Entering an unsuspecting household never felt comfortable. The silence is heavy and judgmental the way you imagine the sealed tomb of an emperor is. There is something kingly and commanding to the intimacy you’re breaking. Every time, Carlos Meija felt bad when he stepped into the house or apartment of someone he didn’t know. Stepping into somebody’s vital space where he abandoned himself just felt wrong.
There was a lot to learn about someone from the room he didn’t clean before your arrival. The living room smelt of cold pizza. The take-out box was still on the coffee table. Papa John’s. The man knew where to get a good pizza. The sixty inches flat screen TV, the multiple video game consoles and the sox abandoned in front of the leather couch finished to convince Carlos that this guy was a long time single. He imagined what Leila would say if he brought back home one of these televisions. You had to be single to enjoy one of those.
There were two laptops and a few hardware pieces on the dinner table. The occupant seemed like a technology enthusiast. Carlos played that little game every time he ventured into an apartment. He built a relationship with someone he didn’t know. That was a way to make his job easier, if you didn’t know, just pretend that you do. The man’s winter coat was put on a chair at the dinner table. He didn’t care about anybody coming in, he put it there so it was easy to grab in case he wanted to go out. Carlos has been a single for a long time before he met Leila. He was twenty eight years old when he did. In three years, she changed him into a whole other person. Getting into somebody’s intimacy was getting harder as he grew more sensitive. It’s something that now had to be done with a ceremonious respect.
The ceremonial approach made it more interesting, Carlos was getting jaded of work when he met Leila. Her vision of life influenced him so much, her sensitivity, her fascination with what he did inspired him to lay a new look on what he was doing. Most of all, she wasn’t scared of him for what he did, that’s why every of his relationships before Leila failed, girls were getting spooked out when they learned who Carlos truly was.
Legal medicine was a solitary lifestyle.
Even at work, where he was surrounded by cops and colleagues, Carlos felt everybody dreaded the guy who split the corpses open. For Carlos it was something more, a calling, a vocation to the dead and even more so, to their remaining family. Carlos Meija was a bringer of closure and inner peace to the mournful. Therefore, despite the hardships of work, the rejection and even the nightmares, he loved what he did and would do nothing else.
“Doc”, yelled Officer Mike Daugherty.
Carlos followed him into the bedroom.
It was hard to say if there was a struggle or if it was just messy. Computer towers were scrambled all over the place, some were laid down horizontally, some were on tables, some were piled up.
“Server room” said Churla, the IT girl, confirming what Carlos already thought.
“Poor dude” said Carlos looking at the victim.
From what he could gather, the guy had been strangled with his own bed sheets. The purple face and the swollen tongue were giveaways. Carlos put on his latex gloves and started the examination of the body. There was no sign of struggle. No defensive wounds, no marks on the skin. The guy was in tighty withies so it was a giveaway that it happened while he was asleep.
“Death by strangulation” said Carlos “vertebrae has been broken, but it’s post-mortem, there was a lot of rage on an unsuspecting dude. Lot of rage or a lot of strength.”
Carlos looked at the guy, mid-forties, a little fat, still a lot of gruffy black hair. His glasses were carefully put on the nearby computer table next to a glass of water. Bedtime precaution. He went to bed, thinking he would see tomorrow, in his narrow and smelly bedroom. Someone’s brutally yanked him from the world, but somehow, the whole universe kept revolving around him, like planets looking for their sun.
“Who was that poor fellow? Got a positive ID?” asked Carlos.
“Ernest Garland” said Daugherty, IT technician in a law firm. Not married, no children, parents are dead. Seems like no one is going to miss him much.
That thought saddened Carlos. When they’ll leave Ernest’s apartment, the traces of his passage in the world will be completely forgotten. Ernest will vanish like a white dwarf in a black hole. Without mourning, without the tears of anyone. Carlos didn’t like these clients, but felt obliged to give them a silent respect. He’d make the best autopsy he could and try to treat his body with as much ceremony as he could.
“No…that’s not really as poor fellow, I’m glad he’s dead.” said Churla from behind.
Carlos was about to turn around and yell at her to have more respect for the dead when he saw what she was talking about. Pedophilia. Ernest’s server was hosting pedophilia files. Photos, videos, disgusting, repulsive images of assholes doing their thing on small children.
Suddenly, the universe of Ernest Garland stopped turning around Carlos. The things around him were suddenly infused with another meaning than one’s intimacy. The video game consoles, the teddy bears, the computers, the loneliness. Ernest Garland had locked himself away from the world with his obsession. His apartment was like a bunker where he could stay with his fantasies. Carlos felt surrounded by the sickness of one individual. He raced out and puked on the doorstep. What he had seen on that computer screen for a few seconds would follow him for a while.
Once again Carlos doubted, legal medicine gave him the opportunity to work for victims and to shed light on their fate, but Ernest Garland, for him just deserved what happened to him. He deserved to be forgotten like a bad dream.
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