Ear-Witness (10 page)

“So are you going out with this Jon guy, or what?” Kelly said.

“We're just friends. It was nice of him to help me report the Roach.”

“Oh oh,” Kelly said. “Speak of the devil. Do you see who I see?”

We were walking down the hall, on our way to math class. Ronny Roach was coming towards us. He'd be hard to miss: grimy jeans, bagged out at the knees; a colourless T-shirt, heavily splotched with something green; and an old army shirt, so stiff with dirt it could stand up alone.

“Did the principal talk to him yet?” Kelly said.

“Yeah. He's supposed to apologize.”

“Has he?”

“Nope.”

“You think he'll do it now?”

“It has to be in writing.”

“Well, at least he's stopped hassling you,” she said. “Hasn't he?”

“I haven't seen him around since Raffi talked to him. I guess he's been skipping.”

I kept hoping he'd turn in to a classroom before we had to meet, but we were too close together by now, that wasn't going to happen. “I'm not ready for this,” I said. Even ten feet away, I could see he was mad enough to spit.

We didn't speak as we passed, but his face was pure poison, his eyes so hot with fury they almost smoked. No one had ever looked at me like that before, with such hatred. It surrounded me, like some hideous cloud I couldn't get away from and couldn't ignore.

“If looks could kill,” I said, “I'd be dead meat.”

Flavia and I were sitting on the wide wooden steps in front of our building. It was five o'clock but the sun was still strong. Carlos and Mr. Orellana, both wearing dress shirts and black trousers, had just left. They were obviously in a hurry, but I didn't think that was the reason Carlos wouldn't look at me, or why his eyes slid past my face.

“Mrs. Tammi thinks you are trying to make trouble for her,” Flavia said. “With the police.”

I shook my head. “I'm not trying to get her in trouble!” Then I explained what happened. “Sheena phoned,” I said. “To find out if you told me anything new about the night of the murder. I told her you didn't, and I mentioned the break-in, sort of like an excuse. I didn't know Tammi hadn't reported it,” I added.

“Carlos thinks you are trying to get us in trouble too,” she said.

“How can he think that? What have I done?”

“That is not what I believe, Jess,” she said. “Carlos is strange sometimes. Did he... did he do anything to you when you were in the basement that night?”

I hid my face in my hands. “How did you know?”

“I saw how he looked at you when you came back upstairs.” She paused, as if she was thinking what to say next. “Carlos is very nice about many things. But I must tell you something. He is not at all nice with girls. I have always told my friends to stay away from him.”

“He isn't even talking to me now.”

“He is angry, because he and our father are on their way to the police station, for an interrogation.”

I sighed. “If you'd just said what you heard that night, this wouldn't be happening.”

“I told you, our father forbade us to speak of it. You do not have a father?”

“I have one, but I never see him.”

“You do not wish to?”

“When I used to see him, Mom got really upset.”

“They made a mess,” she said, “but it hurt you.”

“I'm not hurt.” My eyes were watering. Pollen, probably.

“Then why are you crying?” she asked.

Sometimes I forget that Flavia is almost eighteen. “I'm crying because Tammi thinks I'm against her,” I said. “And because Carlos hates me because I wouldn't ...”

A police car rolled quietly down the street and pulled up on the sidewalk across from us.

“Jess,” Flavia said, “you can not let someone as... silly as Carlos hurt you.”

I hardly heard her, I was so busy watching the cops. There were two of them. The big one put his hand on his gun as he closed the cruiser door. He stood there for a while, waving his hands around, explaining something to his buddy. Then the buddy walked quickly down the path between the two apartment buildings and disappeared behind one of them. When he came out on the other side of it, he waved. The big guy, the one by the car, waved back, then headed inside the same building, through the front entrance.

“That's where Raffi lives,” I said. I pulled a hangnail off my finger with my teeth. “But they could be after anyone.” My eyes were glued to that doorway and my legs and arms felt twitchy. “I need to get up and move around,” I said. “Do you think I should go over there?”

“No.” Flavia reached her hand out towards me.

The second cop, the smaller one, came at a run from around the back, unlocked the cruiser, and leaned inside. The radio buzzed with static and voices, then was silent. He slammed the car door shut, then disappeared behind the building again.

Neighbours were filtering outside to watch. About ten minutes later, a second cop car, lights flashing, turned the corner, and pulled up behind the first. Two more cops, one of them Sheena, hurried up the walk and went inside. A moment later she was out again, running towards the back yard.

We waited for what seemed like a long time. Then the big cop backed out the front door, gun in hand. Two others, bracketing a large black guy, followed. The large black guy was Raffi. He was wearing handcuffs.

I stood, then moved down the steps, down the sidewalk towards him, as if I was in a dream. Flavia had taken my arm, the way you'd take an old person by the arm, to help him cross the street. She was trying to hold me back, but nothing could do that. I stopped in the middle of the road, and called out to him.

“Raffi? What should I do?”

He looked up and when our eyes locked, he shrugged. Then Sheena opened the car door and motioned him into the back seat. As he bent over to get in, she put her hand on the top of his head. A second cop followed him inside. Doors slammed shut, and they were gone.

Flavia followed me indoors, and stood watching as I ran up the stairs. “If you need anything...” she said.

I headed straight for the phone, to tell Mom. It rang a long time, and someone else answered. Mom wasn't available.

“Not available?” I said. “I'm her daughter! It's an emergency!”

“Oh dear, I'm sorry. She's at a conference today. At some hotel downtown.”

I groaned. Mom told me about that, but I wasn't paying attention. “Do you know where?” I asked.

“I don't, but let me ask around,” the woman said. “I'll put you on hold.”

She was gone a long time. When she came back I knew right away she couldn't help me. “I'm so sorry, dear, no one seems to know exactly where it is. The people who would know are all at the conference. Is there anything I can do?”

“You don't know when it's over?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I hung up. Then I sank back into the soft cushions of the couch and closed my eyes. How did life get to be so horrible so fast? Tammi thought I'd ratted on her to the cops. Carlos turned into a creep. Ronny Roach hated me. Kelly had dumped me, and now this!

I phoned Jon. He wasn't there. Then I turned on the TV, but the only choices were kids' shows or news, and I wasn't in the mood for either. I opened the fridge, and looked inside for a while. Then I closed it again. There was a paper attached to the door by a magnet. It was a notice of some meeting for psychiatric nurses at a hotel downtown.

The jerk who answered the phone at the hotel didn't know anything about any nurses' meeting, but after I pleaded with him, he
said he'd ask around. Then he cut me off. I called back. He apologized, but it was a fake apology, the kind you make to be polite, not the kind you make when you're sorry. His voice made me want to puke. After about ten minutes of being shifted around from one part of the hotel to another, somebody finally found Mom.

“What's the matter?” she said. She was puffing.

When I told her about Raffi, she started crying. My mother, who never cries, weeping into a phone in some posh downtown hotel.

By the time Mom got home, Raffi had already called from the police station to say he'd been released, and was on his way. He arrived about an hour after she did.

“What 1 don't understand,” Mom said, “is why the Orellanas got invited to go to the police station, and you got dragged off in a cop car.”

We were sitting on the back porch, trying out our new wood-and-canvas folding chairs. Mom and Raffi were drinking light beer, the kind you get in the grocery store that has hardly any alcohol. Neither of them are big drinkers. I had my usual, a Diet Coke.

“It's kind of a long story,” Raffi said, and grinned what Mom calls his little-kid-with-his-hand-stuck-in-the-cookie-jar grin.

“You did something dumb, didn't you?” Mom said. She was trying to sound mad, but she was so happy to have him back, she couldn't quite bring it off.

I was fooling around with the barbecue. It was just an old charcoal one, but it worked fine. Six small potatoes, the kind with red skins, were wrapped in heavy duty foil, baking away in the coals. While we were waiting for Raffi to get home, I'd marinated some chicken pieces in my special lemon and curry sauce, and they were sizzling away nicely on the grill, smelling wonderful. Mom had made Raffi's favourite salad, with fresh mushrooms and new spinach, to celebrate.

“Yeah, I did something dumb,” Raffi said. “Two things.” He tilted his head back and took a long swallow of beer. Then he cleared his throat. After that, he looked quickly at Mom, then looked away again.

She exploded. “For goodness' sake, will you just tell us!”

Raffi took another long drink before he answered. “They phoned yesterday,” he said. “Just before I went to work. It was that woman, Sheena Bowes. She wanted to see me this morning, at ten. But when I got home last night, after cooking pizza for eight hours, I guess I forgot to set the alarm.” He flicked his eyes towards Mom again. “My own fault,” he added.

“Uh huh,” Mom said. “So you got home about three, right?”

“Right. And I didn't go to sleep for a while. Anyway, when I woke up, the first thing I heard was somebody banging at the door, saying he's a cop. Well, you know how I feel about cops...”

“Oh, Raffi!” Mom said. “You didn't answer?”

“The way I figured it was, they'd think I wasn't there, and after I got up and showered and shaved, I'd call them, and apologize. What I didn't count on was this cop climbing up on the balcony and looking in the window. Ground floor apartments have disadvantages I never even dreamed of.”

“Oh Raffi,” Mom said again. Then she scrunched her face up like she had a pain in her head.

“So they thought I was being uncooperative...”

“I wonder why,” Mom said. “You're lucky they didn't shoot first and ask questions later.”

“Well, by now I'm shaking in my boots, or I would have been if I'd had my boots on. And the more scared I got, the less I wanted to open that door. And the longer I didn't, the madder they got. And the less I wanted to ...” As he was telling this, Raffi was acting it out: shaking with pretend fear; swinging his head behind him, then to the front, then behind him again, his eyes huge in his face. “You can see the predicament I was in,” he said.

“Why did they call for the second cop car?” I asked.

“Well, I said I'd come out, but only if that Sheena woman was there. So they sent for her. First thing I knew, she was hoisting herself up on the balcony, and peering through the glass door.”

“The whole thing could have been prevented if you'd only set your alarm,” Mom said.

“Yeah well, I guess you're right,” Raffi said. “Anyhow, Sheena saw that I wasn't armed or anything. And when I let her in, she opened the door into the hall.”

“They didn't blast in with their guns drawn or anything like that?” Mom said.

“They had their guns drawn, but Sheena was talking to them all the time as she was opening the door, saying she was right in front of it. So everything was cool. Pretty cool. I wasn't in the best shape I've ever been in, but it turned out OK.”

“Were they mad at you?” I asked. I stuck a fork into a potato, right through the foil. “They're ready,” I said.

“Yeah, they were mad. But they didn't take it out on me. They knew why I was scared. Sheena did, and she talked to them.”

The chicken was brown and crusty on one side, so I turned it over. It was boneless, and kind of wiggly. Only one piece fell through the grill, into the coals. The little ones will do that. I fished it out and blew the ashes off.

“Why did they want to talk to you in the first place?” I said. “It's not like you live here.”

He sighed. “I'm not sure,” he said. “I think it was just routine. Because I'm in and out of here all the time. Because the guy Jess saw down in Tammi's that night was big, like me. I don't know.”

“The cops think it was you at Tammi's? The guy who scared me half to death?” I said.

He nodded. “That was mentioned. Maybe they think you're covering up for me because you did it once before, when you told them your mom didn't have a boyfriend.”

I groaned, but quietly, inside myself. Raffi was in trouble because I'd acted like a smart-mouthed kid.

“This is ridiculous,” Mom said. “You were working the night of the murder, Raffi. You have an alibi. Jess heard that fight at about 2:00 a.m. You couldn't possibly have gotten home until at least three!”

Something changed then, something important. I noticed it right away, even though the only part of Raffi that moved was his eyes. They switched away from Mom, away from me, and looked off somewhere — across back yards, over other apartment buildings, towards the lake. When he spoke his voice was unusually soft. “I only worked till twelve.”