CHAPTER TWO: THE GIRL IN THE CELLAR
The report of the autopsy flashes onto my laptop screen. Even though the body is suspected to be that of the man who had held me captive for ransom, the police are still keeping mum on the details of the case. Because of my position as a public defender, a lot of people in the criminal justice system owe me. I have called in a lot of favors to gain access to this document.
When the the trunk of the car in which I had been confined while being transported to who knows where was opened, I first gazed upon the figure of a man silhouetted against the bright cloudless sky. I sighed with relief, startled that Faceless, my kidnapper, had somehow survived the fusillade of bullets that had been rained upon the occupant or occupants of the vehicle in which I had been imprisoned.
But when I sat up, the silhouetted figure was wearing a blue shirt and the shield of a police officer adorned his left breast. I looked to my right. Stretched across the ground was a man lying motionless in a pool of blood. He was clad in a short sleeve white shirt and red streams were still oozing from the holes in his chest made by the police bullets.
The dead man seemed shorter and stockier than the man with whom I had fallen in love. His black hair was wavy, his arms hairy, and his skin was olive. Faceless was tall and lean, but his visage had always been hidden by a mask.
So I wondered, had I projected the image of my ideal male onto the anonymous creature that had ravished me? But Faceless had one feature I'm sure I had not imagined. My lover was circumcised.
I scan the autopsy report. Would the pathologist have bothered to comment upon such a trivial finding? After all, the body had been matched to the name and photograph on his driver's license. But the search conducted on his apartment had yielded nothing to connect him to my abduction so the police have been keeping mum on the details of my case, lest other perpetrators remain at large.
I scroll down the document. At the beginning is a narrative about the manner of the subject's demise. Following is a general description of the body and deceased's height and weight, and then finally, the findings:
Abdomen: Gunshot wound to the left upper quadrant...
Then blah, blah, blah followed by medical jargon about the condition of the internal organs including the weights of the liver, spleen, and kidneys.
I try to scroll down more. While not a fan of crime scene shows, from my limited professional experience I know that Genitourinary should be next.
But the hourglass icon flashes onto the screen. I tremble as I wait for the server to respond, dreading the "timed out" message that will flash if the municipality's clunky information system crashes before I finish carrying out my illicit search.
The hourglass disappears. The box within the scroll bar jumps down and at the top of the web page appears Genitourinary. I take my eyes off the screen. Tears stream down my face. My orange tomcat jumps onto my lap, hiding the screen, temporarily halting my quest for the truth about the man who fell in a hail of police bullets.
