by Matt Shaner
“Be my guest.”
He sat down again in the kitchen as he had done on that night so long before. “Do you have any coffee?”
“Sure.” I started the pot.
“Where is your wife?”
”Still in bed,” I said. The coffee pot stirred to life behind us.
“That was something today. I’ve been doing interviews since you left.” His voice did have a trace of hoarseness in it. He absently rubbed his beard that was thick with five o’clock shadow. “So why did you do it?” I had no idea how to respond. Here was a man, sitting in the house and looking for the truth. What is truth? At that point, I had no idea and did not care anymore.
“Do what? Testify? They made me.”
“I think you know what I mean. I’ve been the lead investigator on this whole mess since it started.” The coffee was done, and I poured him a cup. He drank it.
“No. But I think you are planning on filling me in.” I was standing on the other side of the kitchen with intent to put as much space between him and me as possible.
“Yes I am. Did you forget how this all started on the night that poor kid of his was killed in the accident? I can understand why he would be mad. I’ve lost a son myself.” He paused as if to let me absorb that much. “You saw it happen. I read the accident report.” I flashbacked to the night it happened and the snow, the sound of the truck sliding on the ice and the thump of hitting Bryan’s son.
“Yeah I was there. I drove with Bryan to the hospital. What’s the point?” I started to get irritated.
“The point is that the reality behind everything was thrown out the window. The kid died, the driver vanished and then, oddly, the kid’s father.” He looked straight into my eye.
“Strange, I know.”
“I think you don’t know. At least, at that point, you had no idea. You watched life play out until you finally decided to do good and get involved. Your boys had their own little club over here. I think Bryan told you something he would do in revenge, and you tried to stop him.” He fingered the handle on the coffee mug.
“He was planning something.” If the detective was going to present his plan, I could at least sway him away from the truth.
“Really? Okay so we agree. And this had to do with kidnapping or killing the driver in the accident, right?” I thought, that since Bryan was gone, I would throw things back on him.
“That’s what he told us.”
“Oh was it? So let’s count. That’s accessory to a crime.” He tapped the countertop.
“We never thought he would do it; in fact, he told us he was blowing off steam.”
“I’m not here to debate. Let’s continue, shall we? When did he take the guy? The day he was reported missing?”
I felt myself backing further away and hoping he wouldn’t notice. “I have no idea.”
“Would you rather do this at the station?” he asked but still stayed in his seat. He seemed not anxious to get to that point.
“He called me and told me to come over. I went over, and he took me into the basement.” I worked my way backwards against the counter and stopped at what I knew was the knife drawer.
“The guy was in the basement.”
“Yeah, he had him tied up.”
“And why did you not call us?”
“He told me that he would kill me and my wife.” I was so happy Val slept through this exchange.
“So then you leave and what happens?” I noticed at this point that he was not writing anything down.
“I get the others and we go over. We decide to get the guy out and reason with Bryan. Drew, Shawn and I go over and make our way to the basement.”
“Did he try and stop you?” He shifted in his seat. He leaned in and readied himself for my answer.
“He did. We had a little conflict and things were settled.” I hesitated in telling him everything.
“That’s it?” He paused and seemed to be waiting for me to give a little.
“I told you that we left. We came; we saw; we left. There was nothing to be done.” I heard some shuffling upstairs. Val must have woken up and started to get ready for the rest of the day. I hoped she had not heard us, and I knew our time was short.
“I want you to know this. The line between good and bad is paper-thin. I meet people like you all the time, good people, people who may have been caught up in something ugly. When people get pressed, that’s when their true nature comes out. You finally discover who you are at the bottom of the pit. Are you there yet?” He stared at me this entire time.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I said. Val yelled down from the stairs asking me to come up. She did this every now and then, and I thought nothing more than it fit the moment. I had a way to dive in deeper and a way to get out. I decided to walk upstairs. “Excuse me for a moment.” I turned and jogged up the stairs.
“I’ll be here.”
When I hit the top of the steps I heard him on his cell phone and talking. I could not make out any words. Val was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, looking at me. She changed into relaxed clothes and had on her glasses.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“The detective.” Her face dropped. I pushed her into the room and shut the door slow enough to not make a racket. We sat on the bed.
“Does he suspect anything?”
“Somehow I think he has a pretty good idea of what happened, and he’s waiting for me to confirm it. I don’t think he’ll leave without an answer. Everyone else believed us, and he’s like a stone down there.”
“Okay. What do we do?” She said this with a slight coldness in her voice.
“Maybe it’s time to come clean. After everything today, why not? It’s not like he’ll arrest me here, especially after today.”
“You could be right, but what if you aren’t? I would die without you.” She put her arms around me.
“Then let’s get through this. Now, let’s do this together.” She looked up in my eyes, and we came to an agreement. We talked and made our way down the stairs.
He was still in the same position at the island in the kitchen and still on his cell phone. Val walked down behind me with her arm on my shoulder. I went to my position in the kitchen. Val walked to the other side of the island. He did not acknowledge her, and that irritated me.
I backed myself to the same drawer, and Val stopped in her position.
“So you were about to tell me something,” he said.
“Yes. Yes, I was. What were we talking about?”
“The night you went to see Bryan. The night that he disappeared.” I noticed he pulled out a note pad, and it was already filled with writing.
“Okay. We all went over.”
“All as in who?” He cut me off.
“Everyone left alive.” I realized how ominous that was when it came out. “We walked over and went down to the basement. The place was a mess, and the door was open. In his back room, he had the guy tied up. We had talked before and made up a plan to get the guy out.”
“So you wanted to be heroes?”
“Well, we had to do something.” By now, I gripped the knife from the drawer behind my back.
“Continue. This is the best thing I’ve heard all week.”
I started moving closer to him as I kept talking, not letting his sarcasm bother me. “We talked before and developed a plan. We decided to ambush him, but he ambushed us first, actually me to be more precise.” He was noting all of this down and stayed focus on his writing.
“He attacked you?”
“Yes. He charged me with a knife.”
“What was everyone else doing at this time?”
“They were waiting to react.”
“So you go down there, and he charges at you
with a knife. What did you do then?” He was looking in my eyes this time and not writing.
“I had grabbed a hammer from his pool table. I defended myself.” I knew that everything to this point was true and non-implicating for me. It would change in the near future.
“Did you hit him?”
“I did. It was him or me at that point.”
“Did the other’s step in?”
“They did. We all jumped him.”
“Where was the other guy? The hostage as you called him.”
“He was dead.” I noticed Val watching me. I think the truth of everything had made its way into her head, and she was digesting the experience.
“So murder was involved. Why did you not call us?”
“Well, considering I was getting attacked by an insane guy with a knife, it was not the first thing on my mind.” I realized the irony of this as I held a knife in my hand behind my back. I slipped it into my waistband.
“Fine. You are here now, and he is not. You had plenty of time to tell someone about his. It is vital information to the case, and from what I hear, obstruction of justice.” He kept eye contact while saying this to me. I did not waver. That small charge would be the least of my worries.
“Do you want the rest or not?”
“You have nothing to lose, so spill it,” he said.
“Look, what is this? Why exactly are you here?” A thought crossed my mind, and I did not want to let it go. “Are you charging me with something?”
“I’m finalizing my investigation. Also, you have no right to ask any questions. In case you didn’t realize it, I’m here searching for the truth, and you are going to give it to me.”
“Or what?”
He perked up when I asked this question. “You know, I came here with a point. I watched that shooting today, and it was a sad thing to see all those people hurt. When I let Shawn into the courthouse, I never knew he would take out so many.” He lowered his head for a moment. The reality of what he said hit me with a hammer.
“You let him in?”
“How else would a guy with a gun get into the courthouse? Of course, we have an official entrance in the back.”
“Did she make you do it?”
“She didn’t make me. She paid me. Don’t you see it yet? We picked the least stable one. You’re the last man standing. Now I want you to tell me what happened.” He pulled a tape recorder out of his pocket and placed it on the counter. After the recorder, he pulled out his gun. He pointed it at Val. “Tell me exactly what happened, and we know the truth. If you don’t tell me, I’ll shoot her and call for back up. Then I’ll shoot you while I’m defending myself. Isn’t that what you called it? I promise you this: you will end up in a bad situation. If you get smart, I will kill her. If I have to stop the tape and record over something, I’ll kill you both.” He punched the record button on the player. “Now tell me everything,” he said. “Start with the last night you saw him alive.”
This is not a situation I ever thought I would find myself in. Some parts of life carry that quality, and considering everything else we went through, it made sense that this would be the finisher. I looked into Val’s eyes. I looked into my soul for what felt like the first time in years. I thought about the house and our joy in buying it. I thought about everything and made my choice. I would do whatever it took to stop this from ending the wrong way.
“That night we went to his house, and the guy was being held hostage downstairs. We went to the basement and Bryan attacked us.”
“Continue,” he said, keeping the gun on Val.
“I had taken a hammer from the pool table for my protection. Bryan dove at me with a knife, and I hit him.”
“Did this hurt him?”
“It did. It killed him.”
“Then what did you do?”
“We removed Bryan’s teeth then burned the bodies in the fireplace.” My head dropped. Val was crying. I heard a sound in the distance.
“Do you know how many charges this will be? I think you’ll need to come with me.”
“Don’t you want to know what else we did?” I asked. The sound was getting closer.
“There’s more? Of course.”
“The fireplace was not enough.” The noise was right outside, but I don’t know how he missed it. I started to walk around the corner of the island. He slowly moved. He went closer to Val, and I hated each second. “We spread gasoline in the garage.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blue flash moving up to the house. This was my chance. I lunged with the knife, he turned at me, and the gunshot cracked through the air. A sound came at the same moment, and our front door flew open. Val screamed. That was the last thing I remembered.
I woke up to an intense pain in my right leg. I found out later, as my memory gradually returned, I remember hitting his arm as he fired on me. I pushed his arm low and the bullet hit my leg. The pain set off a fire from my leg directly into my forehead, and I passed out.
The light from the hospital is one I will not forget. The down time felt like sleep. It felt like the deepest sleep and darkest escape you ever experienced in your life. It felt like walking through a dream and not being able to find the other side. Then I rose up through it and opened my eyes. The light mimicked the fire of pain from my leg.
The sound kicked in after the light. I cannot tell you how noise is perceived after an eternity of silence. Each note weaves its way into your skull, and you can sense how it is formed. You hear the echo of your heart, and the cacophony of reality sets in after a while. You end up missing silence. You long for a few seconds of quiet and realize that the world denies all. Nothing in the waking sphere is without sound.
I looked to my left, and Val was sitting in a chair pulled up next to the bed. Her tears ran tracks down her face, and judging by the redness, the tracks were well used. Soreness shot through my neck and my upper body. I realized my sleeping position must not have changed often. Val reached out and took my hand, and we squeezed hard enough to join together and stay together. It was a time to reconnect, and I made a point to never leave her again.
Another visitor in my hospital times was a lawyer. It was not our lawyer friend, but a newer version. This was the top attorney in the county. He stopped in twice while I was in the hospital, and we set up an appointment to meet as soon as I left. I knew he had spoken with Val and figured that it could not be anything good.
The time of the visit came, and I felt as nervous as I did the day it all started. Again, I was back in the courthouse. This office was on a higher floor then the first one. His room occupied an entire corner. The receptionist told me that the District Attorney would see me now, and I made my way in.
The first thing that struck me was the massive desk. It sat directly in the center of the room and took over everything. File cabinets were against one wall. A library ran against another, and the back of his desk was flanked with degrees. I wondered if they were all college or if some were high school. It seemed impossible that one person could have so many from just college education. His chairs were plush leather, and I sank into one at his request.
This man also looked different then our first lawyer. He had a sweeping black part through his hair. He smiled like he was posing, and I wondered who he was trying to impress. This was someone considering a governorship in the next five years or so. A file was on his desk, and he put it aside.
“How are you? What was it, a month in recovery?” he asked.
“Well, a bullet can do that.”
“It’s good to see you alive. That was a dangerous situation.” He folded his hands in his lap.
“You could say that, yes, it was.” I tried to measure my words.
“I’m sure you are ready to know what you need to know. I have to tell you that I am bound by some restrictions of my position, but I will tel
l you what I can.” He leaned forward. “You have made a great sacrifice to this community.”
“You probably say that to everyone who is shot by a police officer and lives to tell about it.”
“Strong words from a man looking at a murder charge.” This put me back in my seat. “Can I continue?”
“Go for it.”
“Detective Williams was, is, the subject of an ongoing Internal Affairs investigation for inappropriate conduct.”
“You mean, as in blackmail and shooting people?”
“That and other things. We had him under surveillance. The shooting of your friend, we feel that he was involved. He has been dealing with the recently deceased defendant since her arrest.” I took a few moments to absorb this. He made sense for Julia. A police officer would make a perfect ally in the situation.
“He was working for her?”
“We actually believe before her arrest. We think sometime after her husband’s disappearance. He was selected to be on the investigation by, regrettably, a former colleague of mine.”
My mind flashed to the night of the fire where we were told about the relationship between Julia and the lawyer. I wondered why he stayed involved for so long and why he seemed to be gone now. “We had more people against us then we knew.”
“You did. This entire thing was a mess. We, the city, are ashamed of how things turned out, and that so many lives had to be lost. That doesn’t change what is on this, though.” He pulled open a drawer and took out the tape recorder from the detective. He put it in the center of the massive desk. My mind flashed to the incident again and what I had said on that tape.
“You have to understand, he forced me into saying it.”
“Not at first, that much is clear. We have enough on tape without you under duress . . .” He scanned my face for a reaction.
I tried to focus on one of his degrees on the wall. “After all this, you’re going to prosecute?”
“I actually have a proposal. We would like your help in sealing this investigation. I’m heading the case against detective Williams and the others involved in this conspiracy. I could use your help.”