Naked in School
The Vodou Physicist
Chapter 22 - An Old Threat Returns
Later in the day, Tamara had her office aide period and she found that the office was surprisingly quiet. Miss Wojinsky, however, was bursting with the need to pass on some juicy gossip. She hustled Tamara over to a corner of the room.
“Dr Barello was called to the district office. But I heard the conversation before she left—Mrs Leonard was with her and they had the phone speaker on. It was the superintendent. He told them that those two guys called from the med school hospital. They claimed that they were assaulted here and were forced to strip. They were made to stand under hot lights and then Barello had demanded that they leave.”
“They said that? There were almost nine hundred people who saw what happened...” Tamara started.
“Barello told him that some kids recorded much of the thing on their phones and now it’s all over social media, so that if he wanted to see what really happened, he should check out Tik Tok where it’s going viral. Including the strip tease. So the super asked her how she could let such a thing happen at her school and she really let him have it. She told him, more or less, as I recall, ‘First, you let someone come here to run an assembly without telling me what it was about—he had the nerve to tell me that if I knew, then I would stage a disruption. That, sir, impugns my character and I will be requesting a formal apology from the school board for that remark of his. Then he had the audacity to use a sexual innuendo and suggestive language in talking with one of my students. Third, he and his companion voluntarily stripped off their clothes in front of many hundreds of minor children.’
“The super told her that the guy claimed that he was forced and she told him to just watch the videos; no one was anywhere near him on the stage. And, Barello asked him, since she was kept in the dark about the purpose of the assembly, how was it possible that the school could plan to stage a response which so closely reacted to what Rodriguez said in his speech? She also told him that there was no one backstage during the assembly, just two microphones were active, and that she herself had confirmed that fact immediately after the two left the stage. That’s when the super asked her to come to the district office. She took a couple of teachers who were at the assembly with her to back her up.”
Tamara was nodding her head. “Wow, that’s quite a story. D’you think she’s in trouble?”
“Uh uh; the super didn’t sound angry. He sounded... weary... like he’d rather be somewhere else. Very far away else. Oh! You know something else? He told her that kids in lots of schools heard about what happened here and are starting to refuse to be in the Program. He said it’s disrupting the schools all over the county.”
Tamara chuckled. “Nice. I’m really happy about hearing that. I’m so happy we have our spiritual protectors here—kept us from having the Program start here.”
“You know, I’m not from your culture—look at my name?—really. Is that stuff for real, like the haunting?”
“I’m guessing that 90 percent of Haitians, native or born here, have an affinity for our spirits. Maybe not so much for those who are Protestants, they don’t believe in the Catholic idea of saints, but that’s what the Haitian spirits are—like the saints. They guide believers and to us, praying to them is more accessible than praying to Bondye, the One God, is.”
Wojinsky smiled. “Yeah, I’m Catholic and we pray to the Virgin Mary and there are special days that we observe for our saints, so I know exactly what you mean.”
Tamara nodded. “The major difference is that we Haitians believe that we have a special relationship with certain spirits and given the right circumstances and motivations, we believe that spirits can occupy worshipers’ bodies for an amount of time. So I can’t explain what happens here... some kind of group hypnosis? Who knows.”
~~~~
At home later, Wilson told Nadine and Tamara that he still had ominous feelings of a threat but no specific idea where it was coming from. Tamara told them about the assembly and how it ended.
Nadine shook her head. “You’re becoming quite creative. You still have the feeling that the lwa continue to support you?”
She nodded. “Dad, do you know when you feel Ogorin’s presence?”
“Like a feeling of leaning on you?”
“Yeah. And a chuckling in your head. And whenever I do something that helps protect kids, I feel bathed in comfort and I feel that Erzulie Mansur is close. Oh, another thing. I think I got help when I recorded the lwa voices. When I played them back at school, they sounded so much better than they did when I played them after I finished the recording. It could be better speakers, but still...”
University of Miami Medical School: early September
The next day was Tuesday and in the afternoon, Tamara was at the medical school MRI lab, making some adjustments to a coil assembly.
Dr Beauford had stopped off at the MRI control room to speak to her.
“Say, Tamara, there’s word going around about strange happenings at your school. A colleague of mine, a neurologist, was asked to consult in a case where two people had burning sensations on their skin whenever they tried to wear clothing. They had been at your school. I don’t think patient confidentiality applies because the event seems to be common knowledge—besides, they’re not my patients.”
“I may have seen something like that happen, actually,” Tamara grinned. “I believe they stripped because their skin was hot or something.”
“This was a strange case, my colleague told me. There are all kinds of reasons for psychosomatic illnesses but this one was a doozy. The two appeared at the E.R. naked and when they were asked to put on gowns, they did and then claimed skin pain and the E.R. doctor actually observed their dermatitis and urticaria; their skin temperatures also became elevated. I was asked if I thought if any imaging studies would show anything. Functional MRI can indeed detect the presence of functional brain disorders related to neurogenic problems, but I told him that in this case, I didn’t think they’d be useful.”
“Did they say what happened?” Tamara asked.
“Only that they were giving a school presentation and suddenly it became very hot. They were so uncomfortable that they took off their clothes. When they tried to dress, it was too painful.”
“What did your... um, colleague think?”
Beauford thought for a second. “That this was strange but not unprecedented. There are a number of psychological diagnoses that can explain symptoms which have no apparent physical cause. You want the technical lecture?”
“Sure,” Tamara grinned. “Hit me with your worst.”
“Remember, you asked. There’s Munchausen syndrome. That’s a rare factitious disorder where the person pretends to be ill or deliberately tries to produce symptoms of illness in themselves. My colleague ruled that out. Then we have conversion disorder. That’s a condition where an issue in a person’s mind disrupts how the brain works. The symptoms happen because the brain “converts” the effects of that triggering issue into functional disruptions of the person’s brain or nervous system. It results in real, physical symptoms that the person can’t control. People with this condition often feel pain, sometimes with other symptoms and sometimes on its own. My colleague thought that this was a possibility, but having two people present with this problem at the same time was ... ah ... not just atypical, but difficult to understand.
“Another possibility of what happened to them could be a mass psychogenic illness; that’s a functional neurological disorder which is another brain problem that’s not caused by an obvious physical problem, and it can happen with groups of people who are connected in some fashion, such as having similar jobs. An example of this kind of problem is known to the public as the ‘Havana Syndrome,’ where it’s believed by many medical authorities that extreme job stress, together with the suggestion that some type of sonic attack was being perpetrated on their sites, caused the victims to experience similar neurologic symptoms. Those symptoms are real and very painful, but they are actually created by the brain. This could be the cause of those two people’s problem.
“But more likely it’s related to something called the ‘nocebo effect’; that’s when the person has no expectation of having a particular symptom and then experiences that very symptom in the body. It’s another proof that the brain is capable of producing all sorts of real physical symptoms. So how can the brain produce physical symptoms, you ask? Let’s look at their rashes first.
“If a person experiences increased levels of stress hormones in the body, adrenaline and cortisol, those hormones can increase one’s heart rate and blood pressure, suppress digestive system activity, and also affect the immune system. Immune system changes caused by stress hormones may lead to inflammation in the body. Thus we can see rashes, itchiness, and changes to the skin. And next, looking at pain, the mind can cause pain without a physical source. It’s called psychogenic pain, and it happens when the person’s pain is related to underlying emotional, behavioral, or psychological factors.
“Enough?”
Tamara nodded, grinning.
“So these patients may have received a psychological and emotional shock which somehow persuaded them to remove their clothes. And now their brains and bodies have somehow developed a conditioned response to wearing clothing—when they do, they experience pain and rashes from heightened levels of stress hormones. That would be my diagnosis, but hell, I’m just a brain surgeon, not a psychiatrist.”
“That sounds good—better than what people in my school are saying,” Tamara told him.
“And that is...?”
“Ha. That the school is haunted and that the Vodou spirits cursed them.”
Beauford shook his head. “I may not be a psychiatrist but I do know something about the mind. There’s some real truth behind those curses or hexes. The hexes can trigger a psychogenic illness in a person, even leading to his death. The medical theory is that the curse or hex causes such psychological distress in the believing person that the person subsequently behaves as if the curse was real. That’s when something like the ‘nocebo effect’ may play a role. The outcome is that the person, believing himself to be cursed, stops eating or caring for himself while awaiting his expected demise. Such cases have appeared in the medical and psychological literature, in fact.”
“So they will themselves into illness or death,” Tamara commented.
“Exactly.”
“How long do you think that they will need to stay naked?” she asked.
“Until a shrink gets them to understand that the problem is all in their minds.”
~~~~
On Wednesday, Tamara was back in high school. She felt like she was living two separate lives, and in a sense she was. Her classes at the university were so different, both in their structure and the students. Her university classes had no classroom drama—usually. There had been some drama in her Tuesday morning class—excitement, really, over the unique news that some school officials had been stripped, instead of the students, when they had tried to start the Program. The students enjoyed the idea of a fitting payback. None of the native Floridian University of Miami students had experienced the Program, but some from out of state had encountered it in their school; a couple had even been participants. The instructor had to wait until the class settled down.
As in her college classes, the Edison kids were still chattering about Monday’s dramatic event. They were even more wound up by the news from social media that the Edison kids were being regarded as heroes for resisting the Program and as models to be emulated. Their chat page on the anti-Program website was being examined by kids from a lot of Florida schools and though the plans and ideas discussed there had been never used in practice, kids from the other schools were adopting those ideas.
When she heard voices coming from the auditorium as she passed by, she peeked into it to see who was there. Rojas noticed her and beckoned her over.
“Of all the days for me to miss by being sick...” he began.
“How are you feeling now?” Tamara asked.
“Just a stomach bug. Felt fine by the afternoon.” he answered and Tamara nodded. “These guys here are tearing apart the place. They’re trying to find any physical evidence of what happened on Monday.”
“Oh. I didn’t see anything unusual when I set stuff up and Barello didn’t either. Everything was locked up over the weekend too. Oops, I think a wireless mike was damaged. It felt hot after that guy used it. I tagged it but didn’t get to check it because Barello told me to just close up and go to class.”
“Yeah, I saw it. It’s shot. Something shorted and it overheated, but how that could happen with a battery is weird. Hey, like everything else is weird about this place.”
One of the men came over. “Is this the student you mentioned who was running the sound board on Monday?” he asked.
“Yeah, Bob, this is Tamara. This is Bob Ayers from the school district.” They greeted each other. “According to the principal, Tamara just came in here on Monday to turn on the system. Right, Tamara?”
She nodded.
Ayers asked, “See anything unusual—like something where it shouldn’t be, or something connected to the board?”
“No, there wasn’t anything, Mr Ayers. But, you know, I wasn’t looking specifically for anything. It looked the same as it did on Friday, I guess, and on Monday morning, everything was still locked up. Just before the assembly, I unlocked everything, turned on the system, and got out the mikes. One for Dr Barello and the other for that guy. That’s basically all I did to set up on Monday.”
Rojas added, “Barello confirmed that she saw nothing connected to the board when she checked it just after the assembly ended. She apparently knows a little about sound boards.”
Ayers scowled. “The district sent me here to find out how your school set up a sound program to play a set of disembodied voices. I guess your sound board and the attached gear does have that capability, but it would take a fair amount of prep time and unrestricted access to the system. Who has the keys?”
Rojas said, “I have a set. The office has a backup set in their safe. I had the keys all weekend; left them in my pocket by mistake. I usually keep them in my desk.”
“And who else knows how to run the board?” Ayers asked.
“A sophomore, Judy Gilbert. She’s being trained. Tamara’s my assistant, um... ‘best girl’ they call it. She’s captain of the AV Squad and stepped into the role when we lost the two kids we had spent a year training. They moved away. Tamara took to learning the sound and light systems like a natural. She’s been around electronics her whole life, it seems. She’s helped me troubleshoot stuff going back maybe two years now, right, Tamara?”
She nodded. “Yeah. When I was a freshman.”
“Judy wasn’t even here Monday, either; she must have gotten the same bug that I had,” Rojas added. “So no one else knows how this setup works, I’m sure. And definitely no one had the opportunity to set up anything like you described happened. Tamara, Dr Barello told me about it. What did you think?”
“What I thought? What happened just about blew me away. I’ve never heard of anything like that happening... um, but last spring? The rumor is that something happened then. I heard that a room got hot and I heard strange voices coming on the P.A.”
Rojas said, “Right. I do know about that. It was a mystery that time too. Anyway, Bob, anything more you need?”
“No. I’m not sure what they expected us to find, anyway. I looked at the videos that were on social media. The voices were... just voices. But the people described them as if they were unworldly. But that’s likely because of the phone mikes; they compress frequencies and, well, they’re not intended to be studio quality. And there’s nothing anywhere on the stage to cause heat. All the lighting is by LEDs. And there’s nothing up here that can melt cell phones either. So, we’re done. Thanks for the help, Hector.”
Rojas shook his hand and Ayers walked away, collecting his gear and assistant.
“I just popped in ‘cause I heard voices,” Tamara told Rojas. “I was in college classes yesterday so I didn’t hear about what happened then.”
“Not a lot. Lots of chatter among the kids. Some community members showed up in the afternoon—wanted to consecrate the auditorium, they said. So Barello let them in and they did some kind of ceremony. That was all.”
“I wonder what the consecrat...” Tamara started and the bell rang. “Oops. Gotta get to class now. See you later.”
The remaining day was quiet, but when Tamara got home, she found both parents there.
“Hey, hello,” she called when she walked in. “How come you’re both home?”
“My premonition told me that the danger was to your mom and was this afternoon or tomorrow,” Wilson told her. “We were talking about what it could be.”
Tamara looked at her mom thoughtfully.
“Oh! I... think ... maybe ...no, it is. It’s Vanessa—she’s nearby somewhere. I’ve been so busy with fighting the Program—I totally missed it! When I concentrate, I can taste a hint of the same evil that came from Mr Evil when he came here.”
Wilson looked alarmed. “How could she find us? And how could she enter the country? Masters told me she was on a ‘no-admit’ list.”
Nadine shook her head. “Don’t rely on that. She could persuade most anyone to do what she wanted—even the immigration people. She’s got an ability like Tamara in that way.”
“I’m calling Masters. I’ll find out if he knows anything,” Wilson said.
He made the call and learned that Masters wasn’t available, but spoke to someone who knew about their case.
“Okay, the State Department guy is checking with the FBI and with Border Control. He said someone will call me within the hour.”
Forty minutes later, a call came in. It was from John Norris, the FBI agent in the Miami office. Wilson put the call on his phone’s speaker.
“This is FBI Special Agent Norris, is Wilson Alexandre there?”
“Speaking, and Nadine is here with me. Do you know anything about Vanessa, the Haitian priestess who was trying to take over their government, coming to Miami? I heard that she was probably here.”
“Border Control is checking but there are a lot of places to check. If she entered the U.S., Miami’s not the only port of entry and Haiti isn’t the only departure point for travel to the U.S. If you think that she somehow did get to Miami, you should keep alert. We have some people at the Agency starting to look into how she’d be able to locate you. They think that the most likely possibility is that the suspected rapist you guys stopped could have told her. He was mentally deranged and violent, so INS had him deported to Haiti. The most likely way that this Vanessa person could find you is if she got to talk to him and if he could remember where you lived.”
“Oh, I never even considered that danger. I suppose if Vanessa got to see him, it’s possible she might have gotten something coherent out of him,” Wilson told him.
“Right. Oh, another matter. I’ll be in Little Haiti tomorrow at the high school there. That’s where your kid goes, yes?”
“Correct.”
“The Miami cops told me that some people at the Miami-Dade school board think that there’s been an alien invasion. They claim that two of their employees were assaulted and forced to strip and they claim that there must be some kind of invisible aliens hiding in the school, making it hot and taking over the sound system. They say it’s happened a few times at that school. Well, the Miami cops asked the FBI to come too.” He laughed. “A national security matter, they say. I think if word gets out about them having to chase ghosts, they want to have another agency at least to share the blame.
“I’ll let you know if we hear anything more at the office about Vanessa, Wilson. But be careful, okay?”
They disconnected.
“So it’s possible that Vanessa knows where we live?” Nadine asked.
“Looks like it. I didn’t think Leger was coherent enough to remember,” Wilson replied.
“Maybe he could only give Vanessa a general area and she’s been looking around here for a while. That could be why your premonitions have been getting stronger, Dad,” Tamara said.
Wilson agreed, saying, “That makes sense. But maybe... Nadine, you think she wants to get you alone here? In the Marines we’d watch the target to see if there was a pattern of activity they followed. Maybe she’s doing that and has someone watching to see when you’re alone. I think we need to plan something. Make it look like you’re by yourself and turn the advantage of surprise in our favor.”
“Even if she has bodyguards with her, she’s still dangerous all by herself, Wilson. I could feel how strong she was when she came that time. I can resist her—hypnosis, I guess you can call it. A ‘charm’? Yes, that’s what it was like. You can’t let her touch you or even look into her eyes.”
~~~~
The following morning, Wilson’s premonition was even stronger, so he left the house at his normal time, 6:30 a.m., but he circled around the block to park near the back driveway of their property and snuck back to the house. Months earlier, he had put a chain across the back drive and kept it locked except when Nadine had her religious ceremonies. Then, at 8:30, Tamara’s parents sent her off to her college classes with an admonition that she wasn’t to get involved with Vanessa. She left, traveling with one of the several car service drivers she used.
“Now we wait,” Wilson told Nadine. “I have an almost certain sense that they’re coming today. Be sure you’re always holding that shotgun and don’t be afraid to fire it when you’re threatened or if I tell you to shoot.”
“What protection do you have?” Nadine asked anxiously.
“My hands; they’re deadly, but I also have my Fairbairn-Sykes here,” he showed her the knife’s well-worn scabbard. “This blade’s protected my uncle’s life and mine too, many times.”
They spent a few minutes in the kitchen talking over coffee—ginger tea for Nadine.
After about ten minutes, Wilson said, “Oof, shit. They’re on the way. I just got that feeling like I used to get on missions when the shooting was about to start. Now I know that feeling was from Ogorin; he just shoved me on my back. That means action real soon. Darling, please go to the living room where you can watch the front drive but keep out of sight; I’m staying in the kitchen. I can watch the back door from here and see you too. And if I tell you to shoot, then shoot!”
A short time later, Nadine called, “Car coming up the drive! Stopping, two men getting out.”
“Okay, dear, they may try breaking down the door. Be ready; shoot through the door if they try breaking in. Love you!”
“One’s heading for the back now. Oh! It is Vanessa. She’s getting out of the car now. Merde... is that Tamara? No, no, Tamara, don’t let her see you... Oh, Tamara’s hiding now. That IMP!”
Just then, there was a loud crash at the front door and a second later, one at the back door which flew open, the frame shattered.
“SHOOT, Nadine!” Wilson called as he twisted away from the rear-door invader, who was swinging a machete at him.
BLAM—BLAM rang out from the living room.
As Wilson twisted away, he dropped low, and before his assailant could raise his weapon for another swing, Wilson drove up at him and thrust his blade deep into the man’s chest, right into his heart. He died standing up. Wilson turned and ran to the front. The front door was virtually gone. On the porch, Wilson saw what was left of a man lying there. His head was almost blown clear off, as was most of his chest. Nadine had gone outside for some reason, passing through the shattered door. She had said Tamara’s name—that Tamara was somewhere out there and perhaps Nadine went out to protect her.
Wilson saw that Vanessa was bent over in apparent shock and holding one arm, which appeared to be bleeding. Some of Nadine’s buckshot, or flying door fragments, must have hit her. Then she stood up, facing Nadine, and Wilson noticed with alarm that Nadine didn’t have the shotgun with her. It was lying on the floor near the shattered door. He picked it up.
Vanessa screeched to Nadine in Kreyòl, “There was not supposed to be anyone here but you, Cassandra! But I have the upper hand! I have your daughter Fabienne, and you will come with me or I will have her killed. One of my men went to her school this morning and has her now.”
Nadine could see Tamara stealthily move from the bushes along the driveway to a point behind Vanessa’s car.
Wilson slipped through the front door frame; Tamara’s movement had also caught his eye as he slowly walked toward Nadine.
What the hell does Tamara think she’s doing? Nadine wondered angrily.
Then she noticed that Tamara was signing her to keep talking and Nadine saw her holding two flashlight-shaped objects, pointing them both at Vanessa. Tamara’s activities momentarily distracted her parents and suddenly Vanessa was holding a small pistol and aiming it at Nadine.
“Drop the gun,” Vanessa demanded to Wilson. “I’ll shoot her if you don’t.”
Wilson cursed himself for his stupid, amateurish mistake and carefully set the shotgun on the ground.
Nadine looked at Wilson, then back to Vanessa. “How did you find us?”
“One of my men told me. The fool disobeyed me and somehow his conditioning was broken. You must have been responsible.”
“What do you want me to do? You lost your influence in Haiti. How does capturing me help you?” Nadine asked.
“Why I want you is my concern. Now... uh, go to the car and get in. If you don’t... ahhh... start walking, I’ll ... aaahhh... shoot him,” she said, pointing her pistol. “You’ll drive...”
“If I go with you, how can I be sure my daughter’s safe?”
“I will call my... my... oh!... ah... what’s happening... feel weak... ahhhh...”
Vanessa fell to the ground, clutching her chest. She lay there shivering, mouthing, ‘Please help me...’
Tamara ran up to her, still pointing the flashlights, and Nadine could see wires from them going to Tamara’s backpack as Nadine started to approach Vanessa.
Nadine had a sudden incongruous thought, She’s always got that stupid backpack with her...
“Stay back, Cassandra, I need to finish her,” Tamara called, but the voice was... Nadine’s mother’s? Her mother’s voice? What?
Wilson was standing with Nadine now and both watched with fascination as Tamara brought the two flashlights close to Vanessa’s chest and the woman jerked, then lay still. Tamara sighed, pressed something on her devices, then stuffed them both into her backpack. Then she ran and threw herself into Nadine’s arms, sobbing.
“I had to do that, Manman, for Tamara. I had to. She told me. Your manman. Told me what to do to stop that evil creature. You know how many that witch’s killed? Tortured?” Tamara sobbed.
“I don’t understand, dear. Why did you risk yourself? We told you to stay away,” Wilson asked her gently.
Then Wilson’s cell phone rang.
“This is Wilson.”
“Special Agent Norris. Are you safe?”
“I am now, why?”
“I confirmed that this Vanessa person is going to your home now, so watch out.”
“Already taken care of. She won’t be a problem anymore.”
“You... did you kill her? What happened?”
Wilson snorted, “If I could have killed her, I would. She just keeled over. Heart attack, probably. How did you know she was coming?”
“Nabbed an accomplice at your daughter’s school.”
“Sounds like we both have stories to trade,” Wilson remarked. “Why don’t you and your Miami cop friends join us for a spot of tea? That is, if you won’t mind some untidy housekeeping issues like a bit of spilled blood and some scattered body parts. Oh, and my daughter’s safe with us.”
“You know, Wilson, I like your style,” Norris chuckled. “Yeah, let’s trade stories. I have a feeling yours will be better, though.”
Ten minutes later, a police car and a black sedan drove in and parked next to Vanessa’s car. Wilson had moved it from where it was blocking the driveway to a parking spot, but wore gloves and was careful not to disturb any existing fingerprints.
Norris got out of his car and introduced the two police officers as they left their vehicle. When they saw the scene, they dove back into their vehicle and called for a crime scene crew, detectives, coroner, and ambulance.
Norris watched and laughed. “Gives ‘em something to do. We’ll need to hold off our confab until after the circus leaves.”
Seven minutes later, a detective arrived. The cops had rolled out crime scene tape everywhere; and official cars were still arriving. The detective looked around and shook his head.
“Hi, Norris. FBI here too? Looks like a war scene—or a gang shootout.” He looked at Wilson and Nadine. “You the homeowners—that’s your house?”
Wilson nodded. “The woman lying there has been hunting for my wife for years. We believe she killed my wife’s mother and she threatened to kill Nadine and my daughter too. They came here and broke into the house. As a Marine, I’ll use Marine terminology. We counterattacked and repelled the invaders. One’s dead in the kitchen and what’s left of the other, after taking two shotgun rounds, is on the porch. The dead one there? Looked like a heart attack; she clutched her chest and keeled over.”
“Why was she after your wife... Nadine, you said? Last name?”
“Alexandre.” He spelled it.
Norris broke in. “Not to interfere with your investigation, Gutierrez, but the woman there was involved in an attempted political takeover in Haiti; she’s in the U.S. illegally, and the State Department and my agency are supposed to be being protecting the Alexandres. But it seems that they’ve been doing a pretty good job of protecting themselves while we feds have been falling down on the job.”
“Wait, I think I remember an incident here, maybe two years ago? Also connected to Haiti?” Gutierrez asked.
Wilson answered, “Same deal, same woman involved. But she was in Haiti then and had just sent her goons out.”
“Okay, I got the picture,” Gutierrez remarked. “I see the pistol that woman’s holding, too. Let’s look at the rest of the scene.”
Leaving Nadine with a weeping Tamara, Wilson led Norris and Gutierrez through the ruined door—Good, she only got the door with the blasts, not the frame, Wilson thought—and into the kitchen. There was some blood on the floor, but with a wound that stops the heart, there’s no pump to force much blood out of the body.
Gutierrez noted the smashed door, the machete, still loosely clutched in the invader’s hand, and the clean wound to the chest.
“Combat training, I’m guessing.” he remarked.
“Yep. Had to rush it, the wife had just let two shots go and I needed to get to her.”
“Understood. This was very efficient.”
“You can’t make any wasted moves in hand-to-hand. That ninja stuff looks good on the movie screen but it gets Marines killed if they get fancy,” Wilson told him.
“Okay, this was clearly a home invasion and the use of deadly force is totally legal. Their motive was as Agent Norris said, do you concur?”
“Yes,” Wilson agreed. “When can I call someone to start fixing things? A busted front and back door ain’t safe in Miami. And the bodies and blood cleanup too.”
“I’ll check with the CSI crew chief. What happened here is straightforward, so it shouldn’t be long.”
“Let me get my family now; my daughter needs some comforting,” Wilson said.
“Say, Wilson, I just got a call I need to handle. Can I come back in, say, an hour? This won’t take long.” Norris asked.
“Sure. See you in a bit.”
A photographer came in then and took some shots; then the EMTs put the body on a gurney and left with it. There was a small pool of blood where the man had been lying and an EMT returned with a handful of absorbent pads. He put some of them on the blood.
“Leave these pads on for a few minutes. They should absorb all the liquid. Then pick them up, roll them, keeping the plastic on the outside, and put them in a trash bag. Then scrub the local area with a good dishwashing detergent using more of these pads—only the area with the blood. Use the rest of the pads to absorb the detergent and put them in the trash bag too and tie it closed. You can put the bag in your trash collection. Then use a 10 percent bleach solution to scrub the area, let it sit for ten minutes, clean that up, and you’re good to go.”
Wilson asked him, “What about the mess on the porch?”
“We cleaned up whatever body parts we could, but there’s blood on the wood and on the ground outside. Let me give you a card that has the numbers for several cleaning services. They do crime scene cleanups and your homeowner’s insurance might even pay for it.”
Gutierrez was outside talking to an EMT; two others were loading Vanessa’s body into an ambulance.
Wilson heard the EMT say, “...yeah, I’m pretty sure. Cardiac arrest. Probably from the failure of her pacemaker or ICD—that’s implantable cardioverter defibrillator. That looked strange though, her skin was burned where the device was implanted, like it got really hot and burned out. Never heard of that happening. Most likely something shorted in it and an overloaded pulse to the heart caused the cardiac arrest.”
“So the cause of death was still accidental?” Gutierrez asked.
“Unless they find something else during the autopsy, that’s my thinking.”
Damn, Wilson thought. Tamara must be freaking out. And Nadine killed that other person. Shit. I hope they can get through this okay.
He set off to find them.
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