Scars and Songs (35 page)

Turning my back, I walked away towards the unknown
mortal
human life that lay ahead of me.  Then I heard Grace’s voice scream out, “NO! No! It doesnʼt end this way! You canʼt leave me!”  I turned back to run to her, but it was too late.  She was no longer there. 
Nobody was
.  I was alone again, surrounded by a heavy darkness.

Out of the blackness, something pungent slowly crept past my senses and began burning my mouth and nose, traveling like lava through my nasal cavity and pooled into my lungs. Ammonia,
yeah that’s the damn smell
,
ammonia
.  Triggering my inhalation reflex to kick in, it felt as if someone grabbed my nose from the inside of my head and yanked on my brain. My eyes snapped open and I bolted upright. 
Damn, that was really strong stuff, and why can’t I move my arms
.  

Where the hell am I now?
  White walls, hospital noises…lightheaded, dizzy, room spinning, my entire head was on fire and my eye socket throbbed like a bitch. A police officer sat in front of me with a small container of the offensive smell that woke me up.  Smelling salts. 
Oh right, now I remember, fondly I might add, Ethan knocking me out.
  Well, my getaway seemed to be an epic fail because my wrists were pleasantly handcuffed behind my back.  What a clusterfuck I woke up to.  And it just got worse from there.

When I could get on my feet, the two officers dragged me through a small crowd of my friends.  The only one able to look at me was Ethan and hatred filled his eyes.  Lea clung to Conner and cried into his shoulder.  
They all thought I did this to Grace?
  

The officers hauled me through the exit and shoved me into the back of a patrol car.  They didn’t even tell me to watch my head like they do on television when I got in, so of course, my forehead slammed itself against the top of the open doorframe as they pushed me through.  I sat silently in the back of the RMP, blood dripping down my forehead and into my fucking eye as the two officers joked about getting laid at some party the night before.  It took twenty minutes for the cops to get to their precinct, and in that time, I could tell they were both lying about getting laid at that party the night before. 
Doucheofficers
.

Next, they not so pleasantly dragged me out of the car and yanked me into a busy police station that smelled like piss and deeply fried Chinese food.  Cops in dark blue uniforms walked around with papers flying out of their hands, radios blasting crimes and calls, yelling and throwing shit at each other.  If I wasn’t handcuffed it would’ve probably been fun to hang out with them.

Then they threw,
yes THREW
, me into a cell and locked me inside. 

After two hours of getting to know the junkies in the jail cell I was kept in personally, a plain-clothes detective called my name and held the cage door open for me.   As I was leaving, I bowed to my new junky friends and thanked them all for pissing and shitting right
in front of me while asking me all about my music.  Epic experience.

The detective, a tall muscular guy with a goatee, led me to a small interrogation room, offered me a cup of coffee with a sandwich and sat across from me.  A small voice recorder lay on the table memorizing my words.  The detective introduced himself as Detective Murrows and then
fist bumped me
.

“Listen, Shane.  I get it.  I understand.” Murrows started running his hands over the blond peach fuzz that covered his head.  “My girl pisses me off too.  She just pushes me to the edge sometimes, so I get it.”

Textbook interrogation technique - make the perpetrator
think
their crime was understandable so they would admit to it.  The only damn problem was, I didn’t commit any crime.  “What is it that
you get,
Detective?”  I asked sitting back against the cold metal chair, relaxing.

“I’m just saying,
I understand
.  If I saw
my girl
dancing with some other guy, especially a loser like
Blake Bevli
, I’d want to hurt her too.  I’d want to hurt the both of them.  I don’t think that I’d be able to control
my anger
under
those circumstances
.”  Murrows’ caramel-crap colored eyes drew in a long blink and then looked slightly to the left and up; his lips tightened into a line and casually curled down. 
This jackhat needed to work on learning how to make up better stories, he sucked at it
.

I offered him a small chuckle and nodded my head.  “Looks to me like you’re the one who should be behind bars then, because doing something to hurt
your girl
,
any girl
- I wouldn’t understand
that
.  And I sure as hell wouldn’t have done anything like
that
to Grace no matter what happened between her and Blake.”  Giving him a wider smile, I continued.  “However, I do agree with you on one thing – Blake Bevli is a loser.”

Murrows stared at me through narrowed lids and blinked twice. 
Maybe someone should get a professional to come in here and ask these questions, because I was kind of starting to feel sorry for this guy
.

“Maybe you don’t understand, Shane.  You are our prime, number one suspect.  I can tell you’re a man’s man and don’t like to be bullshitted, so let me lay it all out for you.  Grace Taylor’s blood was all over you.  Shane,
it still is
.  The EMTs and all your friends witnessed you holding Miss Taylor, explaining to everyone that it was ‘
all your fault.’ 
Shane, the EMTs saw the murder weapon in your hand when they got to the crime scene.  If it wasn’t for the snowstorm and one of our patrol cars had made it there to secure the scene prior to the EMTs moving the victim, you would have been arrested on the spot.  So, why don’t you just make this easy on everybody and tell me
the truth
.”

I looked him dead in the eyes.  “That’s all circumstantial evidence, Detective.  I didn’t do anything to Grace except try to get her to a hospital.  Ask your EMTs who carried Grace’s body through the snow to the ambulance, because it wasn’t them.  And the last I checked, this was America I believe, right?  I’m innocent until
you prove I’m guilty
.  Have fun doing that.” 

“Maybe you don’t understand the weight of the charges they want to bring against you, Maxton.  Attempted murder 2, Assault 1, Reckless Endangerment, Criminal Possession of a Weapon 2 and a slew of whatever else they could find to slap you with to put you away for a long time.”  Murrows started tracing circles on the top of the metal table with his index finger, “If you want me to help you with those charges, make them a bit
less
– you could lessen the
time
you get, all you have to do is come clean to me and I’ll see what I can do.”

I chuckled.

He leaned in closer and lowered his voice, “Come on, Shane, help yourself out here.  If you don’t, it’s going to be a long time until you get to see her again.  Hey, I mean, think about your band, man.  Mad World isn’t going to have their lead guy, think about what you’re doing, Shane.  Your band is hot right now. Don’t you want to get back on stage as soon as you can?”

“I think you want my autograph.  Maybe you want me to sing for you?  Fuck you, Murrows.  You know as well as I do that I didn’t hurt Grace.  So, go and find the person who really did.  Yes, I found her there.  Yes, I picked her up and carried her to the ambulance.  Yes, I have her blood all over me.  And yes, I gave the knife to the EMTs to bag up for the police.  Check the prints on it, there will be more than just mine, I can promise you that.”

Detective Murrows stood up abruptly, slammed his chair into the table, and stormed out of the room.  Laughing, I looked towards the two-way mirror, shook my head and asked, “Does he have a lot of tantrums like this?”

I was then formally arraigned - charged for the attempted murder and attack on the girl I loved.  The judge, being a hard-ass decided to remand me, deciding not to set bail and hold me until
grand jury could indict me. 

Every time I asked about Grace through the whole ordeal, every one told me she still hadn’t woken up yet. 

I asked about Grace every day, for seven days, while I waited in a cold cement jail cell.  Each day, it was the same thing, she was still in a coma, and nothing had changed.  I knew I made the right choice, I knew what I gave up to save her,
so why wasn’t she coming back to me?

With every passing day, I became more human than I ever was.  Emotions ran raw through my body and clawed at my insides like a cancer.  I barely ate the food they gave me and I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, all I thought about w
as Grace and getting her back to me.

Grand jury came and went.  I testified on my own behalf.  Yes, I had said it was my fault, because I was supposed to protect her,
but I wasn’t the one who tried to kill her
.  However, given the circumstantial evidence against me that was presented, it was enough proof for a trial against me.  So, I was transferred from a holding cell filled with the dregs of life to the majestic (read as shithole of the universe) location of Rikers Island, surrounded by the murky polluted waters of the East River, to await my trial; general population, housed in the dormitory cells of the Taylor House.   Me, Shane Maxton, singer and lead guitarist of Mad World, once angelic being, surrounded by 14,000 prisoners who swore they were just as innocent as me.

Grace still hadn’t woken up. 
This shit wasn’t going as I planned
.

“Hey, Maxton.  That girl of yours wake her pretty little ass up yet?” Luscious Carter, in for murdering his girlfriend
and her family (husband and kids)
- which he without a doubt committed, asked me.  He seemed to try to take me under his wing.  Said he loved music.  Played a few instruments himself.  Wanted to jam with Mad World.  He was in for life.

“Nah, bro.  Not yet.”

“She’ll come round, Rockstar, she’ll come round soon.”

“Hope so,” I whispered.

“Then you could hire someone.  Finish the job you fucked up on.  Teach that bitch a lesson.  ‘Cuz, lemme tell you, Rockstar, when push comes to shove, you gots to start stabbing.”  Scratching at his chin he seemed deep in thought, “There’s a trick to it.  Gots to get them in the heart a few times, so no one can fix ‘em.”

“Holy fuck, Carter!  Don’t talk to me about it again.  Shit, you are going right to fucking Hell.”

He shrugged his shoulders and laughed, “Bet it ain’t much different then here.”

The small window in the prison library let a small amount of the brilliant sunlight in, lighting up the colorless prison walls.  Every damn day since they locked me in, it was the same monotonous routine: get up from sleeping in a dorm filled with about a hundred prisoners, who
smelled like piss and the worst body odor ever in existence.  Get dressed in front of the prisoners, most of which called me
Rockstar
.  Eat breakfast, and then back to the dorms until lunch, and then back to the dorms until dinner.  There was a one-hour block of free time, either in a large gymnasium where we lifted weights, the prison library which housed about fifty books, or an outside courtyard each day at various different times. 

There was a strict visitation schedule, which was based on the first letter of each inmate’s last name.  Three visitors at a time, one time per visiting day, and all visitors needed to be registered before hand.  Alex, Conner and Brayden came to see me every week.  They told me all the bar gossip, anything going on that they thought might be interesting to me, but they always came with the same news about Grace.  She hadn’t woken from her coma.

Ethan visited me twice.  The first time he visited all he did was grunt and yell, and then threatened to kill me if I got sentenced for her attempted murder.  And if she didn’t wake up, he’d kill me with his own bare hands. 

The second visit was to give me the news that Blake overdosed and was dead.  What could I possibly have said or felt about that?  That’s exactly how the real Shane Maxton’s life ended.  It was no surprise to me that Blake, Shane’s old drug dealer went the same way.

It was five weeks, two days, six hours, fifty-six minutes and thirty-four seconds since I held a dying Grace in my arms, when a guard called my name over the crowd of inmates in the general pop recreational area.  It was less than an hour before lights out and I was lifting weights with a bunch of bikers when they called for me.  My heart almost burst from my chest thinking that someone had news for me about Grace.

There was no news about Grace.

The guards escorted me straight past the cells into the visitor’s center and right to a young high maintenance looking district attorney who looked like she painted her business suit on and smelled of sex and vanilla body spray.   She had her back to me and was busy talking on her cell phone. “…yeah, I have to 343 the case with that hot guitarist everyone is talking about…yeah he’s so hot, you have to see how I dressed to meet him…so I’ll be at the office in the morning with the papers since they’re pushing this through so late…but I was thinking to offer to drive him home,
you know what I mean
…” She turned around, caught me smirking at her and ended her call immediately.  Stumbling over her words, she basically informed me that I was free to go.  I was being
‘pulled and released since there was evidence that had come to light that excluded me without a doubt from being the perpetrator of the crime against Grace Avery Taylor.
’  She wouldn’t tell me what it was, but slipped me her card with her personal cell phone number on the back. 
Yeah, you just wait by the phone there, sweetheart.