Left for Garbage

fell apart immediately. I had to practically carry him onto the plane, and then he cried for the entire four hour flight. Didn’t even attempt to pull himself together.
    Thank God we were accompanied by Tim, one of the ABC producers, or I don’t know how I would have survived. Tim’s accompanying us had always been part of the plan. He and his cameraman had been previously scheduled to return to Orlando with us. The original story ABC had been taping was the tale of our journey from the day we discovered Deeley’s disappearance , through our nationwide search for her, and then the show would continue at our home, with some touching shots of me holding Deeley’s teddy bear in her little empty bedroom, and showing both Keith and I standing sadly by the playhouse we’d bought her for her second birthday, her last birthday.
    But , of course, once the remains were proven to be Deeley’s, well then ABC’s Tim was to follow our story as we prepared for Deeley’s funeral instead. The show would culminate in some footage of the funeral itself.
    I guess maybe ABC and Tim wondered why I didn’t fall apart, too, and give them the show Keith did, but a better question would have been why Keith acted like finding out Deeley was dead was such a shock to him. Ask me, Keith should have gone right from being a police officer into acting, because he gave an Academy-worthy performance that day, he surely did.
    Yes, yes, yes, we knew she was dead, okay, is that what you wanted to hear? Well there it is, but don’t take that as any kind of a confession from me or my daughter, either.
    In fact, I’m sure poor little Denise , with her mother’s heart, believed Deeley was alive right up until the minute some cold-eyed jailer dropped the news on her. It kills me that I wasn’t with her. I mean, who does she have to comfort her: her paid friends, Mr. Gutierrez and that psycho who’s married to a serial killer that he stuck on my child’s defense team? I can’t bear to think of the shock my Denise must have felt, but as I was saying, for me and Keith, those days of false hope were long behind us.
    I can’t give you the exact date when I knew, for heaven’s sakes, but the thought crossed my mind the very day we picked up Denise’s car. When I saw Deeley’s doll in the car seat, the doll she called Mama, well I knew if Deeley was alive , that doll would have to be with her, as much as she loved that baby doll. That, accompanied by the terrible odor, well, I went nuts. But, I hoped differently, and it was gradual, my growing realization that Manny had probably killed her, and killed her pretty early on. Manny and the press, I should say, killed her, my little one. I guess maybe I knew not too long after Denise was forced by her father and that goddamned Rick Daley to tell what happened at Kay Ranch Park.
    I mean, I knew then. I knew that Manny and his lover-man Fernando were capable of violence, forcing my daughter to the ground as they did and running off with Deeley, who must have been screaming for her mommy. She loved her mommy so much. She had to have been so confused.
    If only Denise hadn’t been so afraid of these vicious kidnappers and had been able to tell me, well then I would have never called 911. Yes the 911 call is my own piece of guilt, but I didn’t know about Kay Ranch Park then, you see, I didn’t know. Once I did know, I understood , and it didn’t take me too long to get there. All the endless media coverage of the case must have shocked these already desperate and deranged men into committing a desperate act.
    They knew it had gone too far and that there was no way to return Deeley to us and not be caught while doing it, so they took the easy way out. They killed our precious baby and then must have dumped her little body as close to our house as they could , to frame Denise. And by now, who knows where they are? I’ve heard maybe Panama. So, yes, they killed her, but then so did the media - the media scrutiny forced them to do this.
    The grieving I went through after I understood this nearly killed me. I hid it behind anger but I was more devastated than anyone, and I still am, of course. It was Denise’s attorney, Gutierrez, who told me I had to keep up a positive front, because if I even hinted that I thought Deeley was dead, it would bring more heat down on my daughter.
    Mr. Gutierrez said it was only my belief, my cheering on the public, my telling them Deeley was still alive, that was keeping