Loves Me Not

SIXTY FOUR

AFTER
DETECTIVE BRETT PORTER

I leave Westbrook and get back to Bridgeport just before five. I have all of her belongings in an evidence bag sitting on my passenger seat.

I take it into the station and show the lieutenant. He tells me that this is good news. That we can try to recover the data from the two phones.

The one phone is useless to me at this point since I've already exhausted all resources into looking through the phone records, but I bring it with me just in case. I take that, along with the burner, to our tech guy, Jake. He's the one to go to for anything involving cyber-crime, identity theft, and recovering lost data. I hope he can help with this one.

He removes both phones from the evidence bag and examines them for a couple of minutes, shaking them, taking them apart, feeling every single inch of the metal with his fingers. He removes the sim-card from the burner and plugs it into his computer. I watch as he runs the software and waits, staring at the screen. Then he turns to me.

"Listen, Brett, I wish I could help. I really do. But the chances of retrieving anything off of either of these phones is a longshot."
"But not impossible, correct?"
He presses his mouth into a flat line. "Well, no, not impossible. But highly unlikely."
"What do you need to do?" I ask. "Run the software? Work your magic?"
"It could take a long time," he tells me. "Hours, days, sometimes weeks. There's so much information on these tiny devices, and they've been sitting in water for weeks now. Honestly, I'm surprised they're not fried completely. But this program here deals specifically with damaged sims. Let's just give it some time and see what comes up, alright? But I will caution you – I don't think it's looking good. So don't get your hopes up."
"Trust me, Jake," I say to him. "In this field of work, I don't even have hopes anymore."

______

I sit at my desk and look over everything else we recovered from her purse. Her ID's, her wallet, gift-cards, a pen, lipstick, eyeliner, her keys, a lighter, and a package of gum that has been nearly disintegrated. These are the items that Catalaina carried on her. These are the last things she had with her when she died. No drugs, no murder weapon, nothing. Just mundane items that any woman would keep in her purse.

It brings me back to earth and reminds me how mundane she truly was. Despite the testimonies that everyone gave about her being complex and hard to figure out. Despite the fact that she was cheating on her fiancé. Despite the fact that she was selling drugs. Despite all of these factors, she was just a girl. A girl who got too caught up in life and couldn't handle it all. A girl who got herself into some trouble and didn't quite make it out alive. That's the most tragic part: That she needed help and nobody was there.

I think Catalaina was mistaken about one thing. You see, after studying her life meticulously and reading through her personal journals, what I've gathered was that Catalaina felt misunderstood. She felt lost and lonely and confused. In one of her last entries before her death, she detailed her fears of this world. One of her biggest problems was that she felt no one truly understood her. She felt alone and isolated.

But here's the thing. I spoke to her boss and her co-workers. I spoke to her fiancé and her secret lover. I spoke to her parents and her brother. I spoke to her friends and her ex-friends. And the one thing I gathered from every single person was that they knew Catalaina for her soul. They told me things about her that you don't just hear about anybody. They told me about her love of the ocean, about her need to stand out and be different. They told me about the kind gestures she did for others, how she had an inherent need to help people. They told me how she was complex and multifaceted, that she'd go through moods that would confuse almost anybody. They told me how she hated coffee and that she wanted to travel the world. They told me that she always put others before herself, and that she wanted to make a difference in this world. They told me everything.

Well, Catalaina, if you can hear me, I want you to know this: You believed that nobody got you, that you were so misunderstood. On the contrary. I believe the only one who had a misunderstanding here, was you.