FOR ELISE©
BY Pamela Garza

Her name was Elise Toussaint. And as I looked up at her face, I couldn't help but feel regret. This emotion isn't the kind that settles in your head after long thought. No, but rather it slams you in the gut so that it knocks the wind out of everything you've ever held dear.

I was called in by the warden of this minimum security Federal Prison for Women, that had the Boot Camp Theory in tow. The authorities wanted me to attest to the fact that there were no more bruises or cuts on the body than there had been yesterday.

You see, I was the tracker that finally caught up with this little lady after she escaped and lead the marshals on a merry chase of 3 days and a hundred miles. Choppers, dogs, and men were called in from all over the country to apprehend this desperado, this 'prostitute', this convicted 'drug lord' from a Nearby State. Little did I know then but that she was running for her life.

"What'll it be, Coke?"

The impatient voice behind me wanted to hurry things along. He wanted to get this lifeless piece of trouble out of his barracks, and exorcise the ghost of scandal hovering over his jurisdiction. Well, I don't like to be rushed, a tracker's trait, I s'pose. But if my name, Coke Bucknil, goes on a piece of paper that was to be taken as gospel, naturally, I was going to take my time.

"How'd she die?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but... a broken neck. Can't you see? She hung herself."

"The correct term is 'hanged'. Her toes are touching the floor."

"So she's been hanging there since 3 a.m., according to the official time of death. Plenty of time for the cloth to stretch and her toes to reach the floor."

"Where'd she get all that cloth to make the rope?"

"You remember how scratched up she was when they brought her in. These are all the bandages from those wounds."

Yes, I remembered. In her desperation to get away, she lead me through thick bramble, thorns, and muddy fields. She was suffering from exposure, scratches, bruises, and hundreds of blisters from the bites of fire ants. How they must have hurt, but not a whimper out of her, not even when the officers pushed her belly into the mud to cuff her. That image of a survivor rankled in me now, as I inspected the body of one who apparently gave up in suicide.

"These red marks across her face, they weren't there yesterday, Warden."

"Oh that. Those are the marks she made herself when she slipped the noose over her head. Come on, I don't have time for this, Coke. You've stalled long enough. What's it gonna be?"

"Well, I'll have to mention those in my report."

"Get this straight, Coke, if you even insinuate that this is anything but a suicide, I'll see to it that you never work in this town OR in this state again. I'll damage what little reputation you have left."

"I didn't insinuate nothing. You know something I don't know, Warden? OR is it just your guilty conscience?"

I enjoyed irritating him, being the smirk he couldn't stop, the spot he couldn't clean, but I didn't want to make him mad. 'This state', Texas, was a large territory not to ever work in again. 'This town' shall remain anonymous, though its sister city was posted as the most literate in the country. It's a cinch that whoever initiated that burp, Georgia survey never lived here.

These twin cities combined have more than 200,000 people and only one newspaper, a newspaper whose reporters explain the 'overnight' disappearance of 4 million gallons of water as a 'leak', a newspaper who has an agreement with the college to suppress out-of-hand gang activity so that parents will send their little darlings to this college. And as I stood looking up at that lifeless face, a face that had been beautiful at one time, these and other cover-ups blitzed my mind. I turned away from the body, and left the building.

One thing about trackers: When they know how to read the signs in the bush, easy-like, the ability runs off into reading people. The warden meant what he said, and as I walked to my car thinking about Elise, I wondered if that mattered to me. If I hadn't seen her on these two separate occasions, I would write anything, poetry in rhyme if he wanted me to. But the signs gave me pause. The expression on the white face was not one of peaceful resolve at the prospect of ending her ordeal. It was fear, fear so pure, so vivid that it left its mark on her. I'd seen that kind of fear before.

Another sign: How could a woman as slight as she was jump one foot off a cot and break her neck? Semantics would dictate that the act would only choke her. And... the marks on her face were not from the cloth noose. They were made by the large hands that pressed the life out of her, hands that broke her neck before they tightened the noose around her throat.

"She was murdered." I said outloud, and drove my car out the gate. If I had a decent bone in my body, I'd cover the shortest distance to the Police Station and tell them my suspicions. But I had to think this through. My life, as bent on being mediocre as it was, still meant something to me. If I wasn't careful, I'd end up like her, because the power of two states was at work here.

She'd been convicted as a drug dealer and prostitute. That was the rumor, anyway. The one thing about rumors, though, is that they ruin the wrong people's lives. My wife left me on a rumor. Though I admit to having a highly developed sense of justice, nothing was ever proven.

Anyway, I tracked down my own theory about what really happened. When the idiot governor of this Nearby State got tired of his mistress, he planted drugs on her, labeled her a prostitute, got her convicted, and sent her here; all because she knew too much of his organized crime activities. He had to get her out of his way so that when she was killed, he couldn't be blamed.

With that knowledge in mind, I finally decided what I was going to do about the injustice done to Elise, and professionalism took over. From the squalid fire trap I had for an apartment on Beck St., I did my tracking over the computer until 2:30 a.m. By that time, I had a plan of action that would take me over the next week.

By 3 a.m. I had the Warden's mansion under surveillance from a respectable distance. I was looking for a particular activity and found it. The man who I heard was in town, the one with the hands the size of rottweilers, was coming out of the ante-bellum home. Sloppy work was always his signature. There was no need to follow him. He'd be heading back to his boss. I would see him soon.

By 4 a.m., I was home again. Settling with the warden was easy. I would use my 'special-occasion' stationery. Taking it out of my desk, I handled it with plastic gloves. I wrote my report the way he wanted me to, snapped the paper to activate the chemical, and slipped it in a protective plastic. When I addressed the envelope, I made sure it was FOR THE WARDEN' S EYES ONLY.

A few hours later, I paid cash for a plane ticket for a fast and furious vacation in the tourist town near the Gulf Coast. During the week that I was there, some headlines made quite a stir. One read:

GOVERNOR AND BODYGUARD DIE OF NATURAL CAUSES AT LOCAL RESTAURANT.

How fitting that they should be together when it happened. The bodyguard had known the truth, though. I saw it in his dying eyes as I cleared the water from their table. As soon as the job was done, I donated my bus boy uniform to the Goodwill Industries. One thing about trackers: They are proficient at covering their own tracks. When I left, the state was mourning the loss of their governor and his bodyguard with hands the size of rottweilers.

Meanwhile, back home, the Warden also died suddenly of natural causes. Since he was easily replaced by another, I still had a job.

One thing about trackers: When they feel that gut-wrenching regret, sometimes they do it for free. I did... for Elise.