My first published work- January 2020!
Road to Nowhere
By Nicholas Italia
After a long day at the office (and trampling about outside), I enter my house, pass through my living room to my bedroom, take off my Suffolk County Police uniform, change into comfortable clothing, go back to the living room, and plop down on the couch, just as I do every day after work. My wife and niece greet me with smiles on their faces. I have only a few hours with my wife except on Saturdays, when we both have off from work. It is spring, and my wife and I are hosting Ginger, my niece, who wants to stay “as far away from her parents as possible” while on her spring break. While I love hosting her, her father being my older brother makes me uncomfortable. She has told me she likes being at boarding school, finishing her sophomore year for high school. She transferred to the local boarding school and moved into the dorms over her Christmas break, after being expelled from her previous high school for reasons I do not want to discuss or even think about.
I can read these two women’s minds; they want me to tell them everything about the case I’ve been working on. “Where’s Ted?” I ask. My wife, Rubie, hands our one-year-old over to me. I feel relieved. Relaxed. Ready for an interrogation; that is, these two women interrogating me.
“How are you, Uncle Cecil?” Ginger shows me her most recent paper for one of the classes she took, economics 101, a constructive criticism essay mentioning the pros and cons of the Federal Reserve System (which she got an ‘A’ on). She will be a junior in high school next year. She is fifteen-years old now. How time flies. She is currently attending a boarding high school for troubled girls; girls with behavior problems, drug addictions, learning disabilities, depression, you know what I am talking about. While my niece has not been clinically diagnosed with ADHD, her disruptive, erratic, and often impulsive behavior has been a concern of many people, including that of Rubie and me. On the other hand, she is much less prone to violent outbursts than she used to be. At least that is what I heard from what school administrators told my brother; Ginger’s father.
“Happy, I guess. For now, anyways, Ginger. This case is closed.”
“Another murder? So what was this latest one about? And why do bad things always happen to good people? I bet Aunt Rubie knows all about it,” Ginger remarks. I wonder if she was thinking about herself when she said good people.
“Of course, I know all about it,” Rubie starts. Then she turns to me. “By the way, Ginger did not get into any trouble today.” (My wife is a school nurse at the same boarding school for troubled girls that my niece attends; which is one reason my brother sent her there).
“So what’s the latest case about?” Ginger asks again, as I sip some tea. So I begin:
“It all started a few weeks ago when these road repairmen were repairing a section of a two- lane road that goes between here and Danesville. They discovered a bunch of bones on the side of the road that goes westward.”
“What part of the body?”
“Complete skeletons, actually, Ginger. Now, realize that, with this very finding by the construction workers, we stumbled upon clues that we figured just might solve a dead-end case that was opened about two years ago. All the action in the story I am about to tell you happened in the last few months.
“After going to the construction site and collecting the bones, we took them back to our forensic team. I also noticed, along with the bones, there were some shards of beer-bottle glass. Very few, but enough to notice. Our junior forensic, Mikayla Bespal, determined that the bones were around two years old. They had decayed a bit, but since the ground was rather dry, many were still intact and identifiable. But what caught my eye was that the male corpse had a ring on the middle finger of the left hand. It had a blue eagle on a black background, and it said ‘1990’ on it. We guessed it was a class ring. We took the ring as a clue. What my fellow officers and I did next was painstakingly look for schools or any other institution with a blue eagle as a mascot. We finally found one: ‘Amity Preparatory School’ in Amityville. What was also interesting was my team, me, Lieutenant Frost, and forensic Bespal noticed shards of beer-bottle glass beside the buried bodies. Bespal saw dents in the skulls of these two corpses suggesting they were hit over the head. We were ninety-nine percent sure it was beer bottle glass because most beer comes in green bottles.”
“They could have been Perrier bottles, or San Peligrino,” says Ginger.
“Ah, except Bespal and Callist, from forensics, measured the approximate circumference of the bottles by looking at the slightest curvature of some of the shards. Most beer bottles have a diameter of 2.5 inches. I was able to see, by the curvature of a few of the shards then, that these people were struck by beer bottles, but I did not rule out other kinds of bottles. But these two homicide victims were very likely struck on the head by glass bottles. We dug more, and found evidence of a standard beer bottle neck, too. It was all in place, again, suggesting that these people
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were struck over the head with bottles. Humans have great imaginations; and anything can be a weapon.”
“Hmm. Ginger,” starts Rubie, “wouldn’t a person be able to use a beer bottle more easily than a sparkling water bottle?”
“Uhh, I guess so, Aunt Rubie. I mean they are smaller than the average sparkling water bottle. And those bottlenecks would have made perfect handles. Most carbonated water bottles do not have bottlenecks. Is that what you were hinting at?”
“Yes, Ginger,” Rubie says.
“So, what did you do next, Uncle?”
“Well, we had to go to Amity prep. I brought my lieutenants with me, as well as Bespal.” “Lieutenants Frost and Dumont?” Asks Rubie.
“Yes.”
“Which one’s the woman again?” Inquires Ginger.
“Dumont. Michelle Dumont.”
“Just asking, Uncle. I just want to... know that information...”
“May I continue?” I ask.
“Yes. Sorry,” Ginger says.
“I told the administrators that I had found a corpse with a class ring on it. I showed them the
ring, and asked them to show me a list of grads from 1990. The principal, Ms. Jennings, came back with one after a ten-minute wait. I came across the name ‘Earl Dawes.’ Earl Dawes had been on the missing persons list, as well as his wife, Fiona Dawes.
“So, I went back to the lab, where Bespal had just taken some DNA from both skeletons...” “Uncle Cecil, how do they extract deoxyribonucleic acid from bones?”
“When Bespal is ready to extract DNA, she cuts a small piece of bone or tooth and crushes it
into powder. In the bone powder are millions of bone cells and millions of cells from other organisms, such as bacteria and other parasites. A copy of the DNA is located inside every single cell...”
“Uncle Cecil, I already knew that DNA is in every cell in the body...”
“...Next, she needs to crack open the cell walls so that the DNA spills out. A special enzyme does this job. It is a lot like cracking open an egg into a bowl.”
“Cool!” my niece comments.
“Of course DNA is not the only thing inside a cell, Ginger. When the cell walls are cracked,
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other cell parts come out as well. To separate the DNA from the other parts of the cell, the next step is the cleaning step. Bespal must capture only the DNA but leave all of the other parts- the junk in other words- behind. When the DNA is clean, it is ready for analysis.”
“Wow!”
“So, what did the DNA test say?” Asks Rubie.
“Before I tell you that, Rubie I want to point out that there was evidence of blows to the head
of a certain kind; a strong enough blow to kill them, or at least knock them out for a period of time for the murderer to stick a knife in their throats and finish the job, or something else. There was no evidence of gun use at all. Bespal painstakingly looked for a bullet in or on the bones; none were found.
“As I just mentioned, my team dug up the names Earl and Fiona Dawes. Earl and Fiona Dawes were reported missing about two years ago; from a couple named ‘Carlisle.’ Edgar and Tammy were their first names. They claimed to be hosting the Dawes’ son, Bradley while his parents were at a school reunion of some kind. The reason the Carlisles were hosting Bradley was because their son, William Carlisle, is a good friend of Bradley. The Carlisles told us that Earl and Fiona were good people who became their friends through Bill and Bradley’s friendship, not the other way around. You know what I mean by that...”
“Of course!” replies Ginger.
“Yes, I know what you mean,” says Rubie.
“When I asked where Bradley was at the moment, Mr. Carlisle pointed to a thirteen year old
boy right behind them, who was with his maternal aunt, a woman named Claudia, as well as his paternal grandfather, a man named Alexander. I showed Alexander Dawes the ring, and he told me that it was his son’s class ring. We did DNA tests on Alexander Dawes and Claudia Ellis by extracting some living cells from saliva. Forensic Bespal extracted cells from Ellis, Bradley Dawes, and Earl Dawes by stroking the inside of their mouths with q-tips. Then, she extracted DNA from those cells, and matches were made with the DNA from Earl and Fiona Dawes.”
“Wait, the workmen were trying to fix the road and found the skeletons, right? Asks Rubie. “Yes. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.”
“It was clear to me!” Snaps Ginger.
I continue:
“We got in touch with Alexander Dawes, Claudia Ellis, and the Carlisles. They were relieved that their bodies were found after two years of running around in circles. I asked both
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Alexander Dawes and Claudia Ellis how Mr. and Mrs. Dawes intended to get to the party. They both told me the only way they could have gone was by car. I took that down immediately, and asked if they could give me any photos of this car, which they did. The car was a blue Mini-Cooper with the license plate number being ‘SUF-108.’”
“Bespal did not find any bullets or traces of bullets in or near the skeletons, but she did notice signs of a fight. She found blunted dents in Earl and Fiona’s skulls that hinted they were clubbed with something like a baseball bat. She also found traces of round, broken bottle-glass...”
“We know, Uncle Cecil. You already told us that.”
“So, I asked Bespal if there was significant damage to other bones. She showed me the rest of the bones; they did not appear to be damaged. She looked at the teeth of the skulls, noticed some were missing, again suggesting that there was a fight. Of course, it could also be that the Dawes did not care about dental hygiene.”
“That’s not funny,” Rubie remarks. Rubie is something of a health nut, which should not be surprising given her profession.
“Aunt Rubie, one can never assume anything about anybody, especially Uncle Cecil...” “Much of their clothing remained,” I continue.
“Gross, Uncle Cecil. What did it look like? Worm-eaten? Moldy?”
“Both, Ginger.
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