Killing Time - Part Two
EDIT - If you haven't read 'Killing Time - Part One', here's a link to the post.
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I sat in the van and cried.
The crowd was thinning out now that the body of Misses Gordon was out of sight, and the rain started to come down in sheets. After a few minutes, I collected myself and started the engine, then pulled out of the muddy park and headed to the Medical Examiner's office. I was in a bit of a daze from lack of sleep, the stress of delivering bad news to my cousin’s kid, and the nervous anticipation of knowing what the rest of the night had in store.
With gangland shootings, robberies gone bad, and even rapes that turn into murder, there’s usually a motive, a logic to it, even if it’s a twisted sense of logic. Even when some psycho shoots up a school or a night club, there’s usually a motivation for it, or at least an inciting incident, that we can wrap our heads around. With this one though, it just didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t like he suddenly snapped and opened fire into a group of people. He was driving around, choosing a person at random from a crowd, and shooting them. This is also what made him so hard to catch.
At the Medical Examiner's office, I checked Misses Gordon in and placed her on a cold metal table, then rolled the table next to the one Joey was on. There wasn’t much to clean up in the van, just a few spots of blood on the gurney and floor where the body bag leaked, which only took a few minutes to clean. I did a quick inventory check then climbed out and shut the van doors.
Gonna need a few more of these.
I grabbed four more body bags and a box of nitrile gloves, then shut the door behind me and climbed in the van.
BZZZZZT BZZZZZT
My work phone was buzzing and I was not ready for whatever Carol had to say.
“Please tell me it’s a hospice call,” I said.
“No such luck, Charlie. Car accident. Decedent is a twenty-six-year-old female. It’s in Vantana,” she said.
Carol gave me the rest of the details as I scribbled them down on my notepad. The vehicle rolled over multiple times on a main road, which the police had closed off, so it was imperative that I get there as fast as I can. I would be meeting Gus on the scene.
I get to haul ass in the rain with Florida drivers and work with Gus? Lucky me.
“Thanks. I’ll head there now,” I said and hung up.
As expected, the drive on US1 to Vantana Beach was full of people going ten miles per hour under the speed limit with their hazard lights on. I’m not prone to road rage, but at times like this, I really empathized with people who are. It’s almost an hour-long drive in the best conditions, and these people were bound and determined to make the Vantana Police hate me. The rain finally stopped when I got to Indian Road in Vantana, and the traffic sped up a bit, allowing me to weave in and out of traffic to make up some time.
When I finally got to the scene, Gus was just arriving, which made me feel a little better about how long it took me to get there. I parked in the middle of the road beyond the police barrier, and took a look at the scene.
“Holy shit,” I said.
The woman was driving a Jeep, and it looked like she lost control, rolling at least once or twice before bouncing off a telephone pole, then slamming into the side of a building where they do oil and tire changes, before the Jeep finally came to a rest upside down. She was still in the driver’s seat.
Gus helped me get my gurney and other accessories from my van to prep for removal, and we wheeled it all over the where the Jeep was laying. There were a lot of police around to control the large crowd that had gathered, including employees of the quick lube business the Jeep smashed into.
“You’re skinnier, you get to go fish her out,” Gus said.
He wasn’t wrong. Gus is a rather large man, and there was no way he was fitting through the crushed window that was our only opening. I put on my gloves and kneeled down, peering into the Jeep. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and had been tossed around inside during the accident. I was amazed she hadn’t been ejected. Still though, she wasn’t nearly in as bad of shape as I would’ve expected for such a high velocity accident. No visible cuts or gashes or bones sticking out of her skin.
There was a strong odor of alcohol inside the Jeep, and I noticed two empty bottles of wine, plus an unopened bottle that I had to move out of the way. There was also a cell phone lying next to one of the empty bottles, with its screen still on. I knew I shouldn’t have looked, but curiosity got the better of me, and I picked up the phone.
“10 mins. B there soon. Luv u 2”
Unsent. When will I fucking learn?
I set the phone aside and tried to focus on the job at hand. The way the woman was positioned, I had to pull her out by her legs. I got her into position, then crawled backwards out the passenger side window, and began pulling her legs and sliding her out of the Jeep. When she was halfway out, her shirt got hung up on the crushed door and as I pulled, her shirt got yanked up, revealing her breasts.
Normally, I wouldn’t care about something like this. Just get her out, wrap her in a sheet, put her in a bag, and go about my business. But there was a crowd, and there were awfully close to the scene, especially one particular employee of the quick lube shop, who was taking pictures with his cell phone. And he was doing it right in front of two cops who weren’t paying any attention whatsoever. I immediately pulled the dead woman’s shirt down over her breasts, then stood up and proceeded to lose my temper.
“Officer! You gonna do something about that? Or do I have to?”
The cop gave me a confused look, and I wildly gesticulated towards the man taking pictures.
“Take his fucking cell phone or I’ll be transporting two bodies!”
“Hey, we don’t need you to make a scene. Just do your job and we’ll do ours,” the officer said.
I snatched the phone out of the guy's hand and shoved it in the cop's face, showing him the picture of the naked dead woman that the guy had taken.
“Then fucking do it,” I said.
This was not the first time, nor would it be the last time that I yelled at police on a scene, and didn’t get in any trouble for it. I considered it one of the perks of the job.
One officer escorted the man further away from the scene while the other deleted the photos. They didn’t arrest him or give him a citation, and to be honest, I’m not sure he actually broke any laws. It was just incredibly disrespectful, and I couldn’t allow pictures like that to get out into the public. I’ve been on the internet way too long to not know how that would turn out.
Gus and I got the woman and her personal effects wrapped and bagged and strapped, then wheeled her to my van and loaded her up. I lit a cigarette and leaned against the van to relax for a moment before making the drive back down south.
“You really need to take it easy, man,” Gus said.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll try yoga or something,” I said.
I climbed into my van and started heading back to US1, hoping for a calm drive now that it wasn’t raining. Then my phone rang.
“Our guy struck again,” Carol said.
“You gotta be shitting me.”