* * *
The two detectives glared at me across the interrogation room table. If this was supposed to be good cop, bad cop, I wondered where the good cop was. Their contempt for me as real as the hard-backed chair I sat in.
“I’m Detective Hughes and this is my partner, Detective Randall. We’d like to know where you were Wednesday morning between midnight and three a.m.”
That was an easy one. “In bed, asleep.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
Not so easy. “No.”
The cops glanced at each other and smiled as if they’d won the lottery.
I shook my head. “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Except you don’t have an alibi for the victim’s time-of-death,” Hughes said. His sentence hung in the air for a long stretch of time. “So what did you do that night before you went to bed?”
I thought back to Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. I’d worked a double shift, same as yesterday. “I worked until eleven. I went home, had something to eat. That’s it. I was tired and I went to bed.”
Even if I’d known I would need an alibi, who would I have called? No one. I had no girlfriend, no close buddies. I was a loner. Occasionally I’d stop for a beer after work with a couple of the guys, but most days, I went home, watched TV or read a book, and went to bed. Even my weekends, I spent alone. I’d just moved into a fixer-upper, spent my free time on renovation projects.
A grenade toss interrupted my train of thought. “So how do you explain the neighbor who identified your truck parked in the murder victim’s driveway at midnight, right around the time Cahill was killed?”
As soon as the detective said the words, it came back to me. I had been at Cahill’s house that morning, but I couldn’t believe someone saw me. I was only there for a few minutes. I didn’t even get out of my car. I planned to. I wanted to confront that asshole, but then I changed my mind. Decided it wasn’t worth it, so I turned around and went home.
Now the pieces all came together. Cahill had filed a police report against me when he thought I’d stolen that Rolex. I knew people witnessed my outburst at his store when I went to tell him I was innocent. And then Cahill’s neighbor spotted me at his house that night. Putting it all together, even I thought I sounded guilty. The cops probably figured they had an open-and-shut case. Nothing I could say would convince them otherwise.
“I want a lawyer.”
“Figures,” Randall said, turning to his partner. “The guilty ones always lawyer up.”
“And my phone call. Aren’t I supposed to get a phone call?”
“After we book you,” Hughes said. “You can call in the cavalry, but it won’t help. You’re going away for a long time.”
“A real long time,” Randall echoed.
I watched in silence as the detectives left the room; their words hung in the air.
A few minutes later, a guard showed up and took me to the jail’s processing area. The situation was so surreal, I felt as if I were a balloon hovering over my body. Like I was watching a scene from a movie. Fingerprints, mug shot, strip search, a bright orange jump suit. I stumbled through the process, pretended it wasn’t real, like it was happening to someone else.
Finally, the ordeal ended and I stood alone in a holding cell. I gripped the bars, as though I could push the door open and free myself from this nightmare. Being abandoned worse than what I’d just gone through. On my own with my thoughts. Nothing to distract me from imagining my future: a trial, a guilty verdict, life in prison. This couldn’t be happening. I’m innocent, I wanted to scream.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but my legs began to ache. I turned and spotted a concrete bench at the back of the cell. I staggered to it and collapsed in a heap, curled up in a ball as though my bones were rubber. I lay there, feeling helpless, until I realized no Superman was going to fly in to rescue me. I had to come up with a plan, some way to save myself.
I forced myself into a sitting position, my elbows propped on my thighs, my head in my hands. I racked my brain, trying to come up with a strategy. I had the money to pay for a lawyer, but I didn’t know any criminal attorneys. I tried to think of someone to call, someone who could do some research and find a good lawyer. But my mind was blank. I had no brothers or sisters, no close friends. My mother was dead and I hadn’t talked to my dad for ten years.
My dad -- a retired cop. It slowly dawned on me that he might be my best shot. He knew the system, knew the best lawyers. He’d spent hours testifying in courtrooms, battling defense attorneys. If I needed to put my life into a good lawyer’s hands, my father would know the best person for the job.
But could I make that phone call? Could I ask my dad to help me?
I thought back to the last time I’d seen him -- at my mother’s funeral. I’d graduated from college a week before she ended her life by hanging herself in our garage. I’m sure she planned for my dad to find her, and if he’d come straight home from work, he would have. Instead, he stopped at a bar for drinks with his buddies. By the time my father made it home, I’d already cut the rope, watched my mother’s lifeless body drop to the ground with a thud, fallen to my knees and cradled her in my arms. A neighbor, walking his dog, saw us and called the police. I was still holding my mother when the cops came.
A suicide note, addressed to me, lay propped against my dad’s toolbox. The words she wrote are branded on my brain.
I love you, Ben. Always remember that. Loving you is what kept me going all these years. But now you’re grown-up and ready to go off on your own. I can’t stay here without you, alone with your father. And I can’t leave him. We both know he’d kill me if I tried. So this is my only way out. The only way I can get away from him forever -- on my terms. Be good, Ben. Be the man your father couldn’t be.
I thought back to the hell my dad had put us both through -- the drinking, the emotional abuse. I remembered one time when I broke a softball trophy he’d won playing on his precinct’s team. I can still see how his face turned red with rage, the veins in his neck popped out, his hands curled into fists. The spit flew from his mouth as he called me a useless idiot and told me he wished I’d never been born. Although he didn’t strike me then or any other time, the threat always loomed. I spent my childhood in a constant state of fear. That was the reason I didn’t have anyone to call for help. Thanks to my dad, I distrusted the world, afraid to open myself up to anyone in it.
Although my father didn’t physically end my mother’s life, I held him responsible for her death. He killed her day-by-day, moment-by-moment. His contempt turned her into a depressed, fearful shadow, cowering each time she heard him come home from work. On the day of my mother’s funeral, as they lowered her coffin into the ground, I’d turned to my dad and told him I never wanted to see him again. And now ten years had passed without a word between us -- not even a phone call or a letter.
Could I open that door? Could I let my father back into my life? As much as I hated the idea, I had no other options.