Diana Rowland — Writing, Life, and the Stuff in between

I could smell it as soon as I got out of the car even though I was parked a good hundred yards away. It wasn’t a constant stench, thankfully, but one that caught you unawares in the drifts and eddies of the breeze.

The deputy on scene pointed me toward the car at the end of the row. “The rest of these have been here since before the hurricane. Flooded. This one is newer. We figure it’s been a week or more.”

I stepped around the car, started taking pictures. The stench was a lot stronger and I had one brief moment where my gorge rose into my throat, but I was able to get control of it. Good thing too. The guys would never have let me live it down if I’d puked. Didn’t matter how much the guy stank.

I took all the exterior pictures of the car, processed the outside since the detectives wanted the door handles dusted, then we finally opened it up. The smell of rot came pouring out along with a cloud of flies. There were maggots crawling all along his groin and hands and head. The skin that showed was black, even though we were pretty sure he was white. The skin on his legs had large seeping blisters, and we just knew that he was going to pop when it came time to move him. I took my pictures, occasionally pausing to take breaths through with my hand over my nose, breathing in the welcome smell of latex.

I went around to the other side of the car to get some pictures from the other side. Meanwhile the detectives were debating as to whether the mass of maggots roiling along the side of his face were covering up a bullet hole. His face was black and swollen, and maggots writhed and humped around his mouth and nose.

The coroner came and had the ugly task of getting the body out of the car. The blisters on the victim’s legs popped when he was moved, spilling a dark fluid onto the ground. The arms dripped liquid and when the coroner lifted the victim’s shirt to check the torso, a layer of skin came off in a strip, wrapping itself around a finger of his glove. He made a disgusted noise in his throat and wiped the clinging skin off onto the man’s chest. Maggots crawled on his gloves and he flicked them off absently.

The bodybag was zipped up, though the stench did not abate much. More maggots squirmed on the outside of the bodybag and a second bodybag was used. “Doc may cut this one first tomorrow,” he said, “since it’s such a stinker.”

I took more pictures of the car. A detective took great joy in pointing out that the console was nearly full of fluid. I made the appropriate, “Eeeewwwww” noises. Another detective pulled out the victim’s jacket and was cautiously turning it around, doing his best to not get any of the thousands of maggots on him.

“Anything in the pockets?” his Captain asked. The detective shook his head.

“Just maggots.”

We took Anna to the zoo yesterday. They’ve done an incredible job of cleaning it up ad fixing it up after the storm, and there are only a few places where you can really see where it was ravaged.

Anna had an absolute blast! She’s old enough now that she can enjoy the animals. Much of the time we didn’t even try to keep her in the stroller, and did our best to keep up with her as she ran, screeching, from exhibit to exhibit.

Well, except when she was riding on Daddy.

She also got to touch all sorts of neato wildlife.

We also tried to go on the carousel, or “flyin’ horses” as it’s known down here. That was not as successful. Anna flatly refused to sit on any of the animals, so we compromised by sitting in one of the “sleigh” seats.

But, all in all, Anna enjoyed herself.