OF
Copyright 2003 KJ Erickson
No one except police had actually seen the crime-scene photos.
But everyone saw the scene in their mind’s eye. Down to the smallest detail. An image that rose from rumors, bits of published fact, tabloid covers glimpsed at supermarket checkouts, and from the unrelenting speculation and gossip mongering of lawyers who spent more time on cable TV talk shows than in courtrooms.
The image was remarkably accurate.
The woman’s body lying flat, facedown, on a gleaming hardwood floor.
Her long red hair fanned out around her head, her head turned sideways in profile.
Her left arm lay at her side, twisted back so the palm turned up. The right arm was extended, elbow bent, fingers spread open, palm down. Her slim bare legs were splayed, one knee raised, as if to climb a step. One shoe, off at the heel, clung to her toes. The other foot was bare, its shoe lying at the photo’s margin.
What everyone imagined remembering was the blood, shocking red against the white of her dress. A red pool spreading out from under her body.
Her footprints across the floor.
She’d been running in her own blood! You could tell by looking at the streaked footprints that she’d been running. You could see the dark stains on the sole of her shoeless foot.
What her father remembered about seeing his daughter’s body was not the blood. Her father’s mind could not associate the blood with his daughter’s body. Could not accept what it would mean if the blood were his daughter’s.
What her father remembered about seeing his daughter’s body was two things.
First, that the person who had been his daughter was not part of the body lying on the floor. This was comforting, just as not accepting that the blood was his daughter’s blood was comforting.
The other thing he remembered was the large bruise on the body’s left arm. In such a scene a bruise was perhaps the least shocking evidence of brutality.
But not to her father. To her father, the bruise brought him back at warp speed from denial to reality. Because the bruise was old, gone green and yellow with age. Like other bruises the father had seen on his daughter’s body.
Bruises he had seen countless times since his daughter, Terri DuCain Jackman, had married Tayron Jackman.