Becoming the Storm
35 Suspicion
“DO I NEED A LAWYER present, Detective Craig?” I asked. At least he’d shown me his ID. There was nothing else about him that said police. He could have been an insurance salesman. He frowned. I didn’t like the fact that he had to stop and think about it for a while. I’d been kidding. He finally shook his head.
“You are entitled to a lawyer if you want one present. Or a witness. We have interviewed everyone else that was present the day of the shooting. I want to get your statement to complete the file.” Well, that wasn’t asking too much. I nodded my head. “Before you agree, though,” he continued, “you should know that you will probably come under greater scrutiny because of recent revelations and your unique part in stopping the tragedy. I’m not giving you legal advice. I have not arrested you so I am not going to read you your rights. It is your decision and I will not think worse of you either way.”
This was weird. I didn’t mind giving him a statement, but everything inside me was screaming that I needed to have a lawyer. Did my therapist tell the police about my dreams and rage? Couldn’t be. That was unethical. Something else triggered this.
“I think I should have my attorney present when I give my statement. I’m not entirely cogent because of the painkillers they have me on. They come with a warning that I shouldn’t drive, operate heavy machinery, or sign contracts. I think a statement to the police falls under the latter.”
He grimaced. I suppose I just made his job harder and the poor guy just wanted to close things down. I almost told him I’d give him the statement. But something was definitely wrong. The detective stood, gave me his card, and asked to have my attorney contact him. Then he left without another word. Now what? I need to find an attorney.
I was going to be moved to a Physical Therapy facility this week. I no longer had tubes in me. I could make it from the bed to the bathroom, but the nurses still preferred me to alert them. I’d pooped Sunday and was thankful that I was still on a soft food diet. Before long, I’d be out of my diaper completely. Before I moved, I needed to get a lawyer and get this statement over. I knew Mom and Anna would be up to visit me about lunch time. I was going to tell them it was time for them to go home and be with Dad. But right now, I needed someone who could get me a lawyer. Sure, there were Rex and Jean and Art and Teri, but they were all related to the clan. Whatever was going on, I didn’t want it to affect anyone else in the family. But there was only one person I could think of to contact. I pressed my call button. Nurse Moore came into the room. She was a smaller version of Nurse Ratched—I mean Nurse Durham. I’m sure she expected that I needed to use the bathroom.
“I need to make a phone call,” I said. “Is there someplace I could use a phone?”
“A phone? Don’t you have one?” She looked around my room as if I’d hidden it somewhere. “I suppose that since you were unconscious for so long, they never put an extension in. I’ll get one set up for you. Do you need to use it right away?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’re going to see how well you can push that walker, then, aren’t we?” she smiled. I groaned. But it wasn’t safe to walk without the contraption yet. I found my legs were extremely weak and my right leg still tended to buckle under my weight. One little twitch of pain in my hip and the leg went to jelly.
Not to mention the fact that I was still in a hospital gown that gapped open in the back to show my diaper. I shuffled along behind Nurse Moore, having to stop every ten feet or so to catch my breath. I finally reached the nurse’s station and she handed me a phone. I dialed the only person I could think of who would help me.
“Clinton residence. God loves you.”
“John, it’s Brian. I need help and I don’t know who else to turn to.”
“You know?”
“I know the police want a statement and said I would be investigated because of recent developments and my unique involvement. I need a lawyer.”
“I agree.”
“A good one, John. I’m scared. Can you help me? Please?”
“Brian, you know I’ll help you. I’ll call the Pratts.”
“No. I don’t want anyone in the clan or the tribe involved. I think I need someone independent.” John was quiet for a moment. I could imagine him thinking over what I said in his deliberate manner of considering things.
“You’re right, Brian. I’ll have someone who’ll meet with you as quickly as I can. Rest. This could be a long process.”
“Yessir. Thank you. Thank you so much.” There were fucking tears in my eyes again. I don’t know why the detective frightened me so much. I was just so thankful for John. I looked up after I put the handset in the cradle. Nurse Moore was looking at me with her mouth open. “What?”
“Let’s get you back where you can rest. No one here buys any of that story. I can’t imagine the police are taking it seriously.”
“What story?”
“Just a stupid thing in some gossip tabloid. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Mom and Anna had taken up the task of bringing me news of the clan and messages from my hearthmates. Sometimes they were just too hard to listen to. Life was moving forward in my casa. It had stopped for me.
Mom was giving me a progress report on Dani’s surgery. The fucker messed up her face. Shot her in the mouth and broke her jaw! God damn it! I’m going to kill him. I can’t even tell her… that I love her.
John came into the room to find me turned away from my mother as I tried not to shake with my sobs. Behind him was a guy in blue jeans and a sport coat. He didn’t look any older than I am.
“Brian, I want you to meet Alex Ramos. He’s the one you wanted to talk to,” John said as he stepped to the bed and took my hand to shake it. I felt a crumpled up paper pressed into my palm. A dollar. Lawyer? A good one? John!
“What’s this about?” Mom asked.
“Brian asked me to find Alex and bring him in for a chat,” John said. “I came along to take you two to lunch. Bea is waiting in the car for us.” Mom and Anna looked a little confused.
“Do you want to be alone with Alex?” Anna asked.
“Yes, Anna. Mom, please go to lunch with John. I’ll talk to you about it later this afternoon,” I said. I turned on my back and used the control buttons to raise the bed so I was in a full seated position. John, Anna, and Mom left. I turned to Alex.
“John filled me in briefly. We can get you through this. And don’t worry; I don’t dress like this in front of a judge, but when I’m doing research, I like to be comfortable. I specialize in criminal cases with young clients. Jeans and a T-shirt are more appropriate. Do you have a dollar?” I handed him the bill John had pressed into my hand. “You have now retained me as your attorney. Anything you tell me is covered under client/attorney privilege. Tell me the absolute truth. You can’t afford for me to be surprised by what other people might say, or what other evidence might prove. If you actually conspired to lure the shooter into a gunfight, I can’t put you on the stand to deny doing it, but we can make the state prove that you did it, and frankly, I don’t see how you could have, so don’t give me a raft of crap about how guilty you feel that you lived and the others didn’t, either.” He turned and closed the door before sitting down with a yellow legal pad and a pen. He used his briefcase as a desk. “Why don’t you start by telling me the problem.”
I guess it was my turn to talk. I told Alex about the visit from Detective Craig and that he wanted a statement about what happened. But he alluded to the fact that I would likely be investigated because of something or another and I got scared.
“Craig’s one of the good guys. He’s tenacious when it comes to gathering evidence and he is an extremely good interviewer. But he’s also fair,” Alex said. “How much do you know about these recent developments?”
“Nothing. I just found out about my girlfriend being shot in the face. I can’t believe no one considered that important enough to tell me.” I couldn’t believe she had to have reconstructive surgery because bone fragments from her jaw tore a ragged hole in her face. Rose said it would take a while for her to heal. She didn’t say anything about what was healing.
“Good. I’m not being facetious. It’s good that you don’t know anything except what happened from your perspective. I’ll fill you in on other details in a little while. First, let’s work on your statement. I want a statement from you that is factual and as objective as you can make it. We’re going to work on a statement of events, not feelings or emotions or guilt or second guesses. As old Joe Friday said, ‘All we want are the facts, ma’am.’”
Alex was pretty easygoing. He led me through the time from the moment we arrived at the sorority, backing up to why we were there. When things got too difficult, like seeing Lexi shot down and watching Samantha and Dani get hit, he let me pause and gave me water. It took more than an hour to get the details I remembered from less than five minutes of my life. At different times, he had me draw pictures of where I remembered people being. Then he read the whole thing back to me as I nodded and occasionally added a detail. It was hard work and I was exhausted.
“Now,” Alex said, “I’m going to bring you up to date on what the recent developments are. Friday, the supermarket tabloids hit the stands. Someone went to a great deal of work to implicate you as a party to the shooting—a kind of grudge between two gangs. The allegation is that you went there intending to intercept the shooter.”
“What kind of fucking shit is that? No one has even told me the name of the shooter so I can hunt him down and kill him when I get out of here!” Shit! I shouldn’t have said that. Alex looked at me curiously.
“You already did, Brian.”
“Run!” I yelled. My leg jerked and pain shot through my hip and side. Nothing happened. No one came into my room. Had I even yelled that out loud? The dreams were bloody. They were the worst part of my recovery. Every night I was afraid to go to sleep because I would relive watching him kill Lexi. Watching him shoot Samantha and Dani. Knowing that he’d shot Courtney and killed Addison’s boyfriend.
I replayed the last moments—gathering all my strength and the power of the universe and lunging at him. But I was too far away. I couldn’t reach him. Yet the detective, having sat through the reading of my prepared statement, said that a dozen eyewitnesses had indicated that they saw me leap over Dani and deliver the deathblow to the guy. They said I hit him with such force that we both flew backwards from the impact and landed over twenty feet apart. It just wasn’t possible.
And then I found out who it was. Wayne Enders, the computer hacker who had been a pain in Courtney’s ass even before he shot her there. It happened that he had also been the president of AXE, the pseudo-fraternity that we’d had trouble with the first year we were down here. Nothing added up. I’d never met the guy. Only knew him from Courtney’s stories. Some idiot reporter had been digging for four weeks and the tabloids had printed a crapload of my history. How they dug up what I did to the twins who tried to rape Jessica is beyond me. And Gary’s gang. And Tommy Westerling, Hannah’s brute of a boyfriend. All that was sealed as far as any official records were concerned. I was a juvenile and was never accused of anything anyway. I breathed a sigh of relief that the only thing they hadn’t uncovered was that I killed Lester Hawkins. I didn’t volunteer that in my interview with Ramos.
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