My fingers grip the edge of my front door as my mind whirls with fear. They know. They know the gun was mine. Now I won’t have a choice but to hire a lawyer. Even if that moron coroner decides to actually try using scientific methods and figures out it was suicide, they’ll still look at me for bringing the gun.
I swallow hard and answer Officer Raintree’s question. “Because I didn’t kill anyone. If I had mentioned the gun was mine, you wouldn’t even have considered anyone else, not that you have. You’ve spent all your time assuming I’m the one who shot Bryan, but I’ll tell you for the hundredth time, it wasn’t me! Now leave me alone!”
This time I do slam the door in their faces, but it doesn’t feel as good as I’d anticipated because my mind is full of the reality that there’s no way I can avoid paying a lawyer now. I lean against the door while I try to figure out what to do, and from outside I hear Officer Raintree speaking to me.
“Mr. Jennings, you have the chance right now to tell us all that happened. The prosecutor may be able to help you, but if you refuse to speak to us, we’ll have no choice but to assume you’re guilty.”
Although I know I shouldn’t, my frustration with these cops gets the best of me, and I fling the door open again to say, “You’ve been assuming I’m guilty from the moment you arrived at the community center. I told you someone had been shot, and that barely registered on your radar. You took your own sweet time walking up to where Bryan was, and he may have lived if you two hadn’t dragged your fucking heels the whole time. His death is your fault, no one else’s, so go home and sit with that for a while. The next time you come here you better have a warrant because if you don’t, I’m not talking to you ever again.”
Officer Ramon starts to say something, but I’m not listening to him. I shut the door and lock it before walking back up to thebedroom. I slide under the covers and close my eyes, unable to believe this is my life now.
My mind drifts back to the last time the police thought they had me for a crime. It feels like another lifetime ago, but as soon as I think about it, all that happened comes rushing back to me.
“Connor, answer the door!” my mother yells from the basement where she’s folding clothes.
I want to say I’m busy, but I know what will happen if I do that. She’ll lecture me on how I don’t pay rent here, even though I turned eighteen months ago, so the least I can do is help her out with things like answering the door.
Begrudgingly, I trudge to the front door and open it to see a policeman standing in front of me on our brick porch. My blood feels like it stops flowing through my veins for a few seconds, but I force myself to smile so the cop doesn’t know how nervous I am right now.
I don’t say a word, so the officer with the badge that says Miller and a big read nose that screams he’s a drunk clears his throat and says, “Son, are you Connor Jennings?”
My kneejerk reaction is to tell him I’m not his son, but I don’t. All I do is nod, sure I remember watching some TV show that said the less you say to the cops, the better.
“Is that a yes, that you’re Connor Jennings?” he asks, and this time the question has a little edge to it.
“Do you want to speak to my mom?” I ask, happy to push him off on her.
“No, I want to speak to you. Now once again, are you Connor Jennings?”
And again, I nod but still give him nothing more.
His frustration shows when his gray, bushy eyebrows draw in toward that red, meaty, bulbous nose. Even as I think that, I can’t believe I used bulbous in an actual, real world sentence. Mrs. Anderson from senior English would be so proud.Actually, knowing that old bag, she’d probably give me a shrug if I told her. She always was a pain in the ass.
“Son, the police are investigating a death in the woods last night over near Shaney’s Mountain. Do you know anything about that?”
I shake my head and smile. He wouldn’t be asking me if he thought he had me dead to rights. I’m no dummy. I’ve seen Law and Order. True, it was only because I was grounded for a month in tenth grade for getting into a fight after school with that shithead Brett Kolino, but I paid attention when I had to sit with my mother and watch TV during my incarceration.
“Perhaps it would be a good idea for me to speak to your parents. You said your mother is at home? Please get her for me.”
Officer Miller looks downright irritated because I refuse to speak to him, and even though I’d like to piss him off more, I figure letting my mother deal with him is probably the best plan. I bet he decides he liked my silence better than talking to her, though.
I take my time walking to her room where she’s busy hanging clean clothes. She’s been in a bad mood all night, so the last thing I want to do is spend any time with her. This little visit from our town’s finest is going to make her even more miserable.
She is better than Officer Miller, though.
“Mom, there’s a cop at the front door who wants to talk to you,” I say as I stand in the doorway to her bedroom.
She looks over at me before hanging a navy blue T-shirt on a hanger to go in her closet. I tell her T-shirts are supposed to be folded, but she claims that leaves them wrinkled. Hanging them up like she does is just weird.
“What does he want?” she asks in a rushed way, already telling me she’s not happy having to deal with the cops tonight.
Not that anyone is ever happy to have to deal with them.
I shrug. “Don’t know. I didn’t talk to him.”
My mother stops hanging her shirts and levels her gaze on me, narrowing her eyes as if she’s trying to figure out if I did anything wrong to bring the police here. Dressed in a white sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, she straightens her clothes and lets out an unhappy groan.
“This better not be about something you did,” she warns as she walks past me.
