The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips (8 page)

Fast-forward.

“. . . hit me in the past.”

Rewind.

“. . . answer to your question, yes, he hit me in the past. Several times. No, it wasn’t just when he was drunk. Alcohol gave him a shorter fuse, but sometimes he would just snap. You know, he would just explode and I would sit there and go, where did that come from? When he got really angry, I would try to get away until he cooled down. And, no, he hasn’t hit me since he got out of prison. Nor do I recall any threats made after he got out. But I don’t see how that matters. He is who he is.”

Fast-forward.

“. . . told me that if I ever left him, I would regret it. Now I do. He killed my little boy to get back at me for what I’d done to him. I never imagined he could hurt me so bad.”

Rewind.

“He told me that if I ever left him, I would regret it.”

Rewind.

“. . . if I ever left him, I would regret it.”

Rewind.

“. . . I would regret it.”

Andy clicked off the tape and leaned back in his chair. “Christ,” he said as he stared at the tape player. “Holy, holy Christ.” He ran his hand over the top of his head and tried to think. “Whew.” He stood and walked from the kitchen table to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “She emptied everything out of the house while he was out of the country?” He shook his head in disbelief and said to his dark and empty house, “I’ve heard of bitter ex-wives, but, man, she wins the gold medal.” Walking from the kitchen through his living room, he opened his beer and took a long drink as he passed on into his bedroom. On the nightstand, next to his bed, lay the picture of Gabe and Loraine. Andy sat down on the bed and picked it up.

I’m not sure how long he sat there staring at the photograph he’d picked up in Gabe’s room, but eventually he wound up back at his kitchen table with his Big Chief pad. He flipped it open to the page with the word “why” printed across the top, and began writing. “Why would a woman accuse her son’s father of killing his own child?” he wrote on the first line, which was immediately followed by “Can anyone really hate another human being enough to make something like this up????????!” This was, Andy told me, the key question that would determine how far he would go in the investigation. The most incriminating evidence he’d found at this stage were Loraine’s words the night of Gabe’s death. All of the physical evidence turned on her accusation. Any woman who would empty out the house and move away while her husband was off on a mission trip seemed capable of about anything. But accusing her former husband of murder was more than anything. At the very least, John could end up locked away for a very, very long time. With the recent Supreme Court decision opening the door for executions, it was conceivable that John could receive the death penalty if he had, in fact, killed Gabe in cold blood. Loraine had to know this. He scrawled, “If she were just making this up, why would she take it this far?”

Andy got up, grabbed the Big Chief pad, and moved to the living room. The cuckoo clock on his wall cuckooed three times. Plopping down on the couch, he let out a long yawn, then wrote, “Why would a father kill his only son?” Andy had read accounts of parents who killed children during bitter custody disputes. However, it is far more common for those who do to go ahead and kill themselves as well, rather than wait around to get caught. Or, if someone is driven to kill, it is more likely he would kill the ex-spouse who’s making his life a living hell. As his mind tried to wrap itself around these questions, Andy’s hand kept writing “why” over and over again. At the end of the page, he added two more sentences: “Why Gabe?” and “Why me?”

He let out a long sigh, then headed to the fridge for one last beer before going to bed.

Even though he fell asleep very quickly, Andy felt like he was still awake. It was like one of those nights when you cram for a test back in college. You study and study and study, and when you finally fall asleep, you feel like you are still studying. That’s how Andy’s night went. He kept hearing Loraine’s voice talking and talking and talking. The sound of her voice took him back to her apartment. He rolled over in her bed and there stood John, staring at him.

The phone ringing broke into his dream. Andy slapped at the phone, unsure of where he was. “Hello,” he mumbled.

“Officer Myers?”

“Yeah. Who wants to know?”

“It’s Jeanine Martin, the apartment manager at Madison Park. You asked me to call if I heard from John Phillips.”

“Uhhh, yeah.” Andy looked around his room. Loraine was not there, and neither was John.

“Well, he’s here right now. He came by to turn in his keys and sign the papers terminating his lease. I can stall him if you want me to. Otherwise, I think he’s in a hurry to leave.”

Andy’s mind slowly caught up with his body. “Yeah, yeah, do that, please. I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and sat up in his bed. The line between his dream and reality still felt very thin. He yanked the covers up off his bed, just to make sure no one else was in there. “Loraine?” he yelled toward the other end of the house. No answer. Once he was sure he had, in fact, been dreaming, he threw on his uniform and rushed out the door.

The Madison Park Apartments were already familiar territory for Andy. It had always been a place where low-income families, especially single mothers, moved in and out. No one ever stayed there long. Few, if any, of the people who called it home had any kind of deep roots in Trask. (Of course, in a town like this, if you weren’t born here, you’re a newcomer until the day you die, even if you live to be a hundred. That’s just the way it is in little towns in the Midwest. Always has been. Always will be.) Outside the connections kids make with one another in school and sports, most of the people out there don’t even make a blip on the rest of the town’s radar. The whole complex could get picked up by aliens and hauled off to some galaxy far, far away, and no one outside the guy who runs the liquor store and the woman who hands out the food stamps would notice or care.

And that included Andy. By his third trip out there in less than a week, he was getting pretty sick of the place. Up to this point in his life, the apartment complex had always been a pain in the butt to him. Now it smelled like death. Just pulling into the parking lot was enough to put him in a bad mood. “Man, I hate this stinking hole,” he said as he walked through what passed for grass between two of the buildings to look for the manager’s office. Even though it was barely 8:30 a.m., a crowd of children had already gathered on the dilapidated playground equipment behind the laundry building. Andy had to step over several bicycles strewn about on the sidewalk leading to the complex office. The office, of course, was empty. “Crap,” he mumbled, and walked back into the main parking lot. After standing around, feeling stupid for what felt much longer than it actually was, he played a hunch and walked up the stairs of building three to the Phillips apartment. The door stood open and Andy could hear Jeanine Martin and John talking inside. Apparently, little Miss Martin told John she had to inspect the apartment for damages before he could get out of his lease. She was a pretty good liar for an old lady.

Andy knocked lightly on the door frame. “Mind if I come in?” he asked.

“I was about to leave, so don’t mind me,” John said. Finishing his conversation with the apartment manager, he said, “Again, thank you so much for your understanding, Miss Martin. I appreciate it more than you can know.” He then started walking toward the door. “Good to see you again, Officer Myers.”

“Where you going in such a hurry?” Andy asked.

“I’m already late for work,” John said. “I had only planned on stopping by here for a minute to drop off my keys. So, if you will excuse me . . .”

“Sure, sure, sure,” Andy said. “Tell you what. Why don’t I walk out to your car with you. It will give us a chance to talk. I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you.”

“Yeah, that’ll be fine. But I really have to hurry,” John said. He picked up his pace as he went out the door. Andy followed. “So what do you need to know, Officer?”

“Oh, nothing big. Nothing official, that is. Just wanted to check on you. You know, find out how you are doing since your son died,” Andy said.

“I’m fine. I already told you, Officer, I have a hope that is bigger than death.” John moved quickly down the building three stairs and started toward his car. “It’s you I’m concerned about. How are you doing? You didn’t look so good at Gabe’s funeral.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m doing great. But back to you, if you are doing so well, why did you move out of your apartment so fast?”

With that, John stopped a few feet short of his car. He turned to Andy, raised his palms, and said, “The apartment reminds me of a reality that isn’t real. My son isn’t dead. He’s more alive than you or me. Like Jesus said, I don’t need to look for the living among the dead.” None of this made any sense to my old man. John’s talk of his son being alive made Andy think the guy was mental or something. “Now, really, Officer, I have to run. I’m too late already,” John said as he turned and started walking to his car.

About the time John reached the car door handle, Andy called out to him, “Why would your ex-wife say you killed your son?” The second the words left his lips, Andy wished he could reel them back in, but he couldn’t help himself. That question had been gnawing on him for days and he couldn’t keep it in any longer.

To hear Andy tell it, what happened next was huge. Me, I didn’t read too much into it, but then again, I wasn’t there. Still, I think that even if I had been, I wouldn’t have leaped to the same conclusion my old man did. Anyway, Andy threw out his stupid question to John, told him that his wife had accused him of murdering his child. And John’s only response was to turn, look Andy right square in the eye, smile, and shake his head. Then he climbed into his car and drove off. Andy took it as a smug, smart-ass,
Oh, wouldn’t you like to know?
kind of thing. Keep in mind, Andy thought he had a knack for reading people. The cop in him said he noticed subtle little things other people missed, and he could figure out pretty quickly what someone was all about. And the things that made John look guilty weren’t so subtle. From the moment John answered the door talking on the phone, Andy’s suspicions were aroused. Then the guy didn’t act that upset over his son being dead. To Andy, that just seemed flat-out weird. I don’t know what he expected John to do, maybe go jump off a bridge or something. I’m not sure. But remaining calm and quoting Bible verses was not, in Andy’s mind, the appropriate response to the death of a child. And neither were a lot of things Andy saw in John and heard him say.

Andy still didn’t have an answer as to why a father would kill his own son, but watching John drive off from the Madison Park Apartments, his gut told him Loraine was right. Proving it would be a much harder proposition. But then again, Andy always liked challenges.

After leaving the apartment complex, Andy drove back to his house, stripped out of his uniform, and climbed into the shower. He didn’t have to report to work for several more hours. On his way from the front door to the bathroom, he made one detour. He picked up his beloved Big Chief pad and turned to the only page on which he hadn’t done any brainstorming, the “how” page. Quickly he scribbled two sentences. The first simply said: “How did he do it?” The second said: “How can I prove it?” Tossing the pad onto the living-room sofa, he walked back to his bathroom, climbed into the shower, and let the hot water wash over him until his fingers were pruney. The water lubricated the gears in his brain. As he stood there soaking, he kept asking himself,
How am I going to nail you, John Phillips? How am I going to prove you did it?

As he stood there soaking, another “how” question came to him in the shower. He jumped out and didn’t even wait to dry off before finding his Big Chief pad. Water dripped onto the floor as he stood there naked and wrote, “HOW CAN I GET HIM TO ADMIT WHAT I KNOW HE DID?!!!!” Proving he did it wasn’t enough for Andy. He wanted to hear with his own ears the sweet sound of John admitting his guilt. Andy wasn’t interested in framing an innocent man. No. He was out for justice. And true justice demanded that the guilty man take full responsibility for his crime, and suffer the consequences. Andy needed a confession to feel satisfied that he’d done enough for Gabriel Phillips, and he would not rest until he made it happen.

Chapter 5

T
HE WAY I’VE HEARD
the story, and I’ve heard it many, many times, Loraine Phillips strikes me as the kind of person who never does anything without first thinking it out long and hard. In her taped statement to the police—a copy of which, by the way, I have tucked away in a drawer in my home in Trask—she never once mentioned Andy by name. She talks about going out and finding herself a “real man,” but she never says who that real man might be, or how many real men she found. Andy may have been the only one. I don’t think he was, although Andy does. Not that it matters. She wasn’t looking for anything more than a way to completely emasculate John. I’ve heard of bitter ex-wives with a taste for conflict, but she outdoes them all.

Whether or not Andy was the only man in her life (and her bed) matters less than the fact that he believed her when she said John killed Gabe as an act of cold-blooded revenge. Any doubts he may have had drove off with John that morning at the Madison Park Apartments.

Andy believed Loraine. But believing something and having the proof to back it up are two different things entirely. Andy had some circumstantial evidence and a gut feeling, but that’s not enough to indict a man, much less convict him. The whole case came down to a “he said, she said” kind of thing. Loraine said John killed their son; John said the boy fell out of bed and hit his head on an open drawer. The evidence could go either way, depending on whose version you believed. Andy also faced the problem that this wasn’t his case to prove. He may have been a part of the investigative team, but the sheriff’s department took the lead in these things. Their analysis carried far more weight with the district attorney than the opinion of a small-town cop. Andy had friends over there who were working on the case, but they didn’t have the same fire for it that he did. Nor had they made up their minds about John’s guilt or innocence. Honestly, I think the whole thing would have gone away if not for my dad’s persistence. I know it would have. But Andy wouldn’t let it go, and he wouldn’t let Ted Jackson, Mike Duncan, or anyone else on the Harris County Sheriff’s Department forget about it, either.