Legally Dead (13 page)

They all joined Vicki and Laura in the war room.

“It
is
them,” Keri whispered, as Casey planted a kiss on Laura's forehead.

“Would I lie to you?”

Venturi introduced her to the Barretts, using her first name only. “Consider her a friend,” he said. “You can tell her anything.”

“We'll make an after-hours appointment at my office,” Keri told Laura. “But if you're comfortable with it, I can take a history right now, in private, and answer any questions you may have.”

“Now.” Laura nodded with a look of relief.

Keri took a notebook from her handbag and everyone else cleared out. Danny watched the late-night news in the kitchen. Vicki and Michael drilled Casey on lesson material at the table.

After nearly an hour, Keri emerged from the war room, notebook in her hand, tears in her eyes.

Danny left. So did the Barretts. Venturi drove Keri home. “This wasn't exactly the evening I expected,” she said softly, as he parked outside her Coral Gables town house.

“What did you expect?”

“I thought you would kiss me.”

He turned off the headlights and ignition. “Like this?”

The kiss was long, slow, and warm.

“No,” she finally gasped, “not quite like that.”

She closed her eyes and lifted her mouth.

He tried again.

“Can I come in?” he finally asked.

“It's already late and I'm due in the office early. But this evening has been an experience. Promise me something?”

“If I can.”

“No more secrets?”

“No secrets,” he said, and sealed it with a kiss.

Delighted to have the last word, Laura and Casey enjoyed collaborating on their suicide note.

Many such notes are cruelly calculated to leave a legacy of guilt to the living. In their case it was appropriate.

Venturi encouraged them to keep it short and simple—and to leave their fingerprints all over it. Literally.

It didn't take long to produce a final, so to speak, draft.

Casey handwrote two copies which they both signed.

They mailed one to
The Miami Herald
and the other to the Miami-Dade Police Department early on the day they died.

The Barretts left their apartment at the usual time that morning, but on the way to Venturi's they made stops at four service stations. They filled a five-gallon gasoline can at each one.

They stayed at the house, while Venturi carefully drove their car west on the Tamiami Trail and turned down a remote dirt road into the Everglades.

Danny followed in his SUV.

They left Laura's purse and Casey's wallet containing their driver's licenses, ID, and all the money they had left—two $1 bills and some small change—on a tree stump near the turnoff to the dirt road.

“Sure this will be hot enough?” Venturi asked.

“Who knows more about cremation than me?” Danny confidently removed two cardboard boxes from his car.

Each was marked with a label from a Florida medical examiner's office.

April 9, 1995, Jane Doe, unidentified Caucasian female, age thirties.

Dec. 17, 1998, John Doe, unidentified Caucasian male, age thirty to forty.

“Intact skeletons like this,” Danny proudly explained the night before, “are rare and hard to come by. You never find them out in the open. Wildlife scatters them, wild dogs run away with big bones, land crabs carry away the small bones like fingers and toes.

“We're damn lucky. Whoever wrapped Jane in plastic rolled her up in a heavy rug and buried her deep. If some farmer didn't decide to dig a well, she never would have been found.

“And Johnny here came out of the closet in an abandoned house. A demolition crew found him when they were about to knock it down. He might have been homeless, crashed there and died of natural causes or a drug overdose, or he was killed and dumped there. Nobody knows.

“No cause of death established on either one. No bullet holes, no knife nicks. Pristine condition,” he said proudly.

“So how did you happen to…”

“You'd never get them in Miami-Dade. Here, the medical examiner's office boils 'em in meat tenderizer, strips the bones, and stores 'em indefinitely, hoping to identify them someday. But smaller ME offices around the state don't have that kind of storage space. These were kept for at least ten years. Eventually they're released to a funeral home for cremation or burial. Need I say more?”

“I already heard more than I want to,” Venturi said.

He and Danny had originally discussed cleaning out the nagangas of several Santería priests he knew. The large metal cauldrons usually contain a human skull and long leg bones along with other ritualistic items.

“Where do they get the bones they use in ceremonies?”

“Don't ask,” Danny said. “Some from Africa and Haiti. They busted a woman at the airport here just recently. Came in from Haiti with a human skull in her purse. Couldn't understand why it was a problem. But most are harvested locally. More graves are robbed here than in anywhere in America.

“Even the dead aren't safe in Miami.”

They arranged the man's bones on the seat behind the steering wheel of the Taurus and the female's in the passenger seat. From counties in different parts of the state, they almost surely never met in life, but John and Jane Doe were about to be linked forever.

Wearing work gloves and masks to protect themselves from the fumes, Venturi and Danny drenched the bones, the seats, the dashboard, and the carpet with gasoline. The fuel tank was a quarter full, a volatile mix of fumes, gasoline and air.

“Got a cigarette?” Danny asked as, choking on fumes, they used the last of the gasoline to soak the inside of the trunk.

They left the car windows open just a hair, allowing in enough air for the fire to breathe, and hung a gasoline-soaked rag out the driver's-side window.

Venturi attached a road flare to the end of a fifteen-foot-long painter's pole, pulled off the cap, and slid it across the flare's pyrotechnic bubble as though scratching a match.

The flare ignited. Backing away, he touched it to the gasoline-soaked rag.

Danny was already behind the wheel of the SUV.

Venturi extinguished the flare in the dirt, telescoped the pole and tossed it, the flare, and the cap into the backseat, and scrambled into the SUV.

“Sure you got the cap?” Danny said.

“Yeah, yeah. Let's go, let's go!”

Danny swung back onto the Trail and turned east. Venturi called 911 on a prepaid cell to report a raging brush fire thirty miles from the real flames roaring in the rearview mirror.

“Look at that sucker burn!” Danny whistled through his teeth as he watched the rearview mirror. “Wait till that gas-soaked trunk burns cherry red and the fuel tank blows.

“So long, Laura and Casey.”

“Ashes to ashes,” Venturi said. “May they rest in peace.”

“Hullo, Audra and Aiden Faircloth!” Danny said.

Audra hugged Aiden's neck, as Mike and Danny walked in.

“It's over? Is it really over?”

“It's over. They're gone,” Mike said.

Their Kmart clothes and the rest of Laura and Casey Barretts' meager belongings remained in the tiny efficiency with the window view of treetops and sky. A third copy of the signed suicide note was found on the kitchen table, with a postscript apologizing to the landlord for any inconvenience regarding the lease. Homicide detectives found it along with stacks of want ads, job applications, and letter after letter of rejection. The landlord later showed camera crews and reporters around the modest single room and bath.

The deaths of the couple at the heart of the sex scandal at Devonbrook Day Care made national news as did the untimely death, the same week, at age forty-four, of Richard Jewell, the security guard hero who was hounded, hunted, and ruined when the media falsely accused him of being the Olympic bomber.

The difference was that Richard Jewell was really dead.

Their transformation was so effective that Audra and Aiden already considered Laura and Casey sad strangers they had left behind.

Audra, now blond, walked like a high-stepping model, her shoulders and hips in motion, and spoke like an Aussie. Once brown-eyed, she now wore green contact lenses. Her pregnancy, confirmed at Keri's office the night after they met, didn't show yet. Aiden was a jock, head shaved, beard short, mustache well groomed. He even looked taller due to lifts in his shoes and his improved posture, which appeared almost military. Neither resembled the sad-sack photos on Laura's and Casey's driver's licenses.

Their new birth certificates and passports would pass scrutiny anywhere in the world.

Venturi had again called upon a friend who in a prior career had provided similar documents for protected witnesses. Nelson Drumheller now owned a company with lucrative government contracts to control access to federal buildings, computer systems, and sensitive areas with a new high-tech generation of badges and ID cards. His were encrypted with biometric data including fingerprints, facial recognition, and license and passport information.

And Danny had reached out to a former CIA contact, now a travel agent expert at moving people all over the globe without leaving trails. Enough money to see them through the first year was waiting in an Australian bank.

As Venturi drove them to the airport for their long, first journey home, he reinforced their training: how to spot a tail, how to lose one, and how to cheat the omnipresent security and television cameras.

“Never sit bareheaded in the stands at sports events. TV cameras often pan the fans. Always wear hats and shades. You have long lives ahead,” he said earnestly. “As you raise your family, you'll fall into the rhythm of life in your community. But break no laws, however minor. Draw no attention to yourselves. No letters to the editor, no man-on-the-street television interviews. Live quietly, under the radar. Even in intimate situations when you're alone together, never use your old names. You never knew those people.”

Audra and Aidan had been drilled relentlessly on their new dates of birth, mothers' maiden names, fathers' occupations, their new wedding anniversary, until everyone was sure that no momentary slip of the tongue would betray them.

“If someone on the street shouts out the name Laura or Casey, don't react, don't turn around. Walk away normally. Someone who thought they recognized you will assume they were mistaken.”

They said their good-byes in a parking garage at Miami International Airport.

“It's such a long, long flight,” Keri fretted. “I want you both, especially you, Audra, to get up and walk around. Don't sit in a cramped position for long periods. Drink lots of fluids, nonalcoholic, of course. Take your vitamins and find a good ob-gyn from the list I gave you as soon as you arrive.”

“Okay, okay,” Audra said, rosy cheeked and excited. “We get it, we got it the first time. You're starting to sound like you're our parents!”

She threw her arms around Venturi's neck from the backseat, catching him off guard.

“You are our parents,” she said emotionally, and hugged him hard. “The family we never had. You're our gift from God.”

Her chin trembled, her eyes filled. “We'll live up to your expectations, I promise.”

“From now on, you are the family,” Venturi said. “Congratulations! Australia! What an adventure.” He sounded almost envious. “Be happy.”

“We will,” she promised tearfully. “We'll never forget you.”

Danny pumped Aiden's hand. “Watch out for the crocs, mate.”

After a round of hugs and kisses, the couple hurried into the terminal.

The others followed slowly, from a distance, watching until they cleared security.

Audra looked back at one point and waved. No one waved back. They were history now. But they kept watching until the couple, caught up in a tidal wave of humanity, disappeared.

The Miami-Dade County medical examiner's office announced weeks later that tests had been unable to confirm through DNA the identification of the remains in the Barretts' car.

The chief medical examiner explained that the fire's heat had been so intense that the victims' teeth had exploded and that even the large leg bones, usually a reliable source of DNA, had been incinerated to the extent that only splinters remained.

“They were literally cremated,” he said.

However, experts had authenticated the handwriting on the suicide notes as that of Laura and Casey Barrett.

The burned remains of a couple their age had been found in a car registered to them, and their identification was located nearby.

A psychological autopsy of the victims revealed histories of despondency, depression, and incarceration. The experts concluded that the Barretts were indeed deceased at their own hands. Their death certificates were signed.

Case closed.