We Were Never Here(89)
The forensic autopsy, which was performed in Chile and overseen by American officials, identified fractures in the skull and subarachnoid hemorrhage—ruptured blood vessels in the fluid-filled space around the brain—denoting a fatal head injury.
According to the report, toxicology tests on a sample of García’s vitreous humor—the jelly in the globe of the eye—also revealed the presence of Rohypnol in his system at the time of his death. No other superficial injuries or internal abnormalities were recorded, although decomposition left medical examiners unable to analyze other factors.
While a spokesperson from the Los Angeles Police Department did not respond to a request for comment, García’s father, Rodrigo García, says this leaves more questions than answers.
“For Paolo to be drugged, hit on the head, and buried in the middle of nowhere—it just does not make sense,” he says. “He was the nicest kid. He never hurt a fly.”
CHAPTER 41
The numbness came next, my brain shrinking inside my skull so that my body could take over, moving on autopilot. I sprinted back the way we’d come. Flagged down a car, begged the curly-haired woman inside to call 911. I wanted her to drive me back up, but a dispatcher told her it might block emergency services. So I jogged up the hill, asthma plucking at my lungs, and peered bravely over the side.
There were tire tracks, a half shade darker than the dirt, carved into the steep earth. Flattened shrubs and a mangled cactus, its geometric limbs snapped off at funny angles. A few stories below was the SUV, its hood squashed, its body corkscrewed so that it rested on the passenger’s side. It was so still, like a mural, the Arizona sun glinting off the glass and steel. If Aaron was wearing his seatbelt, he might have survived.
But then I spotted Kristen’s legs. They were all I could see, the rest of her under the SUV’s grill—legs unfolded like the Wicked Witch of the West. Like Paolo’s hairy legs, poking out from his own blood-soaked backpack. They were tawny and toned and hairless, shiny in the light, with gray sneakers still laced up at the end.
And they weren’t moving.
My screams echoed around the canyon and returned to me, as if the land had rejected them. This is your fault, the orange hills seemed to say. Why should we absorb your pain when you brought this on yourself?
Distant sirens blotted out my howls. Fire trucks appeared and I thought crazily of the fire, all those years ago, of Kristen’s kind mom and mean dad and the forking flames that killed them both. So much noise and chaos, the song that doesn’t end—there was a deep, rhythmic thwocking now, too, a drumbeat, no, a helicopter, all of it getting louder and louder, drowning out my thoughts.
A cop sauntered out of a squad car, too casual, and asked me if I was the one who’d called 911. I can’t remember his face, even though I stared right at it, but after a few seconds I said yes, and he said they’d like to take me to the station, just standard procedure, to ask some questions and get my statement. He was kind, his voice calm and reassuring, and so I agreed, because of course I wanted to help.
The police station was generic, like a movie set. He brought me into a room and offered me water, a bag of chips, and weak, tepid coffee. I sipped at the water, my hand shaking like a maraca, as I tried to explain what’d happened. Just on the mountainside, just those critical fifteen seconds there, since I was confused and too distracted (oh my God oh my God are they dead are they okay) to get into the backstory.
I told it backward. Kristen went over the ledge because Aaron swerved the SUV toward her. He swerved because I was in the road. I was in the road because Kristen and I were talking, and I didn’t know a car was coming. We were on a walk together because we needed to talk. As for Aaron…well, I didn’t know why he drove out after us. Truly, I had no idea. The cop kept telling me I was doing a good job, and I kept interrupting to ask how Aaron and Kristen were. He asked for my name, my number, my home address. I was so rattled I had to think hard, suddenly debating if I’d switched the numbers in my own zip code.
Finally he volunteered to give me a lift to my hotel—he was so kind and self-assured, “You’re doing great, I’m sure you’re eager to get out of here”—but I asked him to take me to the hospital instead. The next few hours reside in my memory as a murky movie montage: sitting in a waiting room, asking everyone and no one if my friends were okay; reaching for my phone again and again, realizing with a squirt of cortisol that I didn’t have it. I was untethered, a helium balloon that could float up into the stratosphere and pop without anyone noticing.
As the day began to wane, the ER’s doors slid open and ushered in a puff of hot air. A couple rushed inside. They reminded me a bit of my parents: thinning hair and crinkled eyes, but with the slim frames and expensive glasses of those who won’t give up their coolness without a fight. They glanced around, then hurried up to the front desk.
The woman behind it, whose hair was a beautiful tower of corkscrew curls, looked up at them with the same unimpressed glare she’d given me. I tilted my head, listening hard. Something about this stylish couple prickled at me, beyond their passing resemblance to my folks. Why did they look familiar?
The woman opened her mouth and the world stopped.
I froze and listened harder, in disbelief, with that same sense of corked time as when something wakes you in the middle of the night and you listen, listen, listen, waiting to see if it happens again.