Day 30

A day early and hallelujah I'm very finished with this. Now back to my real novel

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I spent the rest of the month leading up to the birth of our last child in a state of weepy remembrance over Cynthia Rose. It colored a time when I should have been overjoyed, happily anticipating the birth of our son Daniel, into shadows and sadness. Afterwards I had a bout of post partum, spending a lot of my time wondering just how right the psychic had been.

This simple manila envelope came into my possession when I spoke at a meeting of professional women at the Four Seasons in Washington proper. I’d spoken to urge the listeners to donate to our foundation as well as volunteer and to raise awareness about our cause. Some of the monies we collected went to the families where the main wage earner was the missing adult and the rest went to provide necessary services for the families left behind that could not possibly afford them, such as counseling for those without health insurance coverage.

As I stood at that dais and looked out over the well heeled crowd of Washington professional women and told of my own personal involvement with NMAO I spotted a vaguely familiar man standing at the back of the ball room. He wasn’t part of the serving staff hustling around serving coffee and desserts nor was he part of the hotel staff. I could feel his eyes upon me and I wondered what he wanted.

After the dessert reception and all the different speakers he sought me out once the women who’d expressed an interest in helping the NMAO scattered and I sat alone at my table. When I looked up I recognized him at once, he was a little older, hair completely gray and he was starting to stoop. I wondered how old Sgt Sam Vocci was now and why he’d come all the way to Washington from Biloxi to see me. His face was unreadable but I knew it couldn’t have been good news.

I stood up and hugged Sgt Vocci, wordlessly, tearful, knowing what he was going to tell me. He sounded tearful himself as he whispered, “I’m so sorry.” When we broke apart he handed me this envelope, over sized and bulky and said gruffly, “Here. It’s all in here.” I held out the envelope, like it was a poisonous snake, like a bomb and stared at it, stared over at him, struck dumb. This was not how it was supposed to be.

Sam Vocci put one hand on my shoulder, a kindly touch and said softly, “Do you want me to hang around till you read it all or would you rather do this alone?” His voice jolted me out of my shock and I said, “Sam, I need to get back to my office and process this, look through the file but.. I might have questions about the material. Do you mind coming to my office and waiting in the ante room?”

He followed me in silence from the hotel and we walked over to the Metro station to ride the train to my NMAO office near Dupont Circle. I no longer clutched the envelope like it was deadly, now I grasped it like my entire life depended on it.

Once I sat down at my desk after telling the receptionist to get Sgt Vocci a coffee and to hold all my calls I sat here, stunned and afraid at the same time. I could sense in my spirit that the envelope held death, the aftermath of death, which led me to think about the twisted path my life and my sister’s life had taken after leaving home.

I hesitated, the longer I put off opening this the longer I had to get used to the finality of what really happened to Cynthia but suddenly I was seized by a desperation, more than anything else in this world I needed to know exactly what happened. I picked up carved giraffe wooden letter opener I’d bought on a trip to Kenya and in one swift movement I slit this thick envelope open and tipped the contents out on my leather desk blotter.

A jumble of things slid out, a womens slim wallet in faded leather still bearing traces of fingerprint dust, an autopsy report, photographs, so many photographs, some of crime scene and some from an autopsy and a sheath of paperwork.

There was no doubt who the wallet belonged to. It held a old faded drivers license that had expired nearly ten years ago. There was no money in it or credit cards but the photo section held pictures of my triplets as newborns, a wedding photo of Jude and I and pictures of Momma and Daddy and our family.

The first set of crime scene photographs were disturbing, a lady with blonde hair lay supine in a cheap hotel room and her skin was an unearthly sick shade of white. She had deep strangulation marks around her graceful neck and further photos showed that her hands had been crudely chopped off. Her face showed a peace that passed this world, whatever had happened to her she was in a place far beyond it. There was no terror or horror in her face.

It was undeniable that the photos of this dead body was my sister, Cynthia Rose, long dead, murdered by a trick from the looks of it. I read through the papers and yet as I cried a little bit what I felt mostly was relief, I think I’d known almost from the beginning that Cynthia was dead. Confirmation of that brought me some closure even as I was filled with horror at how she must have suffered towards the end.

After I pulled myself together I buzzed Doreen, the receptionist, and asked her to have Sgt Vocci come into my office. As he closed the door behind him and stood before my desk I looked up at him and said, “Thank you, at least I finally know. But I’m not sure I can make much sense of these reams of reports. Can you tell me what happened and how you found her?”

He sat down slowly and sighed, “It’s not a pretty picture and your sister, Cynthia, she was so beautiful, she could have done so many things with her life, but apparently, as best we can reconstruct, she chose to continue in her lifestyle with Brad. We don’t know if he had any involvement with this. The original reports seem to indicate that by that time Cynthia Rose and Brad Smith had parted ways, or not. I believe he was taking her all over the country to strip.
Once they left Seattle, they moved down to San Francisco, Los Angeles then on over to Reno. Your sister tended to dance at a place for a week, two weeks tops before they moved on. Both Brad and her changed their names on the circuit and your sister started wearing a red wig when she danced. I guess Brad didn’t want them to be found because there were outstanding federal charges hanging over him. Brad didn’t tend to stay in a place too long before he met your sister.

Those photographs, of the crime scene, are from about six weeks after your sister disappeared. They were taken at a cheap hotel in Baltimore’s notorious Block. Looked like a trick turned bad. Whoever did this horrible thing to your sister chopped off her hands and because there was no id and no way to fingerprint her the Baltimore PD had no way of knowing who she was, another Jane Doe. They ran artist renditions of her in the local news but no one came forward to claim that they knew her so the city buried her as a Jane Doe in the burial grounds they maintain for prisoners, the indigent and for people who die with no name, like your sister. I can take you to her remains if you’d like.”

I interrupt Sgt Vocci at this point, “Why do you have the wallet but no one could match Cynthia’s body with a name?”

“Because the wallet wasn’t discovered at the same time as the body. Your sister died in a run down hotel in the downtown area just off an area filled with strip clubs and prostitution and left only her clothes behind. They never found the hands and she had no distinguishing marks, tattoos and no obvious dental work. It was a dead end for the Baltimore police department until a month or so ago.

Large portions of the downtown area are now being gentrified in Baltimore Maryland. All those strip clubs and old hotels are sitting on land now worth major money and some of them have changed hands. That hotel was bought out by a major chain, who was completely redoing the rooms, gutting it and starting over. When the demolition crew removed the television from the room that Cynthia Rose died in they found a wallet hanging out of the back of the television, shoved back behind the set half in and half out of a loose panel on the back. They called the police, who realized that the photo of the lady in the license photograph matched their Jane Doe from nearly ten years ago. They ran Cynthia on the NCIC and here I am. We found her.”

“Thank you,” I sobbed out, suddenly glad this was all over with while knowing that breaking the news to my parents wasn’t going to be easy. I felt suddenly grateful for Jude too, he’d stuck by me for years while I’d searched, been my rock of stability, loved me beyond all reason.

Sgt Sam Vocci got up and smiled wistfully, “I promised you I wouldn’t give up and I didn’t”

As he stood there I picked up my office phone and dialed quickly before saying, “Momma, are you sitting down? They found Cynthia Rose.”