Full Release

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Full Release Page 6

by Marshall Thornton


  The officers stretched yellow crime scene tape across the entrance to my garage. Then the tall, white officer walked down my side yard and looked over the fence into the back.

  Ten minutes later a van arrived. On its side in black letters it said CORONER. Two men wearing black jackets that said Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office got out. They walked up to the garage and stood chatting with the police officers. Then one of them slipped under the crime tape and walked over to Eddie’s body, did some more looking around, and came back out.

  Strangers stood in front of my garage, staring at a corpse. I began to feel peripheral, as though I was watching some bizarre television show being filmed at my house without my consent. All I wanted to do was somehow run time backward and get to a place where I felt safe and in control.

  A brown Crown Vic parked at the curb in front of my house. Two plain-clothes detectives got out of the enormous car, a man and a woman. Without a word they walked by me and conferred first with the police officers and then with one of the men from the Coroner’s office. Eventually, they came back down the driveway to me.

  Detective Aaron Tripp introduced himself. He was a tall, light-skinned black man in a nice suit. His partner was Detective Lucinda Hanson. She was nearly as tall as he was, with dark hair and pale skin. I blurted out a couple of things in a rush. That I’d just come home from the gym. That I’d tried to open the garage door, and when I got under the door there he was. That I hadn’t gone in there all the way.

  “Slow down, okay? What’s your name?” Detective Tripp asked, as he took out a spiral notebook.

  I stopped, felt silly for not telling him in the first place, and said, “Matt, Matt Latowski,” He started to write my name down, but then stopped to make me spell it.

  “All right, Matt, tell me what happened.”

  “Um, as I said, I was at the gym and then, when I came home, I tried to put my car in the garage, but the door wouldn’t open all the way. So, I got out of the car and I tried to lift it, but could only get it up so far… I kind of bent over and got underneath and there he was.”

  “Did you go into the garage?”

  “No. I mean, I would have, but he looked so dead.”

  Detective Tripp studied me a moment, then pulled his partner a few feet up the driveway for some kind of conference. He leaned over to whisper something in her ear. She listened, then whispered a response. Her response was longer, obviously detailed. She rested a hand on his arm while she talked. Finally, she stopped, took a step back, and raised a questioning eyebrow. Then she walked away.

  Tripp seemed to take a moment to absorb what his partner had just whispered to him. He walked back to me. This time, the detective positioned himself a few steps to the right. I realized he did this so I would face him and by facing him I’d be looking away from Eddie’s corpse -- which had been on full view since the first officers forced my garage door open. I can’t say I minded.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Tripp asked, his voice blandly neutral.

  I shook my head. “We’ve had a couple dates. That’s all.”

  In that instant, I decided I shouldn’t tell the police how I met Eddie. Somewhere he had a family, a mother, a dad. Some cop, maybe even this guy, was going to come to the door and tell them that their son had killed himself. It would be awful. But it would be worse if they found out he was the kind of masseuse who specialized in a full release -- an escort, really.

  “But you left him alone in your house?”

  In the garage, Detective Hanson had begun to take photos of Eddie. They’d set up a couple portable lights. Between the flash and the portable lights, my garage seemed to glow.

  “You left him alone in your house?” Tripp repeated. “Even though you didn’t know him well.”

  “We had a date last night. He stayed over. This morning when I left for work he was still sleeping. I expected he’d be gone before I got home.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Eddie.”

  “Last name?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “How many dates did you have? Exactly.”

  “Two. Just two.” I hoped that made me sound a little less stupid for not knowing Eddie’s last name. Though it probably made me look even dumber for leaving him alone in my place.

  “How did you meet him?” the detective asked.

  “Online.”

  He nodded, as though suicide after an Internet date was pretty common. “It’s still pretty upsetting, though,” he suggested. Up to this point, he’d been so businesslike. I appreciated the kindness in his voice.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Suicide is hard thing for people to understand.”

  I nodded.

  “Was he angry at you?” Tripp asked.

  “We didn’t know each other well enough for him to be angry.”

  “He seem like a stable guy? There was no indication he might do this?”

  “He called me earlier in the day. We talked about what to have for dinner.”

  “You talked about having dinner? You just said you hoped he’d be gone by the time you got home.”

  “I did. But it wasn’t working out that way.” Suddenly, I felt very guilty about having wanted to dump this poor guy. What if I’d come home earlier? What if I’d been more interested in spending time with him?

  In the garage, an electric saw began to whir, and I jumped. I tried to take a step and look around the detective. He moved to block me. Without looking, I knew what they were doing. They were cutting Eddie down. Still, I asked, “What are they doing?”

  “It’s all right. They won’t damage anything any more than they have to.” Given the sounds, I didn’t believe that possible.

  “Did you reject Eddie?” he asked, getting back to business. “Ask him to leave? Freak him out in anyway?”

  “I was hoping he’d get the hint, you know? I went to the gym and hoped he’d be--” I stopped, looked the detective right in the eye. “You don’t think he killed himself because I didn’t come home for dinner, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said, in a reassuring voice. “But I do need to figure out what did happen. Do you mind if we look in the house?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  He left me standing on the curb. I watched as his partner finished taking photos of Eddie then nodded at the coroners. They stepped forward to pull Eddie down, resting his body on the oily garage floor. Then they got a gurney from the van. But they didn’t immediately put him onto it. They huddled around him. Hanson took more pictures.

  Tripp watched a moment then stepped over to his partner. After they huddled, he went into my back door. Hanson looked down the driveway at me and gave me a look I couldn’t read; she didn’t like me, that part was clear. But I had no idea why. She turned and followed her partner into my house.

  A small knot of neighbors gathered on the far side of the street. I could have joined them, I suppose. Could have told them what was happening. Tried to make myself sound like a victim and gotten sympathy. But I wanted nothing to do with them. I didn’t want to talk any more than I had to.

  Standing at the end of my driveway, I was somehow inside a circle my neighbors were afraid to penetrate. After a while, I noticed Mrs. Enders from across the street edging toward me. She was in her mid-sixties, though she dressed like a teenage pop star, hoping to deny time. She wore a tight blouse that showed her freckled midriff and pedal-pushers. On her feet were fluffy slippers, and in her hand was a vodka and soda.

  She made it to the middle of the street, as close as she dared. “It’s not Jeremy, is it?”

  I shook my head, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to encourage her, didn’t want to explain. Not yet. She looked relieved that it wasn’t Jeremy. He always did a good job of charming old ladies. She tried to smile encouragement at me, though I could tell
from the hesitant way she did it she wasn’t sure if she should. She waddled back to her side of the street.

  The coroners wheeled Eddie down the driveway. Briefly, they left him sitting a few feet from me while opening the doors of the van. He’d been wrapped in a white sheet and then placed into a body bag. They hadn’t been able to close the bag completely. They’d cut a chunk of metal off the garage opener. A belt was tied to the chunk. The other end of the belt, the buckle end, was around Eddie’s neck. The belt was no longer taut, and I could see a deep, wide rut where it had dug into his neck. It was purple and red. I couldn’t help but think about the violence involved. Had it surprised Eddie? Had he just expected a simple squeezing? Had he thought it would be like holding his breath?

  I tried not to look at his face, but failed. His eyes were partly open; the blue of his irises seemed even more striking with the discoloration of his skin. I’d never seen a dead body before. Not in person. Eddie looked like something on display at a wax museum. He didn’t look real. They pushed him into the back of the van.

  “Was he on FaceSpace or any place like that?” I jumped. Detective Tripp was back. I hadn’t noticed him walking up to me.

  It seemed a weird question. It didn’t make much sense to buddy up with a dead guy. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “It’s the new place to leave your suicide note.”

  “Oh my God.” I thought about it for a moment and asked, “He didn’t leave a note inside?”

  “We didn’t find one.” After a pause, he said, “We did find your friend’s wallet. His name was Javier Hernandez.”

  I was shocked, though I shouldn’t have been. The little sex game we’d played should have clued me in. “He told me his name was Eddie.”

  Tripp looked at me. I could tell he thought I was holding something back. His eyes were kind. I wanted to tell him everything I’d left out. But it seemed harmless enough. Eddie being a masseur didn’t have anything to do with him killing himself -- people with nicer jobs kill themselves all the time. I kept quiet.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Hanson coming out of my house and into the garage. She had a cell phone glued to her ear.

  “We noticed some bruising around his neck. Looks to be a few days old. You know anything about that?”

  “He said he tripped. I didn’t believe him.”

  “He might have tried a few days ago. Sometimes it takes people a few times to get it right.”

  “There’s an overnight bag in the bedroom. Is that Javier’s?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “What else did he have with him?”

  “That was pretty much it,” I said, not mentioning the massage table. It would bring up too many embarrassing questions.

  He took a cell phone out of his pocket, one of the older flip phones that didn’t do a whole lot. “Is this Javier’s phone?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He never used it in front of me.”

  Detective Tripp flipped it open and scrolled around. After a minute or so, he looked up at me. “You said he called you. I’m not seeing a call.”

  “I--I don’t understand. He called me.” I stood there dumb, then pulled my own phone out of my pocket. I turned it on and hit icons until I got to Recent Calls. I found the calls I got from Eddie. I showed the phone to the detective. He was staring at it when Hanson came over.

  “We almost done?” she asked.

  “You got a big date?” Tripp came back at her.

  “Gang shooting. Truman High. I figured you’d want in, so I said we’d go.”

  Tripp’s face got hard. “Kids?”

  “Two.”

  He turned to me and said, “Can you come to the station tomorrow and make an official statement?” When I nodded, he asked for my phone numbers. I gave him all three. Home, work, cell. Hurrying, he gave me a business card.

  The detectives left shortly after that, but it was nearly eleven before the other officers finally finished. I was exhausted and starving. I wished I had the money to go to a hotel and order room service. I didn’t, though, so I had to go back inside. Even though they’d taken the tape down from the garage, I didn’t bother to put my car inside. I didn’t want to go in there.

  With my remote, I tried to close the garage door. The door moved down its track a foot or so and then, with a grinding thump, stopped. I walked up to the door, bent down and looked up at the garage ceiling. A chunk was missing from the opener’s track. Stupidly, I hadn’t actually put that together with the piece of metal attached to the belt Eddie had hung himself with. The track would have to be replaced.

  I stepped into the garage. Hanging from the track was a cord used to manually pull the door down. When I pulled it, the door slid down all too quickly, shutting with a bang. The garage became very quiet. It was the last place in the world I wanted to be right then. I hurried through, past the spot where Eddie had died, and into my kitchen.

  I began looking around my house, afraid of what I’d see, my imagination running wild. Everything was exactly as I’d left it that morning. Except I had the feeling that things had been moved and put back in almost but not quite the right place. Of course, that was easily explained. Tripp and his partner had been wandering around, looking at my things, assessing their possible involvement in Eddie’s suicide. It was an eerie feeling.

  As hungry as I was, I couldn’t eat. I wasn’t sure I could sleep, but there wasn’t much more I could do other than go to bed. I could have a drink, I supposed, but on my empty stomach it would likely make me sick.

  I found my phone and called Peter. It didn’t even ring. Instead, it went right to voicemail. Apparently things were going well with the guy he’d met in the parking garage. I left a brief message. “Can you call me? Something bad happened.” A few minutes later, I called his voicemail back. “I’m okay. Something bad happened. But not to me. Well, sort of to me. I’m okay. Just call me.”

  Of course, I had other friends, but none I could call so late at night. Well, none that I could call when I was in trouble. Before Jeremy, I’d been good at friends. I’d had a nice circle of four close friends and at least a dozen solid acquaintances. There were a couple of bars over in Silver Lake that I went to on weekends and I’d always find someone I knew. But then, after Jeremy and I got together, I’d let the relationships slip away until I wasn’t sure if I even had anyone’s correct phone number anymore.

  One friend had even called me in a tiff around my first anniversary with Jeremy and said, “You know, he’s a boyfriend. Not a Siamese twin. It’s entirely possible for the two of you to be in different places at the same time.”

  But Jeremy was jealous of my friends and did his best to make seeing them difficult. And I have to admit I liked Jeremy’s jealousy. Not because I didn’t care about my friends, but because it meant Jeremy loved me. And the idea that his love was sometimes irrational, somehow made it seem better, more likely to last. I guess we know how that turned out.

  I could have called my family, I suppose. But I couldn’t think of one person in my family who’d be helpful or even remotely supportive in this situation. If I called my father and told him that a guy I’d dated killed himself in my garage, he’d say something like, “Your people do that kind of thing a lot, don’t they?”

  He said that when talking about homosexuality. “Your people.” As though his oldest son came from some foreign country he’d never been to. My mother didn’t treat me like a foreign national; she treated me like a drug addict. If I looked to her for sympathy, she’d probably send a brochure for a reparative therapy group based on the twelve steps.

  I could call my sister. She was easier to deal with. But she had a husband and two children. She’d likely refer me to one of my parents. Not because she thought they’d help, but because she was hoping that eventually they’d cut me out of will in favor of her kids. Any opportunity to make me look bad in th
eir eyes aided her cause.

  I decided to take an over-the-counter sleeping pill and try to forget everything. Walking from the bathroom to the bedroom, I stripped off my clothes and dropped them on the floor as I walked. I was naked by the time I got to my bed. I threw back the comforter and slipped in between the sheets.

  Immediately, I jumped back out. The sheets were wet. Cold and wet. I turned on the lights and could see there was a large wet spot about chest level. Both the top sheet and the bottom sheet were wet, as was the blanket. The comforter was dry. Someone had pulled the comforter back and peed on my bed. I ran my hand across the stain and lifted my fingers to my nose. The smell was faint, but it was the smell of urine.

  Eddie had pissed in my bed.

  Chapter Seven

  I slept on the couch. Or rather I lay down for a few uncomfortable hours with my eyes closed -- too much going on in my head for sleep. Eddie had killed himself in my garage. Well, not Eddie, someone named Javier. No, that wasn’t going to work for me. I couldn’t think of him as anything but Eddie. Maybe if he hadn’t killed himself I might have been able to switch to his real name, provided he ever gave it to me. But he’d done what he did, so to me he’d always be Eddie -- Eddie who killed himself in my garage.

  Why? Why had he done it? Was he that messed up? Well, I told myself, just the fact of him killing himself in my garage said, “Yes, he was that messed up.” Should I have seen it coming? I mean, it was weird that he wouldn’t leave my place even though I dropped a ton of hints. And the way he made his living wasn’t exactly mainstream, and I guess was the kind of thing that could attract someone who wasn’t stable. But, no, I shouldn’t have seen it coming. That was expecting too much. And why did he urinate in my bed? Was he angry with me? Did I have more to do with his suicide than I’d thought? I’d only met the guy twice, though. Was he crazy? Was he that crazy? Was I some kind of stand-in for all his clients? Had he developed residual anger over all the men he massaged and masturbated, and decided to take it out on me?

 

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