Seeing and Believing

by Norah McClintock

  “You’re saying you weren’t in the store?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. Because I wasn’t in the store.”

  I glanced at Rebecca. I still couldn’t tell what Amanda was thinking, but I had a pretty good idea about Rebecca. She was thinking that she didn’t like Amanda Brown. Maybe she was even thinking Amanda Brown was one of the bitchiest girls she had ever met. For sure she was one of the toughest girls I had ever met. I could picture her and Rebecca going at it.

  I stepped between the two of them.

  “We know that you were caught shoplifting in the store,” I said. I tried to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal.

  “Yeah?” Amanda said. “Says who?”

  “A man we talked to. He was in the store. He’s the one who caught you.”

  She didn’t like that.

  “That’s his story,” she said. “Old fart. He comes in while I’m trying to decide what to buy and he sees what I look like, and the next thing I know he’s grabbing me by the arm and hauling me up to the register, saying I’m stealing and that he’s going to call the cops, that’s the only way to handle people like me. What does that even mean—people like me?”

  I was willing to bet Rebecca had an answer to that.

  “But Mrs. Lee didn’t call the police, did she?” I said. “In fact, she helped you get the job at the video store.” I was pretty sure I’d get a reaction to that, too—How did we know she worked at a video store? But her face showed nothing. She just looked at me, her arms still crossed over her chest. “That’s why you went to the funeral, right? Because she didn’t call the cops on you. Because she helped you get a job. She was nice, right?”

  “Did you know her?” Amanda Brown said.

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know what she was like?”

  “I’m just saying if you were stealing from her and she gave you a chance—”

  “Look, you don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You’re in my garage. I don’t want you here. Go away. Simple, huh?”

  “But my friend says you were in the store when it happened.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “This friend of yours, is he the one they arrested?”

  I glanced at Rebecca, then I nodded.

  “Well, your friend is lying. I wasn’t there.”

  “He’s pretty sure.”

  She stared at me.

  “The way I heard it, there were three guys in the store when it happened. Someone heard gunshots and saw three guys run out of the store and he identified one of them. That’s what people are saying. I never heard anything about that guy saying there was anyone else in the store except the people who were shot.” I noticed she didn’t say their names, not even Mrs. Lee’s. She just called them the people who were shot. Mrs. Lee hadn’t called the cops on her. She had helped her get a job. But Amanda Brown was acting like she didn’t care. What did that mean? “So, three bad guys and two people who were shot. That’s who I heard was in that store. Which means if your friend was in the store, he’s a thief and a killer.”

  She was pretty if you looked at her a certain way. Her hair was a light blond color, short, kind of perky. Her skin was pale. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry. No eyebrow ring. If she had a tattoo, it was hidden under her sweatshirt. She seemed kind of sweet—if you looked at her in a certain way. But looking at her now, with her hard blue eyes and her sour mouth and the contempt in her voice, there was nothing pretty about her. She came across as nasty and bitter and mean.

  “My friend says he didn’t do anything. He just happened to be there. He says he saw you in there and that you saw everything that happened and that you could tell the police that he had nothing to do with it.”

  She nodded, but not because she was agreeing with me.

  “So let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re telling me that you think I was in a store and saw a woman get killed—a woman who, according to you, gave me some kind of break—” Boy, she was backing right off even knowing Mrs. Lee. “—but that I didn’t go to the police and tell them what happened and what I supposedly saw so that they could actually go out and nail the guys that did it. Is that what you’re telling me?” She shook her head. “I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in the store. I don’t know what your friend is trying to pull, but he’s wrong.”

  I glanced at Rebecca. She looked lost, like she thought she had made her way to the right place only to find out that she had read the map upside down and backward.

  “I can go to the cops,” I said. “I can tell them you’re the one my friend saw.”

  “Yeah? You mean your friend got arrested, but he didn’t tell the cops he saw me there? He just told you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Uh-huh,” Amanda Brown said. “The cops didn’t believe him, huh? What makes you think they’re going to believe you—especially since you don’t know what you’re talking about? You want to go to the cops? Go ahead. I’ll tell them the same thing I told you. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what your friend is trying to pull, but if you ask me, he must be neck-deep in crap if he’s seeing things that weren’t there.”

  “He described you perfectly,” I said. “He described your tattoo.”

  “Really?” she said. “That doesn’t prove a thing. A lot of people have the same tattoo. Maybe he’s confusing me with someone else. Or maybe he’s just seen me around someplace.”

  Nothing fazed her. It was starting to get to me. I couldn’t shake her, and the fact that I couldn’t was shaking my confidence in Vin.

  “So you’re saying you weren’t there?” I said.

  “Are you deaf as well as stupid? That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  I stared at her. She stared at me. Someone tugged my arm. Rebecca.

  “Come on, Mike. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah, Mike,” Amanda Brown said. “Listen to your preppy girlfriend and get out of my garage.”

  Rebecca grabbed my hand and yanked me out of the garage. She marched down the driveway as fast as she had marched into that first video store. She didn’t slow down until we were a couple of blocks from Amanda Brown’s house.

  “Do you believe her?” I said.

  “Do you think I look preppy?” Rebecca said.

  It was one of those questions I didn’t know how to answer, but that I knew she wanted me to. “You look great,” I said. “All the time.”

  Rebecca stretched out her arms as if she were standing in front of a mirror, checking herself out. Then she looked at me and shook her head.

  “You don’t even know what preppy looks like, do you, Mike?” she said.

  I didn’t know how to answer that, either, but this time she didn’t expect me to.

  She looped an arm through mine, and we started to walk up the street.

  “I don’t know if I believe her or not,” she said. “But I sure don’t like her.”

  “Why would Vin say she was there if she wasn’t there? How would he be able to describe her so well?”

  Rebecca shook her head.

  “Why would she say she wasn’t there if she was?” she said.

  One more of those questions.

  “Hey, Rebecca? That Megan, the one who runs the store, you know her, right?”

  “Yeah. She’s the one who gave me all those coupons.”

  “You think maybe we could talk to her?”

  Rebecca smiled. “I was thinking the same thing,” she said.

  I went straight to work without going home first. Riel had already told me that he was taking Susan out to dinner and then they were going to a movie. He’d told me that they would probably be late and not to wait up for them. When I got home after work, there was a note for me on the fridge. Vin’s mother had called again. She wanted me to call her.

  The first thing I thought was, Something must have happened to Vin. Why else would his mother be calling me? I remembered his phone number—even after all this time—and dialed it. Vin’s m
other picked up. Right away she thanked me for calling.

  “Is Vin okay?” I said.

  She said he was fine.

  “I’m going to see him tomorrow afternoon, Mike,” she said. “I was hoping you could come with me. He wants to see you. He’s having a hard time, Mike. Especially after what happened today.”

  Today?

  “What happened, Mrs. Taglia?”

  “The man who was shot—I just heard, Mike. He died.”

  Oh boy.

  “I’ll understand if you don’t want to come,” Vin’s mother said. “But it really cheered Vin up when you went to see him earlier in the week and when you spoke to him on the phone.”

  I could tell from the way she was talking that she was fighting back tears. But even if she hadn’t been upset, there was no way I could say no to her. She’d been like a second mother to me, especially after my mother had died.

  “What time are you going?” I said.

  “I could pick you up after I get off work. Is three thirty okay?”

  I told her sure.

  After I hung up the phone, I sat on the couch and stared at the blank TV for a long time. The tape I had made for Susan was sitting on top of it. I picked it up and looked at it. I wondered if Jeremy had at least taped something good. I popped it into the VCR and hit play. Talk about irony. He had taped CSI. I watched the whole thing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The next day was one of those days that there aren’t enough of—a weekday during the school year when you don’t have to go to school. It was a professional development day. Riel left the house at the regular time. He was headed downtown to some special conference on teaching history. It sounded like a snooze to me. I still couldn’t figure out how someone who used to be a cop, which at least was interesting, even if I didn’t like cops all that much, could get such a charge out of reading history books and sitting all day with a bunch of other history teachers listening to someone talk about teaching history. But I guess it was none of my business.

  It was nearly nine o’clock by the time I rolled out of bed. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. I hadn’t slept much. I kept thinking about Amanda Brown and why she would lie—assuming she was the one who was lying, not Vin. I stumbled down to the kitchen. Susan was sitting at the kitchen table. She had the newspaper open and was reading it while she drank coffee. When she saw me, she started to get up.

  “You want me to fix you something for breakfast, Mike?”

  I told her no, it was okay, I’d get my own breakfast. Riel had made it clear to me after he proposed to Susan that some things were going to change and other things weren’t. The big thing that was going to change: Susan was going to be around a lot more before the wedding, and afterward she was going to move in. “There’s going to be a woman in the house, Mike,” he said. “Which means things have to be a certain way, you know?” I think mostly he meant not so much farting. Things that weren’t going to change: my chores, which included keeping my room clean, doing my share of the vacuuming and tidying in the rest of the house (“I’m not the only person who uses the living room and the dining room, Mike.”), and the cooking. In other words, Riel said, I shouldn’t expect Susan to jump up and do things for me that I could do myself just because she was a woman. I never would have expected that, but Riel made the point all the same.

  I was just getting myself some cereal when the doorbell rang.

  Susan looked up from her paper. “I’ll get it,” I said.

  I saw through the glass before I even opened the door that it was Detective Canton and Detective Mancini. I wanted to walk away from the door and leave them both standing out there, but I knew I couldn’t. Besides, it would just make them angry. I unlocked the door and opened it.

  “Good morning, Mike,” Detective Canton said, like it was the best morning of his life so far. “Is Riel around?”

  “He’s at a conference.”

  “Well, that’s okay. You can call him from the police station.”

  The police station?

  “Are you arresting me?” I said. It had to be a joke, but it didn’t feel funny.

  “We want you to come with us. We want to ask you some questions.”

  “About what?”

  Detective Mancini grinned at me. It was not a pretty sight.

  “Bad news, Mike,” he said. “Someone dropped a dime on you.”

  “Huh?” What did that even mean?

  “That Crime Stoppers announcement I told you about?” Detective Canton said. “Someone called in. Swears they saw you go into that store just before it was robbed.”

  “What?”

  “So we want you to come with us, Mike. You can call Riel when you get there.”

  “Is he under arrest?” someone said behind me. Susan.

  Both detectives turned their heads to look at her. She was standing in the doorway to the living room.

  “And you are?” Detective Canton said.

  “Dr. Susan Thomas.”

  “Doctor?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And your relationship to Mike?” Detective Canton said.

  “To Mike? None. I’m engaged to John Riel.” I don’t think I imagined the appreciative look on his face when he looked at Susan—heck, why not? Susan was pretty and smart. “Why do you want to talk to Mike?” she said.

  Detective Canton told her what he had already told me. She asked him again if I was under arrest. He told her no, not at this time, but that they wanted to question me further.

  “Fine,” she said. “Let me call John.” She dialed the number for his cell, but he didn’t answer. “He’s at a conference,” she said. “He probably turned off his phone.” She looked at me. “I’ll go with you, Mike.” I knew she was doing it to make me feel better, but it didn’t work. Someone had called the cops on me. Someone had said that I had gone into the store right before it was robbed. Who would do something like that? No offense to Susan, but I would rather have had Riel with me. He knew how things worked. He also knew how cops worked. Then Susan surprised me. She said, “That is, if you want to go, Mike.” She looked at Detective Canton. “You said he’s not under arrest, right? So you can ask him to go to the police station, but you can’t force him to. Right?”

  Detective Canton looked at Detective Mancini. Then he nodded.

  “That’s right.”

  “I know you told him what you wanted to question him about,” Susan said. “But did you tell him what the consequences might be if he goes with you and answers your questions?”

  The two detectives exchanged glances again.

  “We were going to get to that,” Detective Canton said. “We do these things by the book.”

  “I think you should tell him now,” Susan said. She crossed her arms and waited. Detective Mancini looked annoyed. Detective Canton sighed and looked at me.

  “If you come and talk to us,” he said, “charges may result and any statement you make may later be used in court.”

  Susan’s face got more serious. “Did you explain to him about consent?”

  “Given his track record, I think he already knows about consent,” Detective Mancini said.

  Susan gave him a sour look.

  “Mike, you don’t have to come in for questioning at this time,” Detective Canton said. “The choice is yours. If you do come in, you are free to leave at any time during the questioning—at this point.” I knew why he said it like that: because even if he didn’t consider me a suspect now, that could change once he was actually talking to me. Then he would have to stop and give me another caution. “We’ll go over this again when you get to the police station and make sure you understand what’s happening and what your rights are. Then you’ll sign a consent form. Do you understand?” I said I did. Finally he looked at Susan. “Okay?”

  Susan was frowning.

  “I think we should wait until we can get hold of John,” she said. She looked at the two detectives. “I’ll get John to call you when he
’s free. He’s Mike’s foster parent. He’s responsible.”

  “It’s okay,” I told Susan. “We can go now.” I wanted to get it over with, and who knew how long Riel was going to be at his conference.

  “I don’t know, Mike,” Susan said. “We should at least call a lawyer.”

  “But I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  She hesitated for a long time before she finally said, “Where do I bring him?”

  “We’ll take you,” Detective Canton said.

  “I’d prefer to drive him myself,” Susan said.

  They told her where to meet them, and then they left the house. But they didn’t drive away. Instead, they sat in their car out in front of the house while Susan went upstairs to change. While I waited for her, I thought about the videotape that I had made for her. I wished I had mentioned it to the cops the first time they’d asked me about that night. If I told them about it now, they’d probably think I was making it up. They’d be really suspicious about whether it was for real. I dropped it into my backpack anyway, just in case.

  Susan came back downstairs, grabbed her keys, and pulled on a jacket. The two cops were still out there when we went outside. They watched us as we walked from the house to the street, where Susan had parked her car. They watched us drive away. Then they followed us. I think that made Susan nervous, which made me nervous. I wondered if I should tell her what I was thinking, but she kept looking in the rearview mirror at the cop car. I started to think she’d been right—we should have waited for Riel.

  When we got to the police station Detective Canton read me my rights and made me sign that I understood. Susan listened carefully the whole time. Then Detective Canton asked me to explain how come someone had seen me go into the store just before it was robbed.

  “Who saw him?” Susan said.

  Detective Canton didn’t answer.

  “You said it was someone who called Crime Stoppers,” Susan said. “Crime Stoppers doesn’t ask for names, does it? It doesn’t even have call display on its phones. If someone calls in and gives information, they get a special reference number so that if an arrest is made on the basis of that information, they can use that number to get a reward. It’s all anonymous, isn’t it?”