Chapter 16 #2
“Well, just looking you up. It seems like you’re doing a book about gay killers and—what does it say?” He squinted at the page and read. “Cultural discourses of sexuality and crime. Interesting topic.”
“We didn’t have any classes like that when I was in college,” Hoffer said.
Laurence looked over at him. “I’ll never stop being surprised at the fact that some poor college let you in.”
“Shut up,” Hoffer said, but smiled.
“You know I’m just messing with you.” Laurence turned back to me. “Anyway, you have to admit it’s pretty interesting. A guy who devotes his time to studying gay murder cases ends up in a situation like this.”
“Just because I’m working on that book doesn’t mean I’ve killed anybody.”
“I didn’t say you had.” He grinned. “Tyler did.” He was enjoying this.
And I almost admired it, the way he was stringing me along.
He had me in the grip of his story; even I wanted to know what I had done.
“But the thing about Tyler, there’s something sort of odd about him.
Off-kilter? I don’t know how to say it. A wild kind of look in his eyes.
Anyone could see it, I’m sure you did. And there was obviously something intense between him and Addison.
I don’t know if it was sexual or what—” he waited for a reaction, but I offered none “—and so it made me think. Maybe Tyler’s done this.
Killed off his roommate, for whatever reason. ”
“Or no reason at all,” said Hoffer.
“Sure, that’s possible. But I wondered, if Tyler did kill Addison, maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe he planned the whole thing. So he’s had time to think about how to pull it off and get away with it. And in that case, who better to go to than you?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I think maybe you do understand. Maybe Tyler’s been planning this all year.
And that’s why he came to you in the first place.
Because he thought, lonely prof stuck in this shit town, I’ll strike up a relationship.
Who wouldn’t like the attention of a cute kid like Tyler?
Weird, sure, but endearing. And Tyler’s thinking, he’s an expert on murder. I’ll have his help when I need it.”
Tyler after that first class, asking about my book. Me, flattered he was interested.
Laurence went on. “I wondered even about this fight the other night. I don’t know you well but you don’t really strike me as a violent man.
So I thought, maybe Tyler picked this fight because he was planning to turn on you.
Getting himself beat up so he can prove you’re dangerous. Frame you for what he had done.”
Tyler refusing to leave, goading me on.
“That’s not true,” I said.
“None of this ever occurred to you?”
“Tyler wouldn’t do that.”
“Which part?”
Laurence was trying to rattle me, get us to contradict each other. Already, against the force of his story, I could feel my memories of these months breaking apart, getting confused.
“Tyler cares about me.”
“I don’t doubt that. You know what they say—we always hurt the ones we love.”
I looked down at the table. Without realizing it, I’d laid my hands across it. I saw my fists clench and open. I saw the edge of the folder, the recording device. My chest rising and falling beneath me.
“Now is there anything you want to say?” asked Laurence.
He reached toward me and tapped a finger, two short, quick punctuations.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to speak with a lawyer.”
It was as if I had flipped a switch, ending the charade this was just a conversation among friends gone sour. Laurence clicked off the recorder, slammed shut the folder, and leapt to his feet. He motioned at Hoffer and they strode to the door. “We’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”
I was alone in the room. I closed my eyes. I inhaled and held my breath—trying to slow the fast, hard punching of my heart in its cage. After some minutes it started to work and I could think about what had just happened, what might happen next.
I wish I could say I remained silent from some instinct of self-preservation.
If I’d ever had that instinct, certainly it had left me by now.
No, it was for Tyler. I wouldn’t betray him with the truth.
In all honesty, I had wanted to confess everything.
And not because I sought absolution. If that were to come, it would not be like this and not from them; they knew nothing about me and had nothing to offer.
I wanted to talk because the desire to unburden myself of the past seven months, of everything I had seen and felt and done, burned within me, ferocious, unbearable.
Waiting for them to return, I felt dizzy at the thought of finally speaking aloud my longing for Tyler and what it had done to me. I wanted someone else to know.
And as I sat there playing through the story of Tyler and me, what I would say if I could speak, I thought about this: that, in fact, everything Laurence said had already occurred to me.
Some version of it at least. In the dorm room, looking at Addison’s inert body on the bed, I wondered if it wasn’t an accident, if Tyler had planned it.
Was that why he waited, why he didn’t call 911?
And in my apartment, I am not sure the exact moment, sometime after I knocked Tyler to the floor but certainly before I dragged him to my bedroom—I thought, Am I being set up?
By the time I had him facedown on the bed I didn’t care if it was a setup, or if the entire thing had been one.
What is love, after all, if not life’s greatest setup?
But in the end, I wasn’t sure Tyler could mastermind something so big—he was making impulsive decisions with no real sense of consequence; he was too young to understand how life is a series of choices best understood as self-limiting constraints.
He certainly wasn’t smart enough to plan the cover-up.
That was all me. It was my idea to hide the body, after all, and to scatter a trail of false leads to make Addison’s last hours difficult to retrace.
When I found Tyler in my apartment that night, soaking wet, crying, terrified, what had he said?
I know I have to go to the police, but I’m too scared.
I can’t go alone. And then he asked me to take him to the station, that was it.
That was all the help he wanted. I was the one who convinced him it wasn’t worth it.
I told him he’d be throwing his life away.
I promised I would protect him. When I finally got what I wanted—to know that Tyler needed me—it wasn’t enough; greedy men and our insatiable wants.
Maybe if I had listened, if I’d just given the help he asked for, only my company, if I had let that be enough—everything would have been fine. Maybe it was me who had set us up.
I was thinking about all this and then a strange thing happened. The door swung open. Someone stood there. Plainclothes, a stack of file folders clutched to her chest.
“Am I in the wrong room?” She looked down the hallway then back at the door.
Some noise came from beyond view. A throaty voice called out, “Coming through,” and she stepped back, leaving the door open.
Two uniformed officers appeared in the hallway.
They had someone between them, pulling him forward.
It was Tyler. His hands were cuffed behind him.
The violet of his bruised cheek shone garish and beautiful.
His hair was wild and frantic and his mouth hung open, like an injured animal.
He turned his head and looked into the room where I sat.
For an instant, our eyes met. My entire body seized; I was held in suspension.
Tyler’s mouth opened as if to speak, it seemed to form itself around some words—Help me?
I’m sorry? I love you?—and then he was pulled away, hoisted really, down the corridor and out of sight.
I stared at the empty hallway. I did not think to flee. Where would I go? I had no life to which I could return. A moment later someone must have realized the door had been left open. I heard a muttered “Jesus Christ,” and then it clanged shut, sealing me in.