Every Little Thing (34 page)

Cohen shook his head and poured two teas, in case Keith changed his mind. “There if you want it.” But Keith came unflinchingly towards him and knocked both mugs of tea off the counter and into the sink. A scorch of liquid heat across Cohen's forearm. A splash of brown on his shirt. Keith was in his face, leaning up on his toes, pointing. “You know what you need to hear?”

“Calm down, Keith. And back up.”He put a hand on Keith's chest, extended his arm to push him back. But Keith walked back in, closing the space between them, and Cohen heard Lee'sTV go quiet.

“She gave away your fucking kid and never told you. Did you know that? She was pregnant when she left you to live with Lee. That's how much she cares about you, asshole. And that's how loyal Lee is to you too, by the way. He never told you a thing about it, did he?”

Cohen put his hands up and out, begging for a minute to process what Keith had thrown his way, but Keith stepped back into his face again, spit coming out with the words, “Yeah,how do you like the truth of it, asshole? Might not have been yours because her and I started in long before she left you.”

“You don't just fuckin tell someone something like this, in a goddamn kitchen, shouting in their face!”He pushed Keith away and looked to the floor, to channel a moment of clarity. He went to say,
Bullshit
or,
What the fuck was that?
but when he looked up, Lee was halfway across the kitchen, charging at Keith with a knife clutched in both hands, like it was a sword.

Cohen shifted gears, from shock to instinct, lunging at Keith to protect him because Keith had his back turned to Lee and never saw Lee coming. But Keith saw Cohen lunging towards him and backed up as if Cohen was going to swing a fist at him.

The knife went in. A wet, smooth thud. It was the biggest knife in the house. The same one Cohen had been finding in Lee's room for weeks. The knife went in and Keith's face went paper-white. His mouth fell open: his chin right into his throat. Two rows of teeth, but no scream.

Lee had the knife deep in Keith's back, near his kidney, and was about to haul it up and kill Keith, but Cohen got there in time and pushed down on Lee's hand. He wedged his body in between Lee and Keith, using Keith's body as a wall to push against, to thrust Lee and the knife in the opposite direction.

Lee fell to the floor in a way that expressed his age, his mental state, and Cohen pinned him there, gently as possible, like he was a brittle bug. Keith knelt into Cohen's back, punching Lee in the face over and over, belting him, with Cohen sandwiched there between them, trying to protect them both. Lee was cowering and bawling in pain, crying and reaching for the knife way out of reach under the kitchen table. Keith kept swinging, more blood and tears bursting over Lee's face, so Cohen rolled over and covered Lee entirely, lining his head up over Lee's head, his torso over Lee's, his legs over Lee's, to shield Lee from the blows and to keep Lee from getting the knife.

But Keith kept swinging, hitting Cohen now. Knowing the difference and taking pleasure in it. It felt like Keith was hurling rocks at his face. “Call an ambulance, get out of here.”

Another punch, like another thrown rock; the after-sting and the instant swelling. “Keith, I've got him. Get up, get out of here, call an ambulance.”One more sharp crash into his face and Cohen started swinging back.
I could've let him kill you.

Keith got up, feeling his back. “Fuck! Fucking Christ! Jesus fuck!” He was wiping his back and looking at the blood on his hands, over and over, panicking more every time. He took off running and left the front door wide open.

Lee sat with his back against the cupboards, below the kitchen sink, crying, wiping his bloody hands all over the parts of his face Keith had welted and left bruised. His face and hands were equally smeared red. Lee was panicked and his body was shivering like he was cold, but he wasn't cold.

Cohen stepped back, away from Lee, more alarmed than concerned for his own safety. It was too much at once. His heart like an angry wasp, and his face still stinging. He was absolutely terrified of Lee now and not sure where Keith was. He took his phone out of his pocket and dialled the direct line to Grayton's police station. Allie kept it plastered to the fridge. He was backing away from Lee as he dialled, his eyes never leaving him. Lee kept yelling. “You fucking ruined it! I was waiting weeks for that! We had him! You want Allie, don't you?” He kept a distance from Lee, who was pacing around the kitchen now, blood-smeared and capable of anything. Cohen called the police, but they already knew the situation.

“The police and an ambulance are on their way. The victim is still in your driveway, locked in his car, and waiting for us. Are you okay? Is the offender still in the house?”

Offender.
Lee a criminal now.

“Sir, the yelling in the background, are you in danger?”

“I don't know. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I know this man. I don't think he'll hurt me.”

“Sir, let's stay calm. I need you to place a sizeable object between you and the offender. A table. It might be best if you join the victim in his car and wait—” But Cohen heard the sirens coming. That quickly, the police station a two-minute drive from Lee's house. He hung up on the woman and looked up. Lee was gone. Not in the kitchen. He heard Lee's TV flick on, the news blaring something about a tropical storm. He'd crawled back into bed, bloody clothes and all. The knife still under the kitchen table.

The cops came in like a small militia, shouting
Police
and pointing guns. Something in the panic of it all had amplified the wispy-crackling of static from their walkie-talkies. Cohen put his hands up and pointed to Lee's bedroom. They arrested Lee on the spot, cuffed him, brutally, his chest crashing into the floor, his left cheek pancaked into hardwood. One cop had his knee pressed into Lee's back so hard Cohen pictured Lee's ribs snapping like spaghetti sticks. A man that old, knocked down and pinned to the floor. Three on one. All that shouting and panic. The contrast between how the police were looking at Lee and how Cohen was. It was too much to feel real.

She was pregnant when she left you to live with Lee
. And then the pattering of police boots derailed his train of thought. He looked over at the bloody knife under the kitchen table again.

Three officers scooped a handcuffed Lee off the floor like he was a tagged animal. His glasses had fallen off his face. One officer looked down at his glasses, stared, like he was contemplating if he'd pick them up or not. He did and he put them on Lee's face in time for Lee to turn to Cohen as they guided him out of the house, and Lee shouted, “I did this for you, and you had me arrested! I did this for you and Allie! But you just wanted my house, didn't you!”He spat.

All eyes on Cohen now. Three officers took Lee out of the house, and one stayed behind with Cohen. Notepad in hand. Cohen said, “That's not what it sounded like.”

The officer licked his fingers and grabbed the edge of his notepad. Found a fresh page. He motioned to the couch in the living room. “I'm constable MacDonald. We need to vacate the scene of the crime.”

Cohen sat on the couch; the constable on the edge of the loveseat. The cop's phone rang just before his mouth got started on his first question. He laid the notepad on the cushion beside him and talked for three or four minutes in
yeahs
and
okays
and
uh-huhs
. Cohen stood up. He went to go see if the paramedics had arrived and to see how Keith was doing, but the constable stuck his hand up at Cohen,
Don't move
. Through the window, he saw that the paramedics hadn't arrived yet.

Two more officers, new on the scene, walked through the living room and into the kitchen with something like toolboxes in their hands. The constable clicked his cellphone closed and picked up his notepad.

“I need a statement. What is your last name, Cohen?” and Cohen wondered how the officer knew him by name.

“Davies.”

A nod, a scribble. “I need to advise you that you're entitled to have a lawyer present.”

The comment never struck Cohen as accusatory or extreme. He knew the police had disclaimers to make before everything they did; that they were required to shout
police
at potential criminals before drawing a gun and to tell everyone they talked to that they were entitled to a lawyer. Bullshit formalities, for legal reasons. Cohen made a facial gesture that that was fine and told the officer his story. He told him why Keith had come by— suspicions that he and Allie were more than friends—and he gave the details of that conversation. He mentioned Lee's contempt for Keith.

“...I know they don't get along. I know Lee's thrown flower pots at the man's car. I know Lee's been increasingly unstable, but I
never
saw this coming. I
never
saw Lee capable of this. He's a kind and big-hearted man, but he's suffering from a mental disorder. Dementia is part of it. But, still.”And then he thought of it and mentioned that he'd found that knife in Lee's room a few times and kept taking it back out.

“And that never struck you as bizarre or foreboding? It never struck you as a safety risk for others, or Lee himself?” The constable scribbled hurried little words as they talked.

“No, because it was one of many random things I'd find in his bedroom. I found a corkscrew on his nightstand one day. He doesn't drink wine. I'd ask him about the knife and he'd get confrontational, and it's just not worth upsetting the guy. We were in the process of finding suitable long-term care for Lee—”

“By
we
, whom do you mean?”

“By we, I mean Allie and myself. As I mentioned, Allie and I,we were...together. In the past. For years. Lee was a family friend of hers. So Lee and I got close, developed a friendship separate from me and Allie. Recently, she called needing help looking after Lee until she could secure long-term care. I was in a position where I could work from Lee's until she'd done so. I was happy to help. As a friend of Lee's.” He was starting to feel like he was lying.

“How long have you been looking after Lee?”

“Not quite three months?”

“Is that six weeks? Seven?”

“I don't know. I'd need a calendar. Jesus.” And the officer flipped to the back of his notepad and stuck a calendar in Cohen's face. “Going on eight weeks, I guess.”

“And has his condition been the same or has it worsened or improved in that time?”

“Worsened.”

“And were you advised by a medical professional to seek a proper care regime for the man? Meaning a facility with trained professionals?”

“Well, yes, more or less—”

“I ask that because the phone call I just took confirmed that Lee appears to be unaware of the consequences of what he's done. This indicates severe mental impairment. It may be construed as negligence on your and Allie's behalf to have not sought the proper medical assistance. As a result, a man has been stabbed.”

“No one can predict something like—Honestly, no one would have guessed Lee was capable of violence.”

“And yet Keith Stone has told police that Lee recently punched Allie Crosbie in the face, just weeks after nearly breaking her hand in a doorframe, on purpose. And you yourself told me he's thrown flower pots at Keith in the past, correct? That he's been carrying a knife on his person?”Cohen had no retort. His jaw lowered, shocked by the truth of the statement, but no words came out. The officer nodded and said, “He hits a woman and keeps a knife on his bedside table, and you tell me he never struck you as violent?”

“You've got to understand. I still think of Lee as the man he was before this disease—”

“I need to ask if you've been having sexual relations with Keith Stone's partner, Allie Crosbie, since moving into Lee's, as his makeshift caregiver.”

“Does that really matter?”

“Yes. It may.”

“How so?”

“Motive. I'm told that Keith Stone, the victim—”

“
Motive?
”

“I'm told that Keith Stone, the victim, says it felt like you were part of it. That you were distracting Keith so that Lee could sneak up on him, from behind, and stab him. Or, at best, that you had to have seen Mr. Brown coming, given the length of the kitchen, but that you didn't warn him at all—”

“Did Keith leave out the part that I just saved his life? Lee knew what he was doing with that knife. I stopped Lee from hauling the knife up through the man's organs and he's telling you I, what, put a hit out on him?”

“Second thoughts, perhaps? You changed your mind about a criminal plan?”

“Cold feet, yeah, that's it! Are you kidding?”

“Sir, I should advise you I'm officially taking your statement, and sarcasm will not come across to those who read it. Sarcasm will not help anyone and certainly not you. I've written here now that you've said,
Cold feet, yeah, that's it.
Do you understand?”

“Do I need a lawyer?”

“At this point, I'd like you to come down to the station with me. You're entitled to a lawyer's presence, yes, and I'm to make that perfectly clear. Not that anyone is accusing anyone other than Lee Brown of anything here. Mr. Stone is understandably in shock, but has, yes, implied you were negligent, at best, in this incident. And that you may have a reason or two to have wanted him hurt. It's my job to explore that notion while the incident is still fresh in all of our minds. Understood?”

“So how does this work? I'm more than willing to be truthful and detailed, but I want a lawyer.”

THE INTERROGATION ROOM was a small, cold rectangle. Cement walls. No windows. One long strip of fluorescent lightning buzzed above them. There was a steel table welded to the floor with a single handcuff chained to the tabletop. They didn't use it on Cohen.