The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips

by Stephen Baldwin

  “He did it, Jax. You know it. I know it. The kid next door knows it,” Andy said.

  “Maybe. We’ll find out. That’s the whole point of an investigation anyway. Right?”

  “Yeah, man, whatever you say,” Andy said.

  Andy hung up the phone, rolled back in his chair, and kicked his desk. “Dammit. You need more evidence? I’ll give you evidence. I’ll give you so much flipping evidence that you’ll choke on it.” He grabbed the phone and punched in seven numbers, and when I say punched, I mean punched. He abused that poor phone. After three rings, the other end picked up. “Loraine,” Andy said, “this is Andy Myers. Do you have time to answer a couple of questions for me? I’m working on your son’s case and I just need to clarify a few things.” She couldn’t see him until the next day, which was fine for Andy. It was getting late and he needed time to mentally prepare himself to see Loraine.

  Chapter 6

  ANDY FOUND HIMSELF standing next to Gabe’s grave. The sun had gone down hours earlier, and the moon cast very little light, but he knew it was Gabe’s grave. A layer of dry and shriveled flowers left over from the funeral were scattered across the still-fresh dirt. Andy had a teddy bear in a cop’s uniform in his hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to drop it on top of the rotting flowers. Instead, he just stood there, breathing in the heavy night air, staring down at the grave, silent. Even if he had been able to think of something to say, the words wouldn’t form on his lips. Nor could he cry. His eyes stayed bone-dry the whole time he stood there. Staring.

  “Do you really think I would kill my only son because of you?”

  Andy turned around to see John Phillips walking up a path between headstones about ten yards behind him. “What did you say?” Andy asked.

  “I said, do you really think I would kill my only son because of you?” John spit out those last three words like someone had made his lemonade with salt.

  “I have a witness,” Andy said.

  “You don’t have anything. You know it, I know it, and the kid next door knows it.” John kept walking until he’d closed to within fifteen feet of Andy.

  “I know what you did,” Andy said, and turned back to Gabe’s grave.

  “You don’t know anything. Do you really think I would kill my only son because of you?” John began laughing. Andy tried to ignore him. “DO YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD KILL MY ONLY SON BECAUSE OF YOU!” he shouted.

  “Yes,” Andy said in almost a whisper.

  “Oh, that is rich.” John laughed. “That is sooooo rich,” he said as he fell to the ground and began rolling around in the grass, laughing uncontrollably.

  “Yes,” Andy repeated, louder. “Yes, I know you did it. I know you killed Gabe.” Andy moved from the grave site to where John lay on the ground, laughing. The sound of his laughter enraged Andy. “I know what you did. I know you killed him.” Andy was now standing directly over John.

  “Because of you?” John could barely get the words out, he was laughing so hard.

  “YES!” Andy shouted. “Because of me.” His words only made John laugh harder. “BECAUSE OF ME!” Andy yelled as he kicked John hard in the side. “I know you killed HIM!” He kicked John again, and again, and again, but each time Andy kicked him, John only laughed harder. “I KNOW YOU KILLED HIM!” Andy screamed.

  “Because of you?”

  “YES! BECAUSE OF ME. IT WAS ALL BECAUSE OF ME!” he shouted. Andy reared back and kicked John as hard as he could in his face.

  “You don’t know anything,” John said with the same cold tone of the drive-through worker at McDonald’s asking if you want fries with that.

  Andy sat straight up in bed, his sheets soaked with sweat. “What’s wrong?” Loraine asked, lying beside him.

  “The dr-dream . . . ,” Andy stammered, “it felt so real.”

  “It was,” Loraine said. “Do you really think he would kill my son because of you?”

  ANDY AWOKE in a panic, his pulse racing. “Oh, God,” he panted. Although neither John nor Loraine had come to him during the night, the question they asked rang in his ears. “This has nothing to do with me,” he said to the silence. “I didn’t do anything. Hell, I didn’t even know she had a kid. And besides, I didn’t go looking for her, she came looking for me.” He climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom to relieve himself. When he came back to bed, he glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. It was 2:06 in the morning, exactly one week to the minute since the dispatcher sent him on the call where he discovered Gabe’s dead body. Andy knew he would never get back to sleep.

  A half hour later he was behind the wheel of his 1972 Impala, heading toward the Adamsburg Memorial Gardens. A small bear in a cop uniform lay on the seat beside him. Andy had picked it up the day before, intending to place it on Gabe’s grave. Even though cemetery workers cleared off everything except flowers at least once or twice a week, Andy figured it was the thought that counted. And he couldn’t stop thinking about Gabe. “Now’s as good a time as any,” he said to the dashboard. He’d been to the cemetery one other time, the day after Gabe’s funeral, but that had been in daylight. He hoped he could find the grave in the dark.

  The Impala’s headlights shone on the closed gates of the cemetery. Visiting hours officially ended at dusk and would not begin again for another three hours when the sun came up. Shifting the car into park, Andy climbed out, opened the gate (no one ever locked them, and half the time the work crews forgot to close them, but what do you expect from minimum-wage workers?), and drove inside. Driving down the main cemetery drive, Andy counted off one, two, three, four side roads. He turned on the fifth of six roads, which led to the part of the cemetery where they buried babies and children. He went to the very end of the road and parked his car. If memory served him correctly, and who knows at three in the morning, Gabe’s grave was somewhere on the fourth row to the south of the road, almost to the end. Thankfully for Andy, Gabe’s was the only new grave in this section of the cemetery.

  As in his dream, Andy stood over Gabe’s grave in silence for nearly fifteen minutes, the bear in his hand. All of the flowers from the funeral had long since been removed. Two vases full of fresh flowers sat where the headstone would eventually go. At least they looked fresh to Andy in the near darkness. The only light came from a streetlight about twenty yards away. Finally Andy crouched down and laid the bear atop the dirt covering the grave. “I got this for you,” he said. “It’s not much. Just a little something to let you know I’m thinking about you. I think about you a lot. I miss you. I really miss you.” He paused and stood silently for a while. “You know, I never really liked kids before I met you. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that, but you’ve probably figured it out by now.” He paused again before saying, “You were a special boy, Gabriel Phillips. I can’t believe you are gone.” Tears began to well up in Andy’s eyes, but he fought them off. “I don’t know why this happened, but I’m trying . . . I’m trying to fix it.” He didn’t say anything else for several minutes as he stared down at the grave. “So maybe this will remind you of me,” he said. “I don’t really know if you can see it or not from where you are now. Like the song says, ‘I don’t know what happens when people die. I can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try.’ Jackson Browne said that. Couldn’t have said it better myself.” Andy reached down and patted the grave as a way of saying good-bye. “Anyway, I hope you like the bear.”

  Andy walked back to his car, started it, and drove back through the main entrance. He stopped on the other side, climbed out of his car, and shut the gates. An Adamsburg police car pulled up and shone a spotlight on him. “Everything okay there, buddy?”

  “It’s okay, Officer, I’m a cop. Andy Myers. Trask P.D.”

  “What are you doing in the cemetery at this hour?”

  “Business. Just taking care of a little business.”

  “You mind showing me some ID,” the policeman asked. Andy flashed his badge, to which the officer said, “I don’t know about Trask, but over here we don’t
spend a lot of time in cemeteries after dark.”

  “Got it. Yeah, that’s fine,” Andy said. “I was just leaving anyway.” He climbed back into his Impala and drove away. Sleep still wouldn’t be too easy to come by, Andy knew that. Once he reached his house, he walked into his kitchen, pulled a bottle of Scotch out of the cabinet, and proceeded to get smashed. He didn’t even pretend to drink for any other reason. Pouring a drink into a glass, he tossed it down in one gulp like a teetotaler with a head cold taking NyQuil. Then he gulped down another and another and another until he felt completely numb. Then he took one more drink, lay down on the couch, and passed out.

  Chapter 7

  LORAINE LOOKED GOOD, really good, when she opened her door and invited Andy inside the next afternoon. He struggled to concentrate on why he had come by. His eyes undressed her as she stood in the doorway. It didn’t take a lot of effort. She’d opened that door for him on more than one occasion without wearing a stitch of clothing. Not this day. “Hello, Officer,” she said coldly, “right on time. Won’t you come in.” It wasn’t so much what she said as the way she said it. Andy felt like he needed to introduce himself, it was almost like they were meeting for the first time.

  “Thank you, Ms. Phillips, er, Loraine. This won’t take too long,” he said as he walked inside. He sat on a chair across from Loraine, who sat on the couch. Andy took a quick glance around the room. The house looked exactly like he remembered it, but Loraine didn’t. At least she didn’t look at him the way she had just over a week before. Watching the two of them, you could have never guessed they had once been lovers. All of the sexual heat and chemistry Andy said once existed was gone. It was as if it had never been there.

  “On the phone you said you had a couple of questions regarding my son’s murder,” she said, getting right to the point.

  “Uh, yes, yeah,” he stammered. Given their history, Andy was surprised to find himself so nervous sitting across from her now. “I’ve, uhhh, been investigating the case and, uhh, I wondered if you could answer a couple of questions for me.”

  “Yes. I assumed that’s why you were here, since that’s what you said over the phone. What do you need to know?”

  “A couple of things, uh, just a couple of things. Uhhhh, in your taped statement to the sheriff’s department investigators, you mentioned how your ex-husband would—”

  “Husband,” she interrupted.

  “Excuse me?” Andy said.

  “Technically, he’s still my husband. We separated six months ago, but we are still married. The divorce hasn’t gone through yet.”

  “Uh, yeah, okay.” He tried to regain his composure. “In your taped statement to the detectives assigned to this case, you said your husband would regularly bring home strangers who had nowhere to stay and allow them to sleep on your couch.”

  “Correct.”

  Pulling a pad out of his pocket, he flipped it open and said, “And you also said that, and I quote, ‘the prostitute was the last straw.’ ”

  “Yes. He brought home a prostitute and allowed her to stay in our home for three or four days. As if that weren’t enough, he also bought her new clothes and started the process of finding her a job.”

  “How did he come into contact with this prostitute?” Andy asked.

  “He says he met her when he and a group of people from his church went to downtown Indy and preached on the street,” Loraine said.

  “Do you believe him?”

  Loraine looked Andy in the eye and said with a cold, matter-of-fact tone, “The bastard killed my son. What do you think?”

  Andy didn’t know exactly what to think, which was why he had asked the question. “Do you recall her name and where she may be now?”

  “Why in the bloody hell would I want to know where she is now? Her name? I don’t know. Bambi or Angel or something. If you want to find her, his church can probably steer you in the right direction. The Redeemer’s House of Deliverance over in Crosse, that’s where he goes. He’s gone there since he got out of prison. That church takes care of whores and bums all the time. Check with them.” Loraine appeared to be getting bored with Andy’s questions. She glanced at her watch, tapped her foot, and asked, “Anything else, Officer?”

  “Uhh, yes, uhh, the coroner discovered several bruises on your son’s body. Most of these were old and clearly did not occur the night of his death. Do you know how he got these?”

  “I don’t know anything about any bruises,” Loraine said. “That makes a couple of questions. Are you finished, Officer?”

  “No, not quite. There’s just one more thing, one question that’s been bothering me since I first started on this case. No matter how hard I try to imagine it, I can’t help but wonder why a man would kill his own son.”

  “You have a son, you tell me,” Loraine said. “Is a father’s love so strong that he would never do anything to harm his precious child?” Sarcasm dripped from her words.

  Andy didn’t take the bait. If he wasn’t in full cop mode before this point, he was now. “From what I have observed and heard, your husband had a better than average relationship with his son, especially given the fact that the two of you were separated. I can’t help but wonder how he moved so quickly from loving father to murderer.”

  “Don’t you?” Loraine said in a hushed tone. Her entire demeanor changed like she’d thrown some internal switch.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I thought you had probably figured that out by now, Andy.” Her eyes dropped to the floor.

  “Figured out what, Loraine?”

  “That Gabe wasn’t John’s son.” Tears began rolling down her cheeks.

  “Did John know this?” Andy asked.

  “Yes. I told him the night he killed him. When I dropped Gabe off at his apartment, he started pressing me for more visitation time. He told me how much Gabe missed him and how much he loved his son and that a boy needs his father more than an odd weekend here or there and a random weeknight whenever I might call and ask if he could watch him. He said he was ready to file formal divorce papers and request either full custody or joint physical custody.” She looked up at Andy, her eyes red, the harsh tone she’d used earlier now gone. “But he didn’t just say it. He started raising his voice and threatening me. He said no court in the state of Indiana would give a child to a two-bit whore like me and that he wanted his son, and he would get him one way or another.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him not to bother. I told him the truth. I told him Gabe was not his son.”

  “What did he do?” Andy asked.

  “He pulled up his hand like he was going to backhand me and called me a lying slut. I told him to go ahead and hit me, and I threatened to take Gabe with me right then and there and never let him see him again. Well, that calmed him down. He started pleading with me not to take his son away. He acted all sorry and begged me not to say such horrible lies, that we could work out a way for Gabe to spend time with both of us, that that’s all Gabe really wanted. I told him to believe whatever he wanted to believe. And then I told that son of a bitch to never threaten me again.”

  “Why didn’t you tell this to the detectives when you spoke with them?” Andy asked.

  “I couldn’t, Andy,” she answered, her tone almost pleading. “I was telling him the truth. Gabe wasn’t his son. But I couldn’t admit something like that to complete strangers. I couldn’t have them look at me like that, like I am some kind of whore. I’m not a bad person. I swear it. Yes, I was unfaithful to John a long time ago and ended up pregnant, but it was just one time. I’m not that kind of woman. And, yes, I left him for you, but that was completely different. He pushed me to that. He wasn’t the same man anymore. I needed a man. Can you understand that?”

  Andy didn’t know what to say. He muttered something like, “Yeah, I can,” and he even started to move over closer to her to comfort her, but he was afraid of where that might lead, and at this point, he knew he couldn’t do anything to scre
w up the investigation.

  Here’s the part that gets to me: he believed everything she told him. He believed it as if Mother Teresa had been on that couch telling him this story rather than a woman who wasn’t exactly the poster child for honesty and integrity.

  “I shouldn’t have left Gabe with him that night. I knew I shouldn’t leave Gabe there, not after what I’d said. But we had plans, you and me, and I didn’t want to break them. I didn’t want to disappoint you. I never wanted to disappoint you,” she said as she stared into his eyes.

  A part of Andy thought she was trying to seduce him, but somehow he knew better. “That’s all I need, Loraine. Thank you for your time,” he said as he got up to leave. “This helps a lot.”

  “Andy?” she said in that unmistakable tone that got Andy into this mess six months earlier.

  “Yes,” he said, turning.

  “You won’t let him get away with this, will you?”

  “No, Loraine. If he did it, I will nail him. I already promised you that.”

  “He did it,” she said. “You know he did it.”

  “Yeah,” Andy said as he headed toward the door to leave. “I think he did.”

  Andy sat in his car for a few minutes and processed what he’d just heard. In his mind, he’d never been able to figure out how a father, even a bad one, could willingly kill his child. But if the child wasn’t his, that changed everything. That also provided the missing piece to the puzzle as to why John would flip out and kill Gabe when he did. Loraine left him six months earlier, and by her own admission, she’d let John know she’d found someone else. Even if she hadn’t, Gabe had surely told him about the new man in his mother’s life. If John was going to fly into a jealous rage, it surely would have come earlier, during one of these other milestones in their breakup. But it wasn’t just jealousy that drove him to kill. If John wasn’t Gabe’s father, that little boy now represented everything that had destroyed John’s life. It all started to make perfect sense to Andy. Now he just needed to find enough evidence to convince Ted Jackson to go to the D.A.’s office for an indictment.