Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Connor
I wake up and see it’s already dark out. I’m alone in the bed I’ve shared with Jamie for fifteen years, and then suddenly all that happened between us this afternoon comes rushing back to me. She’s not here because she doesn’t believe me.
She’s taking my kids away because she thinks I’m a murderer.
Part of me believes this has to be a nightmare I can wake up from, but I’m not asleep. I don’t understand how this is happening. I agreed to go for a walk with a coworker. That’s it.
If only Bryan hadn’t been so stupid as to wave that gun around so carelessly.
They say hard times show you who your real friends are. It seems I don’t have a single friend to stand by me. Martin said he didn’t believe I was guilty, but he had to be nice like that. Martin is a softie. He couldn’t be mean to someone if you paid him.
I thought I could count on those I love, but Jamie showed me that isn’t true either.
She and the girls are all I have. My parents are dead, and I haven’t spoken to my brother in over a decade after he fell off the wagon for the fifth time.
I couldn’t keep letting him around the girls when he was drunk, and he was always three sheets to the wind.
So I have no one.
As that harsh reality settles into my brain, I hear knocking downstairs. Maybe it’s Jamie and the girls. If she forgot her house key, she’d have to knock.
I jump out of bed and hurry downstairs in just my shorts I wore when I crawled under the covers to take a nap. As much as I should be angry with my wife, I can forgive her. I need her by my side during this time. Jamie and the girls believing in me is all I need, so I don’t care why she’s back.
I’m just happy she’s realized by my side is where she should be.
Without looking through the peephole, I fling the door open ready to show her how thrilled I am they decided to stay, but my hopes are dashed when I see Officers Ramon and Raintree standing on my front porch.
I don’t think I can hate two people more, so having to see them and their judgmental stares only serves to make me want to slam the door in the faces.
“Mr. Jennings, we’re here to speak to you. Do you have some time now?” Officer Ramon asks in that officious voice he likes to use whenever he sees me.
I don’t answer for a few seconds as I try to regroup from my disappointment at not seeing Jamie and my girls. Talking to these two assholes is the last thing I want to do tonight. They’ve already chosen to not do their jobs and focus solely on me, so why would I bother?
“Not tonight, gentlemen. I’m busy. Have a nice night.”
Just as I’m about to enjoy slamming the door in both of their faces, Raintree says in a voice that’s nothing short of gloating, “We know the gun that shot Bryan Corsei was yours, Mr. Jennings. Why didn’t you tell us that before?”
My fingers grip the edge of my front door as my mind whirls with fear.
They know. They know the gun was mine. Now I won’t have a choice but to hire a lawyer.
Even if that moron coroner decides to actually try using scientific methods and figures out it was suicide, they’ll still look at me for bringing the gun.
I swallow hard and answer Officer Raintree’s question.
“Because I didn’t kill anyone. If I had mentioned the gun was mine, you wouldn’t even have considered anyone else, not that you have.
You’ve spent all your time assuming I’m the one who shot Bryan, but I’ll tell you for the hundredth time, it wasn’t me! Now leave me alone!”
This time I do slam the door in their faces, but it doesn’t feel as good as I’d anticipated because my mind is full of the reality that there’s no way I can avoid paying a lawyer now.
I lean against the door while I try to figure out what to do, and from outside I hear Officer Raintree speaking to me.
“Mr. Jennings, you have the chance right now to tell us all that happened. The prosecutor may be able to help you, but if you refuse to speak to us, we’ll have no choice but to assume you’re guilty.”
Although I know I shouldn’t, my frustration with these cops gets the best of me, and I fling the door open again to say, “You’ve been assuming I’m guilty from the moment you arrived at the community center.
I told you someone had been shot, and that barely registered on your radar.
You took your own sweet time walking up to where Bryan was, and he may have lived if you two hadn’t dragged your fucking heels the whole time.
His death is your fault, no one else’s, so go home and sit with that for a while.
The next time you come here you better have a warrant because if you don’t, I’m not talking to you ever again. ”
Officer Ramon starts to say something, but I’m not listening to him. I shut the door and lock it before walking back up to the bedroom. I slide under the covers and close my eyes, unable to believe this is my life now.
My mind drifts back to the last time the police thought they had me for a crime. It feels like another lifetime ago, but as soon as I think about it, all that happened comes rushing back to me.
“Connor, answer the door!” my mother yells from the basement where she’s folding clothes.
I want to say I’m busy, but I know what will happen if I do that. She’ll lecture me on how I don’t pay rent here, even though I turned eighteen months ago, so the least I can do is help her out with things like answering the door.
Begrudgingly, I trudge to the front door and open it to see a policeman standing in front of me on our brick porch. My blood feels like it stops flowing through my veins for a few seconds, but I force myself to smile so the cop doesn’t know how nervous I am right now.
I don’t say a word, so the officer with the badge that says Miller and a big read nose that screams he’s a drunk clears his throat and says, “Son, are you Connor Jennings?”
My kneejerk reaction is to tell him I’m not his son, but I don’t. All I do is nod, sure I remember watching some TV show that said the less you say to the cops, the better.
“Is that a yes, that you’re Connor Jennings?” he asks, and this time the question has a little edge to it.
“Do you want to speak to my mom?” I ask, happy to push him off on her.
“No, I want to speak to you. Now once again, are you Connor Jennings?”
And again, I nod but still give him nothing more.
His frustration shows when his gray, bushy eyebrows draw in toward that red, meaty, bulbous nose.
Even as I think that, I can’t believe I used bulbous in an actual, real world sentence.
Mrs. Anderson from senior English would be so proud.
Actually, knowing that old bag, she’d probably give me a shrug if I told her. She always was a pain in the ass.
“Son, the police are investigating a death in the woods last night over near Shaney’s Mountain. Do you know anything about that?”
I shake my head and smile. He wouldn’t be asking me if he thought he had me dead to rights.
I’m no dummy. I’ve seen Law and Order. True, it was only because I was grounded for a month in tenth grade for getting into a fight after school with that shithead Brett Kolino, but I paid attention when I had to sit with my mother and watch TV during my incarceration.
“Perhaps it would be a good idea for me to speak to your parents. You said your mother is at home? Please get her for me.”
Officer Miller looks downright irritated because I refuse to speak to him, and even though I’d like to piss him off more, I figure letting my mother deal with him is probably the best plan. I bet he decides he liked my silence better than talking to her, though.
I take my time walking to her room where she’s busy hanging clean clothes. She’s been in a bad mood all night, so the last thing I want to do is spend any time with her. This little visit from our town’s finest is going to make her even more miserable.
She is better than Officer Miller, though.
“Mom, there’s a cop at the front door who wants to talk to you,” I say as I stand in the doorway to her bedroom.
She looks over at me before hanging a navy blue T-shirt on a hanger to go in her closet. I tell her T-shirts are supposed to be folded, but she claims that leaves them wrinkled. Hanging them up like she does is just weird.
“What does he want?” she asks in a rushed way, already telling me she’s not happy having to deal with the cops tonight.
Not that anyone is ever happy to have to deal with them.
I shrug. “Don’t know. I didn’t talk to him.”
My mother stops hanging her shirts and levels her gaze on me, narrowing her eyes as if she’s trying to figure out if I did anything wrong to bring the police here. Dressed in a white sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, she straightens her clothes and lets out an unhappy groan.
“This better not be about something you did,” she warns as she walks past me.
Curious about what Officer Miller is going to say to her, I follow my mother to the end of the hall and stop there to eavesdrop on their conversation. She walks up to the front door but doesn’t offer to let him come in. I come by my distrust of cops naturally, it seems.
“What can I do for you, officer?” she asks him, and even though the words sound like she’s trying to be nice, anyone who knows my mother can hear her irritation that she has to speak to him at all come through loud and clear.
Through the screen door, he says, “Ma’am, we’re investigating a death in the woods last night. We were wondering if your son could give us any information regarding it. We’ve been told he and some of his friends were there around the time the death occurred.”
My mother looks back in my direction and then turns back to face the cop. “My son was home with me all last night. I’m afraid he won’t be able to help you. Sorry.”
And with that, she closes the door and marches over to where I’m hiding. Pointing her figure at my face, she says, “You better not have done anything stupid. If you and your friends were around when it happened, then you and your friends need to get your stories straight. Got it?”
I nod but say nothing. Rich and Mike know nothing about what happened last night, but they’ll be good if they find out about everything.
They’re not going to rat me out. We know what it’s like with the police around here.
They only protect and serve the side of town where the big houses are.
Down here in The Patch, they think we’re all fucking criminals at birth.
So we keep our mouths shut whenever they come around asking their questions.
Since they won’t protect us, we protect our own.
The memory of the cop’s visit to my house fades, and once again I’m alone in my bed, safe and sound.
For now.