by Claire Adams
But most of all, I wondered how Megan was, I wondered where Megan was, and wherever she was, was she thinking of me?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Megan
I ran to answer the door, hoping it was Brent. Then I remembered Brent wouldn’t ring the doorbell. The last I’d seen of him had been yesterday morning before I’d left for work. When I’d gotten back home that night, he was nowhere to be found, which wasn’t unusual, so I’d just eaten something light and headed to bed. I’d woken up to a silent apartment and when I poked my head in to Brent’s room, it was clear that he hadn’t come home.
I’d been home almost two hours now, and there was still no sign of Brent. I was starting to get a little suspicious. Why on earth would Brent disappear like this? He had done it before, but he always mentioned when he’d be back or where he was going. It would either be a girl’s house or a party in the city or a club or something. I had tried calling him a couple of times, but he hadn’t picked up my calls.
I pulled open the door to find a tall, lanky guy on the other side. He was dressed in ripped jeans and a torn hoodie. He looked severely emaciated and was swinging from one side to the other like he wasn’t steady on his feet.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Name’s Tim,” he replied, in speech that was kind of slurred. “Where’s Brent?”
“Brent’s not here,” I said, looking him over up and down.
“When’s he back?”
“Um… I honestly don’t know.”
“I need to speak to him,” Tim said. His eyes were sort of misty, and I smelled smoke on him. I was starting to get a little nervous. Tim’s eyes darted around and they looked dangerous, and I knew I needed to shut the door as fast as possible.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “He’s not here.”
“I’ll wait for him.”
I froze in place. “Uh… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“We’re friends,” Tim replied.
I realized that his eyes were bloodshot, as though he’d walked right out of a bar after a heavy night of binge drinking and right to my doorstep. I barred his path so that he couldn’t walk in.
“I have no idea when’s going to be back,” I said. “You could be waiting for days.”
“Are you telling me that motherfucker skipped town on me?”
I froze in place. “What do you need to see him about?”
“That’s between him and me.”
I gulped back my nerves. “I’ll tell him you stopped by when he comes in.”
Tim narrowed his eyes at me, but much to my relief, he turned and walked away without another word. Intensely grateful, I closed and locked the door and went back to the kitchen where I had been making dinner. I had gone almost two days without eating much of anything, and my stomach had finally started to complain. There was freshly cooked chicken and macaroni in a bowl, but again, my appetite had completely disappeared.
I could still smell the smoke off Brent’s so-called friend, and I was starting to really worry about where Brent might have disappeared to. Something was not adding up, and I was realizing that maybe I was the one who had been wrong this whole time. I was just about to force some chicken down my throat when the doorbell rang again.
I tensed immediately, assuming it was shady Tim back to push his way back into the apartment. I went to the door and peered out through the peephole. Much to my relief, it wasn’t Tim at all, but the officer who had visited me at work yesterday. I opened the door.
“Officer Manolo,” I said, remembering his name easily.
“Good evening, Ms. Jacobs,” the officer replied politely. “I’m very sorry to disturb you at home, but I thought it would be much more convenient than dropping by your place of work.”
“Yes, it is.” I nodded. “Why don’t you come in?”
“Thank you.” The officer nodded, as he walked in.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” I asked.
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” he replied.
“Please, take a seat.”
The officer sat down on the sofa and gestured for me to take a seat opposite him. I sat down, finding that my mind was running riot suddenly. Something about Brent’s behavior was not adding up and with his new disappearance, I was starting to smell a rat.
“I came to ask you a few more questions, ma’am,” Officer Manolo said.
“Sure.” I nodded nervously. “About Phil?”
“Uh…yes, about Phil.” He nodded. “And also about your brother.”
I felt goosebumps erupt on my skin. “Okay,” I said uncertainly.
“You said your brother and Phil were friends?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“How did they meet?” officer Manolo asked.
“The truth is, I’m not sure,” I said, in embarrassment.
Officer Manolo raised his eyebrows. “You don’t know?” he asked. “Neither one ever mentioned it to you? And you never asked?”
“That’s not what I mean,” I said, hurrying to correct myself. “What I mean is, they both told me different stories about how they met. And I suppose…at this moment…I don’t know which one to believe.”
Officer Manolo looked interested instantly. “Why don’t you tell me both versions then, please?”
I took a deep breath. Even if Phil was guilty, I didn’t want him to get into worse trouble because I decided to run my mouth off to a cop. I still loved him, and I wanted him to be okay. And at the same time, I worried about my brother...though I had to admit that my concern for Brent was far less than my concern for Phil.
“Ma’am?” Officer Manolo said. “Please, this would really help.”
“Help whom?” I asked, without thinking.
He smiled kindly at me. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a tissue, which he handed to me. It was only then that I even realized I was crying. I accepted the tissue and wiped away my tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Take your time.”
Once I had composed myself, I looked up at him. “Phil told me that he met my brother through a mutual friend. A man named Harvey.”
I didn’t mention that Harvey was a dealer because that would undoubtedly get Phil into more trouble and the last thing I wanted to do was make things worse for him.
“Harvey?” Officer Manolo repeated.
“That’s right.”
“Any last name to go with that?”
“Sorry, no,” I said. “My brother told me a different version of how he met Phil though. He told me that…uh… Phil sold pot and that’s how they met.”
“Your brother used to buy pot from Phil?” Officer Manolo asked.
“Yes,” I said, realizing that I’d just outed my brother.
I felt like a complete idiot, but the officer seemed calm and unhurried. “Where is your brother?” he asked.
“I… I don’t know,” I replied.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Yesterday morning,” I replied.
“Does he have a contact number?”
“Yes,” I said.
After I had given him Brent’s contact number, he thanked me for talking to him and left. The moment he was gone, I raced through the apartment as alarm bells went off in my head. I had ignored my instincts this whole time in favor of what Brent, my so-called brother, had told me. It was time to stop listening to what I was being told and start listening to what my gut was telling me.
I looked through every nook and cranny of the apartment and that was when I remembered the locked closet in Brent’s room. There had to be something in there that he was hiding, right? His room was never locked, so I walked in and looked around. I went straight for the closet, but as I expected, it was firmly sealed off. There was a tiny lock, but no key in sight.
I tried to pull it open, but the lock held. I decided not to resort to breaking it open just in case there was nothing insi
de. That would be a tough one to try and explain to Brent in any case. So I found a hairpin and tried to jimmy the lock. I had to watch a couple of tutorials on YouTube, but after almost forty minutes of trying, I finally got it right and the closet door clicked open.
With a deep breath, I pulled the door open and looked inside. It was a mess of clothes and shoes and old, broken things that Brent should have thrown out a long time ago. It just looked like a bunch of forgotten stuff that he’d thrown in there when he was lazy.
I rifled through everything, but nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at me. I was starting to feel really silly about my suspicions when suddenly I noticed a little latch that seemed to be built in to the wall. Frowning, I pushed aside everything surrounding it. I realized that it wasn’t built into the wall. It looked almost like a makeshift safe—except that it was a tiny chest that looked like a singular cupboard. I pulled the latch and it opened out slowly, but I couldn’t see what was on the inside.
Unwilling to let it go, now that I had found something, I pulled harder and put my hand inside. There didn’t seem to be much there, but I was pretty sure I was holding something bag-like. I pulled it out and realized I was looking at a Ziploc bag that held a white dusk like substance. It took me two seconds and then my heart went cold with realization.
“Oh my God,” I whispered to Brent’s empty apartment.
I put my hand inside and removed every single thing that was held inside. There were three more Ziploc bags with equal quantities of the white powder and a few more with large quantities of pot.
I rushed to the living room and grabbed my phone. I fumbled with it for a moment before I managed to find officer Manolo’s number.
“Hello?”
“Officer Manolo,” I said, with my heart beating hard. “This is Megan.”
“Megan… is everything all right?”
“Um, not exactly,” I stammered. “I… I stumbled across something in my brother’s closet. There was a hidden panel there…”
“What did you find?” Officer Manolo asked, and his tone suggested he already knew what I was about to say.
“Drugs,” I replied shortly.
“Come to the station,” he said. “I’ll meet you there as soon as possible.”
“I… should I bring—“
“Yes,” Officer Manolo replied. “I’ll notify my colleagues.”
I put the drugs in a carrier bag and headed to the station immediately. The moment I got there, I asked for Officer Manolo.
“What is this in regards to?” the policewoman at the front desk asked me.
“It’s about a case,” I said.
“A case?” she said, with raised eyebrows.
“Yes, and it’s urgent,” I said. “I need to speak with him now!”
“Oh,” she said, and realization dawned on her face. “Are you Megan Jacobs—”
“Megan,” a voice behind me called and I turned around to face Officer Manolo. He looked at the woman behind me. “I’ve got it from here. Thanks, Makenna.”
“Phil’s innocent,” I blurted out. “He’s always been innocent. It was my brother—it was Brent. This proves it, right?”
Officer Manolo put his arm on my shoulder. “Why don’t you take a seat, Ms. Jacobs?”
“After you left, I searched the apartment,” I said, unable to stop talking. “I found this stashed away in the back of his closet. It’s the only place in the apartment he keeps locked.”
I pushed the carrier bag into his hands and he took a look inside. “This was all in your brother’s closet?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Is it possible that your brother and Phil were working together?”
“No,” I said with certainty.
I had failed Phil before by ignoring my instincts after my gut reaction calmed down and listening to my brother simply because he was my brother. Now I needed to listen to my own voice and it was telling me that Phil had been set up.
“Phil had nothing to do with this,” I insisted. “My brother set him up.”
“You sound sure?” Officer Manolo observed.
I looked him straight in the eye. “I am.” I nodded.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Phil
I kept staring at the ceiling of my cell, seeing people’s faces in the grainy gray stains of the wall. The more I stared, the defined their features got until I was staring at someone from my past, wondering how I’d gotten to this place. It seemed almost inevitable that I would find myself in a jail cell, and that scared me more than any other thought. I realized that I had felt that way since I was fourteen or fifteen years old.
I had watched my dad’s life and then I had watched my brother, and somewhere along the way I’d become part of a drug gang. I suppose that given the life I’d led, it would be realistic to assume that this was where I would end up. I shook my head and frowned. That was the very reason I had given it all up. I didn’t want to end up in a jail cell for any significant period of time. I wanted to become more than the men I had seen around me growing up.
I wanted to contribute to society. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help people. Those were the reasons I gave people when they asked me what had led to my decision to become a firefighter. They were the selfless reasons that made me look a better man than I probably really was.
There were more reasons, though, and they were less selfless. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be liked. I wanted people to look at me with admiration. I wanted to be included in a society that I didn’t think had any real room for me. I had watched my mother, my father, and my brother and the one thing they all had in common was the fact that they were all misfits. They didn’t fit in anywhere. They were loners who built walls around themselves, and it had succeeded in keeping everyone out.
I thought about my mother. I had been so young when she left, but I still remembered the atmosphere at the time. Dad was furious, but I sensed a deeper pain hidden beneath the fury, and it wasn’t until a few years later that I was able to identify it as hurt. Somehow that knowledge made me feel a little better about my father. If he could be hurt, then that meant he had had some feeling towards my mother, right? Maybe in his own way he had loved her…just a little. And maybe that meant he might have loved Paul and me a little, too.
I knew that being trapped in this cell was letting my thoughts run wild. I wondered if I was making up scenarios just to entertain myself. I wondered how Paul had lived like this for years. I knew that his prison had a large courtyard, a garden, a television room, and a library. But it was still one contained space—it was still a cage, and Paul had never been one to stay in one place for long.
He had been angry when they sentenced him. No one but me could have said as much, but I saw the emotion plain as day on his face. He blinked rarely and the vein in his forehead popped slightly so that I could see its purplish tint against the pale white of his face. He didn’t make eye contact with me as he walked away with his jailer and I understood that. It must have been hard to look at anyone who was free when you yourself were trapped.
I wondered if prison had changed him, and if it had, I wondered how it had changed him. Had he softened, seen the error of his ways and reformed, or had he hardened, gotten angrier, and more likely to fuck up his life after being released? It was a tossup, and I realized that I had no clue who my brother was anymore. He was a stranger made up of biased memories and foggy recollections.
I wondered if I would end up in the same prison that he was in. I almost laughed at the thought. What if that really happened? Would he even recognize me? I had changed a little since we’d last seen each other. I had built muscle and lost facial hair. I didn’t look like the boys we had rolled with when we were teenagers. Now I looked like I had a chance. I looked like someone you could trust…at least, I liked to think I did.
I was trying to imagine Paul’s reaction to me if we happened to land in the same prison when I heard footsteps approaching. I sat up quickly and t
urned to my cell door. A few seconds later, Manolo appeared. He opened my cell door and walked inside. I stared at his face, hoping that his expression might give something away.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said impatiently. “Any news?”
“We’re working on things.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re working on what?” I asked desperately. “Did any of the leads I gave you pay off? Did you find Brent? Was he in his apartment? Was Megan there?”
“Whoa…” Manolo said, holding up his hands. “Calm down, Phil.”
“Sorry,” I said, breathing deeply. “I just… I’m anxious.”
“I can see that.” He nodded. “And I understand, but unfortunately, I can’t disclose any information to you. I just came to see how you were holding up.”
“There’s nothing you can give me?” I asked desperately. “Nothing at all?”
“All I can say is that there has been movement in the case,” Manolo said.
I tried to bottle up my hope so that I could live off it for the next few hours, but it vanished as soon as it appeared. Manolo’s face was a blank canvas that gave nothing away. His words were somewhat encouraging, but they could have meant anything.
“Have you spoken to Brent?” I asked, hoping his answer would give me a clue.
“I can’t say,” Manolo replied.
“How about Megan?” I asked.
“I can’t say,” he repeated.
I sighed. “What can you say then?” I asked.
“Try doing some push-ups,” he said, with a slight smile. “Keep active in here…it’ll help you from going crazy.”
I sighed. “I doubt it.”
“You know your boys are with you, right?” Manolo said. “Everyone down at the fire station believes you a hundred percent. They want you to know that they have your back.”
That did make a small difference, and I managed to crack a smile. Then I thought about the person I cared about most in the world right now and my smile faded. Manolo noticed that immediately.
“Don’t be too hard on her,” he said, as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. “She really does love you.”