Casey
Agent Baxter and Detective Hussler stand in a v-shape facing each other, heads bent to peer down at something by their feet. Caution tape lines the scene and other agents and forensic scientists kneel around the small area with their own equipment. Baxter hears me approach and turns. His expression is gray and dreary; the look of a man who has witnessed something terrible.
"You're sure you want to be a part of this?" he asks.
Ice runs through my veins, but I step forward. "Yes. You asked me that twenty minutes ago over the phone. I haven't changed my mind. I need to know everything that happens."
He nods understandingly. "I'm sorry to do this to you."
Before I follow their line of sight, I look at Hussler. His eyes are just as red and bloodshot as ever, sunken deep with dark bruises beneath them. The green of his irises is dull and gray like the surrounding forest. He looks defeated; hopeless.
Hussler holds out a hand to stop me. "Don't look. You need to brace yourself. It's one thing to see a dead body, it's something else entirely to see someone who was your friend without light in their eyes."
I take a shaky breath and nod, turning away. I limp a few steps into the surrounding woods, sneakers digging into the wet ground, leaving footprints.
It gives me an idea. "Before I have to face reality, I just want to say that I think you should check for footprints by where Daniel was taken."
Hussler shakes his head. "We did. The rain washed them away. You won't want to hear this, but it was the perfect opportunity to kidnap someone."
I take another breath. This is impossible. I pivot sluggishly around. "Is it actually him?"
"Yes. But you have to understand how different someone looks when they're dead. And he did not die pretty," Hussler replies.
Inhale. Exhale. Breath by breath. I can do this. Someone has to bear witness who knew him as a person before he became a corpse.
"Okay. I think I'm ready." Goosebumps tense along my skin, sending the hair fully erect.
"You'll never be ready," Hussler murmurs. "You don't have to look now, you know. You can wait until the funeral."
I shake my head. "No. I need to see now. I need to see how he suffered so I can make his murderer suffer ten times worse."
They glance at each other knowingly. Either they think it's an empty threat or they agree one hundred percent.
"You're sure?"
Despite everything, annoyance builds, and I snap, "Yes, I'm ready!"
They don't take offense or get riled by my harsh tone. They simply take two steps back each, leaving an open view to the body on the ground.
His feet are bare and covered in brown socks of dried blood. There are several gaps where toes should be. The bone and exposed flesh torment me the longer my eyes remain attached to them, too shocked to move further. I force myself to move on. His jeans are matted with blood, ripped in long strips in many areas where a knife cut through. His torso has similar wounds, but deep stab marks instead of long, shallow cuts meant to sting. I feel sick before I even make it higher than his chest, but my eyes keep scanning the entire length of his body. I make it to his throat and find a long, red slash. A waterfall of dried blood creates a scarf around his neck, falling over his shirt where it absorbed and turned the whole thing deep crimson.
I stop at his throat. At the lethal slash. I don't want to see his face. A body is a body, but a face is for certain.
This is important, I remind myself.
I look at his face. His skin is unnaturally pale; gray like everything about this scene. His lips are parted, blue from lack of blood circulation as well as the late-fall chill. His hair sits in matted curls around his head like an untamed crown.
I don't think the full affect hits me right away. I have just enough time to ask, "Did you contact his parents yet?" before I stumbled unevenly away from the crime scene to empty my stomach for the second time in the past twenty-four hours.
I fall to the ground, my leg hitting the dirt with a sharp stab of pain. I shriek at the fire in my leg, but my sobs are based on the hole in my heart. I'm shaking, my chest heaving and muscles quaking as I think about all the horrors he had to endure.
I knew we would be too late. Why does it hurt so much when I knew it was bound to happen? The serial killer wouldn't hold off just because it's the courteous thing to do! If he cared about manners, he wouldn't have kidnapped, tortured, and killed half a dozen boys. Maybe even a dozen...
I glance through tear-blurred vision to see Hussler and Baxter discussing amongst themselves back at the scene, casting worried glances my way every so often. After what feels like hours, although I'm sure it was barely even a few minutes, a burly man walks gingerly towards me and scoops me up in his arms.
"Uncle Vic," I say through a clogged throat, "he's dead. He's dead..." I nestle my face in the crook of his neck, listening to the sounds of the birds' lively chirping around and feeling fire shoot up my leg every time it swings. That's the issue with a knee-high cast, I suppose: too much autonomy.
"I know, sweetie. Let's get you home."
"My leg..." I mumble, almost inaudibly.
"You have medicine for that. They'll make the pain go away."
Tears continue streaming as I think, The pain won't ever go away.
Hussler was right: I wasn't ready and I never would be. Seeing a dead body--someone I knew and appreciated--in that state left a gaping hole in my heart. It ripped the innocent veil from my eyes.
This is the real world. The real world is cruel, unforgiving. It's an evil place.
The physical pain grows unbearable. I fight to stay awake, even though unconsciousness would be a welcome relief from everything wrong in the world.
"My leg hurts," I mumble again, weaker than before.
"I know, honey. Just close your eyes. We'll fix that soon."
"He's dead."
"Yes," is all Unlce Victor says. The word holds a lot of weight. Unlce Vic is a big man, a wide frame covered in sheer muscle, but the way he says it, he seems lighter than a feather, liable to flutter away with the slightest breeze.
"Do they know? Do they know their son is dead?"
"I called them." His voice is a gentle relief from the pulsating screams ringing through my brain. "You never should have been at that scene." Anger rises in his voice, but he pushes it back down instantly. "I think I need to have a word with that agent. He should know better."
"I made them promise," I say. "I wanted to see."
"You didn't know what you were asking. Besides, you are just a child. My responsibility. You don't know what you want. And after you came in so late last night, I'm beginning to wonder if you have any respect for my advice and my concerns."
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
His lips press into my hair. "Shhh. It's okay, sweetie. I shouldn't have brought that up. It's not the time. I don't want you to feel any worse right now, okay?"
I don't know if it's possible to feel worse than I do now.
He sets me gently in the passenger's seat of the car, having the seat reclined for me to lean back and nearly lay down.
"Uncle Vic?" I ask once he's settled into he driver's seat.
"Yes?"
"I really am sorry."
"Don't worry yourself over that right now. I was disappointed for a while, but I don't blame you."
"I just...I just wanted to understand. I didn't want him to have to go through it all alone. I know it sounds stupid because he was alone, in the end, but I thought it was important for someone who knew him to see him dead before he was made presentable for the funeral."
"I understand, honey."
We drive in silence. The bright blue sky bears down on the world mockingly. The sun blinds us and terrorizes us with its heat on the most uncharacteristically warm day of October in Belleridge in just under a decade.
It feels wrong; everything should've frozen over and cold. But, in some ways, it's highly appropriate. The world does not stop spinning for one lost life. Nature doesn't all just die because one person did.
He was warmhearted and generous and kind like the sun's powerful rays. He was bright like the sky is now, and steady like the whispering breeze. He was good.
Thinking about it now, it makes perfect sense that the day should be gorgeous. A golden day for the golden boy.
It was October twenty-second that Benny Duran's body was found in the woods, not two miles from where Daniel had been taken.