The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips (4 page)

Andy smiled and replied, “Yes, sir. I will be happy to do it.” Now that was a bunch of crap, because in that moment Andy wasn’t happy to do anything but go home and try to scrub this night off himself.

“What about my son?” John asked without looking up. It was the first thing he’d said to anyone but God in nearly an hour. “Who’s going to take care of him if I leave?” Andy found his question to be pretty ridiculous, since the boy had died while in John’s care.

Ted Jackson played it cool. “I understand your concern, Mr. Phillips,” he said. “We’ll take good care of him. The coroner isn’t quite finished. Once he is, we will release your son’s body to you. For now, the best thing you can do for him is to go with Officer Myers so that we can clear this whole thing up as quickly as possible.” When John hesitated, Jackson tried to reassure him. “This is all standard procedure with accidents like this. Thank you for being understanding. And again, I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“But it’s not a loss,” John said as he rose from his chair. Those words really stuck with my pop. “It’s not a loss,” John said, “because to be absent from the body is to be at home with God in heaven, the final resting place. That’s what the Bible says. How can I call that a loss?” he said with a smile. Yeah, with
a smile
. Andy thought that to be the single most absurd moment he’d experienced in his whole, entire life. The man’s kid is lying in a pool of his own blood, dead and cold, and the guy can smile about it. My dad looked at his friend Ted Jackson, and Jackson looked at him. Neither needed to say a word, because they both knew what the other was thinking.

“Come on, John, this won’t take long,” Andy finally said after a few moments of awkward silence. The two of them walked out of the apartment and down the stairs toward Andy’s patrol car. It was a little before four in the morning. The carnival at the Madison Park Apartments was starting to wind down.

A
NDY’S NIGHT STILL
wasn’t over. A wave of fatigue washed over him as he climbed into his patrol car. Every time he closed his eyes, he found himself staring into Gabe’s lifeless face. He wanted to scream and yell and pound the steering wheel, but he had to keep his composure, since the boy’s father was sitting in the passenger seat next to him. Andy glanced over at John as he put the car into gear. Maybe by that point Andy had already spent more time on the case than he should have, because his nerves were frayed in a way that usually didn’t hit him for months, if at all. He kept staring at John Phillips, wondering how someone who had known this child for such a short time could be more upset by his death than the boy’s own father. John noticed Andy’s staring at him. It was a little hard to miss, since Andy wouldn’t let up on the brake and pull the car out of the parking lot. I imagine he looked like he was in some kind of a trance.

“Would you like me to pray for you?” John asked.

“What?” Andy replied. The absurdity of the question broke the trance.

“Would you like me to pray for you?” John replied. “It looks like this night is tearing you up inside, Officer Myers. You don’t have much of a poker face.”

“No thank you,” Andy replied without a hint of emotion in his voice. He’d pulled himself back into full cop mode. Cool on the outside, even as his anger raged inside him. “That won’t be necessary,” he said as he pulled out onto the street. The drive to the county seat of Adamsburg would take less than twenty minutes. Andy figured he could keep it together until then. And he might have, if John had kept quiet. But since this was the longest night of Andy’s life, you know John kept talking. And talking.

“Really, Officer,” John said, “it’s no trouble at all. I know the sight of my son lying there had to be hard on you, since you knew him and all. And again, I can’t thank you enough for the kindness you showed my little boy. He loved baseball. After that Reds game, he became the biggest Johnny Bench fan in all of Indiana. I bought him a team poster, but he hung it up in his room at his mother’s house, since he spends more time there than with me.”

Andy really didn’t need to be reminded of the boy’s mother. In his mind he pictured her when the chaplain knocked on her door. “Christ,” he muttered under his breath.

“Excuse me, Officer, did you say something?”

“Listen, Mr. Phillips, would you do me a favor and just shut the hell up?” Andy’s wall of control started to crumble.

“I understand you are upset. Please, Officer, let me pray for you.”

The wall started to fall faster. “You know, you’re right,” Andy snapped back. “I am upset. I can’t get over the sight of seeing that little boy lying there. And here’s the hell of it, Mr. Phillips, here’s what really has me messed up inside. I hardly knew your boy, and yet it appears I am more upset over his death than you are.”

“You are,” John replied.

Andy knew he should cut off the conversation right there. He knew he needed to let the cop in him take over, but he didn’t. Not yet. “You are one smug son of a bitch, aren’t you, John? I—” Andy stopped himself before he said anything else.

“That’s not it at all, Officer.”

“Then what the hell is the matter with you? Your son is dead. Doesn’t that bother you at all?”

“Of course it bothers me.” Although the words should have been full of emotion, John spoke them with an easy calm. “It bothers me more than you can understand,” he said. “Gabe was my son, my only son. It wasn’t easy for me to let him go, but I have a hope that’s bigger than grief.”

Andy didn’t buy any of it. “Whatever.”

John tried to reply, but Andy cut him off. Slowly the cop in him took control. “You need to be very careful about what you say, sir. Your son’s death is being actively investigated. Anything you say to me or to any other police officer will be considered evidence in this case. I’m sorry I blew up at you. That was very unprofessional of me. It’s been a long night.” Andy paused for a moment and said, “I thought a lot of that little guy.”

“Thank you,” John replied. With that, the conversation ended until they arrived at the sheriff’s office.

Andy pulled his Trask patrol car around to the side entrance of the sheriff’s department building and led John inside. Deputy Michael Duncan, a department detective, was waiting for them near the entrance, along with a younger man Andy had never met. “Hey, Andy, I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Tough night. Sorry.” He then turned to John and said, “Mr. Phillips, I need you to go with Donny Phelps here. He’s one of our techs. He just needs to take a few pictures and get a few samples from you. Nothing to worry about, just standard shhh . . . er . . . stuff in an investigation like this.”

“But one of the officers on the scene already took several pictures of me, at least of my hands,” John replied.

“I realize that, sir, and I know this must be very difficult for you, but if you would just bear with me a little while longer, we can have this wrapped up in a short time. Now if you would just go with Donny.”

John turned to Andy and said, “So what am I, Officer, a suspect or some kind of witness?” Andy knew John had been right about one thing that night. He didn’t have much of a poker face. My old man started having doubts about the kid’s father from the word “go.” Before anyone could answer John’s question, Donny Phelps put his hand on John’s shoulder, reassured him, and led him down a long hall to a room on the left.

As soon as John and the tech were out of earshot, Duncan said to Andy, “Man, I thought you’d never get here. The mother showed up over an hour ago, and, my God, you will not believe what she had to say. I’ve got her in an interrogation room, kept her around so you could hear this for yourself.”

Andy groaned. “I don’t think I can do that, at least not in an official capacity,” he said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Duncan asked.

“I’ve got a—how do I put this delicately—a bit of a personal connection to the case. Loraine and I have been seeing each other for a while.”

“Holy crap. Is she the nymphomaniac you’ve been nailing? Lucky stiff—”

“Hey, Mike,” Andy cut him off, “show a little restraint. She just lost her son.”

“Settle down, cowboy. I wouldn’t say this in front of her. You know me better than that. I’m a pro. But I still think you need to talk to her. First words out of her mouth when she walked in here are ‘I can’t believe that bastard actually did it. I can’t believe he really killed my little boy.’ ”

“She what?” Andy asked.

“Yeah, said she wasn’t surprised. Said that’s why she didn’t want to let the boy go over to the guy’s apartment, but her lawyer wouldn’t listen to her. And did you know her ex has a record?” A little smile broke out on Duncan’s face as he said this.

“No. Wow. That surprises me. On the way over, he offered to pray for me.”

Duncan laughed. “Well, from what the mother told me, the guy better start praying overtime. He did time for assault. Mother said he beat up a guy in a bar not long after the kid was born. She claims this whole God and Jesus act was something he cooked up in the pen to help make parole. Like I said, Andy, you gotta talk to the woman yourself.”

“Yeah, okay,” Andy said. He wanted nothing more than for that night to end, but it wouldn’t, not for a few more days. “Which room is she in?” he asked.

Duncan pointed down the right-hand hallway. “Room two.”

Andy let out a long sigh, hesitated, then started walking slowly down the hall toward interrogation room two. It was, he later said, the longest walk he ever made. I guess that only fits, since it was part of the longest night of his life. He tends to overuse his metaphors. When he got to the door, he heard Loraine’s voice echoing on the other side. Andy could hear a mixture of sobs and shouts of profanity. Although he wasn’t a religious man, he muttered, “God help me,” before turning the knob and stepping through the door.

What have we done?” Loraine said as Andy walked into interrogation room two. Her back to the door, she didn’t turn to see who had entered. She seemed instinctively to know it was Andy. “You know why he did it, don’t you? He knew about us. He knew I kicked him out because of you.” Slowly she turned and looked Andy in the eye. He hardly recognized her in this state. “He always told me that he would make me wish I were dead if I ever left him. Well, he was right. I wish I was dead right now.” Her voice broke as the words spilled out, tears began flowing from her swollen eyes. “Oh, God, what have we done?” She bent over, sobbing, then sunk to her knees, her shoulders heaving.

Andy hesitated. His first instinct was to cross the room, put his arm around her, and comfort her. But stabs of guilt froze him in his steps.
We?
he thought.
We?
His mind went into quick rewind. He thought back to the efforts he’d made to get to know Gabe. At the time it felt like the right thing to do. Loraine seemed like a struggling single mother, and boys in that kind of household need a man who will take an active interest in their lives. Even though Gabe talked about his father, Andy wondered what kind of relationship the two of them really had. Maybe guilt was driving him. The amateur psychologist in me wants to say he transferred his relationship with me onto Gabe. Since my old man had abandoned me, he must have figured Gabe’s dad had done the same. This was his chance to play the hero, by filling the void in a poor child’s heart left there by a heartless father. That’s what I would like to think was going on. The truth is probably less noble. My pop probably figured the best way to stay in the mom’s pants was to act like he cared for her kid. Women just love a sensitive, caring man.

Now Andy wasn’t so sure about anything he’d done over the past six months. His no-strings-attached, purely physical relationship suddenly had strings, and he felt those tightening around his neck. He knew he should have walked away from this relationship, right from the very beginning. It didn’t take the death of Gabriel Phillips to make Andy realize he had been using the boy’s mother. He’d known it all along. From their first night together he knew he never intended to build any kind of long-term relationship with her. The only reason they’d lasted this long was because she initiated the contact when she wanted him. He’d phoned her once, maybe twice, in their entire time together. That is, until he got to know her son, but even then he wasn’t pursuing her. He felt more like a Big Brother volunteer with fringe benefits than a serious boyfriend. Some benefits. The boy was dead, and Andy felt responsible.

I don’t know how long Andy stood there watching his woman break down on the floor. A little internal battle broke out between his internal cop and boyfriend. Getting involved in the case in more than a professional manner could bring down everything for which he’d worked over the past ten years. But Loraine cried harder, and Andy finally decided,
Screw it,
and walked across the room. He knelt down beside her and pulled her close to him. She didn’t fight him, but she didn’t melt into his arms, either. Like everything else about their relationship, she reacted with warm restraint, if that makes any sense. They stayed like that for what Andy said felt like an eternity. Finally Loraine looked up at him and said, “You aren’t going to let him get away with it, are you?”

“Don’t worry,” Andy said in a near whisper. “I’ll personally look into this. If he had anything to do with Gabe’s death, I’ll take care of him. I guarantee, I will take care of him.”

After the trial, Loraine would no longer call to ask Andy if he had time to drop by. They talked from time to time after Gabe’s funeral, but, with time, Andy never heard from her again.

Chapter 3

A
NDY HATED FUNERALS
. He used to say that staring at a corpse in a box while some moron drones on and on about what a saint they were (even when they weren’t) wasn’t his idea of a good time. My mom says it went back to Andy’s dad’s funeral. The way I hear it, my “grandfather” (and boy, oh boy, being a crappy father sure runs in my family) was a drunk who would disappear from the family for weeks at a time. Andy said he was more of a sperm donor than anything approaching a father, which is pretty much how I described Andy for most of my life. Andy’s mother never divorced his father. She was too good a Catholic for that. And besides, people didn’t get divorces back then. They just put up with the other person’s crap and prayed the “death do us part” part of their wedding vows would come sooner rather than later. Her prayers were answered soon enough. Andy’s father literally drank himself into the grave when he died in the midst of a bender. Even so, at his funeral the priest made him out to be a cross between Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer. After that, Andy never really cared for funerals.