Bodies found in water are commonly referred to as “floaters.”
There is nothing worse than a floater that’s been in the water a few days-long enough for decomposition to begin internally, filling the body with gases, bloating it to grotesque proportions; long enough for the skin to begin to slough off; long enough for fish and insects to feed on and invade the body. I had last seen Irina Saturday afternoon. It was Monday. I didn’t look as she was pulled out of the water-not straight away, anyway. I could have let Landry take me home and leave me out of this process, but I felt an obligation to stay at least for a little while. She had been part of my ersatz family. I felt a certain strange need to protect her. Too little, too late, unfortunately.
Uniformed deputies were ordered to drag the dead gator up to the bank. The coroner’s people oversaw the extrication of burn tissue from between the reptile’s jaws. I smoked another cigarette. My hands were still shaking. I leaned back against the side of my car, too wired to sit. In the old days, when I was “on the job,” as the cops say, nothing got to me. I was numb. Ice water in my veins. There was no case I couldn’t tackle. I was a woman on a mission: to dole out justice- at least to serve up the bad guys to the DA’s office hog-tied on a platter. I went from case to case to case, like an addict constantly looking for the next fix.
The last murder victim I’d had on the job was someone I knew, someone I had worked with and liked. His murder had been my fault. I’d made a poor decision going into a meth lab in rural Poxahatchee. Jumped the gun, so to speak. One of the dealers, a wild-eyed, mulleted cracker named Billy Golam, had pointed a 57 directly in my face-then turned abruptly and fired. I watched in horror as the bullet hit Deputy Hector Ramirez in the face and blew out the back of his head, blood and brain matter spraying the walls, the ceiling, splattering my lieutenant, who was standing behind him.
Three years had passed, and I still watched that scene play out in my nightmares. The face of Hector Ramirez floated through my memory every night.
I suspected that tonight Irina’s face would supersede that of the man who had died because of me. It would be Irina’s pale blue face that stared up at me through the fog of sleep, her ravaged eyes and lips. The idea made me feel ill and weak all over again.
How well had I known her, Landry had asked.
I had known her for more than a year, and I hadn’t known her at all. Our lives may have revolved around the same center but otherwise never touched. I felt regret for that. The remorse of the guilty conscience-something all of us feel when we’ve lost someone from our lives we had never taken the time to really know. We always believe there will be time later, after this, after that… But there is no time after death.
On the other side of the canal, Landry and the rest of them were engrossed in their task of evaluating the scene and collecting evidence. They would be at it for a long time. They expected- wanted-nothing from me aside from my statement, which Landry would take later.
Irina was dead. There was nothing I could do to change that. I was of no use to her standing there watching as people stepped around her remains like a sack of trash torn open by scavenging animals.
I hadn’t made the effort to get to know her in life. Before this was over, I would know her well. That was what I could do for Irina. I knew even then that the journey was going to take me places I didn’t want to go. If I had known exactly where, I might have made a different decision that day… but probably not.
As if he had sensed the direction my mind was turning, Landry looked over at me, frowning. I got in my car, turned it around, and drove home.
Irina and I had come to Sean’s farm at the same time, for the same job. Happenstance, if you believe in that. Fate, if you believe something more. I didn’t believe in anything at the time.
I had answered an ad in Sidelines, a locally based magazine for people in the horse industry. Groom Wanted. The person looking had turned out to be Sean Avadon.
Sean and I had known each other back in the days when I was a daughter, had parents, lived on the Island (Palm Beach proper). I was filled with rebellion and teen angst, and horses were my escape from the rest of my spoiled, privileged, empty life. Sean, older and wilder, had grown up a couple of mansions down the street. We had been friends, an odd couple, unrelated siblings. Sean was my sense of humor-and fashion, he claimed. What he got out of the deal, I never had figured out.
I had been in a very dark place when Sean came back into my life-or I into his-filled with anger and self-loathing and suicidal fantasies. The two years past had been spent in and out of hospitals while doctors tried to put me back together like Humpty Dumpty. On the day Hector Ramirez was killed in my stead, I had gone under the wheels of a meth dealer’s 4X4 truck and been dragged down the road, the pavement breaking bones and stripping flesh and tissue from my body. Why I hadn’t died, I couldn’t understand, and I had punished myself for it every conscious day I had in the two years that followed.
Sean had given the groom’s job and the apartment that went with it to Irina. He had taken me in like a wounded bird and put me in his guesthouse. When I seemed strong enough, he had put me to work helping to ride his horses, knowing the horses would be more help to me than I ever could have been to them.
Irina’s apartment was located over the plush clubby lounge in Sean’s barn. I went into the lounge, behind the bar, took a bottle of Stoli out of the freezer, and poured some into a heavy crystal tumbler. Leaning against the bar, I looked at the room as if it were an empty stage, remembering a conversation I had had with Irina in this room a year past.
She had just thrown a horseshoe at the head of a Belgian horse dealer who had come calling to tempt Sean into parting ways with substantial amounts of money. She would have killed the man on the spot if she could have. Her rage was a palpable thing, huge and hot and bitter. She had launched herself at him, pummeling him with her fists until Sean grabbed her by her blond ponytail and one arm and pulled her off.
I had brought her into the lounge while Sean tried to smooth things over with the Belgian. She told me the story of a girlfriend from Russia who had gone to work for the dealer, who used and abused her. In the end the girl killed herself. Irina had wanted revenge. I’d admired her for that. There had never been anyone in my life I felt strongly enough about to seek revenge on their behalf.
Full of passion. The heart of a tigress. I wondered if she had fought as fiercely for herself. Was there a killer holed up somewhere with fingernail scratches down his face, missing an eye, unable to walk straight? I hoped so.
I raised my glass in salute and finished off the vodka.
Putting on a pair of thin, tight riding gloves, I climbed the spiral stairs that led to Irina’s apartment. If Landry caught me doing what I was about to do, there would be hell to pay. Of course, the idea of negative ramifications had never stopped me from doing anything in my life.
A very private person, Irina always locked her door, but I knew where the key was hidden and I helped myself to it. The violence perpetrated on her had not happened here. The place looked lived-in, not tossed. A single coffee cup sat in the drain basket in the sink. The latest fashion magazines were strewn across the coffee table.
She had left her makeup out on the counter in the bathroom. I remembered she had been eager to go on Saturday. She had rushed off alone, dressed to kill. She could have been on the cover of one of the magazines in her living room as easily as working in a barn. Even in a T-shirt, baggy shorts, and muck boots, she had exuded an almost royal sense of confidence and elegance. I often referred to her as “the Czarina.”