“And then there’s this,” Mike Duncan said as he pulled out another set of photographs. These were of Gabe’s abdomen and back. “A few were snapped at the scene before the body was moved.” Duncan slid three others closer to Andy. “These with the rulers in the shot, Warner took them during the autopsy. The bruises on his abdomen and chest appear to be several days old. The ones on his back,” he said as he fished out a couple of other photographs, “are from the night the boy died. They may have been made by the fall out of bed, if that’s how he died.”
“And if not?” Andy asked.
“Then someone had been beating the crap out of this little guy on a regular basis,” Duncan said. “We also found some fresh scratches on the backs of his hands, like he’d put up a fight against something.” Mike Duncan must have seen Andy’s face flush red, like he was about to pop his cork, because he immediately said, “Now settle down. That doesn’t mean the dad was the one abusing the boy.”
“Like hell it doesn’t.”
“Think about it, Andy,” Duncan said. “The kid was on the top bunk. The ceilings are pretty low in that dump of an apartment complex and they all have that blown-on, popcorn-looking texturing. You ever hit your hand against that crap? It can do some damage. And what do kids do when they have a bad dream? They roll around and fight the demons attacking them in the night. There’s a pretty good chance the kid scratched his hands on the ceiling.”
“If he fell out of bed while having a nightmare,” Andy said.
“Exactly.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“You tell me,” Duncan replied.
Andy paused and let that soak in for a moment. Duncan started putting the photographs away when Andy said, “You know the guy has already cleaned out the apartment, don’t you? Scrubbed it clean from top to bottom and moved out.”
“What?!” Duncan shook his head. “Holy crap. And right about the time I’m ready to give this guy the benefit of the doubt . . . Man, that’s quick. The kid’s been dead, what, three whole days?”
“Four,” Andy said.
“You clean out a place that fast, it sure looks like you have something to hide.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Andy said.
The rest of Andy’s shift went by without any major incidents. He made a few traffic stops, and was called out to a possible fire. The fire turned out to be nothing more than smoke wafting through a window from a neighbor burning trash. He cited the neighbor for burning after dark, and watched as the fire department dumped a few gallons of water into the trash barrel to douse the flames. Throughout his shift Andy kept an eye out for John Phillips, but he couldn’t go off searching for him. For that matter, he didn’t even know where to start looking. At 11:00 p.m., he dropped back by the station to clock out and brief the poor sap pulling the graveyard shift. Andy had to go back into the station a second time to retrieve the folder and cassette tape from his locker. Flipping the tape around in his right hand, he said, “God, I hope she didn’t talk too much.”
Chapter 4
I’VE ALWAYS HEARD that prison changes a man, but I never knew how true that really is. John changed while he was in the joint. By the time he got out, he wasn’t the man I married. Funny, I never really heard of people changing like he did. He came out sooooooo religious, it was nauseating. Don’t get me wrong, I liked some parts of the new John. He stopped drinking, which was good because he usually got violent when he got too drunk. But I didn’t think that meant I had to stop drinking. I wasn’t the one with the problem, so why should I quit? I’ve got to be honest. I missed hitting the bars together. Yeah, he got mean when he got drunk, but he was also fun. And funny. I know Jesus can change people. I just never knew God wanted ’em so dull.”
Fast-forward. It was Andy’s third time to listen to the tape. He wanted to hit the highlights one more time while it was all fresh in his mind. As he listened, he made notes in his Big Chief pad.
“. . . could take the personal changes. I could live with going to church on Sundays and not getting stoned at the occasional concert. You know, Gabe was getting old enough that we didn’t have any business doing that stuff anyways. And he really liked going to Sunday school. Gabe loved Sunday school. I think it was the favorite part of his week. I kept taking him even after his father and I split up. Gabe really loved Sunday school.”
Fast-forward.
“. . . so I don’t know a lot about God and Jesus. I mean, I went to church when I was a kid. My mother made me and my sister go to nearly every Vacation Bible School in town in the summers when we were kids. We had fun, and for her it was a week of free child care each time. So I know some things about God, not a lot, but enough to know that John wasn’t normal. Like I said, I didn’t have a problem with him cleaning up his act. He landed in prison, for Christ’s sake, he needed a little cleaning up. It’s when he started giving things away and bringing people home, that’s when the problems started.”
Fast-forward.
“. . . things like food, clothes, even money. It wasn’t like we had an overabundance. I’ll never forget the time he gave a hundred dollars to some person he hardly knew. I didn’t know them at all. Our rent was due in a few days, and he gave a huge chunk of it away. When I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, he told me to ‘trust God.’ He said God wouldn’t let us down when we obey Him. Okay, I’m all for helping people out when they need it, but John’s helping others made us candidates for charity ourselves. I managed to juggle around some of our other bills to make rent, but it put a lot of stress on me. John took the fact that we didn’t lose our home as proof that God had come through. I didn’t see it that way.”
Fast-forward.
“. . . different people. Never anyone we knew. Sometimes they were homeless. I pleaded with him to stop. I told him that bringing strange people into our home put both me and Gabe in danger. John would just quote some Bible verse about ‘the least of these’ and tell me not to worry. I do not know or care what the least of these are. All I know is bringing a stranger into your home when you have a wife and small child is not safe. Period. He never understood why I would worry. Trust God, he would say. Trust God. Trust God. Just trust God. He said it so much that I thought it was just some cliché he hid behind when he didn’t want to take responsibility for what was going on.”
Fast-forward.
“. . . the prostitute was the last straw.”
Rewind.
“. . . but the prostitute was the last straw.”
Rewind.
“The down-and-out bums were bad enough, but the prostitute was the last straw. Yeah. He brought a prostitute into our home. Even introduced her to Gabe. Like all the other people he let sleep on our couch, John said she didn’t have anywhere else to stay. Said she’d just given her life to Jesus and she needed a safe place where her pimp wouldn’t find her. I shudder to think what might have happened if he had. I was furious. I threw out the sheets she slept on. I can only imagine what we might have caught from them. She stayed with us for three days until John found somewhere else that would take her. Three days. He even went out and bought her some new clothes. Like we could afford to buy some whore new clothes. I hadn’t had anything new in months, not that John noticed or cared.” Loraine let out a long sigh on the tape. “After that, I was done. I couldn’t take it anymore. Can you blame me?”
Fast-forward.
“. . . mission trip. Guatemala, I’m pretty sure it was Guatemala. I didn’t think ex-cons could leave the country. He did. He went with a group of men from his church for ten days in Guatemala. I think they built a church. Like I said, by that point I was done. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what he did. While he was on the mission trip, I loaded up Gabe and myself and all our stuff, and moved here. Our house was completely empty when he got back. John’s stuff? I gave it to the Salvation Army. I thought it only appropriate. I don’t know how he reacted when he found the house all empty. If I cared, I wouldn’t have done it like
that.”
Fast-forward.
“Yes, I found someone else. I needed to be with a man. A real man, not some . . .”
Rewind.
“. . . needed to be with a man. A real man, not . . .”
Rewind.
“. . . found someone else. I needed to be with a man. A real man, not some, you know . . . When? The same week; while he was on his mission trip. No, I didn’t think that was fast. My husband had been gone for a couple of years. Like I told you, John was no longer the man I married. And I needed a man. I’m sure he knew what I’d done. He had to know. The way I see it, I did him a favor. Since I went out and ‘committed fornication,’ he’s free to find himself a woman more suited to his new tastes. Whatever. I really didn’t give a damn what he did. And, no, I never thought he would retaliate like this. Do you think I would have gone through with it if I thought he would kill my little boy to get back at me?”
Fast-forward.
“He’d threatened me on more than one occasion. You won’t have any trouble finding witnesses to back up what I am telling you. It should be in the transcripts from his trial. That’s why he went to prison. All I did was talk to the guy. He was nice, and I was just being polite. I’d felt ugly for a long time. I got really big with Gabe. It was our first time to go out after he was born, our first night of letting him stay with a babysitter. But John didn’t think the guy was being nice. He said he watched the guy staring at my boobs all night. Like I said, I got really big with Gabe, in more ways than one. The guy said something, I don’t even remember what, when I walked past him on my way back from the bathroom. Next thing I know, John has the guy on the ground and has to be drug off.”
Fast-forward.
“. . . hit me in the past.”
Rewind.
“. . . answer to your question, yes, he hit me in the past. Several times. No, it wasn’t just when he was drunk. Alcohol gave him a shorter fuse, but sometimes he would just snap. You know, he would just explode and I would sit there and go, where did that come from? When he got really angry, I would try to get away until he cooled down. And, no, he hasn’t hit me since he got out of prison. Nor do I recall any threats made after he got out. But I don’t see how that matters. He is who he is.”
Fast-forward.
“. . . told me that if I ever left him, I would regret it. Now I do. He killed my little boy to get back at me for what I’d done to him. I never imagined he could hurt me so bad.”
Rewind.
“He told me that if I ever left him, I would regret it.”
Rewind.
“. . . if I ever left him, I would regret it.”
Rewind.
“. . . I would regret it.”
Andy clicked off the tape and leaned back in his chair. “Christ,” he said as he stared at the tape player. “Holy, holy Christ.” He ran his hand over the top of his head and tried to think. “Whew.” He stood and walked from the kitchen table to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “She emptied everything out of the house while he was out of the country?” He shook his head in disbelief and said to his dark and empty house, “I’ve heard of bitter ex-wives, but, man, she wins the gold medal.” Walking from the kitchen through his living room, he opened his beer and took a long drink as he passed on into his bedroom. On the nightstand, next to his bed, lay the picture of Gabe and Loraine. Andy sat down on the bed and picked it up.
I’m not sure how long he sat there staring at the photograph he’d picked up in Gabe’s room, but eventually he wound up back at his kitchen table with his Big Chief pad. He flipped it open to the page with the word “why” printed across the top, and began writing. “Why would a woman accuse her son’s father of killing his own child?” he wrote on the first line, which was immediately followed by “Can anyone really hate another human being enough to make something like this up????????!” This was, Andy told me, the key question that would determine how far he would go in the investigation. The most incriminating evidence he’d found at this stage were Loraine’s words the night of Gabe’s death. All of the physical evidence turned on her accusation. Any woman who would empty out the house and move away while her husband was off on a mission trip seemed capable of about anything. But accusing her former husband of murder was more than anything. At the very least, John could end up locked away for a very, very long time. With the recent Supreme Court decision opening the door for executions, it was conceivable that John could receive the death penalty if he had, in fact, killed Gabe in cold blood. Loraine had to know this. He scrawled, “If she were just making this up, why would she take it this far?”
Andy got up, grabbed the Big Chief pad, and moved to the living room. The cuckoo clock on his wall cuckooed three times. Plopping down on the couch, he let out a long yawn, then wrote, “Why would a father kill his only son?” Andy had read accounts of parents who killed children during bitter custody disputes. However, it is far more common for those who do to go ahead and kill themselves as well, rather than wait around to get caught. Or, if someone is driven to kill, it is more likely he would kill the ex-spouse who’s making his life a living hell. As his mind tried to wrap itself around these questions, Andy’s hand kept writing “why” over and over again. At the end of the page, he added two more sentences: “Why Gabe?” and “Why me?”
He let out a long sigh, then headed to the fridge for one last beer before going to bed.
Even though he fell asleep very quickly, Andy felt like he was still awake. It was like one of those nights when you cram for a test back in college. You study and study and study, and when you finally fall asleep, you feel like you are still studying. That’s how Andy’s night went. He kept hearing Loraine’s voice talking and talking and talking. The sound of her voice took him back to her apartment. He rolled over in her bed and there stood John, staring at him.
The phone ringing broke into his dream. Andy slapped at the phone, unsure of where he was. “Hello,” he mumbled.
“Officer Myers?”
“Yeah. Who wants to know?”
“It’s Jeanine Martin, the apartment manager at Madison Park. You asked me to call if I heard from John Phillips.”
“Uhhh, yeah.” Andy looked around his room. Loraine was not there, and neither was John.
“Well, he’s here right now. He came by to turn in his keys and sign the papers terminating his lease. I can stall him if you want me to. Otherwise, I think he’s in a hurry to leave.”
Andy’s mind slowly caught up with his body. “Yeah, yeah, do that, please. I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and sat up in his bed. The line between his dream and reality still felt very thin. He yanked the covers up off his bed, just to make sure no one else was in there. “Loraine?” he yelled toward the other end of the house. No answer. Once he was sure he had, in fact, been dreaming, he threw on his uniform and rushed out the door.
The Madison Park Apartments were already familiar territory for Andy. It had always been a place where low-income families, especially single mothers, moved in and out. No one ever stayed there long. Few, if any, of the people who called it home had any kind of deep roots in Trask. (Of course, in a town like this, if you weren’t born here, you’re a newcomer until the day you die, even if you live to be a hundred. That’s just the way it is in little towns in the Midwest. Always has been. Always will be.) Outside the connections kids make with one another in school and sports, most of the people out there don’t even make a blip on the rest of the town’s radar. The whole complex could get picked up by aliens and hauled off to some galaxy far, far away, and no one outside the guy who runs the liquor store and the woman who hands out the food stamps would notice or care.
And that included Andy. By his third trip out there in less than a week, he was getting pretty sick of the place. Up to this point in his life, the apartment complex had always been a pain in the butt to him. Now it smelled like death. Just pulling into the parking lot was enough to put him in a bad mood. “Man, I hate this stinking hole
,” he said as he walked through what passed for grass between two of the buildings to look for the manager’s office. Even though it was barely 8:30 a.m., a crowd of children had already gathered on the dilapidated playground equipment behind the laundry building. Andy had to step over several bicycles strewn about on the sidewalk leading to the complex office. The office, of course, was empty. “Crap,” he mumbled, and walked back into the main parking lot. After standing around, feeling stupid for what felt much longer than it actually was, he played a hunch and walked up the stairs of building three to the Phillips apartment. The door stood open and Andy could hear Jeanine Martin and John talking inside. Apparently, little Miss Martin told John she had to inspect the apartment for damages before he could get out of his lease. She was a pretty good liar for an old lady.
Andy knocked lightly on the door frame. “Mind if I come in?” he asked.
“I was about to leave, so don’t mind me,” John said. Finishing his conversation with the apartment manager, he said, “Again, thank you so much for your understanding, Miss Martin. I appreciate it more than you can know.” He then started walking toward the door. “Good to see you again, Officer Myers.”
“Where you going in such a hurry?” Andy asked.
“I’m already late for work,” John said. “I had only planned on stopping by here for a minute to drop off my keys. So, if you will excuse me . . .”
The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips Page 6