Journal Entry: Horatio Caine

Title: Journal Entry – Horatio Caine
Author: Bj Jones
Summary: Horatio reflects back

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The last case brought it all back. The memories from a time long ago.

My mothers memory is never far from my mind; her sparkling blue eyes and bright red hair, much like my own. I had taken after her, in coloring as well as temperament. She could always sooth me with her voice and smile. For a while it was just the two of us. We would go to the zoo, have picnics in the park, and shop at the local markets. She taught me compassion; to help others who are less fortunate than we were.

It was perfect, mom and me, just the two of us.

Then Raymond was born.

He was so different from mom and I. He had father’s dark hair and cold eyes, and as he grew, so he also had father’s temperament.

Not soon after Ray was born, things began to change. Father would come home later and smell of alcohol. He began to yell, rant and scream. I was eight when I noticed the first bruises, after that I can barely remember a time when she didn’t have a bruise or black eye.

I was ten when his anger turned on me. I had come home from school, with a note from the teacher. He started yelling at me. Mom told him to leave me alone, and he turned on her, hitting her hard enough she fell against the coffee table. I clearly remember hearing the bone snap. I screamed in rage and pushed him away from her as I ran to her side. I helped her up and though I’m not quite sure how, I got her to the doctor to get her arm fixed. I stood there in the small office as she told him that she was clumsy and she had tripped over the rug and landed on the table. I knew she was lying, she knew, and the doctor knew, but no one spoke up. When we got home, I helped her to bed, tucking her in like she had done for me. I kissed her forehead and went into my own room where I found my father waiting for me. The blow was sudden. Vicious. I just lay on the ground blinking up at him. I missed school for a week.

Fifteen years later he was dead by my hands. Once Ray had left for college I convinced mom to leave him. To get away, start a new life. I swore to her I would protect her from him. But I failed.

For two years she lived again. I would take her for picnics on the park, walks at the zoo, and shopping at the market. Then one day I came home to find her dying in a pool of her own blood; my father standing over her with a self righteous expression, full of anger and hate. She had dared leave him, and now she paid the price.

I pulled my weapon and without hesitation I shot him.

I broke down and told the cops who came about the years of abuse. How she had run once my brother and I were safe. I told them I came in to see him beating her, that I told him to stop and step away but he refused. They believed me.

I buried my mother in a quiet place in the cemetery, near a beautiful old oak tree. I cremated my father and dumped his ashes into a trash can as I left the funeral home.

Ray finished college and followed me into the Police Department. But fate would have it that soon, we both would leave New York and move down to Miami. But that is another story, for another time.

To this day, mom is the reason I do what I do. I couldn’t save her from him, but I can try and save others in her name.

Her blood will always be on my hands as is her killer’s. I took his life trying to save her, and for that I pay penance. My life is not my own now.

It belongs to the victims.