The Year We Disappeared (18 page)

The next morning, Mom drove me to school with a police cruiser following closely behind us. We were a little bit late when we got there, and I thought she was going to take me straight to Ms. Williams’s classroom, but instead we went to the principal’s office. “You wait out here,” Mom told me, and I sat in the outer office by the school secretary. I could hear my mom talking to the principal, and when she came out, she still looked mad. The principal came with her.

“Let’s go,” Mom said, and took my hand and held it hard. We followed the principal upstairs to Ms. Williams’s classroom. He knocked on the door, and when Ms. Williams came out, he said,
“I need a quick word with you.” Then he turned to me. “Cylin, go clean out your desk.”

I went into the classroom and everyone stared at me. I opened my desk and there, on top of all my books, was my red plastic hairbrush. She had put it back for me, even folded it up the way it was supposed to be. I grabbed my stuff and walked out without talking to anyone. When I came out to the hallway, Ms. Williams went back into the room and closed the door behind her, and the principal led Mom and me down the hall. “You’ll be in Ms. Campbell’s classroom now. It’s an open classroom, with grades two through four. Everyone learns at their own pace. It’s sort of an experiment; we think you’ll like it.”

When we reached the new classroom, I took a peek inside. There were no desks. Instead, kids were sitting in small groups on the floor. Some were reading, others were doing math flash cards or art.

“Hi,” a lady with crazy curly hair said as she came over to the door. She was small, like my mom, and wore a printed hippy shirt and jeans. None of the other teachers at school wore jeans. “I’m Joyce.” She shook Mom’s hand.

Mom gave her a weak smile. “This is Cylin,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders.

“Well, come on in, Cylin!” she said to me cheerfully. “She’s going to be fine here; you don’t have anything to worry about,” I heard her say to Mom.

I didn’t know where to put my stuff, since there weren’t any
desks. But Ms. Campbell showed me my “cubby,” which was like a wooden locker, and had me put my stuff in there. I didn’t know most of the kids there; I hardly knew that this class even existed. But I did know that by lunchtime everyone at school was going to be talking about how my mom had come and pulled me out of Ms. Williams’s classroom.

My family had been trying so hard to pretend that everything was normal, that we were all fine. But now there was no hiding the fact that things were not normal, even at school. My brothers were failing out of their classes, swearing and punching kids every day, and I was suddenly in a special class with no desks and weird kids. I didn’t want to be special, but maybe I needed to be. I joined the circle of kids reading on a colored rug, and a pretty redheaded girl shared her book with me.

“You’re going to have a really good time in my class, I promise,” Ms. Campbell said as she sat down beside me. Why was she being so nice to me? She didn’t even know me. Suddenly, tears filled my eyes, and before I could stop myself, I was sobbing. “It’s okay to be sad; you can be sad here whenever you want. You don’t have to be brave.” Ms. Campbell wrapped her arms around me and told the other kids to go on reading. “You’re going to be okay, Cylin.” She put her hands on my shoulders and gave me a real smile. “You’re going to be okay.” I hadn’t realized how much I needed someone to tell me that until she said it.

ONCE my trachea hole started to heal up, I found that I could put my fingers over the gauze on my throat, keep the air in, and actually try to talk a little bit. “Talk” is a strong word—I could make some noises that no one understood as language. Portions of my tongue had been pretty badly damaged in the shooting—it was almost severed—but the surgeons were able to remove the damaged part (about an inch) and reattach it. This had healed up, but since my jaw was wired shut, I was still on written correspondence.

Another big development was that a couple of months after I got home, my doctors decided that I could have the GI tube removed and start feeding myself through my throat. This would require a liquid diet that would be injected down my throat using a large-capacity syringe with a six-inch-long rubber tube attached. I would suck up the food in the syringe, then insert the
long rubber tube into my wired-shut mouth and push it far back to where my throat started (trying hard not to gag myself), push slowly on the plunger, and inject the food that way. The process was long, tedious, and a real pain in the ass, but I was ready to have the tube removed from my stomach, and I knew that I could eventually move myself up to real blended foods and not just meal-replacement drinks. Hovering at about twenty to thirty pounds under my usual weight, I was ready to eat something real again, even if I couldn’t taste it.

I went into Mass General to have the procedure done, and it was no big deal. GI tube out, some minor stomach cramping, and a couple of stitches, and I was all closed up. So now I had no trachea hole, no stomach hole. That was starting to feel pretty good; I was seeing some progress.

The first day on blended food, I whipped myself up a milkshake with the works: ice cream, banana, and chocolate syrup—all in the blender. The process of using the syringe took forever, and I actually found myself missing the convenience of a GI tube that you could just empty stuff into. Another problem was that I had lost the ability to tell when I was full, so I managed to get a whole milkshake in and then started to feel seriously ill.

When your face is wired shut, throwing up is not only uncomfortable, it’s impossible—and somewhat life threatening. But I was trying to do it, very unsuccessfully. I had to keep swallowing down the stuff that was coming up my throat, and I knew I couldn’t do it for long, so Polly took me to the hospital. I got a
shot of Compazine—an antinausea drug that worked fast. I felt better in minutes, great after half an hour, and they let us go home. When we reached the house, I noticed that the guards outside had changed shifts. There was a guy with dark hair who I didn’t recognize. He introduced himself to me, told me he was a summer special, now full time. The name still didn’t ring a bell. Neither did the face.

We went inside and I was feeling full of energy. Usually I’d be exhausted by a trip to the hospital, but I was twitching all over. I tried to tell myself it was from having real food for a change. Too much energy, first real chow in months. Dave Cusolito heard about my trip to the hospital and stopped by to see how I was doing and if I wanted to play some chess; I didn’t. He asked if he could come over later to watch the Bruins game. Sure, sure, I told him. But right now, I just couldn’t sit still.

I looked out the window at the guys in the yard. There was something about that dark-haired cop I didn’t like. He gave me a bad feeling. What was it about this guy? I didn’t know him. He was a new cop. That’s what it was. My mind was racing, like I’d had too much caffeine. I watched the guy through the window, and I started to have a bad feeling, a very bad feeling. What if Meyer hired him to infiltrate the police department, then get on duty guarding my house? He could kill Polly, the kids, and me. Make it look like an accident.

I was wearing my shoulder holster, so I took my gun out and checked to see that it was loaded. I cocked the hammer.
I’m ready
for you bastards
, I thought. I started pacing the carpet in the living room.
Come on in, just try it
. I could feel the sweat running down my face. What was wrong with me? I had to try to keep it together. I felt like I was losing my mind.

I looked out at him again and he was sitting in the car, talking with the other guard. Maybe I was wrong; he looked like a good guy. But then I started pacing again. He’s probably just checking out the house today, and he’ll set it on fire when we’re asleep tonight. Or he’s waiting for my next trip to Boston so he can kill my family. Insane thoughts were racing around in my head.

“What are you doing?” Polly asked me, and I spun around, my gun pointed at her. “John, what’s wrong?” She looked terrified.

I wrote her a scrambled note: “I don’t know, feel funny. I don’t trust new guy outside.”

“He’s okay, Don would never have let him on this detail if he didn’t check out. You know that,” she tried to reassure me. “Put your gun back, no one is threatening you.”

I gently uncocked the hammer and laid the gun down on a table by the couch. “We need to do your suction; you can hardly breathe,” Polly pointed out.

When she left the room, I picked up my gun again and resumed pacing. She came back in with the syringe and asked me to sit down.

“Can’t sit, I have to get out of here,” I wrote to her. I felt like something was crawling under my skin.

“Oh God,” she said, looking scared. “You’re having an anxiety attack—a bad reaction to the antinausea medication they gave you. We have to get you back to the hospital.” Then she went to the door and motioned to the guys outside. “I need a guard to drive us back to the hospital. He’s having a really bad reaction to the Compazine.”

So I was loaded back into the car and had to be convinced that it was going to be okay, that I could put my gun away. “Trust me,” Polly said. “It’s the medication they gave you; you’re going to be fine.” But the whole drive to the hospital, I couldn’t stop my legs from twitching, my hands from shaking. I was looking for that blue car, just knew I was going to see it. Thinking,
He’s coming to finish me off
. When we got to the hospital, they quickly gave me a shot of something to calm me down.

“This happens to a lot of folks,” the doctor explained as soon as the drugs took effect. “There’s something in Compazine that causes extreme anxiety in some patients.” Everything around me was slowing down again to a normal speed, and my heart stopped racing. The doctor got very close to my face and spoke loudly. “John, remember the name of this drug so that if anyone gives it to you again, they can also administer some Benedryl to help keep your anxiety down, okay?” I wanted to write him a note to tell him that just because I couldn’t talk didn’t mean I couldn’t hear. Then I realized he was probably talking loud because, suddenly, I was completely out of it. I could hardly keep my eyes open on the ride home. Whatever they gave me to calm me down
sure did the trick. I think I slept for the rest of the day. So much for the first day back on real food.

I hadn’t talked to the detectives who had been assigned to my case in a while, but I heard from my buddies that they were slowly working their way through interviewing everyone I’d arrested over the past twelve months, looking for a motive. So they said, anyhow. If that was true, if they were doing their jobs, I knew they’d eventually get to the night I arrested Paul Cena—Meyer’s illegitimate son—and that should raise some red flags. And the charges I filed against Raymond’s brother, James Meyer—assault and battery against a police officer with a deadly weapon. Our court date had been set for about two weeks after the day I’d been shot and had to be postponed while I was in the hospital. It would have been very convenient for James Meyer if I hadn’t survived—his case, and it was a serious one, probably would have been dismissed due to lack of evidence. Looked like a motive to me. But I still wasn’t holding my breath waiting for the detectives. I was becoming more convinced that my family would be safe only after I took matters into my own hands.

Meanwhile, the town had been spending a fortune protecting my family and me around the clock. Until the police could lock someone up for my attempted murder, they needed to protect us from this person or persons. It had been a new part of our police contract with the town, and we had just recently accepted it. I actually laughed at this clause when I read it, thinking,
I don’t need anyone to protect me. If someone fucks with me, I will blow his ass
away
. Turns out that I was the first cop on the force to need the new protection clause—and I wasn’t laughing anymore.

There had been some rumblings in the department from the top guys and town officials. With my multiple surgeries, lengthy hospital stays, and twenty-four-hour security detail, I was turning into the real-life “Six Million Dollar Man,” without Steve Austin’s special abilities. You would think this would light a fire under the detectives to get the case solved a little faster. But instead it led them to another avenue altogether.

One day, a detective came by to talk to Polly. He had some delicate questions to ask. Before my shooting, had she been having an affair? Was there anyone else in her life, anyone that she was romantically involved with? Polly tried to keep most of this interview from me, but she was so irate afterward that some of it came out. Basically the insinuation was that perhaps she had hired someone to pop me. Or that her jealous lover tried to kill me, something like that. I could see where they were going with this. If it’s personal, and not related to police business, then the police department doesn’t need to pick up the tab, right? But they couldn’t be more wrong—I knew it and Polly knew it. Everybody on the force knew it too, especially the detectives. My shooting was work related, and that was the bottom line.

We had a lot of other folks asking us questions too, more pressing questions—these came from the reporters at the local and Boston papers, and the local TV news guys. There was one reporter who wouldn’t let the story go, who came by on a regular
basis to talk to me. It was equal parts horrifying and amazing to her that people were seemingly allowed to get away with murder and attempted murder right in a beautiful little town like Falmouth. She asked me once how I felt—really felt—about the case. I didn’t want to give her any information that would come back to haunt me, or that Meyer and his cronies could read and laugh about. But the answer was that I felt pissed off, and this was pretty much all the time. I probably should have been feeling happy to be alive, blessed to still be with my family, glad that I didn’t have brain damage, all of the above. Instead, I was just angry. I couldn’t wait to get back at the people who had caused me so much pain and misery. I didn’t realize until I got home from the hospital how poorly the investigation was going. I knew it was going to be mishandled, but this was just plain embarrassing. I also quickly realized that the guys protecting me from Meyer were also protecting Meyer from me. I wasn’t able to acquire any new weapons; even if I wanted to use my police-issued guns to avenge myself, I wasn’t able to sneak out. I was, in effect, under house arrest. Confined and accompanied wherever I went.