Dante:Are you even going to try?
Benji:No.
Dante:I didn’t think so. Call me first thing in the morning. I’m still willing to come get you. Just say the word.
I put the phone on the nightstand and close my eyes. It doesn’t help. Every time I close them his blue eyes are right there, glancing at me over his shoulder a split-second before he stepped between me and the gun.
Eventually, the dark outside the window turns pink with sunrise. I sit up carefully, groaning from the pain in my ribs. My brain finally produces a useful thought. The detective. The young cop who brought me to the ER said a detective would reach out for my statement, but he never got my number.
There’s a detective somewhere in this town trying to build a case against four men for assault and the shooting of an officer. The primary victim and eyewitness is me, and nobody knows my phone number or where I’m staying.
I should go give my statement. It’s the one useful thing I can do right now.
I get dressed, call a rideshare to take me to pick up my car, and drive to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office. It’s a tan building off the highway with a flat roof, an American flag and a lot full of cruisers. I park and sit there for a minute, looking at the building where Mickey probably goes to work every day, wondering if he’ll ever walk through those doors again.
I take a breath and go inside. The lobby is government-clean. Fluorescent lights, tile floor, a counter with a deputy behind it who is on the phone. He holds up one finger. I wait. When he hangs up, he looks at me and his eyes do a quick scan of my bruised face, the butterfly strips, the split lip.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
“I need to give a statement. About last night. The shooting at Big Tex’s Roadhouse. I was there. I’m the one Officer Weaver was protecting when he was shot.”
The deputy’s face changes. Not a lot, just a tightening around the eyes and a straightening of the spine. In a building full of cops, the morning after one of their own took a bullet, the words “Officer Weaver” carry weight.
“Hold on,” he says. He picks up the phone and dials an extension. Talks low and hangs up. “Detective Morrison is handling the case. She’ll be right out. Have a seat.”
I sit in a plastic chair against the wall. There’s a bulletin board with safety flyers and a photo of the department softball team. I scan the faces and the names below. Third row, second from the left. Blonde hair, blue eyes, handsome face. Mickey Weaver. Younger, grinning, wearing a softball jersey that says BCSO SLUGGERS, his arm slung around the shoulder of another guy. He looks happy and carefree.
A door opens and a woman steps out. Late thirties, dark hair pulled back, blazer over a blouse, gun on her hip. She has the slow walk of someone who conducts interviews for a living.
“Benjamin Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“Detective Rosa Morrison. We’ve been trying to find a way to reach you. Come on back.”
I follow her through a door, past a break room where two deputies are standing with coffee. Their conversation stops when I walk by. They don’t say anything but their eyes track my face and I can tell they’re connecting it to the story. They know I’m the guy Mickey stepped in front of. Every cop in this building knows what Mickey did.
The interview room is small, a table and two chairs and a recorder. Detective Morrison sits across from me. She opens a folder, clicks the recorder on, says the date and time, my full legal name, which she asks me to spell, and then she says the four words I’ve been dreading.
“Tell me what happened.”
I tell her all of it. From the stool at the bar to the table of Dixie Cruisers. Sheila’s three warnings that I ignored, thehallway, the grammar joke, the fist, the floor, the boots and the spit on the back of my neck. I tell her about Tex coming around the corner. About Mickey arriving through the door behind him. About the young one with his hand drifting toward his jacket and Mickey stepping between me and the gun. And then the sound of it going off through the fabric and the weight of his body slamming backward into mine.
I tell it chronological and detailed, keeping my voice as even as I can manage. I don’t cry because I know if I start, I won’t stop. I describe what I saw and what I heard. I keep my voice calm because I’m in a building full of people who care about the man I got shot, and the very least I can do is give them a clean statement.
Morrison listens and takes notes. She asks follow-up questions. Where was I standing when the first punch landed? Which direction did I fall? Could I see the gun before it fired? How many seconds between Mickey entering the hallway and the shot?
I answer the best I can. I give her everything because these details are the only thing I have to give. When it’s over, she clicks the recorder off and closes the folder.
“Thank you,” she says. “That’s a thorough statement. It’ll help.”
“Will they all be charged?”
“All four are in custody. The one with the gun is looking at attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. The other three are looking at aggravated assault, possible hate crime enhancement. The state attorney’s office is already involved.”
Hate crime enhancement.
Because they called me a faggot before they kicked me. Because the word was the reason and the word makes it worse under Florida law. My bruised ribs and split lip are evidence of a hate crime.
