Seeing and Believing

by Norah McClintock

  “He’s the one who identified Vin to the cops.”

  She looked surprised. “If you’d been standing outside that store and you heard shooting and then saw someone run out of the store and you recognized that person, wouldn’t you have told the cops?”

  I knew the correct answer was yes, you bet. Maybe I would have said it, too, if the someone she was talking about wasn’t someone who’d spent most of his life as my best friend.

  “You would, wouldn’t you, Mike? I mean, even if it was me, you’d tell them, right?”

  “You’d never do anything like that,” I said. I smiled at her, trying to keep it light.

  She put down her sandwich. “You’re walking by a convenience store late at night. You hear gunshots. You see me run out of the store and down an alley—” Jeez, it sounded like Sal hadn’t held back on any details. “—and then you go into the store and you see that two people, two actual people, have been shot. Are you telling me you wouldn’t say, Hey, I know who did it, I can give you her name and tell you where she lives? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Come on, Rebecca.”

  “I mean, Sal saw what he saw.”

  Rebecca had transferred to my school last fall. All she knew about Vin was the trouble he had been in around that time and how he’d tried to lay it off on me. But she actually knew Sal. She liked him. And during the time that she’d known him, Sal hadn’t been in any trouble.

  “Rebecca, you don’t understand.” It was the wrong thing to say. She started to rewrap her sandwich. “Hey,” I said, reaching for her hand. She yanked it away from me and stuffed her sandwich into her backpack. Then she got up and started threading her way through the crowded tables toward the cafeteria door. I got up to follow her. That’s when I saw Riel coming toward me.

  “Trouble?” he said, nodding at Rebecca, who was getting smaller and smaller the closer she got to the cafeteria door. I shrugged. Riel looked at me like he was trying to figure out what was going on. He said, “If you want to see Vin this afternoon, I’ll run you out there.”

  “Really?” I said. “Are you sure you want to?”

  “No, I’m not. But if it’s what you want, I’ll do it. Meet me in the parking garage right after school, okay?”

  I ran into Sal after school when I was on my way to meet Riel. He was at his locker, packing textbooks and binders into his backpack.

  “Hey,” I said. “Did you have to tell everyone?”

  “Tell everyone what?” he said. He sounded confused.

  “About Vin. You told everyone about Vin.”

  “No, I didn’t. I only told Imogen,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “Imogen?” I knew only one person named Imogen. “You mean Imogen from my French class?” He nodded. “Why would you tell her?”

  Sal’s cheeks turned red. What was going on? What was I missing?

  Wait a minute. “Are you and Imogen … you know?”

  “I like her, okay?” Sal said, like he was daring me to tell him no, it’s not okay. “She’s nice. We get along.”

  I stared at him. I thought I knew Sal pretty well. He’d hung out with Vin and me for years. Of the three of us, Sal had always been the most serious, the straightest arrow. He was also the quietest one and shy around girls. Not that he was perfect. Sal had had his share of scrapes. He’d raided a bakery truck with Vin and me one night, ripping off some boxes of cake. But that seemed like a whole lifetime ago now. Sal had changed since then. A lot of it had to do with his dad being sick. Sal was helping to support his family, which meant he had to work twice as hard as me, and that had made him seem a decade older almost overnight. Now there was a girl in his life and I hadn’t even noticed. He hadn’t told me, either.

  “The thing is, Sal, when you tell something like that to one person around here, you might as well go down to the office, turn on the microphone on Gianneris’s desk, and announce it to the whole school.”

  Sal jammed a textbook into his backpack and slammed his locker shut. “You don’t talk to Rebecca?” he said. “You don’t tell her when something happens to you?”

  “Yeah, I talk to her.”

  “That’s all I did, Mike. I talked to Imogen about something that happened to me.”

  “You talked to her about something that happened to Vin,” I said. “And because of that, everyone thinks that Vin was involved in shooting those people. You know how it’s supposed to work, Sal. Innocent until proven guilty. Proven.”

  Sal threaded his lock into the catch on his locker door. “I don’t care about Vin,” he said. “I stopped caring about Vin a long time ago. And when I talked to Imogen, it wasn’t about Vin. It was about me. I went in that store, and I saw that woman lying there in all that blood. Her eyes were open, Mike. She was staring up, but she wasn’t really staring because she couldn’t see anything anymore. There was a hole in the middle of her face. And there was stuff in the blood. Pieces of stuff that, I don’t know, I sure didn’t ask, but I watch TV the same as everyone else, so I started imagining what it was, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.” He sounded mad now, and his voice was loud. “I thought I was going to be sick or faint or something. I think the only reason I didn’t was I heard that man groaning. He was still breathing and he needed help, and that got me through it. I helped him. I made a phone call, and then I did everything that you’re supposed to do, you know, everything they tell you to do. That’s what I talked to Imogen about—because who else am I going to talk to about that? You?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Why wouldn’t you talk to me about it?”

  “Right,” he said. “Look at the way you’re acting. Look at the way you acted right from the start. Like you can’t believe Vin would do anything like this. Even when I tell you what I saw, you don’t believe it. When you came to talk to me on Saturday, you made it pretty clear that you think I’m the one who made a mistake, not Vin. First you think I saw it wrong, and now you think I did something wrong.”

  “I never said—”

  “I know he’s your best friend, Mike. I know it, okay? I was always the third wheel on a two-wheel bike—okay to hang around with, okay to mess up with, okay to help you out lately when Vin’s been gone, but not the same as Vin, right? Not as good as him. I always thought that and now I see I was right.”

  “Jeez, Sal—”

  “I know what I saw, Mike. And I know I did the right thing. So if I want to talk to Imogen or anyone else about it, it’s none of your business.” He yanked the pull cord on his backpack and slung one of the straps over his shoulder. “I have to get to work.”

  I watched him stride down the hall, taking big, angry steps, like he couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I felt like I was watching a stranger.

  Riel was standing next to his car, drumming his fingers on the roof, when I got to the underground parking. He made a point of looking at his watch when he saw me coming.

  “I said right after school, Mike.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Because I’m doing you a favor. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I know.” I yanked open the passenger door and got inside. Riel climbed in behind the wheel. He glanced at me. I thought he was going to say something, but he just turned the key in the ignition. We were out of the parking garage, down the street, and onto the expressway before he said, “I just want to make sure you don’t get hurt.”

  “Hurt?” I looked at him. “How am I going to get hurt?”

  Riel flicked on the left-turn signal and changed lanes to pass a truck. He didn’t answer until he’d settled back into the middle lane.

  “When I decided to try for the police college, a friend of mine—a good friend—decided to try it, too. We both got in. We went through together. We got hired together. We hung out together. We got promoted together. Then I went into Traffic.” Accident investigation, he meant. “He went into the drug squad.”

  I hadn’t heard this story. Riel wasn’t big on spilling the de
tails of his life. But I would have bet everything I had in the bank, which by now actually amounted to something, that I knew where the story was going.

  “I thought the drug squad didn’t exist anymore,” I said.

  Riel looked at me like he was wondering how I knew that. Billy had told me. He’d said a lot of the cops in it turned out to be corrupt, so it had been disbanded. Billy thought that was funny. He never did have a high opinion of cops.

  “This is from before,” Riel said. “Maybe five years ago. I started to hear rumors—my friend was getting tight with the wrong people, he was looking the other way, he was taking money, that kind of thing. But I didn’t want to believe them—because he was my friend.”

  Yeah, if I’d bet, I’d have made a bundle.

  “Rumors?” I said. “I thought you didn’t listen to rumors.” I thought he didn’t believe in them.

  “At first I didn’t. But I kept hearing them. So I decided to ask him if they were true.”

  “And?”

  “He looked me in the eye and told me that they weren’t. And I believed him.”

  “But it turned out they were true, right?” I said. Why else would he be telling me this story?

  “He swore to me that he didn’t do anything wrong. He told me it was all a mistake, that it wasn’t what they were saying it was. But they showed me what they had on him, Mike. I saw the proof.”

  “But up until then, you believed him, right?” I said. “You gave him the benefit of the doubt. Right?”

  It took a couple of seconds before Riel nodded.

  “That’s all I want to do,” I said. “I want to give Vin the benefit of the doubt.”

  “There isn’t much doubt in Vin’s case,” Riel said. I knew that was what he thought. It was probably what everyone thought. “And sometimes—a lot of times—when people screw up, they try to cover it up. They lie—even to their friends.” Like Riel’s friend had lied to him.

  I believed Riel when he said he didn’t want me to get hurt. But there was something he was forgetting.

  “You don’t know Vin,” I said. “I do.”

  Riel didn’t say anything. We drove the rest of the way in silence.

  They had Vin locked up. Riel and I both had to show ID. Riel said he’d called ahead. He said who he’d talked to. We had to sign in. They asked us if we had any packages for Vin, but we didn’t. Then we had to wait around for a while before they let me into what they called the visiting room. It was a large, plain room with cement-block walls and lots of tables and chairs that were all bolted to the floor. After I sat down, a door opened and Vin was shown in. He had looked bad the last time I saw him. He didn’t look any better now. I wondered what it was like in here, what kind of room he had, whether he had a roommate or was on his own, whether people hassled him or left him alone. We sat down at one of the tables. The whole time we were talking, a man watched us.

  “Is he listening to what we’re saying?” I said.

  Vin shook his head. “He just wants to make sure nothing happens, that’s all. They have all kinds of rules here, Mike. You think Riel’s tough? Man, he’s like a vacation compared to this place.” He was smiling, though, and seemed glad that I was there. “I was real surprised when they told me you were coming to see me. You never came to see me last time.” I couldn’t make myself look at him when he said that. Instead, I focused on the tabletop. “It’s okay, though,” he said. “I understand. I mean, if it had been the other way around, I would have been pretty mad at you. I don’t think I’d have come to visit you, either. But when I saw you the other day—I don’t want to sound weird or anything, but it made me feel good, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Despite everything, I’d felt the same way. I looked up at him. “I wish things were different, though.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Vin, did you tell the cops about the girl?”

  He snorted. “Yeah, I told them. One of them wrote it down. But the next time they talked to me, the same guy that wrote it down told me my imaginary girlfriend wasn’t going to save me. That’s what he called her, Mike. My imaginary girlfriend. Like I made her up.”

  “But you didn’t, right?” I said.

  Vin gave me a sharp look, as if I’d insulted him. But instead of getting mad he just shook his head. “I really messed up good if it’s got to the point where my oldest friend has to ask me a question like that.”

  Oldest friend. Not best friend. I wondered how much he’d thought about those words before he said them. I mumbled that I was sorry, but Vin shook his head again.

  “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, Mikey. You had nothing to do with it.”

  I glanced at the big clock on the wall. Riel had told me I had fifteen minutes.

  “The cops are acting like they don’t know anything about the girl,” Vin said. “They think I’m spinning them a story, which means that she hasn’t come forward. She hasn’t gone to the cops and told them what she saw. Why do you think that is, Mike?”

  Why did I think she hadn’t come forward? Maybe because Vin was spinning a story. But what would he gain by it?

  “Maybe she’s scared,” Vin said. “It’s the only thing I can think of. Maybe she thinks something will happen to her if she goes to the cops. That’s why I need your help, Mike. I need you to find her. She’ll be able to back me up. She’ll be able to tell the cops what happened. She’ll be able to tell them I had nothing to do with it. She has short, black spiky hair. And a ring—”

  “In her eyebrow. And a spider tattoo on her left upper arm,” I said. “I know. You already told me. But how am I going to find her, especially if it’s like you say, if she’s afraid to come forward?” Or, I thought, if it’s like the cops say, if she’s your imaginary girlfriend, if you made her up.

  “I know you’ve got doubts, Mike,” Vin said. Boy, I could feel my face turn red at that. “But you’re the only person I can ask. The cops don’t believe me. They’re not even going to look for her. They keep pressuring me to tell them who the two guys were—and I don’t know. And they keep asking me about a box. When I ask them what box, they say, Come on, Vincent, just tell us where the box is. Do you have it? Do your friends have it? I don’t even know what they’re talking about. I swear I don’t. But they don’t believe that, either. I don’t even know if my parents believe me. My mother cried when she came down to the police station. My dad—Mike, my dad won’t even talk to me. You’re the only friend I’ve got.”

  I wasn’t sure how much of a friend I was. But at least I was here. At least I was listening.

  “Do you know anything else about this girl, Vin?”

  “Just what I told you. The ring—it’s in her right eyebrow, I think.” He closed his eyes. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s the right. It’s silver, not gold. She was kind of pretty. Slim, you know, but not too skinny.”

  “Have you ever seen her before?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you know her name?”

  Vin gave me a look. “If I knew her name, I’d tell the cops and then she wouldn’t be my imaginary girlfriend anymore.”

  “But she was in the store?”

  “In the back,” Vin said. “I saw her. She was in a room that looked like maybe it was a storeroom. The door was open, but not all the way.”

  I wanted to remind him that Sal hadn’t seen her. I wanted to remind him that the man who got shot hadn’t mentioned her, either. I wanted to say, But he mentioned you, Vin. He identified you.

  “You think maybe she worked in the store?” I said. But I knew that couldn’t be right. The cops would have checked. Or the man who was shot would have said something—unless he hadn’t had time to mention her. It said in the paper that he was in critical condition. Maybe he’d just had enough spark in him to identify Vin. But for sure if the girl worked in the store, she would have gone to the police by now. Or someone would have mentioned her.

  “All I know,” Vin said, “is that I saw her standing there, w
atching what was going down. She was like a statue. It was like she wasn’t even breathing.”

  She was probably terrified.

  “Did she see you?” I said.

  “Yeah. She looked right at me. It was her that tipped me to what was going on. I was digging a Coke out of the cooler, and I noticed her. Then all of a sudden her eyes went big. She was staring up at the register. That’s when I turned around. That’s when I saw the guy with the gun. See, that’s the thing, Mike. I didn’t even know what was going on until I saw the look in her eyes. That girl saw what happened, Mike. She heard it, same as me. She can tell the cops—she can tell the world—that I had nothing to do with it. That’s why you have to find her.”

  I glanced at the clock on the wall again and pictured Riel starting to pace, out in the reception area.

  “Is there anything else that you remember about her, Vin?”

  He thought for a moment and then shook his head. I sat there opposite him, watching him, wondering. Finally I asked him the other thing that had been bothering me.

  “Vin? Did the cops ask about me?”

  “Yeah. They wanted to know if you were there. You know, if you were one of the other two guys.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  He stared at me, his eyes sort of watery, like what I had just asked was going to make him cry.

  “What do you think, Mike? You think I’d try to make problems for you? You think I made some kind of deal—Sure, you drop the charges on me or at least reduce them and I’ll tell you who did it, it was my friend Mike?” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “You think I don’t know how bad I messed up last time? You think I don’t know how much that cost me? You think I haven’t been sitting here just praying you’d visit or at least arrange a phone call so I could beg you to help me? You think I don’t realize how lucky I am that you’re even sitting here listening to me? I know I can’t change what I did last year, Mike. But I would never jam you up again. Never. No way. I need your help. I’m in trouble, and I need your help. That’s it.”