Where the hell is my phone?
Panic rushes through me. I don’t keep anything illegal on my phone, but it’s not exactly something I want anyone to scroll through. Phones are personal. The last thing I want is someone looking through it without some context.
I run back upstairs and frantically begin searching around the bedroom. My wife insists on having furniture that’s all up off the floor. She claims it looks more refined. Right now, all it’s doing is making my job finding my phone harder than it needs to be.
Crawling around on my hands and knees, I run my palms over the carpeting but feel nothing. This isn’t possible. Phones don’t just grow legs and walk away. It has to be here somewhere. I flip up the bedspread and search under the bed, and there about a foot in I feel my phone.
How on earth did it get there?
I pull it out and look at it in my hand. With a swipe across the screen, I get to my home page and see no new calls or messages. I should call my boss and tell him about Bryan. Jesus, how the hell am I going to phrase that news?
After thinking of that awfulness, I sit down on the floor next to the bed and lean my head back against the mattress. I can’t believe what’s happened. Bryan is dead from some freak accident that I guess is technically considered suicide. Christ, what kind of unlucky break was that? I can’t imagine what he was thinking shooting a goddamned gun on a hike over the trails around our development. It’s a suburban area, for God’s sake. What if he had mistakenly hurt a child?
The worst part of it is he did it with my gun. I didn’t offer that information, but it’s only a matter of time before the police findout. Even those two bumbling idiots Ramon and Raintree will figure that out. Then what will happen? They can’t blame me. My prints aren’t even on the gun since I didn’t even hold it after slipping it into my pants.
Son of a bitch! Who the hell am I kidding? Of course, my fingerprints are all over that gun. It’s mine, for Christ’s sake! As soon as they know, those two cops are going to zero in on me as the one who killed Bryan.
Staring down at my phone, I try to find the right words to say to my boss, but I’ve got nothing. Maybe Bryan’s wife will call Martin. He was married, wasn’t he? I don’t know. We weren’t that close. He might have mentioned having a wife once or twice, didn’t he?
As I sit there trying to catalog all the things I know about Bryan Corsei, I quickly realize I knew next to nothing about him. I know where he worked and what he did. I know he came to work at Chesapeake Siding and Garage Doors a few months ago. And I know he lived in the same community I do. That’s about it. Until this afternoon, we’d never done anything outside of work. Hell, we rarely did anything together during working hours since he was the boss’s favorite and Martin routinely rewarded him with much better leads than the rest of us.
I better not keep thinking like that, or it might slip out at some point, and I’ll sound like some jealous asshole. The guy’s dead. No need to bring up that he was the office favorite.
Footsteps tear me out of my thoughts, and a second later, my wife appears in the doorway to the bedroom looking downright disturbed. Probably something with the little darlings. I wonder where they all went. Not that I’m unhappy they’re gone, but something tells me I won’t be getting any peace tonight, nevertheless.
She stares down at me in horror, like I’ve done something wrong, so I brace myself for some complaint that will likelyhave me running back to the damn grocery store. So much for a leisurely weekend off. I swear those kids with their social schedule are really starting to cramp my style.
“Oh my God! Connor! Did you hear about that man who got killed on one of the hiking paths? I heard about it when I was at the café having an iced latte. Some woman came in and told everyone just as I was walking out. They’re saying someone attacked him. I can’t believe it!”
So the news has started to spread. Great.
“Believe it. I was there.”
I stand up after saying that, needing to get on with this day. Jamie shakes her head as her mouth hangs open in shock.
“It was Bryan, one of my coworkers. He and I were out on a hike, and he shot himself by mistake. I ran to get help, but by the time I got back with the paramedics, it was too late.”
“Did you see the person who did it? Oh, God, I hope the police catch him quickly. This is terrible.”
I squint at her, having a hard time not blowing up in her face at her idiocy. The woman never listens. She gets something into that head of hers, and dammit if any facts can penetrate whatever delusion she’s decided to believe today.
“Try listening, Jamie. Not someone. There’s no one to catch. He shot himself. It was a mistake. He was waving the gun around and accidentally shot himself.”
My wife’s eyes get as big as saucers. “Shot himself? You mean like suicide?”
Shaking my head, I let out a heavy sigh. If my own wife doesn’t believe it, I can’t imagine how hard it’s going to be telling my boss that story.
I pinch the bridge of my nose as a headache begins forming behind my eyes. “Yes, like suicide. Exactly like it, in fact, since he shot himself, Jamie!”
“Why would he want to kill himself on the nature path in the neighborhood? That doesn’t seem right. And why would he chose to do it in front of you? Don’t people who commit suicide usually do that alone?” my wife asks, only making my situation worse.
Already bored with this conversation, I sigh again. Jamie looks at me like I’m going to answer her question with anything but the actual answer. Sorry to disappoint her.
“I don’t know. It’s not like I asked him to join me and kill himself.”
I begin walking toward the bathroom to escape her, but she follows me, continuing to talk. “I don’t understand this, Connor. I can’t imagine anyone has ever killed themselves up on that path.”
Then, of course, she has to make it about the girls.
