Ear-Witness (2 page)

Mr. Bronski was pleased with me; his smile lit up the room. “Thank you, Jessica,” he said. “An interesting presentation. Very interesting.”

When he dismissed the class, I scooted out of there, fast. I was never fast enough, but I always tried.

“Hey, Fatso!”

I kept moving. Every time I said anything halfway intelligent in that class, this insect came after me. Ronny Roach had hated me for years. Running away didn't help, but what could I do? Stand around and wait to be insulted?

“You trying to get away from me, blubber-butt?” In the crush of bodies in the hall, he squirmed in beside me, then whipped a greasy-looking comb out of his back pocket and rearranged his stringy blond hair.

“An in-ter-rest-ing pre-sent-a-tion,” he said. “Aren't we hot today! You like reading scary stuff, blubber-butt? Is that how fat girls get their kicks?”

I knew I had to do something about Ronny Roach and I knew I had to do it soon. To say he scares me isn't even close to the truth. He terrifies me. So far I hadn't let him see how much he got to me. Today I just managed to keep my cool; I didn't look up and I didn't talk. I just pasted a fake smile on my face and concentrated on getting away.

After a run-in with the Roach, even my locker looked good, almost like a friend. I grabbed my peanut butter and pickle sandwich and waited for Kelly, my buddy. To kill a little time, I rearranged the top shelf, hoping she'd show up while I was doing it. When she didn't, I took my lunch outside. The cafeteria was a zoo. There was no way I'd go there alone.

When I finished eating I checked out a few places Kelly might be, then went back to my locker for my books. I was fiddling with my combination lock when my name screeched out at me from somewhere near the ceiling.

“Jessica March, please report to the office immediately. Jessica March ...”

The message was repeated three times, while I stood there with my mouth open, inhaling the smell of old gym shoes. When I finally realized that it was the intercom I was hearing, and it was talking to me, I slammed the door shut, snapped the lock on and started running down the hall. For someone twenty pounds overweight, I'm in really good shape, but by the time I fell through the office door, my heart was bumping painfully in my chest and my imagination was killing me. Something horrible had happened to my mother: a car accident; a drive-by shooting; some terrible thing at the hospital where she worked...

The woman behind the counter was yakking on the phone. She refused to make eye contact, but I was in no mood to be ignored.

“I'm Jessica March,” I said. “You called me on the intercom.” Then I said it again, only louder.

She glared at me like I was ruining her day, and kept on yakking. Mrs. Carelli, the principal, beetled out of the inner office, and escorted me inside. A very large cop stood in front of her desk, looking out the window.

The principal pointed to a chair. “Sit down, Jessica. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

If this morning was fear,
this
was terror. “What's wrong?” I gasped. “My mom?”

“Your mother is fine, Jessica, just fine.” she said. “In fact I was just speaking to her on the telephone...”

Of course! Mom was at home today. Probably trying to sleep. Then I panicked. My mother. The principal. The cop. I groaned. I was afraid to ask, but I had to do it. “What have I done?” I said.

“Nothing, Jessica. Not a thing,” Mrs. Carelli said. “You're here because the police need your help.”

I took a deep breath, the first in what seemed like a long time. This was my first one-on-one conversation with this woman. I'd heard she was tough, but she seemed pretty decent to me.

She smiled. “I must apologize, Jessica,” she said. “I didn't intend to frighten you. Why don't you sit down and relax, if you can, and Constable Bowes can explain.”

I sat where she pointed, in one of the two chairs in front of her desk. The cop took the other. It creaked.

Mrs. Carelli introduced us. “Constable Bowes, Jessica March.”

The cop looked at me and grinned. “The name's Sheena.”

I slid my eyes to the front of her uniform. She was definitely a woman, a really big woman. Her hair, the colour Mom calls strawberry blond, was shorter than short, and she had a dimple in her chin.

She pulled out a small notebook, the kind with a little spiral across the top, and wrote down the date, and then my name.

“Jessica March,” she said. “Age?” When she talked her words shot out of her mouth, like bullets.

“Uh, fifteen and a half,” I said.

“You live at 582 Telborne Street, apartment three?”

“Uh-huh. Yes.”

“Are you acquainted with the Bird family at that address? Mrs. Tammi Bird, Mr. Raymond Bird and a minor child, Brianna Bird, age four months?”

“Ray,” I said. “He's called Ray.”

“The baby?

“No, Mr. Bird.”

She wrote that down. “You were employed by Mr. and Mrs. Bird for the purpose of babysitting Brianna Bird on Thursday evening from approximately 7:00
P.M.
to approximately 10:00
P.M.
?”

“That was last night,” I said. “The baby was fine when I left. What's going on?”

She sat back, and examined me with bright blue eyes. “Mr. Bird was killed last night.”

“Killed!” I said. “You mean he's dead? Ray's dead?”

She nodded.

“How? I mean, I saw him! He was alive at ...”

“Murdered,” she said. “Some time during the night.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Murdered!” I said. “I can't believe it. Murdered! How?”

Constable Bowes closed her notebook and slipped it into her shirt pocket. Her voice was softer now, more ordinary. “Maybe you'd come down to the station and give us a statement? We talked to your mom this morning. She said you often hear ... noises from their apartment?”

“Uh, sometimes,” I said. What I usually heard was Tammi and Ray doing some pretty intimate stuff, like banging their bed against the wall, and making crazy animal sounds. Either that, or fighting like two tomcats. I looked at the principal. “Sure,” I said. “If I can get off school.”

Mrs. Carelli smiled. “No problem,” she said. “Jessica won't have any difficulty catching up. She's a very good student.”

A warm humming feeling zipped through my body, and I grinned all over my face. Mrs. Carelli smiled some more. So did Constable Bowes.

“This is really great for my reputation,” I said. “Hauled off by a cop in the middle of the afternoon.” I was sitting in the front passenger seat of the cruiser. When I looked back at the school, I didn't see anyone watching. Darn.

“I shoulda cuffed you,” Sheena said. “Coulda staged a little tussle there in the hall. I can see the yearbook now. “Top Student Nabbed by Police in Office!”

My mouth twitched at one corner. “There's this guy hassling me,” I said. “I wouldn't mind him knowing. If he thinks I'm tough, maybe he'll leave me alone.”

“Somebody saw. A girl,” she said. “She was sneaking a smoke behind the steps. It'll get around. Is this serious hassling or what?”

“He's not trying to touch me or anything. Just insults. Name-calling,” I added.

“Such as?”

“Stuff about my body. Blubber butt. Thunder thighs. You know.”

“Sexual harassment,” she said. “Want me to talk to him? Make him wet his pants?”

I laughed. “Well, I might. I mean, I haven't decided what to do yet. He's been on my case for a long time, but he's never actually done anything, so ...”

“Any time, just give me the word. If you want him to think you're tough, tell him I charged you with assault. Assault with intent to wound. Because of that biker whose nose you broke.” She hooted a great laugh and twinkled her eyes sideways.

I sat there, grinning from ear to ear, until I remembered why I was there. “What happened to Ray?” I asked.

“Wife wakes up in the morning, finds him dead.”

“He was killed in the apartment? Right below me?” I could easily have freaked out over that. Very easily. Mom was at work all night, so I was alone, just one floor above a murder. I shivered. My back felt like somebody dropped an icicle down my shirt.

“How?” I whispered. “How did he die?”

“If I tell you that, I'll get in hot poop.”

“I didn't hear a gun or anything.”

Sheena moved one hand from the steering wheel, clutched an imaginary knife and plunged it into her chest. “I didn't tell you nothing,” she said.

We rode the rest of the way in silence.

At the police station, which was up near College Street, Sheena took me into a stuffy little interview room to meet Bud, the cop in charge of the murder investigation. He had to be over thirty, but with his bulging muscles and thousand-watt smile, he looked just like a Ken doll.

He pointed to where he wanted me to sit. “I'm the lucky guy who'll be asking the questions,” he said. “Sheena here will take notes.” Then he flashed his teeth and pulled up a chair. “So, Jessica ...”

Talking to Sheena was easy, but being in this place, with this man, made me nervous. Like, what are you supposed to say when a cop says So?

“Uh, it's Jess,” I said. “Everywhere but school, I'm Jess.”

“So, uh, Jess. You live in the same building as the Birds, right?”

“Right.” I flashed some teeth too, just for practice.

“Where in relation to their apartment?”

“The next floor up. Right on top of them,” I said.

“Who lives there? You, your parents? Anybody else? Sisters, brothers?”

I sat up straight in my chair. “Just me and my mom,” I said.

“No dad?”

I stretched my legs out in front of me and admired my boots.

“Nope.”

“So where is he?” Bud asked. There was something weird about his face but it took me a minute to figure out what it was. He was smiling, but only from the mouth down.

“Gone,” I said. “I thought I was here to tell you stuff about the Birds.”

“Just answer the question, please, Jessica.”

Now he wasn't smiling at all. His mouth was a grim slit in the bottom of his face, and his voice had an edge to it, like Mom's does when she's really mad.

“He doesn't live with us. I already I told you that.” This guy wasn't cute at all. He was mean-looking, with a personality to match.

“When did he leave, Jessica? Last year? Last month? Last week? Yesterday?”

He was really ticked off now, but I was pretty irritated myself, and I could sound just as rude. “He left when I was nine.” I said.

Buddy-boy didn't miss a beat. “I guess your mom has a boyfriend, eh? Does he live with you? Nice-looking woman like that, I bet she's got men crawling all over her.”

The man was a pig. I stared through him to Sheena, who was sitting just behind him, but off to one side, where he couldn't see her without turning around. She made a pistol with her fingers and pointed it at Bud's head.

“Just Mom and me,” I said, as sweetly as I could. “Didn't I tell you that already?” I wasn't really lying, not much. Enough to cause a heap of trouble, but I didn't know that yet.

“Tell me about the Birds,” he said, all charm again. “How well do you know them?”

“Pretty well. I look after the baby two or three times a week. Sometimes I talk to Tammi.”

“And Mr. Bird?”

“He's OK, I guess. Was OK.”

“You didn't like him?”

I couldn't stand him. Ray had sneaky eyes, and he was bad-tempered and sarcastic, but I didn't want to cut up somebody who was dead. “We hardly ever talked,” I said. “Except when he paid me.”

“And you babysat last night?”

“Yeah.”

“From when to when? Be as exact as you can.”

“I went downstairs at quarter to seven and came back up at about ten-fifteen.”

Even when he was asking questions, Bud was staring at the ceiling, like he couldn't stand the way I looked, or I was boring him silly. “Were both Mr. and Mrs. Bird there at quarter to seven?”

“Yeah.”

“Where were they going?”

“Tammi went to bingo I guess Ray went to work

“Where's that?”

“Some bar on Queen Street. I don't know the name of it, but I don't think it's a very nice place. My mom says it's a sleaze joint.”

He nodded. His eyes were closed now. “They come home together?”

“No, they never do, never did. Ray worked late. Tammi came home, then I left.”

“I understand from your mother that you were alone last night, while she was working. Right?”

Now he was drumming his fingers on his leg, like he'd rather be somewhere else. I could relate to that.

“Right,” I said.

“Where does she work?”

“Queen Street Mental Health Centre. She's a nurse.”