Sebastian muttered something.
“And see all these posts?” Gavin said. I read the one he had pulled up. It was written by a law student, commenting on the video, saying she’d done research and believed that the driver who “brazenly mowed down Superdog” could be charged with either leaving the scene of an accident or cruelty to a dog, a Class 4 felony, holding the potential of one to three years in prison.
“This is crazy,” I said.
I felt terrible suddenly, even worse than I’d felt looking down at Baxter in the ICU. It was my fault that the accident had happened. If I’d been more responsible, I wouldn’t have let Baxter carry the ball on the street. And as always, I felt immense compassion for someone who had done something stupid and who ran the risk of getting in big, big trouble for it. I knew that situation well.
“They’re out for blood,” Gavin said.
26
Three days later, Toni called me. “They got him.”
“They got who?” I said.
I was in the kitchen with Baxter, trying to coax him into taking a pain med that I’d hidden in a cube of cheese. But he only chewed the cheese and spit out the tablet that I’d broken in half. Then he slumped onto the kitchen floor, crossing his paws in front of him, putting his chin on them, looking up at me and lifting one eyebrow, as if to say, Are you kidding me, sister?
“The SUV driver,” Toni said. “He’s a big dude, too.”
“Oh,” I said, not processing too much. “C’mon, Bax,” I said, stuffing a halved pill in another cube of cheese and nudging it toward him.
He sniffed and turned his head aside as if in grand distaste.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Don’t make me put this thing down your throat.”
“What?” Toni said.
“I’m talking to Baxter. He can sniff out medication like a bomb dog does a grenade.”
Baxter nudged his snout in his paws and covered his eyes.
“So they have him at the station,” Toni said.
“The driver. At a police station?”
“Yeah! He was arrested.”
“Oh, God.” I felt terrible for the guy. Yes, he’d hit a dog who ran into the road, but he couldn’t have predicted it. He couldn’t have predicted his instinct to run. And like I’d told Gavin many times now, it was my fault for not supervising Baxy better.
Sebastian quietly agreed with my stand on the issue of the driver. He was around much of the weekend while Baxter slept and slept and slept. Gavin was great, running any errands I needed, looking things up on the internet about dog health. But when the topic turned to the driver, all I heard from Gavin was a chorus of things like, What an asshole! and Freaking coward and They need to send him away.
I knew he was just feeling protective of me and Baxter. And I hated that I couldn’t tell him why I felt so strongly about it—about people making mistakes in life and still getting another shot. I’d never spoken about my life with Billy McGowan to anyone. I’d been there for the beginning of the McGowan Brothers’ fame but by the time they were superstars, no one remembered the girl Billy had been married to. And I didn’t want to remember or talk about it. It was a life that was dead.
“They want to know if you want to give a statement outside the police station,” Toni said.
“No!”
“That’s what I said.” Toni hadn’t told me whether she agreed with me or not about the driver but she’d heard my side. “They still want you to come in, though. Even if you’re not making a statement. I can probably get out of here in a few hours and go with you.”
I swallowed hard. I hadn’t been to a police station since my arrest.
“Jess?” Toni said. “You there?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I reminded myself that since I was in a new life, and since that old life was dead, I would go to the station and do what I had to. And that was that. No fear.
“Sebastian is due here any minute,” I said, “to spend some time with Baxy. It might be nice for him if they had boy time.”
Baxter perked up at the mention of Sebastian’s name. Then he looked tired again and dropped his head. His nose was now about an inch from the tablet he’d spit out of the cheese again. He sniffed it a few times, then stared at it drowsily.
“Want me to meet you there?” Toni said.
“I’m going to go now and get it over with. I think I can handle it myself.” I settled Baxter onto his dog bed in my room. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
Then I left a key and a note for Sebastian at the front desk, and left the building.
* * *
“I don’t want to press charges.”
“It’s not your choice, ma’am.” The state’s attorney, a young guy with surprisingly white-gray hair, had said this more than once. Zack Nelson was his name. He’d given me his card after I’d talked to a detective. He’d then taken me into another room, one a bit bigger and nicer than the cement room I’d been in with the cop.
“But I’m the victim, right? Or my dog was.”
“You were both victims. But it remains up to the state to determine if charges are pressed. And we determine yes.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“The State’s Attorney’s Office determines charges,” he said. The guy had no expression on his face.
“Don’t I have some say in this?”
“Not really.”
“Not really?” I repeated.
“We have sole discretion.”
I looked at the fake wood table and thought about calling Gavin, someone from my new life, for support. But I knew he’d want to tell Zack Nelson to throw in more charges and send the guy to prison.
I looked back up.
“Ms. Champlin?” he said, in a “will that be it?” kind of way.
“I want to meet him. What’s his name... Gary Stips.”
Finally, the guy’s face moved. In fact, his eyebrows rose. “Oh, no,” he said. “We could never let you meet with him alone.”
“I didn’t say I needed to be alone.”
He hesitated, and I knew in that moment he had discretion on this, too. I kept flashing back to myself in the police station, that awful time.
I stood. “Let’s go.”
27
I had never seen a man cry like that—with heaving abandon and grief. And now, in an interrogation room with someone crying, I couldn’t help but re-feel my own time in such a room.
Emotions swung through me as if running a test of every single one I could experience. I felt flushed, then exhausted, then beyond anxious. That event in my past had been so jarring, so visceral, a sawing away of everything and everyone I’d known.
Gary Stips, this man in front of me now, tried to bat his tears away with the back of one fist while his other was handcuffed to a wall.
He was mad, too. Mad at himself. “I’m such a fuckup. That’s what I was thinking when I was driving around that day. That I’d fucked up something else. And then wham! I hit your dog.”
More flashbacks now, but those of the accident. Suddenly, I wanted, needed, out of there as fast as possible. I looked at Zack Nelson, who stood in the corner. He shrugged, like, You wanted this.
“You know what?” I leaned across the desk, toward the driver. “Gary, listen to me. The dog is fine. He is. Not one broken bone.”
“That’s what you said.”
“It’s true.”
“Thank God.” He looked right at me then, tears still falling. “You also said he was sleeping a lot. Why?”
“He has soft tissue injuries, and they’ve given him pain meds. The combination makes him drowsy.”
“I saw somewhere on the internet he can’t run. For how long?”
“Another ten days.”
>
More crying. “You should never forgive me.”
“Gary, I’ve already forgiven you. And that’s why I don’t want charges pressed.”
I looked at Zack Nelson, most bored man on the planet. He may have been playing a game of chess in his head, because he did not seem intellectually present right then.
“Mr. Nelson,” I said. “I’d like to officially request that no charges be filed against Gary.”
Nelson gave me a military-style nod. “Your request will be noted for... Oh, for no one. Request denied.” He opened the door and said something to an officer in the hall.
Nelson came back in the room and closed the door. “You’re already too late. Charges are done. He’ll be transported to lockup shortly.”
I looked at Gary Stips. He was stricken. I remember that feeling. My gut clenched for the man. And for the Jessica of yesteryear.
“I’m going to work on this,” I said to Gary.
Without addressing Nelson, I stood and strode past him, thinking fast. I went out in front of the station. It faced a multilaned street, but it was a lonely area. An area of town no one called home.
I pulled out my phone and called Toni. She answered on the first ring. “Tell me.”
“I do need some help after all. I think I should make a statement.”
“Hold on,” she said. “Let’s talk this through.”
I related my meeting with the detective, then the state’s attorney, then Gary Stips. I told her how the state’s attorney had refused to consider my request to not press charges.
“Well, it’s good you asked a couple of times,” Toni said. “Even if the guy was an asshole about it. Because you can use that with the press if we have to, you know, make it sound like official requests were made.”
“And I really did get a ruling from that jackass. Denied.”
“Hmm. Question—did your dogwear orders go up after Baxter was hit?”
“Yes.” There was no denying the numbers.
“And did they go up again when people started looking for the driver?”
“Yes. And we got a lot more followers.” We’d received emails and messages on social media from all over the world. We’re thinking of you, Superdog! We’ll wear our collars in solidarity.
“Okay, then,” Toni said, sounding excited.
“I see where you’re going with this. You think I can have a similar result with a press conference.”
“Yes. With your dog in your arms, imploring the police to let the guy go.”
“That’s a bit much,” I said.
“Sounds like it’s going to take much to get that Gary guy out of there.”
“Hold on a sec.” I put my cell phone on speaker and looked at the call log. “I’ve been getting calls from the plant in Grand Rapids for the last few hours.”
“You want to check in with them?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you right back.”
The phone rang for a long time in Grand Rapids before a harried-sounding woman’s voice answered. I identified myself and asked for the manager on my product.
“Oh, my gosh,” the woman said. “He’ll really want to talk to you.”
In a few seconds he was on the phone, his words coming fast about how orders for my products had been coming directly to their plant. “I don’t know how they tracked us down!” he said. “We’ve never had this happen, but over the last few days, it’s gone nuts. We’re running full steam.”
“Amazing,” I said. “What do you need from me?”
“We hired a few people, so you just keep going!”
I called Toni back. “Okay, our timing is spooky. The orders are coming to them directly now. Looks like more attention around the accident could really keep biz great. But I don’t want to do a press conference just for that. Mostly, I want to implore them not to charge the guy. I want them to leave him alone. I want him to be able to put this behind him.”
I didn’t add, Like I’ve put my past behind me.
“I’ll put the word out to the media,” Toni said.
“I should call Gavin and Sebastian. Then I’ll get Baxter. The dogger will be psyched. He’s been getting bored at home. Meet you here in an hour?”
“See you then.”
28
I called Gavin and practically beseeched him as my boyfriend to support me on the decision to call a press conference.
“I can’t believe you’re doing so much for this guy.”
I told him how in addition to wanting to do it, giving a public statement would also be good for I’d Rather Sleep with the Dog.
“Well, at least there’s that,” he said.
I told him how Gary Stips had been sobbing in the interrogation room. “He’s been punished enough,” I said.
Gavin climbed on board, grudgingly, agreeing to support me in not wanting to press charges. Once he’d decided that, he was amazing, saying that of course he’d be at the press conference.
I closed my eyes as I hung up the phone with him, letting the appreciation for him, for us, run through me.
I called Sebastian then, and he, too, said I should do the press conference if it could help my business.
“And, Jess,” he said. “I do completely understand your opinion that everyone deserves a second chance from their mistakes. I completely agree with you.”
My appreciation soared.
But then I asked if he would be at the press conference.
“No.”
“That was a fast answer.”
“I can’t, Jess. I really can’t. The one news piece I did was it. If I keep doing these things, my name will get out there.”
“Wouldn’t that help you in some way?” I asked. “Get you more readers?”
“I doubt it.”
“But this is news,” I said resignedly.
“Sorry, Jess,” he said. “I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
He didn’t answer.
* * *
Two hours after I’d called Toni we were in front of the station. In that short amount of time, Toni had worked magic. News trucks for four local stations and two national networks were lined up under streetlamps. Reporters stood around consulting with cameramen under supplemental lights. Toni had also gotten two radio stations, four print magazines, six photographers and some bloggers.
Toni put me at the podium with Baxter, who awoke occasionally to give a big pink-tongued yawn, which the photogs snapped. Gavin was behind me.
“So just so you know,” Toni said. “They’re going to have their say after you do.” She explained that standing on the other side of the set, waiting to comment on my statement, were the arresting officer, the detective and the state’s attorney.
“I figured,” I said. I had caught Zack Nelson just a moment ago, crouching in front of a squad car’s mirror, trying to fix his hair with his fingers.
When the lights were all on, I had to blink profusely to try and clear my vision. I held Baxter closer to me. He squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness.
I read my statement, asking again that the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office accept my request. I said that since there was no harm to person or property (or dog), the charges against Gary Stips should be dropped.
When I was done, Zack Nelson stepped forward and spoke into the mic. “If we were to allow people to run over our pets and take off, never even asking if the pet is okay, what kind of society would that make us?”
A hand shot up from the CBS reporter. “Do we have a particularly big problem in Cook County with dog hit-and-runs?”
Zack looked confused by the question, then sighed and answered, “Well, not exactly. But this is the kind of thing we like to get on top of. You don’t want to set a precedent.”<
br />
“How much will it cost to prosecute Mr. Stips?” another reporter asked. They didn’t seem to have faith in Zack coming up with anything original to say.
“I’d have to do the math....”
Everyone silent. Okay, we’ll wait for that math.
“I think it’s like twenty-five grand,” the first reporter said to the second.
“More, if someone is in custody,” another added.
Zack murmured something about the job of a state’s attorney. The press had completely lost interest and were looking back to me.
I looked at Toni with a question in my eyes. She gave me a nod.
“I have one more thing to add,” I said, stepping toward the mic again, holding up my phone. “Actually, I just have something to show you. A video. Baxter met Mr. Stips tonight.” I hit Play and showed the clip of Baxter in a white interrogation room with Gary Stips. Baxter licked Stips’s tears, who laughed lightly when Bax kept it up.
“Excuse me!” Zack said. “Pets are not allowed in the station.”
He looked around for who might have been responsible. The detective who’d told me he thought Zack Nelson had “a stick up his ass” raised his hand and waved it toward Zack as if to say, Let it go.
A reporter asked me why I was “so keen” on having the charges dropped against Mr. Stips.
“Because everyone makes mistakes,” I said. “And everyone should be able to move on.”
29
It was ten o’clock at night by the time the press conference was over. Within the hour, it ran on a local twenty-four-hour news station. Toni put that video on the internet, along with the one of Bax and Gary. People flooded both videos with comments. Many of the comments were supportive—talking about the power of apology and forgiveness, and how the world would be a better place if there was more in it. But a lot of people said I was a coward, that Gary Stips was a coward and that any man who would hit a dog and drive away should be hung. Essentially.
The controversy over what should be done drove the news stations and morning shows to air the story the next day and even run it a few times. Then all their websites were flooded with comments, too. The questions about punishment and forgiveness were discussed on morning shows and even debated at schools. A few days went by and more and more steam grew on the forgiveness side of things. #Forgivness and #Superdog were trending all the time.
The Dog Park Page 13