened, physically attacked, and denied employment. We can no longer survive and with nowhere to turn, we choose this way out. Perhaps God will forgive you all for refusing to accept the fact of our innocence and driving us into this downward spiral of hopelessness and despair.
Good-bye.
Casey handwrote two copies which they both signed.
They mailed one to The Miami Herald and the other to the Miami-Dade Police Department early on the day they died.
The Barretts left their apartment at the usual time that morning, but on the way to Venturi’s they made stops at four service stations. They filled a five-gallon gasoline can at each one.
They stayed at the house, while Venturi carefully drove their car west on the Tamiami Trail and turned down a remote dirt road into the Everglades.
Danny followed in his SUV.
They left Laura’s purse and Casey’s wallet containing their driver’s licenses, ID, and all the money they had left—two $1 bills and some small change—on a tree stump near the turnoff to the dirt road.
“Sure this will be hot enough?” Venturi asked.
“Who knows more about cremation than me?” Danny confidently removed two cardboard boxes from his car.
Each was marked with a label from a Florida medical examiner’s office.
April 9, 1995, Jane Doe, unidentified Caucasian female, age thirties.
Dec. 17, 1998, John Doe, unidentified Caucasian male, age thirty to forty.
“Intact skeletons like this,” Danny proudly explained the night before, “are rare and hard to come by. You never find them out in the open. Wildlife scatters them, wild dogs run away with big bones, land crabs carry away the small bones like fingers and toes.
“We’re damn lucky. Whoever wrapped Jane in plastic rolled her up in a heavy rug and buried her deep. If some farmer didn’t decide to dig a well, she never would have been found.
“And Johnny here came out of the closet in an abandoned house. A demolition crew found him when they were about to knock it down. He might have been homeless, crashed there and died of natural causes or a drug overdose, or he was killed and dumped there. Nobody knows.
“No cause of death established on either one. No bullet holes, no knife nicks. Pristine condition,” he said proudly.
“So how did you happen to…”
“You’d never get them in Miami-Dade. Here, the medical examiner’s office boils ’em in meat tenderizer, strips the bones, and stores ’em indefinitely, hoping to identify them someday. But smaller ME offices around the state don’t have that kind of storage space. These were kept for at least ten years. Eventually they’re released to a funeral home for cremation or burial. Need I say more?”
“I already heard more than I want to,” Venturi said.
He and Danny had originally discussed cleaning out the nagangas of several Santería priests he knew. The large metal cauldrons usually contain a human skull and long leg bones along with other ritualistic items.
“Where do they get the bones they use in ceremonies?”
“Don’t ask,” Danny said. “Some from Africa and Haiti. They busted a woman at the airport here just recently. Came in from Haiti with a human skull in her purse. Couldn’t understand why it was a problem. But most are harvested locally. More graves are robbed here than in anywhere in America.
“Even the dead aren’t safe in Miami.”
They arranged the man’s bones on the seat behind the steering wheel of the Taurus and the female’s in the passenger seat. From counties in different parts of the state, they almost surely never met in life, but John and Jane Doe were about to be linked forever.
Wearing work gloves and masks to protect themselves from the fumes, Venturi and Danny drenched the bones, the seats, the dashboard, and the carpet with gasoline. The fuel tank was a quarter full, a volatile mix of fumes, gasoline and air.
“Got a cigarette?” Danny asked as, choking on fumes, they used the last of the gasoline to soak the inside of the trunk.
They left the car windows open just a hair, allowing in enough air for the fire to breathe, and hung a gasoline-soaked rag out the driver’s-side window.
Venturi attached a road flare to the end of a fifteen-foot-long painter’s pole, pulled off the cap, and slid it across the flare’s pyrotechnic bubble as though scratching a match.
The flare ignited. Backing away, he touched it to the gasoline-soaked rag.
Danny was already behind the wheel of the SUV.
Venturi extinguished the flare in the dirt, telescoped the pole and tossed it, the flare, and the cap into the backseat, and scrambled into the SUV.
“Sure you got the cap?” Danny said.
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go, let’s go!”
Danny swung back onto the Trail and turned east. Venturi called 911 on a prepaid cell to report a raging brush fire thirty miles from the real flames roaring in the rearview mirror.
“Look at that sucker burn!” Danny whistled through his teeth as he watched the rearview mirror. “Wait till that gas-soaked trunk burns cherry red and the fuel tank blows.
“So long, Laura and Casey.”
“Ashes to ashes,” Venturi said. “May they rest in peace.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Hullo, Audra and Aiden Faircloth!” Danny said.
Audra hugged Aiden’s neck, as Mike and Danny walked in.
“It’s over? Is it really over?”
“It’s over. They’re gone,” Mike said.
Their Kmart clothes and the rest of Laura and Casey Barretts’ meager belongings remained in the tiny efficiency with the window view of treetops and sky. A third copy of the signed suicide note was found on the kitchen table, with a postscript apologizing to the landlord for any inconvenience regarding the lease. Homicide detectives found it along with stacks of want ads, job applications, and letter after letter of rejection. The landlord later showed camera crews and reporters around the modest single room and bath.
The deaths of the couple at the heart of the sex scandal at Devonbrook Day Care made national news as did the untimely death, the same week, at age forty-four, of Richard Jewell, the security guard hero who was hounded, hunted, and ruined when the media falsely accused him of being the Olympic bomber.
The difference was that Richard Jewell was really dead.
Their transformation was so effective that Audra and Aiden already considered Laura and Casey sad strangers they had left behind.
Audra, now blond, walked like a high-stepping model, her shoulders and hips in motion, and spoke like an Aussie. Once brown-eyed, she now wore green contact len
ses. Her pregnancy, confirmed at Keri’s office the night after they met, didn’t show yet. Aiden was a jock, head shaved, beard short, mustache well groomed. He even looked taller due to lifts in his shoes and his improved posture, which appeared almost military. Neither resembled the sad-sack photos on Laura’s and Casey’s driver’s licenses.
Their new birth certificates and passports would pass scrutiny anywhere in the world.
Venturi had again called upon a friend who in a prior career had provided similar documents for protected witnesses. Nelson Drumheller now owned a company with lucrative government contracts to control access to federal buildings, computer systems, and sensitive areas with a new high-tech generation of badges and ID cards. His were encrypted with biometric data including fingerprints, facial recognition, and license and passport information.
And Danny had reached out to a former CIA contact, now a travel agent expert at moving people all over the globe without leaving trails. Enough money to see them through the first year was waiting in an Australian bank.
As Venturi drove them to the airport for their long, first journey home, he reinforced their training: how to spot a tail, how to lose one, and how to cheat the omnipresent security and television cameras.
“Never sit bareheaded in the stands at sports events. TV cameras often pan the fans. Always wear hats and shades. You have long lives ahead,” he said earnestly. “As you raise your family, you’ll fall into the rhythm of life in your community. But break no laws, however minor. Draw no attention to yourselves. No letters to the editor, no man-on-the-street television interviews. Live quietly, under the radar. Even in intimate situations when you’re alone together, never use your old names. You never knew those people.”
Audra and Aidan had been drilled relentlessly on their new dates of birth, mothers’ maiden names, fathers’ occupations, their new wedding anniversary, until everyone was sure that no momentary slip of the tongue would betray them.
“If someone on the street shouts out the name Laura or Casey, don’t react, don’t turn around. Walk away normally. Someone who thought they recognized you will assume they were mistaken.”
They said their good-byes in a parking garage at Miami International Airport.
“It’s such a long, long flight,” Keri fretted. “I want you both, especially you, Audra, to get up and walk around. Don’t sit in a cramped position for long periods. Drink lots of fluids, nonalcoholic, of course. Take your vitamins and find a good ob-gyn from the list I gave you as soon as you arrive.”
“Okay, okay,” Audra said, rosy cheeked and excited. “We get it, we got it the first time. You’re starting to sound like you’re our parents!”
She threw her arms around Venturi’s neck from the backseat, catching him off guard.
“You are our parents,” she said emotionally, and hugged him hard. “The family we never had. You’re our gift from God.”
Her chin trembled, her eyes filled. “We’ll live up to your expectations, I promise.”
“From now on, you are the family,” Venturi said. “Congratulations! Australia! What an adventure.” He sounded almost envious. “Be happy.”
“We will,” she promised tearfully. “We’ll never forget you.”
Danny pumped Aiden’s hand. “Watch out for the crocs, mate.”
After a round of hugs and kisses, the couple hurried into the terminal.
The others followed slowly, from a distance, watching until they cleared security.
Audra looked back at one point and waved. No one waved back. They were history now. But they kept watching until the couple, caught up in a tidal wave of humanity, disappeared.
The Miami-Dade County medical examiner’s office announced weeks later that tests had been unable to confirm through DNA the identification of the remains in the Barretts’ car.
The chief medical examiner explained that the fire’s heat had been so intense that the victims’ teeth had exploded and that even the large leg bones, usually a reliable source of DNA, had been incinerated to the extent that only splinters remained.
“They were literally cremated,” he said.
However, experts had authenticated the handwriting on the suicide notes as that of Laura and Casey Barrett.
The burned remains of a couple their age had been found in a car registered to them, and their identification was located nearby.
A psychological autopsy of the victims revealed histories of despondency, depression, and incarceration. The experts concluded that the Barretts were indeed deceased at their own hands. Their death certificates were signed.
Case closed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Pounding on his bedroom door jolted Venturi awake late that night. Scout responded from his rug on the floor with only a single startled woof.
“Mikey? It’s me, I need to talk to you.”
He rolled out of bed naked, focused on the stress in Victoria’s voice. The digital face on his bedside clock read 3:10 a.m. He slipped on a pair of shorts, unlocked the door, and edged it open.
“Vicki? Is everything all right?”
“Here, yes. In the rest of the world, no.” Her hair tousled, she wore a pink cotton robe and slippers. She looked pale but was alone.
“You know I always leave my cell phone on. The New York City police just called. It’s Sidney.”
“Is he all right?”
“No. All wrong, as usual.”
“I’ll be right out.”
When he stepped back from the door she saw the .45-caliber automatic in his right hand.
He pulled on blue jeans and a shirt, then joined her in the kitchen.
He knew she’d seen the gun. “Old habits,” he explained.
“I know. Madison told me,” she said softly.
“Did it bother her?” he asked, his interest piqued. “Did she complain?”
“Oh, no, she always said she never felt safer than when she was with you.”
He swallowed and nodded. “It’s pretty remote out here. You can never be too careful.”
She gazed fondly into his eyes and smiled. “I see the things you do. It reminds me of the two of you together. You know there’s an old love song with lyrics about how little things remind me of you. A cigarette with lipstick traces, a ticket to romantic places, and so on.
“Of course with you it’s little things, like always refilling your gas tank before going home, even if it’s already three quarters full. And then there’s the parachute cord, compass, ropes, papers, and maps in the car, to say nothing of a handgun under the pillow and a shotgun in the pantry.”
She laughed, as though she found them all endearing.
He poured them each a glass of milk and sat across from her in the dimly lit kitchen, illuminated only by the clock on the microwave.
“So what’s with Sidney?”
She blinked back tears and covered her eyes with her hand.
“If he’s still alive and isn’t quadriplegic or comatose, it’s not that bad,” he said gently. “What’s the kid stepped in now?”
She lifted her chin and met his eyes. “My apartment actually. He broke in. Stacked everything he could steal at the front door and was busy vandalizing the rest when the police arrived. The doorman called them. He knew I was out of town.
“Sidney struggled with the police, severely bit a female officer on the chin and forearm, and resisted until they shocked him with a Taser. Three times. It scarcely affected him. They said it was most likely because he was high. He was also in possession of cocaine and marijuana.
“How could two children be so different?” she murmured forlornly.
He shook his head. Sidney, the youngest by three years, had always been trouble. His father’s first and fatal coronary had occurred at a Suffern, New York, police station, where he’d gone after Sidney, then fourteen, took his car without permission. He led police on a wild high-speed chase that ended in a three-car collision, which seriously injured three people, one of them a child.
&n
bsp; “We tried everything.” Her voice sounded thin. “Love, therapy, rehab, tough love, juvenile boot camp. The only thing we didn’t do was a lobotomy. I wish we had. He’s not a kid anymore. He’s an angry twenty-eight-year-old man who hates the world. Especially me.”
She had stopped giving him money because it went for drugs, gambling, or lap dances. He was furious when she did not share the settlement she received for the grave injuries that cost her her daughter and unborn grandchild, her leg, and nearly her life.
“He said Madison was his sister and demanded his share. I said no. If he’d been going to school, working, or buying a house, it would be different, of course. But I won’t support his bad behavior. He and his sister were never close. He always resented her, too.
“I’m actually afraid of him, Mikey.” She reacted as though startled by the thought. “How can you be afraid of a child you brought into the world?”
He took her hands. “With Sidney, it’s easy. He’s more than troubled. I wish I knew what it would take to straighten him out.”
She sighed. “You know, I grew so fond of those young people we just sent on their way. Wished I could disown Sidney and adopt them. That sounds terribly disloyal, doesn’t it?”
“You don’t have a disloyal bone in your body, Victoria. You’ve done everything you can do. Sidney chose his own path for whatever reasons. He must be a throwback to some evil ancestor, a pirate, Ali Baba, or one of the forty thieves.”
“I prefer the ‘mix-up in the maternity ward’ theory,” she said. “I’m going to New York tomorrow to sort things out. The police say it’s up to me if I want to prosecute my son for breaking and entering, vandalism, and destruction of property. They are prosecuting him for assault on a police officer, resisting arrest with violence, and drug possession.”
Her gaze was steady. “I want to prosecute, Mikey. God knows, nothing else has worked. Maybe jail time will. If not, at least he’ll be in a cage and not hurting anyone for a while. What do you think?”
“It’s your decision. He’s your son. I wish I’d been more helpful. I tried, too. I saw Madison cry over her little brother more than once. Personally, I think you’re right to do it, but either way, I’ll back you a hundred percent.”
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