I gave my name and then waited on a wooden bench in the police station. After a while I saw the officer come out and whisper something to the receptionist and then he glared at me and went back inside the building.
I waited for nearly forty minutes before the inspector stepped out from a doorway and invited me inside. He led me to his office where he had me sit in a chair in front of his desk, then he took a seat behind it just as Mr. Peters had done when he’d first asked me to stop achieving it with Donna.
“Awfully sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said. “Positively unavoidable.”
I didn’t respond because I was looking around his office. His desk was very plain and there was a bookcase and a filing cabinet and a few little knickknacks here or there, but otherwise it was very ordinary and really wasn’t much of an office. He also had a coat rack by the door which held his coat and the hat that I used to think was a fedora until I started looking at hats in shopping windows and magazines. I wanted to ask him to clarify once and for all, but then I figured now was probably not the best time, so I simply concluded in my mind that it was “likely a fedora,” at least until I came up with some conclusive evidence to the contrary.
“You might imagine how surprised I was to hear that you’d come to see me. Especially with how we left things last time.”
His statement called for more, so I asked him what he meant.
“Well, what with our investigation, of course. Our snooping around your kitchen and some of the questions we put to you. Surely you are aware that we consider you a suspect in your landlord’s death?”
“But someone has confessed to the murder,” I said.
“Yes, someone indeed has confessed to the murder. And what do you make of that?”
“Why would my opinion matter?”
“Oh, if you would just humor me,” he said.
I thought about it and then told him that my opinion was that it was good to have someone like that off the street, so it was a good thing that he came forward.
“So, relief?”
I didn’t answer.
“Sir, you felt relief at his confession?”
“I don’t think I felt relief,” I said. “As I said, it’s a good thing to have a man like that off the streets.”
“Yes, you may be right about that,” said the inspector. “You may very well be right about that in the final analysis.”
I heard some shuffling behind the door, and it sounded like some mild commotion, but then the inspector started talking again.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he asked.
“You have spoken to my boss,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And you have spoken to Donna.”
“Ms. Wintergrass, yes, indeed. Lovely woman.”
“It has caused me problems,” I said. I said it because it was true.
“Well, I’m awfully sorry about that. Awfully sorry.”
He seemed too jovial to be truly sorry, but then I thought maybe that was just his way, so I wasn’t too fussed about it.
“It is a murder investigation, after all,” he said. “Just doing our due diligence. I’m sure you wouldn’t expect any less of us.”
“No,” I agreed. “Only you have a man who has confessed to the murder.”
“Indeed we do,” said the inspector.
“Donna is upset,” I said.
“That is indeed a shame.”
“I want you to leave her alone,” I said.
“I bet you do,” said the inspector before he wriggled forward in his chair and looked at me with a rather harsh look.
“She has nothing to do with this,” I said.
“Peculiar that you would phrase it that way, sir, that ‘she has nothing to do with this.’”
“She doesn’t,” I said.
“And what of you, sir?”
“What of me?” I said.
“I mean, can you honestly say that you yourself have nothing to do with this? That you know nothing more than you’ve told us?”
I told him that I didn’t appreciate his implication, and I thought this was a good answer since it was true, and if I’d said that I had nothing to do with it then that would have been a rather bold lie, and I tried to avoid those when possible.
“Do you find it odd, sir?”
“What is that?”
“Do you find it odd that I’m willing to meet alone in my office with a man that you quite well know I suspect of having murdered or been involved in the murder of two people?”
“So you do suspect me?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
I felt my heartbeat rising in my chest and I thought that maybe I shouldn’t have gone there, but then I also figured it was too late, by that point, so there was no sense beating myself up over it. “It is obvious you suspect me of something,” I said.
“Well, let me erase any doubt altogether,” said the inspector. “I suspect that you killed Mr. Dempsey in the alleyway and then took his dog, and I suspect that you were somehow involved in the disappearance of your landlord.”
I didn’t respond.
“Aren’t you curious, sir, why I would meet alone with a man like that in my office?”
“I’m not,” I answered, even though I was.
“Well, I will tell you anyway. I suspect that those two men did not suspect a thing was wrong before it was too late. As far as I can tell, you had only a marginal connection with the landlord and likely no connection at all to Mr. Dempsey. As such I suspect that you managed to get the drop on them, so to speak, before they realized anything was amiss, and before they could do anything about it. But I suspect at the very heart of it you are a coward. A true coward down to your very bones. And I suspect you wouldn’t dare try engage someone who was ready for you, and, might I say, readily up to the task.”
He wasn’t much of an inspector to be saying these things. I hadn’t been called a coward since my school days, and I could already feel my ears filling with blood and my heart racing in my chest, and I was going to explain to him that “Nobody Likes a Challenger” but instead I was already starting to imagine the inspector as red and open.
I placed my hand in my pocket as he started to laugh. I could tell he was trying to goad me into doing or saying something, and I knew that I ought not do either, but I was already thinking of how good it would feel to punch him in the face and to see him knocked back behind his desk and how I’d like to sink my knife into his throat and stab him over and over and over again until his neck had been completely split open and was gushing blood and I could see the back of his throat and neck.
Hand in my pocket.
“Sir?”
Red and open.
I’d started into my breathing exercises by then and I could barely even hear him speaking. I closed my eyes, and he called my name again but I ignored it. I tried to imagine the consequences of my actions, which is what my parents and teachers used to tell me, so I imagined how the other police officers would surely storm into the office when they heard the commotion and beat me into submission but by then it would be too late and I would be charged with the murder of the inspector and there would be no getting out of that one and how I’d likely be killed by lethal injection or sent to the gas chamber and then my son or daughter or both if Donna had twins would have to grow up without a father, and even if I wasn’t much of a father how it would still be better than not having one at all.
I thought of all these things and knew I shouldn’t react but the feeling to see the inspector red and open was too powerful so I squeezed the object tighter in my pocket then rose to my feet and opened my eyes and only then noticed the picture on his desk and it jarred me just long enough to interrupt my cycle of scary thoughts and, before I knew what had happened, I said to the inspector, “I’m going to be a father.”
This seemed to take him by surprise, because he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Congratulations,” he said.
“D
onna told me yesterday,” I added.
I kept my hand in my pocket and continued to stare at the picture and do my breathing exercises and think about Donna being pregnant with a son or daughter or both if she had twins.
The inspector said nothing more. Finally, I said, “I have nothing more to say to you.”
I’d only taken two steps toward the door before he called out to me. “Sir, aren’t you at all interested in why I haven’t arrested you for these offences?”
I told him that I wasn’t, which was my second bald-faced lie to him in so many minutes.
“Evidence,” he said. “Just not enough evidence.” He paused before adding, “At this moment.”
“A man has confessed,” I said.
The inspector smiled and nodded. “Indeed a man has confessed,” he said. “A street person. A man who howls at the moon.”
“A street person can murder,” I said.
“Yes, they can.”
“A man who howls at the moon can murder.”
“Yes. Certainly, he might murder the moon, at least,” said the inspector.
“You should be careful with him,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t think that will be a problem,” he said. “I don’t think that will be a problem at all. You see, the man is quite stone dead.”
I didn’t know how to respond to this so I decided not to.
“Tragic thing really. Hung himself just before you arrived here. Bedsheets. Only so much we can do, really. Shoelaces, razors. Eventually if a person wishes to do themselves harm, it seems they find a way.”
“Perhaps he was feeling guilty,” I said.
The inspector just stared at me. Finally, he said, “If you would like to know why I haven’t charged you, sir, on the one hand, I have you finding a dead man’s dog on the street, which is rather suspicious but not a crime, in and of itself, and of course you not knowing that man you would have no motive whatsoever to do him harm, so there is the one.”
“There is the one,” I said.
“And for the landlord, we have a man fully confessed who has now hung himself dead in our cells and can never recant his claim of responsibility. And so there is the second.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Now what are the chances, without more, that a jury might convict a man faced with each of those scenarios?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“I will tell you myself,” said the inspector, finally rising out of his own seat and stepping out in front of his desk. “They would say that we were crazy. They would question the mental health of our department. It would become a circus. We cannot convict someone on mere suspicion, sir, no matter how suspicious that person may be.”
“I see.”
“Now,” he added, “if the real killer were to admit what he’d done--if he were to come forward and accept some level of responsibility for these crimes, then perhaps that would be different--”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“And what do you think about that, sir? What do you think are the chances that the person truly responsible for these crimes might come forward and confess their sins?”
I decided to assault him with honesty. “I would say that the chances are not good.”
The inspector crossed his arms and leaned back against his desk as I stood there by the door with one hand still in my pocket. “No, I suppose not,” he said, and then he watched me as I left.
It was only after I’d stepped out of the building that I finally pulled my hand from my pocket, and it was rather sore in one spot, and I turned my hand over and looked at the bottom of it and saw the deep impression of a Polar Bear set snow white into the meatiest part of my hand, and I saw how red the blood was around the impression and how it was just as red as I’d imagined the inspector’s throat before I’d noticed the picture on his desk.
CHAPTER 25
In the days that followed, things slowly returned to normal and Donna said she wanted to keep the baby and wanted to be with me, and so we found a house together and even though it wasn’t much of a house, it meant that both of us got to keep the green chair, so I think at least that part worked out for the best.
Eventually my son was born and by then Donna had been transferred to a different location within the company, but she was okay with it because a member from human resources had met with her personally and explained how it was best for everyone involved and Donna seemed to accept this without much difficulty.
I continued to sell vacuums with newer healthy technology, and even if the technology didn’t really change all that much from year to year, it seems that I was still able to sell enough vacuums to pay for a family and a dog and a turtle named Bob who would die before long, but I still paid for him while he was alive.
I also continued to follow the local newspapers, and I never read anything about Mr. Dempsey or the landlord again, which meant that the landlord’s body was surely never found and was likely still rotting in the landfill unless animals had gotten to it, but either way it seemed to me very likely that the matter had been put to rest because the inspector left me alone after that. I did, however, see the officer once, so I waved “hello” to him from across the street but he must not have seen me because he didn’t wave back.
After the man hung himself in the cells, Donna seemed satisfied that he must have done so from a guilty conscience, and since the inspector stopped calling her and asking her questions, she must have satisfied herself wrongly of my innocence, and though I didn’t like to see her ignorant like that, I felt it was better than the alternative. Still, for a time I strongly considered retrieving what was left of the landlord and depositing him in the river, in the hopes that he might wash up and corroborate the dead man’s confession, but then I figured that if I was intercepted before I got to the river and was discovered carrying bags filled with decomposed parts of my former landlord, then it might be hard to come up with an innocent explanation and how even the most sympathetic judge probably wouldn’t let me off the hook on that one, so I decided not to risk it.
Our son’s name was Toby and I thought that was a good name because I’d never met a Toby that I didn’t like and neither had Donna so we both felt rather confident that we would like our son and, as time went on, we certainly did. He was a bright and happy boy and talked often and was rarely sullen and though some of his outside parts looked like mine he was nothing like me on the inside and though this might have been a source of disappointment for some parents, it was, in fact, a great relief to me that he had taken after Donna much more than he’d taken after me.
So in those early years it was just me and Donna and Toby and Molly and Bob the turtle until he died, and even if it wasn’t much of a house, I think what was inside the house was all pretty good.
My life had somehow settled me in a way that I’d never been settled before. I would rarely think of anyone as red and open again, and even when I did, I would immediately start into my breathing exercises and consider the consequences of my actions. Most of the time this worked. Sometimes it didn’t, but I don’t much like thinking about that. I prefer thinking of my family and Molly and the other pets we would have during our life together, which even included a cat, and though I never entirely trusted the cat, we got along well enough, all things considered.
Donna would often say how we’d be together forever and I didn’t know about that because forever seemed like an awfully long time but then she said it with such conviction that I figured maybe she knew what she was talking about.
She would also tell me often that she loved me and would then ask me if I loved her in return and this seemed an odd torture since I never seemed to answer satisfactorily because she would sometimes cry as she often did but then she wouldn’t cry for long and would keep saying those same three words to me so I guess my answers weren’t so bad, all things considered.
That Donna loved me was clear, and it was something I hadn’t felt from a person since my own parents and though we would someti
mes have fights or arguments, it was usually as a result of my not sharing what I was thinking or not showing any emotion, but then rather than try to “Control the Conversation” I would “Assault her with Honesty” and just explain to her that I was thinking and sharing a lot of emotion in my head but that it was difficult for me to express it in words, and then she would usually hug me and apologize, and if Toby was asleep or in bed, she would help me to achieve it and it would soon be forgotten, at least until it happened again.
With all the people and the animals around it was much harder for me to be alone with my thoughts, but when I did get the chance I would often think back on how close I’d come to myself being red and open, only in a different way, by lethal injection or gas chamber. But it seems that the inspector had been telling the truth in that they did not have further evidence against me on either case, and since the landlord’s body was never found perhaps they finally accepted that the confessor was the real killer and that the landlord’s body had indeed been washed somewhere down the river, but either way, neither the inspector or the officer bothered me again, and that was good enough for me.
I would also sometimes think back to the two men I’d killed, and though I did feel some remorse for what I’d done, I also felt that they’d mostly deserved it and that it wouldn’t have been right for me to confess and end my own life in the process, so I usually didn’t feel too remorseful for too long.
But perhaps most of all I would think back to how close I’d come to making the inspector red and open when I was at the police station and clenching the Swiss Army knife with the Polar Bear handle in my pocket that I’d already opened to the large blade even before I’d arrived because I didn’t want to risk opening it up to the file by mistake such as when I killed Mr. Dempsey, and though I felt it may have been silly to bring one of the murder weapons into the police station, it was small and fit easily in my pocket and so it was very convenient.
That I’d managed to control myself was fortunate because I figured my life would have turned out very differently had I done what I was about to do when I stepped up from the chair and I figure I would have likely gone ahead with it had I not seen the picture on the inspector’s desk of him and his son in some sort of park and how they were both smiling and happy, and it momentarily gave me pause, given that I might be having a son of my own, or a daughter, or one of each if Donna had had twins, which she didn’t.
The Introvert Page 9