Chapter 16
The light was thinning into a drizzly October evening, and I was nearing the end of my shift when I heard that Railes needed backup for a DV.
It was always best to dispatch two officers for a domestic violence call. One can separate and ask questions while the other checks prior history and arrest warrants, finds out if firearms are on the premises, and interviews neighbors if needed.
Railes should have waited for me so we could go in together, but he didn’t have a lot of patience. And he was among those who’d hopped up quickly on the backlash bandwagon in support of Hartley. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was the one who put the bloated mouse in my locker.
Dumbass, I thought to myself. My anger already roiled at the base of my belly. I probably shouldn’t have taken the call to assist him. My shift was almost over anyway, and Wallace was promising me a homemade lasagna at his place.
But I was closest to the scene, and other units were on the other side of town due to a big monster truck event. Plus, if I didn’t take reinforcement calls due to the backlash, I wouldn’t be providing any backup at all. Most of the department was now lined up against me.
In many ways, my fate was already decided.
I stepped out and walked toward the house, where shouting spilled into the cool night.
The small single-story crouched at the base of a ridge and was poorly maintained.
Dull peeling paint, cardboard duct-taped over a missing windowpane, the outside stoop smelled of urine in the damp air.
I climbed two porch steps to an open door and announced I was entering so I didn’t surprise anyone, especially Railes.
Inside, on one side of the room, Railes was in a heated exchange with a tall, well-muscled guy with a beard and a slightly crooked nose. He had a deep, bloody scratch across his cheek.
He seemed familiar. Maybe I’d pulled him over. Maybe I’d seen him in a bar. He looked like a rough yet handsome bouncer.
“He attacked me,” the bouncer-looking guy said. “Went crazy. Does it a lot. He’s nuts.”
The guy he was referring to stood off to the left in a corner. He was staring at me like a frightened doe. Dark bags hung under his eyes. It was hard to believe he was the aggressor as Bouncer Guy was claiming, but I knew not to read too much into first impressions.
In the middle of the room sat a tattered couch and a small coffee table.
Two glasses, a bottle of Cuervo, and a saltshaker stood next to a wooden cutting board with lime slices and a paring knife.
One of the glasses was knocked over. Sticky liquid pooled on the table.
A white ceramic lamp lay on the dirty carpet, broken into large pieces like a cracked egg.
“You stay right here,” Railes said firmly, and came over to me.
I kept my eye on the bigger, bearded guy because he was amped up, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked like it might break, his hands bound up in fists.
He bounced up and down like he was warming up for a sporting event.
I wondered if he’d done drugs in addition to tequila.
“Couldn’t wait for you,” said Railes. “Too much yelling and I heard some things breaking.”
“What’s the story?”
“Your average kinky homo bullshit.”
Railes’s upper lip was raised in disgust.
His body cam was off. With some personal DV or sexual assault situations, we were allowed to turn them off or leave them in the car for the sake of privacy of the individuals involved.
Mine was on, so apparently, he was cocky or stupid enough that he didn’t care about his homophobic smack being recorded for posterity.
“Care to elaborate?” I said.
“He called the cops.” He gestured to Bouncer Guy. “He says Leon”—he tilted his head to the other—“went ballistic on him for no good reason. He’s got scratches up and down his arms from Leon’s keys and from his fingernails, too. When I came in, Leon was holding up a glass like he might throw it.”
I waited. I knew the debrief wasn’t over.
“He claims Leon goes wacko like this all the time and he usually just takes it since he’s bigger, but this time he lost it.”
Both guys watched us intently. “What’s his name?” I motioned to Bouncer Guy.
“Don’t know yet. Still trying to calm things down.”
“Okay, well, you take him into that room.” I pointed to what looked like a bedroom. The house was squalid and rough. “Get his information. Find out if he has a record. I’ll get Leon’s version.”
Not a fan of being ordered around, Railes shot me a look of disdain.
I ignored him and introduced myself to Leon.
“What’s your last name?”
“Spencer,” he said.
Small-boned and skinny-shouldered, he couldn’t have been more than five eight. The leftover wounds from my days with Sophie falling apart still sent raw pangs through me, and all I could think of as I approached this frightened young man was that I wanted to help him.
Thomas Leon Spencer told me he went by his middle name. He lived in Kalispell, was nineteen, and had gone to Flathead High School.
I was a trained interviewer, and I’d been studying up to take the detective’s exam, so I felt fresh with knowledge. I knew to find common ground quickly, to be encouraging, so I told him I’d gone to school there, too, graduated, and moved on. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I’d rather not.” He looked at the camera on my chest, then down at his hands.
He nervously fingered a key chain—a smooth, colorful agate shaped like an arrowhead and a square plastic Daffy Duck memento, both attached to a ring with his keys and a bottle opener.
His vulnerability and apprehension were palpable.
I was hoping he wouldn’t clam up. I turned my camera off and scooted over to block his view of Railes talking to Bouncer Guy.
“Why not?”
“Doesn’t feel right.”
“How so?”
“The other officer. I don’t think he approves of our lifestyle.”
“Well, I’m not him, and this isn’t being recorded.” I pointed to my device to show him the little green light was off.
Leon glanced at the camera on my chest, shook his head. “You can take me to the station or whatever.”
Everything inside me screamed that this kid had been abused. I needed to get him to talk. I needed to reach him, unlike I’d been able to do with my own sister two months earlier. Unlike I was able to do with Sophie. “I’m not going to do that, Leon. Not until I understand what happened here.”
Leon lowered his head, stared at his key chain.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Look at me. I promise we’ll handle this delicately. Can you tell me why your friend in the other room called us?”
“I was the one who wanted to call. I’ve wanted to many times before, but I’ve never done it. I can’t believe he’d call you.”
“Okay, well, let’s back up a little, okay? Can you tell me why you wanted to call for help?”
“It got out of hand. We were arguing. I could tell it was escalating. I didn’t want that, so I tried to leave. I grabbed my keys and was trying to go out the front door, but he pulled me back. He tackled me and got on top of me.” He swallowed hard and took a shaky breath. “He’s done it before.”
“Done what before?”
Leon peered around me, as if he might get his boyfriend’s permission to say the things he was telling me.
“Leon,” I said. “He’s not listening. He’s done what before?”
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple like a mouse looking for a way out. “Pushed things too far, you know, forced things,” he whispered. “When I don’t want it.”
His voice faded. More key chain contemplation.
A roaring sensation filled my ears. Despite my best efforts, as if I’d brought Sophie’s blond-haired ghost into this small house with me, all the images from that night in the woods—our frantic running, the branches lashing against us, the gnarled fingers of exposed roots grabbing our ankles and tripping us until we at last curled in tight behind a thick, fallen ponderosa to hide—all came rushing back.
“I see,” I said, pushing my own anger down. “Whose place is this?”
“His.”
“Owns it?”
“Rents.”
“His name?”
“Mark.”
“Mark what?”
“Mark Coleman.”
The name snapped on a floodlight in a dark cave.
I stopped writing. My breath caught.
That’s why he looked so familiar. When Jess told me his name, I’d done searches on him. Found out about his scattered upbringing in foster homes. He had no record, but I found photos of him on Facebook before facial hair.
The black-marble eyes, the crooked nose, the high cheekbones.
It was him.
“What’s his full name?” I turned back to Leon. “You know?”
“Markus Mallory Coleman,” Leon said.
The Mallory checked, too.
I was standing in the same room as the beast who 100 percent had forced himself on my sister. The man who’d irrevocably changed her. Made her a shell of her former self, made her a nightmare-laden nervous wreck afraid of her own shadow.
The same guy who I’d dreamed of beating to a bloody pulp. The same guy I had murdered a million times in my fantasies, blowing a hole through the middle of his skull. The same one whose trachea I imagined crushing with my bare fingers.
My heart drummed so hard it felt like it might explode from my chest. I wanted to grab the tequila bottle and smash it against his skull or take one of the thick ceramic shards from the broken lamp on the floor and rake it across his throat.
I did nothing. I stood with my world still whirling and my pulse beating in my neck.
“Do you live here?”
Composure was difficult, but I faked it as best I could.
“No.”
“So, when you say he forced things, you mean he forced himself on you for sex?”
Leon gripped his key chain more vigorously. “Yes,” he said.
“What happened?”
He explained that Mark had ripped his jeans off, held him so tightly that he couldn’t squirm away, that Mark turned him around and continued to control him with one arm. With the other he penetrated him, with his hand first, then his penis.