Entropy

 

 

 

Wattle Publishing Ltd
Third Floor, 207 Regent Street
London W1B 3HH
www.wattlepublishing.com
Published in Great Britain by Wattle Publishing Ltd in 2013
Copyright © 2013 by Robert Raker
The moral right of the author has been asserted
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-908959-18-8
All rights reserved. This Work is protected by Copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieved system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events of locales is entirely coincidental.

I would like to thank my publisher for their belief. This novel could not have been written without the relentless support of Randolph Simmons, the friendship of Gabriel R. Santos and the staggering beauty and faith of Adrienne McGill.

“en·tro·py
/'entrǝpē/
Noun
A thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work,
   often ...
   Lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.”

The bloated, distended corpses of the people whose shortened lives I had retrieved from the water were clearly visible in the immature patterns of condensation that evaporated gradually on the mirror. I stood there staring, waiting to hear her tap gently against the bathroom door. She had done that so many times in the last few years. I often didn't notice her, as she politely sought acknowledgement, before coming into the most vulnerable of places. I now wasn't quite sure if I wanted to hear her anymore.

Earlier, after I didn't hear her rise after I left our bedroom, I slid back the glass door to the shower, slowly twisted the end of the brass faucet and let the water run for a few minutes. I watched the quick, sudden burst cover the floor, the droplets clinging to the white and salmon bath sponge that she used. It looked like a wilted flower trapped by its failure to adapt to its environment during a storm. Some water trickled over the edge of the shower and onto the floor. The level rose to about three-quarters of an inch. It wasn't draining properly. I crouched down and removed the metal screen on the floor. The water moved left, then right. It caused me to think of the rhythm of her body when she crossed a room, and how ethereal she had looked when she broke the surface of the water when we first swam together.

I also remembered how all the pain we had endured had begun in less than twelve feet of water.

The water could teach you how to move if you let it.

I had pulled my first body out of less than twelve feet of water over two years ago, from the frigid waters off the coast of Rhode Island. I was a certified swimming and scuba instructor, who taught corporations how to properly use equipment and provided training in recreational and military diving, but I mostly concentrated on commercial diving. I lived under the disruptive surface of the water, in indoor training pools, rivers, oceans, submersed in the water's reckless and intemperate tenderness.

A civil engineering firm had contracted me to provide training to its employees, in order to repair and construct oil pipeline fittings off the coast of Nova Scotia, in water up to 150 feet deep. I was there in the bitter cold of the North Atlantic for seven months, isolated from the blighted industrial landscapes that corrupted the rural and urban banks of the small town in Pennsylvania where I lived. However for me, there should have never been anything dangerous about water.

Early one dreary, cold morning I arrived at a port in Providence on an oil barge. As I unloaded my equipment onto the docks and prepared to catch a ride, a petroleum worker on another boat cupped his hands over his mouth, outstretched his arms and signaled for me to come over. There was something in the water. Leaving most of my gear left behind I walked tentatively with another worker to the end of the dock, and discovered what appeared to be a body stuck in a drift a few feet below the surface of the water. The torso tapped against the wooden posts that were secured to the inlet floor some ten to fifteen feet from where I stood. We waited for almost an hour for the police to arrive, and I was eventually asked to go into the water because the police diver, who was on call for the area, could not be located. Travel restrictions had also been initiated, as a cold front was moving through, covering most of the East Coast in a dense blanket of sleet and freezing rain.

It wasn't something that I wanted to do, but I had the most detailed training; more inclusive than any of the others on scene, even though some of them were nearly twenty years older than me. It was a mere matter of circumstance or, if you believed in it, fate. I geared up and through the stinging rain listened to the officer on scene relaying messages from a dispatcher speaking to him on his radio on how to proceed once I had penetrated the water: what to initially look for surrounding the body that might determine an accidental death or a homicide; and how not to compromise the integrity of the forensic scene. The coroner would later determine an exact cause of death after the body was removed, and photographs of the scene and surrounding areas had already been taken. They were requesting that we all remained after I came out of the water, because we were all considered to be material witnesses. As I wasn't going in very deep, I decided to utilize a snorkel on the surface and hold my breath when I had to. As I made my final preparations, I couldn't force any spittle from my mouth to clean the inside of the mask. My chest tightened.

The water could teach you how to breathe if you let it.

As the ladder was cracked and missing a few rungs, I dropped directly off the edge of the dock and immediately felt the cold water collide with the material of the dry suit. Bright lights from an incoming vessel came up over the horizon and provided an aspect of light that I hardly needed because the body wasn't deeply submerged. I swam carefully and positioned myself a few feet away from the body and gathered my breath, the serrated sharpness of the air cutting the inside of my throat. I trapped as much air as I could inside my lungs and maneuvered further down.

The man's body was suspended about three or four feet underneath the surface, entangled in a tattered fisherman's net secured to the dock. The area was well known for its exquisite seafood, especially the production of crabmeat. Fishing was the reason I first swam in saltwater, when I was six. My back had been so burnt from the scalding sun that my father dropped me over the edge of the boat to alleviate the constant sting. I remembered that the saltwater burned my eyes and I kept rubbing at them until my father told me to stop because I would only make it worse. It looked like I was crying I had irritated them so much. I wanted to pass the clear water over my lips and through my throat, having no understanding of salinity. I took a mouthful of water and it tasted so bitter that I kept spitting. Being so unfamiliar with the sea, its current and pull, I stayed very close to the boat. My father positioned me in his arms so that I could see away from the shore, and gaze at the openness and loneliness of the ocean beyond our boat. I had never seen anything so beautiful, so picturesque. The pureness of it all arrested me.

As I initially looked around the body, there appeared to be nothing that the police would consider out of the ordinary. There was nothing binding his hands or his ankles. No one else was in the water besides me. I moved past him on my back and noticed the small hole slightly off-center against his forehead. It looked to me as if he had been shot. Leaving the body undisturbed, I struggled to climb out of the water and clung limply to the ladder until someone reached over and pulled me up. The voices above me were constant and seemingly indecisive.

It took a few minutes for my fear and shock to initially subside and I couldn't hold onto the mask that I had pulled away from my eyes, without dropping it. I had seen a dead body before but nothing like that, and not close enough to notice the fact that he hadn't shaved for several days and that his fingernails weren't closely manicured. At the time I couldn't tell how long his body had been in the water. Later, I would. I crawled on my hands and knees further away from the water, and tasted the warm bile in the back of my throat as it rushed forward.

***

After I helped the police remove the body from the water, I sat inside a small restaurant at the top of a hill, located at the opposite end of the dock. It was in dire need of repair. When I opened the screen door to enter, it almost fell off its hinges. The sound of it closing behind me reverberated throughout and the few people who were there regarded me with initial uncertainty, then suspicion. Almost all of them were standing in front of the glass, staring at the scene outside. I watched a group of dock workers, police and emergency responders walk up the hill towards the restaurant. I suddenly felt weak in the knees so I sat down in a booth. A few from the group broke off and made their way towards the parking lot.

A waitress came over, exchanged pleasantries, and then placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of me. By the time I poured sugar into my cup, the officer who had been giving me directions outside had sat down, and holding onto an unlit cigarette, gave me a look of sympathy. I clutched the ceramic mug so tightly that I thought I would crack it with my fingertips.

In between cups of coffee, he talked to me about the basic forensic procedures I had just utilized, and the importance of gathering details in an investigation. As he spoke, I watched his lips move, but I was subdued, struck by his mannerisms. I thought he was going to apologize in his own way about my having to go into the water and without training or support, deal with such a situation, when it wasn't my responsibility. But instead, he just kept asking questions about what I had seen in the water.
Were there any other signs of trauma? What were the condition of his hands and fingers?
Did he appear to be restrained in any way?
Occasionally, he wrote on his small pad. I wasn't sure what else to say to him, so I let him continue to do most of the talking. I kept staring at his fingers and his wrists, as he kept waving them in the empty area around where I was still clutching my coffee. I wasn't sure why, but even though the man in front of me was much younger, I saw salient points of my father in his demeanor, such as in the movement of his fingers; the way he curled them into his palm to hide them as if he didn't feel quite self-assured in what he was explaining.

I placed the cup of coffee to my lips and let the steam soak into my eyes. It reminded me of how it felt when I opened my eyes underwater. Somehow, I thought the action would distract me from the endless questioning. It reminded me all too much of the times sat in isolation with my father, listening to him instruct me in agricultural specifics at farm shows and fairs, where he assumed that I was going to follow him like he had followed his father before him.

I finally made a motion to leave, whereupon the officer asked to me to sign a witness statement. As I left, he added that he may have to contact me further at some point during his investigation. I wasn't sure what else he wanted me to say, or what possible use I could be to him later. All I wanted to do was leave and move past what had happened. It started to rain again as I stepped outside.

I should never have gone into the water.

The water could teach you how to feel if you let it.

I moved out of the bathroom and stood in the shadows of the hallway outside of our bedroom. She was still asleep in the bed on her stomach next to where I had been, her unclothed thighs exposed slightly from underneath the dark sheets. I pulled a blanket over her body, covering it completely, and kissed her on the back of her shoulder. I wanted to pull her towards me and tenderly caress the small birthmark set against her plunging neckline. It looked like a figure eight. When I kissed her, I allowed the side of my face to linger. Her skin smelled so good. It was subtle and wasn't cloying. I scratched at my chest and wanted desperately to slide underneath those sheets and enter her from behind, flex my hands across the sides of her hips and secure my body inside hers. I wanted to lick her nipples. But I couldn't. Not anymore. In the moment that I might have found the courage to approach her, the phone rang. The dense, vacant tone shattered the emptiness and my indecision.

It was the local police department. There were unsubstantiated reports of another body. This time in an abandoned quarry about thirteen miles away. For a few moments I said nothing, merely cupped the receiver against the side of my face and stared out into the waking morning. They stressed over and over that they wanted someone who was both familiar with the area and knowledgeable about the case, as if I had become necessary to the investigation. It had all been going on so long. No one appeared to care about, or had taken into account what I had said after the last time. I just couldn't do it anymore. Yet they were now on the other end of the phone insisting that they needed me to go into the water again.

Someone had been brutally raping and murdering young children, and had left behind a hopelessly vacant trail of apparent motive and tangible evidence. It had started in late December of the previous year, right after the holidays, and had continued relentlessly almost every month since. It was now early August, and as another semester of engineering and instructional classes began for me, there had yet to be another reported abduction or sighting of a body. Everyone had quietly hoped that perhaps it had all just ended. And so had I. I didn't want to help the department anymore; help the unending dead tread water. I no longer gave a damn anymore about integrity or forensic procedures. There had to be someone else who could do it, especially since the federal authorities had become involved. I was surprised that they hadn't already relieved me.

Back in the bathroom I scratched at the condensation on the mirror. The remains of shaving cream on the brass handle of the faucet resembled a snowdrift reminding me of when I had gotten the first call to go into the water during what had turned out to be a contemptible winter.

Body Number One (December): Jennifer McDonnelly, 12 years old. Was discovered floating in a backyard pool. No one was present at the address when the body was found. Initially, it appeared to be a tragic accident, and then quickly declared a wrongful death. After a few weeks of questioning, both parents were ruled out as suspects. Police looked into the family's history, searching for claims of abuse, both physical and sexual. It was standard operating procedure for detectives to look closely at the parents in such cases. The father was an artist and painter; the mother, not surprisingly, a model. After the autopsy the medical examiner determined that the body had been violated sexually, traumatized elsewhere, and then dumped in the tainted, cold water of the pool no more than a few hours later. The last time anyone had seen the victim alive was earlier in the afternoon. That left a window, pending an exact time of death, of about five hours. The victim had been raped multiple times. They found trace amounts of flower petals in her lungs, and a common fertilizer underneath her fingernails.