docks. The pervasive odors of dog shit, brine, and diesel intruded. In the middle of it all, the rotten velour sofa. On die sofa, the body of a naked, headless man.
“Somebody with a twisted mind,” I said.
“The sick shits beheaded the poor fuck. You expect decency after that?”
About the best anyone could expect, judging by die surroundings, was not to be hit by a sniper’s rifle, or attacked by more wild dogs.
“Go over there and work fast.” Liska motioned to thesofa. “This spooky-ass place, I feel like I’m walking on unmarked graves. Shrimp Road’s the only place in the Keys where I get creeps standing in open sunlight, seventy-five degrees, a Sunday afternoon in January.”
I walked toward the sofa. A half dozen deputies and investigators stood by, including Sheriff’s Detective Bobbi Lewis. Their expressions, their subdued talk warned me that I faced a gruesome task.
Afternoon light was fading. Mangrove shadows grew long. I paid close attention to my gear. I rigged for fill-flash on manual setting, synched to use ambient light, but less flash on close-up shots. How unlike a dead person, I thought at the time. More object than human, the body with no face excused speculation on the victim’s personality, or life. Or postponed speculation. Later I would blame that concept on my shock at viewing such a grotesque spectacle. The mental defense mechanism allowed me to remove myself from the ugliness, the horror, the dogs.
After a roll of “establishing” shots, panoramic, perspective angles to the east, south, west, and north, I loaded another thirty-six exposures and looked around. Beyond the imposing trash barrier, another world, the white superstructures, masts, cranes, the green nets of shrimp boats. Behind me, silent law officers and onlookers who’d strolled over from the shrimp docks, or from the beer bars up the street. Beyond them, thirty feet into a dense hammock, an ocean refugee, a “knight of the road,” in a bough-enshrouded single-man tramp camp. A thatch-roofed lean-to, with a rusty bike and a tiny chest of drawers, salvage from the mounds. The sun-browned, dirt-blacked man must exist on charity, on handouts from former trawler-fleet brethren. A sense of foreboding penetrated to my bones. The opposite of trouble looking for a place to happen, this strip of blacktop and mangroves felt primed for intrigue, tuned to violence. I wondered if some spirit had long ago cursed the peninsula, so the land wished now to avenge itself by hosting evil in any form.
I moved to work a few close-ups. The victim’s malnourishedtorso was not tanned except for the arms. Thighs and calves too thin ever to have exercised. A purple, oval-shaped birthmark, or half-birthmark, ran from the top of his right shoulder to the shredded neck skin now curled by drying blood and canine saliva. I went tight to document the half-inch opening in his chest. I shot the stab wound, its proximity to the heart. I got the abdominal scar that told of surgical inexpertise, the jagged lightning tattoo on the inside of his left arm, the odd, deflated scrotum—a testicle removed, perhaps at birth.
All details of a man who’d been alive yesterday.
Finally I finished. Four rolls, thirty-six each, the final roll redundant. I packed my camera bag, looked a final time at those waiting to do their own awful tasks. The sheriff had vanished while I worked. He wasn’t the only one spooked by Shrimp Road.
Fennerty motioned me back to his green-and-white.
We drove north, slower than before. A funky station wagon turned into the marina. Four open windows, four shrimpers’ arms hung out. The road had been empty. It now looked like downtown. Drunks staggered along the shoulders in white work boots. A new-looking Taurus approached, greaseball at the wheel. I turned to watch it pass and continue south. Two gaunt dudes coasted by on two-wheelers, high handlebars, matching black watch caps. One Fu Manchu, one goatee. We left behind a
“Somebody with a twisted mind,” I said.
“The sick shits beheaded the poor fuck. You expect decency after that?”
About the best anyone could expect, judging by die surroundings, was not to be hit by a sniper’s rifle, or attacked by more wild dogs.
“Go over there and work fast.” Liska motioned to thesofa. “This spooky-ass place, I feel like I’m walking on unmarked graves. Shrimp Road’s the only place in the Keys where I get creeps standing in open sunlight, seventy-five degrees, a Sunday afternoon in January.”
I walked toward the sofa. A half dozen deputies and investigators stood by, including Sheriff’s Detective Bobbi Lewis. Their expressions, their subdued talk warned me that I faced a gruesome task.
Afternoon light was fading. Mangrove shadows grew long. I paid close attention to my gear. I rigged for fill-flash on manual setting, synched to use ambient light, but less flash on close-up shots. How unlike a dead person, I thought at the time. More object than human, the body with no face excused speculation on the victim’s personality, or life. Or postponed speculation. Later I would blame that concept on my shock at viewing such a grotesque spectacle. The mental defense mechanism allowed me to remove myself from the ugliness, the horror, the dogs.
After a roll of “establishing” shots, panoramic, perspective angles to the east, south, west, and north, I loaded another thirty-six exposures and looked around. Beyond the imposing trash barrier, another world, the white superstructures, masts, cranes, the green nets of shrimp boats. Behind me, silent law officers and onlookers who’d strolled over from the shrimp docks, or from the beer bars up the street. Beyond them, thirty feet into a dense hammock, an ocean refugee, a “knight of the road,” in a bough-enshrouded single-man tramp camp. A thatch-roofed lean-to, with a rusty bike and a tiny chest of drawers, salvage from the mounds. The sun-browned, dirt-blacked man must exist on charity, on handouts from former trawler-fleet brethren. A sense of foreboding penetrated to my bones. The opposite of trouble looking for a place to happen, this strip of blacktop and mangroves felt primed for intrigue, tuned to violence. I wondered if some spirit had long ago cursed the peninsula, so the land wished now to avenge itself by hosting evil in any form.
I moved to work a few close-ups. The victim’s malnourishedtorso was not tanned except for the arms. Thighs and calves too thin ever to have exercised. A purple, oval-shaped birthmark, or half-birthmark, ran from the top of his right shoulder to the shredded neck skin now curled by drying blood and canine saliva. I went tight to document the half-inch opening in his chest. I shot the stab wound, its proximity to the heart. I got the abdominal scar that told of surgical inexpertise, the jagged lightning tattoo on the inside of his left arm, the odd, deflated scrotum—a testicle removed, perhaps at birth.
All details of a man who’d been alive yesterday.
Finally I finished. Four rolls, thirty-six each, the final roll redundant. I packed my camera bag, looked a final time at those waiting to do their own awful tasks. The sheriff had vanished while I worked. He wasn’t the only one spooked by Shrimp Road.
Fennerty motioned me back to his green-and-white.
We drove north, slower than before. A funky station wagon turned into the marina. Four open windows, four shrimpers’ arms hung out. The road had been empty. It now looked like downtown. Drunks staggered along the shoulders in white work boots. A new-looking Taurus approached, greaseball at the wheel. I turned to watch it pass and continue south. Two gaunt dudes coasted by on two-wheelers, high handlebars, matching black watch caps. One Fu Manchu, one goatee. We left behind a
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