The Incident (Chase Barnes Series Book 1) (24 page)

SIXTY THREE

Late Saturday night into Sunday morning I tossed and turned so much that I think I actually knocked Lindsey out of bed a couple of times.  I was doing so well with my sleep over the last couple of nights that I had no idea what the cause could have been for my recent restlessness.  There were no dreams of Jake or guns or Esteban.  I didn’t fall into a deep enough sleep to really dream about anything.  However, I did wake up in a cold sweat at around two.  I think I was grappling the concept of myself.  I was dreaming of self- doubt.  Again. 

Who was I becoming?  Who have I really been?  Most importantly, was I really choosing the right career path in this private investigation gig?  Was it a bunch of mumbo jumbo or was this a real and legit choice?

I left Lindsey to drift off into a comfortable sleep.  While I went downstairs to wallow in my own misery.  I sat at the kitchen table with a diet Snapple iced tea.  The lone light was a single- bulb lamp hanging just above the kitchen table.  It was ugly and I wanted it replaced.  I sat stone still for a period of time that is still unknown to me.  I thought about Esteban.  I thought about Lindsey.  But most of all, I thought about Jake.  My journal had sat in the bottom drawer of a hutch along the wall adjacent to the kitchen.  I got up and retrieved it, brought it back to the kitchen table and sat to reread it.  I immediately skipped to the fifth and final entry I made.  The words on the page blurred together forming a Rorschach inkblot in my mind.  Another sip of Snapple brought my eyes into better focus. 

I began reading my fifth journal entry.

Fifth Journal Entry:

My name is Chase Barnes and I was the one who killed Jake.  I didn’t drown, rape, torture, and sodomize him.  I didn’t leave him in a Dumpster, hoping he would never be found and I didn’t accidentally run him over with my car- although the accident part is correct.  See, I am- was- a cop and I shot him.  Twice.  It’s a story I don’t like talking about for obvious reasons and it’s certainly a life experience I will never forget- for obvious reasons.  No matter how hard I try.  However, writing it on paper for only my eyes to see appears to be so simple.

Every second of my life has been consumed by the recurring nightmare.  My eyes refuse to close at night.  If they do I instantly hear the gunshots in my ears and the flash of the muzzle lives inside my eyes.  Both flashes.  And I’ll never be able to shake off the vibrations sent through my trigger finger and through my brain.

As I read, I recalled how surprisingly it easy was to write my story of the incident down on paper after I began writing it.  All I needed to do was start and the rest poured out like water out of a hose.  The words flowed and the thoughts rocked my brain.  I shook my head from side to side to regain focus.  My brain grew numb and my palms sweaty.  I had no idea how long I was pounding my foot up and down underneath the table until I knocked my knee against the table leg.

I powered through and finished what I wrote:

My partner Drew and I were driving our normal beat.  We’d been partners only a year and he was just starting to come around.  See, his last partner had been killed in a hostage situation gone bad.  Drew was wounded with a gunshot to the left calf but the more I got to know Drew, I could tell that the mental wounds cut a little bit deeper and had much more of a lasting effect. 

When Drew and I were partnered up we were switched from the day to the night shift.  I didn’t mind it but Drew voiced his verbal objections.  I was convinced that the objections had more to do with me as his new partner and not with his new shift but I never listened to my conscience anyway.  That was until the day Jake died. 

Reading this, I realized how some of what I wrote was irrelevant to the story but I don’t think I cared when I was writing it.  Truthfully, I don’t think I knew what I was writing at the time.

I stuck my nose back in my journal:

             
We took the call and hauled ass to the location of the 7-11 where an apparent robbery- in- progress was happening at Chamberlain and Ryerson.  I couldn’t remember what was on that corner but Drew did.  Now I don’t want to remember what’s on that corner.  I remember watching Drew white knuckle the wheel and tighten his eyes on the road. 

              Chamberlain and Ryerson.

              Ryerson and Chamberlain.  Fuck it, I can’t finish it.  You know I killed him but you don’t need to know why.  Deep breath.  You’re forcing me to finish the goddamned story so I’ll just suck it up.  For Jake.  Do it for Jake.  Jake would want everyone to know.

             
This might have been the first time I’d taken Dr. Sharper’s advice and utilized the journal for what it was meant to be for- writing every thought and emotion down on paper.

              We pulled into the parking lot with Drew accelerating through the turn and caddy- cornering the car across three spots.  Why do people need to do that?  Does it really save that much time?  Maybe it fed Drew’s cop ego.  Who knows?

              I remember seeing a male in a dark hooded sweatshirt.  He was wildly swinging a gun in the direction of the clerk behind the counter.  I opened the car door and stood behind the ajar door, using it as my first line of protection in case the perp tried to take a shot at us.  Drew did the same on his end and radioed for back up.

              I’ll never forget the hood of the sweatshirt.  It hung so low off the top of his head that it covered just about all of his face.  I could tell he saw the blue and red lights instantly flood the interior of the store.  He looked right at me through the front window. 

              Then he fired a shot.  We took cover but saw the shot went into the ceiling directly above the shooter.  Pieces of debris floated down around him.  I knew then that the shooter was either inexperienced with a gun or hopped up on drugs or alcohol.  Or both. 

              The gun.  My gun.  I had no idea Jake knew how to operate a gun let alone knew where my safe was at home.  This is it.  Fuck it.  You can figure out the rest. 

Shut up and continue for Jake.  Keep going!

              I don’t think I’d ever written anything in such detail.  I remember the battles I had with my conscience as I wrote out my version of the incident on paper that day.  Reading this again brought me back to the near panic attacks and tension headaches I felt racing through my body as I wrote.  They were starting again.  The nausea filled my stomach and crept into my throat.

              I kept reading:

             
Drew and I decided we had to make a move at some point.  We had to apprehend the shooter before any further damage was done to the store or to the people inside.  I saw him make a break for it through the store towards the back exit.  I yelled for Drew to continue his pursuit through the front while I gave chase around back.  I drew my gun and took off to the left side of the building.  Just as I rounded the corner I heard a loud crash and saw the perp stumble when the back door kicked back off the side of the building with a ton of force and nearly took himself out.  The gun was still in his hand as he stumbled and staggered to keep his balance.

              I yelled for him to stop and freeze and to drop the gun.

              Stop!  Freeze!  Stop!  Freeze!  I hear it every day when I’m awake and when I try to sleep.

              He slowed his run and quickly turned to face me.  Gun still in hand.  He slowly raised his arm that was holding the gun.  I feared that he might shoot.  I repeatedly yelled for him to drop the gun.  I raised my gun to shoulder height and fired two shots.

              Worst mistake of my life!

              Little did I know he was holding the muzzle end of the gun indicating a sign of surrender but the darkness of the alley way and limited visibility forced me to make a poor decision.  I remembering approaching the body.  I don’t remember, however, walking.  It was more like floating.  I’d never shot anyone in my life before.  Just as I used my foot to remove the gun from his hand, Drew came up behind me. 

              He was just a kid.  A kid apparently driven down the wrong path.  He couldn’t have been more than fifteen.  I’ll never forget the pace my pulse was racing at this point.  The adrenaline was at an all- time high when I saw the vic’s sleeves of his sweatshirt pulled up to his forearms.  What were the odds that two boys had heart- shaped birthmarks on the inside of their right forearm.  Jake did and always told me that when he turned eighteen he wanted to get a tattoo around it to hide it because he was embarrassed by its feminine shape. 

              Then I saw the sneakers.  The purple, the green, the red, and the yellow sneakers that I adamantly refused to buy for Jake because they were so ugly.  Drew pulled out his flashlight and clicked the back end to light it up but I put my hand over the end to hide the narrow strip of light.  I wanted to block the light and I told Drew to let me do it.  He instantly clicked off the light.

              I still see the blood flowing from both chest wounds.  I saw the sweatshirt, which I knew was
my
New York Mets sweatshirt.  I picked up his head ever so gently, sliding my hand under his neck.  The oversized sweatshirt hood dropped off his head when I lifted his neck.  I’ll never forget Drew’s reaction when he saw me touch the victim.  He yelled at me not to touch the body. 

              Don’t touch it!  Don’t touch it!  What the hell are you doing?!!  “It” like it was a dead deer or an old book.

              I told him it was all right since the person I just shot was my son Jake. 

SIXTY FOUR

I didn’t realize it was pushing four in the morning by the time I was able to finish my fifth and final journal entry.  My blood pressure seemed to have returned to normal.  However, my nausea still lingered.  I got up to put my Snapple bottle in the recycling bin and realized I needed to get some sort of sleep.  Not wanting to return upstairs to disturb Lindsey, I made my way to the living room couch.

              I awoke three hours later by the sliver of morning sunlight slicing through the center of the shear curtains in the living room.  Lindsey was in the shower; I could hear the water running.  I lay still on the couch thinking about my need to reveal the truth to Lindsey about Jake.  It was time.  Or was it?  When is there ever a good time to tell your wife that you are solely responsible for killing your only child?

              Sitting up off the couch, the staircase stared me directly in the face.  I managed to make the climb.  Walking the end of the narrow hallway meant that I would have to pass Jake’s room on the way to my bedroom and for close to five months I couldn’t even get myself to climb the stairs.  Sleeping in the spare bedroom kept me as far away from the association with Jake I could get without having to sleep in the garage.  I still make a conscious stutter- step whenever I reach the top of the stairs.  I wanted to immediately strip the walls of Jake’s photos, leave the walls naked and erase every memory of Jake but Lindsey refused.  I still have to look at my feet while I make my way up to the bedroom.  Sometimes at night when I’m awake and can’t sleep I refuse to turn the hallway light on, not out of fear of disturbing and waking Lindsey, but out of fear of seeing Jake’s bedroom door. 

              For a while, my conscience screamed at me every time I was an arm’s length away from Jake’s room or somehow came into contact with something associated with Jake.  It was my own way of reminding myself of what I had done.  I adamantly tried to keep the door to Jake’s room closed to block out the fact that he is gone forever.  Lindsey preferred to keep it wide open in what I believed to be a subconscious thought that Jake might just get to sleep in his bed again.

             
Beast!  Child killer!  Poor excuse for a human being!

              There’s my conscience at it again.  I’ve only now begun to ignore my conscience but sometimes it’s just too powerful and overbearing to tune out because nothing will change the night I shot Jake.