The Stories You Tell

by Kristen Lepionka

  I went through the rest of ADDY MARIE S’s profile. Dozens of photos, all of the real Addison: her onstage at the nightclub; her trying on a swimsuit in the fitting room at Target, smirking sulkily in the mirror as she took the selfie; her in snow pants and a balaclava, a snowboard under one arm.

  Her bio was quite a bit more thorough too:

  I don’t want to sit across the table from you wishing I could run. Jazz standards, spicy food, good beer, faultless honesty. Please have blue eyes and a job that doesn’t start at 8 a.m. because we have some livin’ to do.

  I recognized the first line as a lyric from a Cake song. Addison would’ve been a child when that song was popular. Her weird CD had sampled Lady Day, so her tastes ran the time continuum. But anyway, the most interesting part was that she was currently online.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I dialed Gwen Achebe’s number and asked if Wyatt was talking yet.

  “Not to me,” she said, “but he’s been awfully busy on his phone, and he just left.”

  “Oh?”

  “He said we’ll talk when he gets back.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “He said he had to meet a friend. He borrowed my car.”

  “Did he say where?”

  “He said just over on California Avenue. Unless he was just saying that so I’d let him take it—the tires are bald and it’s not safe…”

  I tuned the rest of her explanation out.

  That was where Addison lived.

  * * *

  I realized something terrible was underway as soon as I turned right from Weber onto High Street and I saw two cop cars squealing hard left turns onto California Avenue. I sped up and did the same, or tried to—the narrow street was a wall of emergency lights, impassable. I parked and jumped out of the car and squinted in the dark. The sidewalk was full of people, rubberneckers craning for a view of what was going on. Farther down, closer to Addison’s apartment, I could make out dark forms in bulletproof vests emblazed with POLICE in white block letters. A chopper was circling the block with a sweeping searchlight.

  “Please, everybody, go back into your houses,” a guy in a SWAT vest was saying. “We can’t do our jobs properly if you’re standing here like this.”

  I sidled up to a woman holding a small black dog in a puffy dog coat. “Do you know what’s going on?” I said.

  “Our tax dollars at work,” she hissed back.

  I jockeyed for position closer to the SWAT guy and asked him the same question.

  He glared at me. “You need to keep this area clear.”

  I searched my notebook for Carlie’s phone number and sent her a text asking if she was home.

  No, why?

  I was relieved—really, I was—but also disappointed. I cut between two houses and over to the alley that ran parallel to California, which was still dark and quiet. Jamming my hands in my pockets, I started down the alley.

  The police helicopter was illuminating the block in wide swaths, but I realized its circles were getting smaller. It juddered above me, its blades beating urgently. As it arced away, I could hear snippets of shouting from farther down the block, just a few seconds before the voices were swallowed up by the chopper when it arced back around.

  “We all just want—everybody gets home safe.”

  My eyes were streaming from the cold.

  “You don’t have—on out. Just come on out. We can—”

  The next voice I heard was quavering with fear. It belonged to Wyatt Achebe. “I can’t.”

  Ice seized my heart.

  “I can’t—” Wyatt said next. “—left alone.”

  I broke into a run and almost collided with the guy in the vest just as he entered the alley from a narrow gap between two houses. “Listen,” I said, “I know this guy. I don’t know what’s—”

  “Lady,” he said, “what the hell are you doing back here?”

  I wasn’t sure if he’d followed me this far, or if he’d simply seen me walking in the gap between houses.

  “Please, listen to me. I know him. He’s a nice kid.”

  “A nice kid?”

  “Yeah—”

  “A nice kid who took some woman hostage. I’m not arguing with you. Go.” He pointed back to California Avenue.

  “Hostage? No—”

  “Yes.” He grabbed me by the bicep and shoved. “What else do you call threatening someone with a gun?”

  When we were back to the street, he said, “Wait here for a second.”

  For a moment I thought he was going to get someone else to talk to me, but then it dawned on me that he just wanted me out of his hair. I pressed farther into the melee, my brain somersaulting over possibilities. It didn’t make any sense.

  Meeting with a friend.

  Threatening someone with a gun.

  What was I missing?

  I flagged down another cop and tried my spiel again. “I know this kid. Can I talk to him or something?”

  She frowned at me and told me to move back.

  The chopper hovered overhead, its searchlight finally stationary.

  I fumbled with my phone.

  Tom answered on the third ring.

  Over the noise, I shouted, “How quick can you get to Clintonville?”

  But it didn’t matter. My question was too late.

  Before I even heard the trio of gunshots, I saw the muzzle flash from Addison’s backyard.

  I screamed no, or maybe just in my head.

  The cops on the street started moving in toward the house, the all-business posture that told me there was work to be done. Two paramedics hustled a stretcher to the backyard.

  I found myself drifting after them. I was on the wrong side of the house to see anything, but I could hear a terse conversation going on back there.

  “Where is it? Where the hell is it? It has to be here somewhere. I saw it.”

  “Maybe it’s in the house? Maybe she’s in the house?”

  “Open it.”

  I flattened myself against the porch of Addison’s neighbor and listened as someone kicked open the back door.

  Footsteps.

  Less than a minute later, the cops were back. “It’s clear. There’s nothing. No woman, no gun.”

  “Maybe this is what you saw?”

  A note of anguish: “Fuck. Fuck. A fucking cell phone?”

  I dropped my own phone into the snow and realized Tom’s voice was still saying my name.

  * * *

  “Roxane, with one N,” I said to the SWAT commander for at least the third time.

  “R-O-X,” he said, hulking over me with an incident form on a metal clipboard, “A-N-A?”

  He couldn’t begin to understand my name or anything about me, including what I’d heard. I pulled my coat tighter around my middle. We were sitting in the front seat of his police-issue vehicle, heat blasting, but I couldn’t stop shaking. “Does it matter? Is anyone even going to see this report?”

  His features were stony but somehow turned even stonier. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I shook my head. I was recording the conversation on my phone just in case anyone ever tried to deny that it had happened, tried to claim I didn’t hear what I’d said I heard.

  Maybe Wyatt would make it, I told myself.

  Maybe it looked worse than it was when the two paramedics wheeled him on a stretcher up to the ambulance, a Rorschach of blood oozing at his chest.

  Things never looked worse than they were.

  It was always the other way around.

  I was numb. I didn’t understand why he came here. Addison wasn’t anywhere to be found. The duplex she shared with Carlie was empty. But someone had called 911 to report a black man with a gun, threatening a woman in the backyard.

  But there was no woman, no gun.

  Just a cell phone in the darkness.

  “Is there anything you want to add to this, Miss O’Leary?”

  I opened the car door and got out without answering.
r />   * * *

  I had a headache that rivaled the worst headaches of my life already, but I held out my glass for more.

  Tom and I were in my living room and we had already killed off half of an old bottle of Woodford Reserve—his choice from my liquor cabinet. He was more of a beer drinker, usually, but this wasn’t a usual situation.

  “Swatting,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Swatting. I’ve seen it in the news a few times, usually some online gaming flame war that escalates. Someone calls the police on their enemy, well,” he said, adding air-quotes, “‘enemy,’ and claims so-and-so did such-and-such, some outlandish thing to get them into big trouble. Some departments have a fine, where you have to pay for ‘police services’ like if the search-and-rescue helicopter goes out.”

  I thought of the sweeping searchlight, scanning the quiet street. “People do this in Columbus?”

  “I’m not sure if we’ve had anyone do it. But, I mean, probably. Not that I’m saying this is what happened here, but it’s a possibility. Another possibility is someone with some very, very wrong information.”

  I swallowed the rest of my drink and leaned my head back on the cushion behind me and closed my eyes. Wrong information didn’t seem to cover it, but at the same time, that was exactly what had happened. There was no gun, and there was no woman, no victim. The house was empty. “So what happens now?” I said.

  “Now we hope and pray the kid makes it, right?”

  “Hope and pray,” I repeated. “Fuck hope and prayers.” I was running short on both. “I tried to get three different people to listen to me at the scene, and no one would. I get it—you can’t act on everything any random person says at an active scene, and that’s fine. But, I mean, come on. They shot him. For doing what? Standing on a porch while black?”

  “The information they had—”

  “Tom, fuck the information they had. I was trying to give them information. They didn’t want it. The situation was always going to go down exactly the way it went down.”

  “No one’s that fatalistic about police work.”

  My father had been. Or maybe he was just stubborn, his views immutable, new information be damned. I said, “You don’t think it’s a tragedy?”

  “Of course I do. I’m just saying Halliwell isn’t a monster. He’s a good cop, for what it’s worth.”

  “Is that his name?”

  Tom nodded.

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s been a good cop up till now. He wasn’t in that moment. And that moment is all that matters.”

  “It’s complicated,” he said, and held up a hand as I started to object. “I’m not defending him. I’m not.”

  “It’s not that complicated. A white cop shot an unarmed black man.”

  “You’re right. It’s a tragedy. And if Wyatt doesn’t make it, Halliwell is going to beat himself up for the rest of his life about it.”

  “Well, fuck that guy.”

  We both fell silent.

  Then I said, “I don’t know what it’s like, to be in that situation. I’m not saying I do. But, I mean, if there’s a name for this kind of thing? You have to be aware that the information you have might not be accurate, and that’s why the information you get from your own two eyes has to be the most important. Did he really think he saw a gun? Or did he expect to see a gun?”

  He touched my arm. “You’re absolutely right. I’m agreeing with you. It’s the ultimate responsibility. I don’t buy into the it’s him or me sort of thinking. Because far and away the majority of situations aren’t like that.”

  His expression had gone tight. The majority of situations weren’t like that, but Tom had lived through one that was.

  I asked, “Do you ever think about him? The kid who shot my father.” The kid you killed two seconds later, I thought but did not say.

  He studied the rim of his glass. “All the time.”

  That wasn’t the answer I was expecting. “Really?”

  “I had to go through the evaluations and meetings and assessments after that, all the stuff Halliwell will be doing, and it was different, because he was armed, he’d just shot my partner. A justified use of force. But some of the guys had that attitude about it. Like good for me, taking down the punk who shot Frank. An eye for an eye. But that’s not what it was. It was training. I fired at him because I told him to drop the gun and instead, he fired at us. It wasn’t revenge, it wasn’t justice. When I say I think about it, I think about his family, really. How I made it two tragedies instead of one.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “I told you, it’s complicated. Using force. Taking a life. I never even fired my gun on duty before that night. I never needed to, never wanted to. Jesus, this conversation got dark fast.”

  “Sorry.”

  He looked at his watch. “I should probably go. Seven o’clock is going to come very soon. I have a task force meeting.”

  It was after one now. “Are you okay to drive?”

  He stood up, rested a palm against the wall, and sat back down. “No.”

  “Stay.”

  “Will it be weird?”

  I wasn’t sure about that. But I said, “You can help me finish this off.” I filled my glass again and topped his off too; he didn’t protest.

  We drank in silence for a long time.

  “It’s been a hell of a week,” he said instead.

  I nodded. “How are you and Pam?”

  Tom sipped his bourbon and looked up at the ceiling. “When are you going to start baring your soul?”

  “I’m an open book, Tom,” I said, and he gave me half a smile.

  “I think Pam and I are over.”

  “No.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Because of dinner?”

  “Because of a lot of things.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry.”

  “Dinner was just the latest in a long line of situations.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You said that already.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “Yeah.” He sipped his drink and gave a heavy sigh. “I started taking an antidepressant, did I tell you that?”

  I turned to look at him. “No. I mean, not that you’re obligated to or anything.”

  “Well, I did. Five, six months ago.”

  “Is it helping?”

  He nodded.

  “Then good for you.”

  “It’s not like a switch getting flipped on or anything. It just helps with the feeling of—well, you know what depression is, I don’t have to explain it. Anyway, I didn’t tell Pam either, not right away. I don’t actually know why, or maybe I do. Maybe I knew how she’d react.”

  I pulled my knees to my chest and waited.

  “She saw a statement from my insurance on the dining room table at my place, she read it, she asked me about it. When we talked, I thought she understood what I was saying. That I, you know, can feel stuck in place. That it’s hard to make things happen sometimes. Is this making any sense at all?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m listening,” I said.

  “The point is, I told her this, and she started acting like, I don’t know, a life coach. Which, to be clear, I don’t need a life coach. I just need the antidepressant, which I have, so things were fine—the only difference is that she knew about it. And it’s like her takeaway from the conversation is that I need external motivation or something. She’s like, let’s go running, let’s go on a couples’ retreat, let’s go car shopping, let’s get engaged—like me having depression is the only reason none of these things have happened already.”

  “What’s wrong with the Taurus?” I said.

  He laughed, the kind of laugh that took him by surprise. “Right? It’s not like I take the antidepressant because I drive a Taurus. It’s more like she wishes I drove something else, like she wants to go running and attend a couples’ retreat.”

  “And get married.”

  He finished his
drink and reached for the bottle again. “We did talk about it. A long time ago. That yeah, I wanted to get married, that I wasn’t interested in a relationship that wasn’t going to go somewhere. But somehow, in all of this, she convinced herself that we would have been married already if it wasn’t for my brain chemistry, and Pam’s very determined, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I have, in fact.”

  “So at dinner the other night, you got to see the tail end of that. She said, you have problems getting started, but I don’t, so let’s just do this.”

  I poured the rest of the bourbon from the bottle into my glass. “Have you talked to her since?”

  Tom nodded. “She apologized, but it was for telling you guys about it. Not for doing it. And it’s not been a great time to have that going on. I mean”—he gestured at the room around us—“Frank. Plus Mickey Dillman now, and granted, he wasn’t a close friend to me. But he was a friend, and I went with the guys who notified his wife, and things had been bad between them—you know all of this. But they’re getting divorced, she more or less hates him, and she’s still his emergency contact in his personnel file. So at the time I thought, that’s really fucking sad. Then I realized my emergency contact’s probably my mother, and she’s been gone for eleven years. So if anything happened to me, there’d be no one to tell.”

  “Hey,” I said, “don’t go there.”

  “I mean, I’m there already. It’s true.”

  “You can change your emergency contact, Tom.”

  “To who? Not to Pam, not now.”

  “Your sister. Me. Anyone. Just because your paperwork, which you filled out almost two decades ago, is outdated, that doesn’t mean you’re like Mickey Dillman, is my point.”

  “What if he walked down that boat ramp thinking to himself, ‘This is it, but at least someone will know’?”

  “Christ, Tom.”

  “I know. Sorry. This is the bourbon talking now.”

  “Is that really what happened? He walked into the river and, what, laid down?”