The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips (9 page)

Andy’s search for proof took him back to the Madison Park Apartments. He knew he wouldn’t find any new physical evidence there. Anything the initial investigative team might have missed was scrubbed away by the team of women from John’s church who descended on his apartment two days after John moved out. Or should I say, after he was moved out. Aside from the brief visit when he encountered Andy there, John never went back to his apartment after Gabe’s death. The way I heard it, he didn’t want to go back there with all the blood tracked all over the apartment. A friend from church offered to let him move in with him over in Crosse, and John took him up on it. A group of men moved all his stuff out, while their wives cleaned the apartment like it had never been cleaned before. Moving out of Trask came easy for John. It wasn’t like he’d put down any roots in the six months he’d lived there. No one from Madison Park puts down roots. Everyone out there was pretty much invisible until some tragedy forced the rest of the town to take notice. Nothing has changed. It’s still that way today.

With no physical evidence to search for, Andy started looking for witnesses who would back up his theory about how Gabe died. In his mind, getting them to talk wouldn’t be a problem. Andy once told me that he could get anyone to do just about anything he wanted. Considering how his story ended up, I would have to agree with him. So he went to work on the people of Madison Park. By the time he was done, he must have interviewed every man, woman, and child in the entire place. He didn’t find exactly what he was looking for, but what he discovered came close enough.

The interviewing process began at the epicenter of the whole affair, apartment 323. On his first day of playing Perry Mason, Andy went to the apartment next door, where the woman lived who’d called the police the night Gabe died. He already knew from the case file that a sheriff’s department team had taken a statement from the woman on the night of Gabe’s death, but that didn’t stop him. They’d only asked about the noises she’d heard on that night. Andy wanted to know more about John and Gabe’s relationship, and whether she’d seen the fits of rage Loraine had described. He had a hunch she had. After all, she was scared to go to John’s apartment by herself that night.

Andy knocked a couple of times before the door of apartment 325 slowly opened wide enough for a pair of eyes standing about four-and-a-half feet off the ground to look out. The chain lock was still latched. The eyes behind the chain didn’t say a word.

“Is your mommy or daddy at home?” Andy asked.

“My mom’s at work and I ain’t got no dad,” the boy said.

“Are you here by yourself?”

“I’m not supposed to say. My mother told me to tell anyone who called or came by that she was lying down with a headache and to please come back later,” the boy said through the crack of a door opening.

“Is she?”

“No,” the boy said. “That’s just what I’m supposed to say. Then I’m supposed to hang up or close the door. My mom don’t want me to talk to strangers.”

“She’s a smart woman,” Andy said. “Then why are you talking to me?”

“It’s okay to talk to a policeman. My mother told me that, too.”

“That’s right. That’s right. You can talk to policemen,” Andy said as he crouched down to eye level with the boy on the other side of the door. “Can you tell me your name?” Andy asked.

“Brian.”

“What’s your last name, Brian?”

“Paul. I have two first names,” Brian said.

“I guess you do,” Andy said as he continued talking through the slit of the door opening. “Brian, did you know Gabe, the boy who used to live next door?” Brian nodded his head yes. As he did, tears started streaming down his face. “Were you friends with Gabe?”

Brian sniffed, wiped his face with the back of his hand, and said very softly, “Best friends.”

“Do you know what happened to Gabe?” Andy asked. On the other side of the door, Brian began shaking, his tears flowed even more freely. He didn’t say a word. I don’t think he could talk even if he wanted. “What’s wrong, Brian? Did you see or hear something the night Gabe died?” Brian nodded his head. “What did you see, son?”

“I can’t talk no more,” Brian said as he shut the door.

Andy could hear the fading sound of Brian crying. It sounded like the boy was running to the back of his apartment. Andy raised his hand and started to knock again, but thought better of it. The mother should have been there for even that small snippet of a conversation, and Andy knew it. Pressing an eight-year-old for information without a parent present could blow up in his face. He turned and walked to apartment 321, on the other side of 323. Before he knocked, he remembered who lived there. “I sure as hell don’t feel like talking to Crazy Cathy today,” he said to himself.

He decided to check the neighbors who lived across the hall. But first, he wanted to go back into the Phillips apartment for another look around. He’d talked the apartment manager out of a key on his last visit, and let himself in. Like every other trip inside that apartment, he went down the short hall toward Gabe’s room. Before he’d taken a step, he heard a sound that nearly made him jump out of his skin. Somewhere in the apartment a child was crying, and it sounded like the child was in Gabe’s room. Andy walked slowly into the short hallway. The crying grew louder. When he reached the room, he stuck his head through the door, unsure of what he would find. The room was empty, just like always, but the cries were now louder than before. He stepped into the room, it was more like a tiptoe, and listened. The closer he went toward the closet, the louder the cries became. He opened the closet door, fully expecting to find a little boy in pain, but the closet was empty. The sound came from the opposite side of the apartment wall, from Brian Paul’s room. Andy smiled. If he could hear Brian now, then surely Brian heard everything that happened on the night of Gabe’s death. The boy may not be an eyewitness, but they didn’t get much closer. “Bingo,” he said to himself.

Andy sped back to the police station to call Ted Jackson. “Jax,” he said when Ted answered the phone. “I think I found a witness to Gabriel Phillips’s death. Not really an eyewitness. More of an earwitness.”

“A what?” Jackson said.

“I know, it sounds crazy, but I think the kid in the apartment next door heard everything through the paper-thin dividers they call walls in those cheap-ass apartments,” Andy said.

“If you are talking about who I think you are talking about, I already got a statement from the mother. The way she talked, something woke the boy, and he immediately woke her up. She said she didn’t hear anything more than the three other callers from the complex that night said, and the kid was with her almost the entire time,” Jackson said. “Did she tell you anything different?”

“I haven’t talked to the mother, only the boy. And I think the kid knows more than his mother is letting on. Hell, she probably doesn’t know what he knows. All I did was mention Gabe’s name, and the kid fell apart. He started shaking and crying and ran away. I’m telling you, that kid heard more than his best friend falling out of bed. He heard something that scared the crap out of him,” Andy said.

“Wait a minute. You talked to the kid without a parent around. Don’t you know anything about real police work?” Jackson said.

“Whoa. Whoa. It wasn’t like that. I went by the apartment to talk to the mother, and the kid opened the door. I just asked if he knew the kid who used to live next door. That’s all. The rest came from him. I swear. But, even then, it wasn’t much. Whole conversation lasted maybe a minute, minute and a half tops,” Andy said. “I swear.”

Ted Jackson let out a sigh in response.

“But here’s the deal,” Andy said, “here’s what you didn’t know. The boy’s bedroom butts right up against Gabe’s. When I was out there just a little bit ago, I could hear the kid crying through the wall, almost like there wasn’t a wall there to begin with. Now, if I could hear this kid crying today, I guarantee you he had a front-row seat to everything that happened the night Gabriel Phillips was killed. We need to bring in this kid and his mother together and find out what he knows.”

“We? What’s this
we
business?” Jackson said.

“We, as in we’re on the case and this is my witness, so I ought to be there when you talk to him,” Andy said. “This kid might know a few other things, too. He said he and Gabe were best friends. He’s probably a good place to start to find out what kind of a father this Phillips guy really was. Loraine Phillips said John used to beat her. If anyone knows whether he had ever hurt Gabe, it would be this kid.”

“Possibly. Possibly. But this
we
business still isn’t going to happen. Let me set up a time to talk to the boy. Hell, I’ll even try to get them to come in here so you can listen from the other side of the glass if you want. But that’s as much as I can give you. You seem way too gung ho about this case, almost like it was your kid who died. Like I told you, you need to check your emotions at the door on this one, Andy,” Jackson said.

“Come on, Jax. You know me,” Andy said.

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Jackson replied. “Let me see what I can get set up and I will keep you posted.”

“Good enough,” Andy said. Then, shifting gears, he asked, “So what’s the status on the case? Is this a full homicide investigation yet? I’m curious as to what the D.A. thinks about what you’ve shown him so far.”

“We’ve notified his office about what’s going on, but we are nowhere close to delivering a prosecutable case to him. The investigation has only just started. I know this may sound a little strange to you native Traskites, but we have these little things called rules and procedures we have to go by. We don’t have the luxury of making it up as we go along,” Jackson said.

“Come on, Jax. You have a guy who acts guilty as hell from the get-go. You have a witness who says he did it. You have his fingerprints on the murder weapon. To top it off, your ex-con suspect has a history of beating his wife. It’s not much of a stretch to go from hitting your wife to hitting your kid. What are you waiting on?” Andy said.

“Loraine Phillips doesn’t fly as a star witness. Hell, I’ve got an ex-wife. I know what they’re capable of. My ex-wife would make me the evil genius behind the Manson Family if she thought anyone would believe her. All you’ve got is a bunch of
maybe
’s and
could be
’s. Every bit of evidence we have so far is completely subjective. Sure, it makes Phillips look guilty, if you already think he did it. I’ve got to give the D.A. more than that or he will hand me my ass on a platter,” Jackson said.

“I just gave you a real witness,” Andy said. “Talk to the kid, then make up your mind. I’m telling you, Jax, my gut tells me this Phillips guy has blood on his hands. You can’t let him get away with killing a little boy who couldn’t defend himself.”

“Depending on what he says, the kid may be a start, but I’m not about to pin my entire case on the testimony of an eight-year-old. Any defense attorney worth a damn would have a field day with a little kid on cross-examination,” Jackson said. I think he heard Andy clicking his tongue or sighing or something over the phone because he went on to say, “Patience, man. Don’t rush it. Let the evidence do the talking. Listen to what it says. And if it says John Phillips did it, then we will nail his sorry ass to the wall. But if it doesn’t and we still try to nail him, we end up looking like a lynch mob rather than professional law enforcement officers,” Jackson said.

“He did it, Jax. You know it. I know it. The kid next door knows it,” Andy said.

“Maybe. We’ll find out. That’s the whole point of an investigation anyway. Right?”

“Yeah, man, whatever you say,” Andy said.

Andy hung up the phone, rolled back in his chair, and kicked his desk. “Dammit. You need more evidence? I’ll give you evidence. I’ll give you so much flipping evidence that you’ll choke on it.” He grabbed the phone and punched in seven numbers, and when I say punched, I mean punched. He abused that poor phone. After three rings, the other end picked up. “Loraine,” Andy said, “this is Andy Myers. Do you have time to answer a couple of questions for me? I’m working on your son’s case and I just need to clarify a few things.” She couldn’t see him until the next day, which was fine for Andy. It was getting late and he needed time to mentally prepare himself to see Loraine.

Chapter 6

A
NDY FOUND HIMSELF
standing next to Gabe’s grave. The sun had gone down hours earlier, and the moon cast very little light, but he knew it was Gabe’s grave. A layer of dry and shriveled flowers left over from the funeral were scattered across the still-fresh dirt. Andy had a teddy bear in a cop’s uniform in his hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to drop it on top of the rotting flowers. Instead, he just stood there, breathing in the heavy night air, staring down at the grave, silent. Even if he had been able to think of something to say, the words wouldn’t form on his lips. Nor could he cry. His eyes stayed bone-dry the whole time he stood there. Staring.

“Do you really think I would kill my only son because of you?”

Andy turned around to see John Phillips walking up a path between headstones about ten yards behind him. “What did you say?” Andy asked.

“I said, do you really think I would kill my only son
because of you
?” John spit out those last three words like someone had made his lemonade with salt.

“I have a witness,” Andy said.

“You don’t have anything. You know it, I know it, and the kid next door knows it.” John kept walking until he’d closed to within fifteen feet of Andy.

“I know what you did,” Andy said, and turned back to Gabe’s grave.

“You don’t know anything. Do you really think I would kill my only son because of you?” John began laughing. Andy tried to ignore him. “DO YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD KILL MY ONLY SON
BECAUSE OF YOU!
” he shouted.

“Yes,” Andy said in almost a whisper.

“Oh, that is rich.” John laughed. “That is sooooo rich,” he said as he fell to the ground and began rolling around in the grass, laughing uncontrollably.

“Yes,” Andy repeated, louder. “Yes, I know you did it. I know you killed Gabe.” Andy moved from the grave site to where John lay on the ground, laughing. The sound of his laughter enraged Andy. “I know what you did. I know you killed him.” Andy was now standing directly over John.