September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (41 page)

“. . . You wouldn’t know anything
about that would you?” The younger cop, Gutierrez his badge said,
preached at me, still pretending to want answers.

I took the opening—it was too easy.
“Know that you’re a tool? No one had to tell me. It’s
obvious.”

Leland was the other guy. He looked
older and was dressed in street clothes with a badge hanging around
his neck. He raised a hand at the younger cop, Gutierrez. My guess
was to keep him from hitting me.

“The old neighbor lady . . . Mrs.
Smith, she says you stole her car keys right off her kitchen table.
A vehicle registered, to her, was found parked in the motel lot and
your prints are all over it. Got any idea how that happened?”
Leland asked.

Watching my black-tipped fingers
resting against the metal chair, they looked strange, like they
weren’t mine. They were just sitting there, like rude guests
ignoring my commands to find a way out. Limp noodles.

“Look, I’ll tell you whatever you want
to know. But you have to promise Angel walks. She had nothing to do
with any of this.” I imagined we were in the middle a scene on one
of those cheesy cop shows. I was trying to sound exactly like a
suspect that the cops had in custody, whose instincts told them was
guilty, but they couldn’t nail for lack of evidence. I thought I
did okay.

Just like a cop show, Leland took a
pencil from his shirt pocket and smacked it onto the table. “We’re
not accepting any of your crazy bullshit. Tell the truth.” He
shoved a notepad beside it and pushed both across the tabletop
until they were right in front of me, just within and yet without,
my reach.

Next thing I knew, Gutierrez was in my
face, ripping the pages from the table. “You’re not fooling
anybody. We don’t need a confession: we got you, your prints, two
victims, the motel room, the stolen vehicle, dozens of witnesses
that place you at the club, and everywhere else you been for the
last ten years! Ward of the state—that’s you!” His hot, rancid
breath made my stomach roll. I wished I had to burp or puke. I
wanted to make him sick right back.

He still smoothed the paper back on
the table and unlocked my right cuff.

“I’m left-handed.” I waited until he
put his keys away to say anything.

Gutierrez hesitated. Leland nodded and
cursed while his partner did what he was supposed to—like a good
little civil servant—and relocked the right cuff around my wrist
before releasing my aching left. That skank at the finger-painting
station twisted it behind my back.

I started doodling while Gutierrez
pulled a small remote from his pocket, pointing it towards a video
camera in the corner. I heard the thin buzz of the lens
adjusting.

The pencil in my hand was
long and thin. The tip was sort of sharp. Brittle. It made me
wonder . . .
what if . . .

Clutching the new pencil—I didn’t even
think about it, really. It wasn’t something I could think about. I
just raised my hand and thrust it down as hard as I could, feeling
nothing as the wood and led skewered the flesh of my
thigh.

The supposedly fierce Officer
Gutierrez paled. That was enough for me. A sweet reward. My smile
grew bigger than a crescent moon as Leland jumped from his chair
and ran for the door, yelling.

I couldn’t bring myself to remove the
pencil, but I made a fist at Leland as he passed. It was another
beat before both my hands were restrained once more.

Then, there was only pain. The chasm
had opened again. It was sucking me in. I was drowning.

+++

When I opened my eyes, the
interrogation room was gone. The new room was not white. The walls
looked like exposed cinderblock. The only sound was that of
metal.
Clinking
,
clanking.
Handcuffs thrashing against the metal frame of the
bed.

Echoes in an empty
room
, I mused. How appropriate.

I was as good as dead—drowned inside
the bottomless chasm—sinking in the emptiness, groping for a
floatation device, wishing to make myself stop breathing. That was
the worst part, knowing I could drown in the black feeling but
couldn’t stop breathing. I tried holding my breath, but that just
made me pass-out and start again.

I kept my head on the pillow and
waited for whatever shrink I knew was coming to appear and make a
decree.

After a while, a small man came
through the locked door and folded himself into a single chair
against the far wall. His hair was gray like the walls with
mismatched dark brown eyebrows.

“Do you know why you are here?” He
asked.

Because they want to pin
me with bullshit battery and homicide charges!

Because I’m a fucked up
nut-case with mommy issues!

Because the world hates me
and I hate the world right back!

I turned away and shut my eyes. “I’m
not. Here. At all.”

+ + +

4
6

—
Angel

The three judges stare at me while I
watch the mirrored wall, wondering over the blank faces behind it,
the ears that must be listening. I don’t feel much better, but a
little more unfurled.

“Society wants us, as individuals, to
think that we’re so strong. But it’s a lie. We’re slaves to the
physical of this world and its’ laws. We’re impotent.”

Taking a deep breath, I look at my own
pathetic reflection in the mirrored glass. “Think about it: how
much does it take to knock us from our towering achievements onto
our knees? A breath from the earth would do it. The slightest shift
in her axis and we’re all done for.”

More minutely, all it might
take is a phone call. Like the one Jakes mother must have gotten.
What happened to her when she heard the words,
‘Jake’s dead’
?

A split-second decision to go instead
of stay, to take the yellow light, to ignore the little voice in
your head that says this turn might not take you where you
think.

A few words of judgment, the bang of a
gavel, and just like that: instead of spending my eighteenth
birthday on a California beach; I’m coming of age in
lockup.

“One wasted second, and we fall like
dry leaves from a dead tree. How often do we take the time to think
about that?”

Quiet Darren leans forward, looking at
the clock. “We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”

+++

I can’t listen to modern music. I
don’t want to hear any overrated Grunge or Metal with its’
thousands of sub-genres or trendy bands. I’m most comfortable with
the music I grew up on. The stuff Jake hated.

Heaven isn’t too far away .
. .
The sound of Warrant hums from my
little clock radio. The irony of the song clenches my chest and
even though I have spent the better part a decade lamenting, I
can’t help but break when Janie Lane says that no one really
cares.

He’s right. Everyone’s gone. But
unlike the song says, I will not keep trying. I decided before I
ever got here that this case evaluation would be my last. The
moment my testimony is over, I will be, too.

But I’m not done yet. I took too long
today, went too slow to finish. So, for now, I must keep breathing
and close my eyes . . .

+++

I’m seventeen, slow dancing with Jake
inside his dark living room, in between the glass encased stereo
and the wooden coffee table.

I feel the ghost of his
lips skimming their way up my neck as he talks about what heaven is
really like. “It’s nothing,”
kiss
, “like what you think.”
Kiss
, “It’s
better,”
kiss
,
“than you,”
kiss
,
“can imagine.”

+++

It’s after twelve when I finally get
into the room with my idiot lawyer, Tight Bun Tara, and Quiet
Darren. They’re all waiting for me in their matching jackets.
Today’s color is white. The lawyer is supposed to be here for me,
playing on my team. So why the hell does he look so dang
comfortable with opposing council?

There’s a sweating Diet Coke waiting
for me, opened and waiting with a bendy straw. Right next to that
is a bottle of water. I take the drinks because they help. Taking
my meds without food is not getting any easier. Makes me so dizzy I
want to puke.

After I’m cuffed to my
chair and take a few long sips of soda, I start in on my
declaration, reminding everyone, once again, that what I am telling
them is the way things looked
to
me
. It is my picture,
the one my mind drew up while I was navigating the maze.

I remind them of my leaving Carlisle
in early June. “I’d expected to have my first taste of real
freedom. I was graduating from that shithole high school. I was
turning eighteen in September. I was in love and had just gotten
engaged.” My eyes swell. “Before June was over, Jake was gone. By
July, so was I. I don’t remember September. Someone said it
rained.” The memory of a vague weather report whispers to
me.

It took months to get to court, but I
don’t remember most of it because the stress and depression had
taken its’ toll; I was having near-constant migraines and was
literally scared shitless. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or shit. That
time was just a haze; with the general feeling that I didn’t care.
I didn’t want to hold myself together. Nothing mattered.

But one thought kept sticking to me:
there was no news about Avery.

“You’ve stated on several occasions
that you do not recall the details of your arrest or the charges
against you.” Darren asks, looking to my lawyer who clears his
throat. “Why do you think that is?”

Why do they continually ask questions
they know the answers to? “My memory has always had holes in
it.”

Darren nods his head. “Yes, and that
is often the case with persons having your diagnoses. What I’m
curious about is how you can recall the most minute details of
every moment you spent with Mister Haddon, but not recall the very
important details of the crimes the state of Arizona saw fit to
charge you with.”

My back straightens. “Ever heard of
selective amnesia? Maybe I don’t want to remember.”

Tight Bun Tara stretches her hand
across the table, getting my attention. “We’re veering off-topic.
If we could continue?”

I turn to her. “My next clear memories
are the handcuffs . . .”

+++

I came out of my constant daze with
sudden clarity. As if I had passed through a fog that cut through
time. I simply appeared there, on my feet, in a white
jumpsuit.

I found myself standing between two
guards in the midst of a large, plain room filled with small round
tables and caged windows high up on the cement walls. Just like a
cafeteria, but smaller and less smelly.