Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Connor
Jamie and the girls aren’t at home when I return, thank God, so I hurry upstairs to get changed and look for my damn phone. It’s not on the bed, like I thought it would be, though.
I quickly slip into my shorts and a clean T-shirt and hurry downstairs to search there. I swear if Jamie moved my phone I’m going to lose it. I tell her all the time to just let it be. Time and again, I’ve warned her not to touch my cell. Does this woman even listen when I say things to her?
Thankfully, she keeps the house spotless, which only seems right since she’s here all day while I work and the girls are at school. What else does she have to do with her time?
Tossing cushions off the sofa, I jam my hands down into the back of the piece of furniture and feel around. Nothing. I turn to the chair next, but it’s not there either.
Maybe in the kitchen.
I hurry in there and scan the room in front of me, but I don’t see it. The kitchen isn’t spotless, so that makes my search ten times more difficult. Pushing aside bags of chips and pretzels Jamie has left on the counter, I look through every inch of the kitchen and find nothing.
Where the hell is my phone?
Panic rushes through me. I don’t keep anything illegal on my phone, but it’s not exactly something I want anyone to scroll through. Phones are personal. The last thing I want is someone looking through it without some context.
I run back upstairs and frantically begin searching around the bedroom. My wife insists on having furniture that’s all up off the floor. She claims it looks more refined. Right now, all it’s doing is making my job finding my phone harder than it needs to be.
Crawling around on my hands and knees, I run my palms over the carpeting but feel nothing. This isn’t possible. Phones don’t just grow legs and walk away. It has to be here somewhere. I flip up the bedspread and search under the bed, and there about a foot in I feel my phone.
How on earth did it get there?
I pull it out and look at it in my hand. With a swipe across the screen, I get to my home page and see no new calls or messages. I should call my boss and tell him about Bryan. Jesus, how the hell am I going to phrase that news?
After thinking of that awfulness, I sit down on the floor next to the bed and lean my head back against the mattress.
I can’t believe what’s happened. Bryan is dead from some freak accident that I guess is technically considered suicide.
Christ, what kind of unlucky break was that?
I can’t imagine what he was thinking shooting a goddamned gun on a hike over the trails around our development.
It’s a suburban area, for God’s sake. What if he had mistakenly hurt a child?
The worst part of it is he did it with my gun.
I didn’t offer that information, but it’s only a matter of time before the police find out.
Even those two bumbling idiots Ramon and Raintree will figure that out.
Then what will happen? They can’t blame me.
My prints aren’t even on the gun since I didn’t even hold it after slipping it into my pants.
Son of a bitch! Who the hell am I kidding? Of course, my fingerprints are all over that gun. It’s mine, for Christ’s sake! As soon as they know, those two cops are going to zero in on me as the one who killed Bryan.
Staring down at my phone, I try to find the right words to say to my boss, but I’ve got nothing. Maybe Bryan’s wife will call Martin. He was married, wasn’t he? I don’t know. We weren’t that close. He might have mentioned having a wife once or twice, didn’t he?
As I sit there trying to catalog all the things I know about Bryan Corsei, I quickly realize I knew next to nothing about him.
I know where he worked and what he did. I know he came to work at Chesapeake Siding and Garage Doors a few months ago.
And I know he lived in the same community I do.
That’s about it. Until this afternoon, we’d never done anything outside of work.
Hell, we rarely did anything together during working hours since he was the boss’s favorite and Martin routinely rewarded him with much better leads than the rest of us.
I better not keep thinking like that, or it might slip out at some point, and I’ll sound like some jealous asshole. The guy’s dead. No need to bring up that he was the office favorite.
Footsteps tear me out of my thoughts, and a second later, my wife appears in the doorway to the bedroom looking downright disturbed.
Probably something with the little darlings.
I wonder where they all went. Not that I’m unhappy they’re gone, but something tells me I won’t be getting any peace tonight, nevertheless.
She stares down at me in horror, like I’ve done something wrong, so I brace myself for some complaint that will likely have me running back to the damn grocery store. So much for a leisurely weekend off. I swear those kids with their social schedule are really starting to cramp my style.
“Oh my God! Connor! Did you hear about that man who got killed on one of the hiking paths? I heard about it when I was at the café having an iced latte. Some woman came in and told everyone just as I was walking out. They’re saying someone attacked him. I can’t believe it!”
So the news has started to spread. Great.
“Believe it. I was there.”
I stand up after saying that, needing to get on with this day. Jamie shakes her head as her mouth hangs open in shock.
“It was Bryan, one of my coworkers. He and I were out on a hike, and he shot himself by mistake. I ran to get help, but by the time I got back with the paramedics, it was too late.”
“Did you see the person who did it? Oh, God, I hope the police catch him quickly. This is terrible.”
I squint at her, having a hard time not blowing up in her face at her idiocy. The woman never listens. She gets something into that head of hers, and dammit if any facts can penetrate whatever delusion she’s decided to believe today.
“Try listening, Jamie. Not someone. There’s no one to catch. He shot himself. It was a mistake. He was waving the gun around and accidentally shot himself.”
My wife’s eyes get as big as saucers. “Shot himself? You mean like suicide?”
Shaking my head, I let out a heavy sigh. If my own wife doesn’t believe it, I can’t imagine how hard it’s going to be telling my boss that story.
I pinch the bridge of my nose as a headache begins forming behind my eyes. “Yes, like suicide. Exactly like it, in fact, since he shot himself, Jamie!”
“Why would he want to kill himself on the nature path in the neighborhood? That doesn’t seem right. And why would he chose to do it in front of you? Don’t people who commit suicide usually do that alone?” my wife asks, only making my situation worse.
Already bored with this conversation, I sigh again. Jamie looks at me like I’m going to answer her question with anything but the actual answer. Sorry to disappoint her.
“I don’t know. It’s not like I asked him to join me and kill himself.”
I begin walking toward the bathroom to escape her, but she follows me, continuing to talk. “I don’t understand this, Connor. I can’t imagine anyone has ever killed themselves up on that path.”
Then, of course, she has to make it about the girls.
“Oh, God. What are the other mothers going to think when they find out our daughters’ father was with someone who committed suicide right here in the neighborhood?”
Unable to stop myself from answering that inane question, I turn around and glare at her. “What the hell does that matter? Why would they think anything? I had nothing to do with his death.”
“Well, I don’t want the mothers to think badly of the girls. That’s all I was saying. I don’t think our daughters should suffer because of something that happened to you.”
“Whatever. I’m sure they’ll be gossiping about someone else soon enough.”
I don’t wait for her response before walking into the bathroom and shutting the door behind me. Maybe I’ll take another shower. I barely did anything since my first one this morning, but after what happened on the trail, I feel like I need to restart this day.
For the next ten minutes, I scrub my body in a desperate attempt to cleanse myself of every last trace of what happened today. Leave it to Bryan to completely screw up a nice hike. Asshole.
Nearly ready to get out of the shower and restart my day, a terrible thought pushes out every other one in my brain. He killed himself with my gun. I have no way of explaining that.
Once those cops figure that out, they’re going to focus entirely on me.
Thinking back on Ramon and Raintree, I know what’s going to happen. Those two couldn’t solve a crime if the answer was tattooed on their brains. The second they find out it’s my gun Bryan shot himself with, they’re going to be looking at me for this, even though it was an accident.
Son of a bitch. This is what I get for wanting to be better friends with people at work.