just that my husband and son are supposed to get in. Elena understands but they, being men, think that I need to accept what happened and that I’m in denial…”
There were things that now I regret not having asked her, but there will be another time to talk with her.
When she got to her office, the atmosphere was more somber than the day before, but this time she immediately knew the cause. Robert Parker, ex-director of the Miami-Dade County Police, who had been retired for six years, had been found dead in his house at age sixty-two. There was talk of suicide but no one was convinced. There was no rationale for it, and he hadn’t left a note. She immediately called her father, who had already heard.
“He was a career man with more than thirty years of service. The first African American to occupy the position. He had a beautiful family. It’s impossible that he could’ve committed suicide.”
“Take it easy Papi. I’ll keep you updated and come over later, but right now I need to get back to work.”
The first thing she did was look for everything she could about Raimundo Alberto Lazo. She didn’t find anything: no criminal record, no credit score, no tax returns for the ten years prior to the accident. It took her a couple of hours, but she finally discovered that his social security number really belonged to one Ray Bow who had died in January 1980.
So, Raimundo had stolen the identity of a dead man… Ray Bow. Raimundo Lazo. Without a doubt, it was a false name too. But why? What was he hiding? What was he running from? Who was the man who crashed in the canal in 1992? Was it really an accident or was there another cause of death?
Maria put the files in her briefcase and headed for the morgue. She knew it would be odd not to find Dr. John Erwin there. They knew her well in the building on 10th Avenue, and they let her come and go as she pleased. Early on in her career, she learned the importance of making friends all over the place. She cultivated her contacts. She remembered the names of their family members, from time to time brought them Cuban coffee or a box of donuts, went to all the birthday parties she was invited to, and attended the funerals of their relatives. She attempted to maintain a balance that let her establish a personal relationship without coming off as a suck-up, or, as her dad would say, a “kiss-ass.”
She found the old medical examiner performing an autopsy. It had taken Maria a long time to watch this part of the investigative process with ease, but the eight years that she worked in the homicide department had cured her of all apprehensions. She shared some of the details of the case with Dr. Erwin.
The doctor finally finished the autopsy. She kept quiet while he finished writing up the report and giving instructions to his assistants to take the cadaver to the freezer.
“So, Maria, what can I do for you?”
“Well, two things. First I need you to look at this forensic report and tell me if there’s any possibility that this man could’ve been killed instead of dying in an accident.”
Erwin took off his gloves, washed his hands, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a paper towel. He was always sweating despite the cold temperature in the morgue. He was a stocky man with chubby fingers that somehow treated the bodies with astonishing delicacy. He then took the papers that Maria held in her hands and read them for two minutes before declaring:
“Yes…”
“Yes?”
“Yes, it could’ve been a murder. See, he had water in his lungs which tells us that he was still alive when he crashed into the water. You can only see a small portion of the window open in the photo. It’s strange because if he were conscious the logical thing to do would’ve been to open the window more. Additionally, the autopsy says that he had sustained trauma to the head. They attributed it to the impact of the accident, and that could be, but it also could’ve been that someone hit him, leaving him unconscious, and then pushed the car into the canal. Now what was your other question?”
“This man wasn’t actually who his driver’s license or death certificate said he was. What do you think would be the best way to go about identifying him?”
“Certainly you’re not thinking about exhuming the body.”
“No, not at this time.”
“Do you have anything to extract DNA from?”
“The clothing that he was wearing is in a sealed bag.”
“Better yet, see if the family kept anything of his, maybe a hair brush.”
“It’s been twenty-three years.”
“You of all people shouldn’t be surprised by the things people save from their dead relatives.”
She called Gladys Elena to make sure that she would be home and went directly to Hialeah. This time Gladys was alone and she opened the door herself.
“Come in, come in… Excuse me a minute, I was just making coffee,” and she ran off into the kitchen.
Unlike the previous visit, Maria took the opportunity to look at family photos. It struck her that the girl that she had met last time, who had a striking similarity to the sketch of the missing baby depicted as young woman now, looked like her father and not Gladys while the boy looked like her and like another young man in one of the photos.
“That’s my brother, Raulito,” Gladys said when she saw Maria looking at the pictures.
She didn’t comment on the similarities. After all, it was very subjective.
“When did you remarry?” she asked in a friendly tone just before sipping her coffee.
“Well, here’s how it all happened… Mauricio was the boyfriend that I had left in Cuba, and he came here two years later. Slowly we fell in love again and a year later, in ’95, we got married. Little Elena was born on December 19 of ’96. It’s incredible that she looks just like her sister… I mean, according to the sketch they did of her sister.”
When they finished their coffee and sat face to face, Maria turned on the tape recorder, took out her notebook and pen, and began questioning her:
“Where did you, Lazo, and your daughter live before the accident?”
“In Little Havana. Let’s see, here’s almost all of the information.”
She handed Maria a sheet with the address of where they lived in 1992, her mother’s address, the address where Lazo worked, names and phone numbers of neighbors and contact lists of their respective coworkers that they were still in touch with.
“You’re making my work easy.”
“It’s taken years…”
“Just two or three more questions… What do you know of your late husband’s past?”
“About Ray? Well, very little. He told me that he came on the Mariel Boatlift, that he was from Cardenas, and that he didn’t have any family here. But when he died, a long-lost uncle of his showed up and was very generous. He paid all the funeral costs even though the wake just amounted to a few of his friends from work. Ray was a good man. He always told me: This is the land of second chances and you’ve been mine. And he’d also go around saying: Fidel didn’t create the ‘new man’; you
