I don�t feel much anymore. When I first saw�the body, I sort of stopped thinking, and as far as I can tell that�s returned. Maybe other things will return too?
I don�t know if crazy people grieve normally, though. We might just skip it and proceed to continue firing out our faulty brain signals, saving up all this grief for death. I will have a hella crazy wake.
Jon is a fidgeting person next to me. I am a thinking, joking person in my head but probably a person who imitates garden statues right now. The coffee has been sitting there since we came in: I wonder if there is some charm on it, that the officers can�t come in until we�ve had at least a sip. Perhaps the coffee is affronted.
I am lifting the coffee to my lips when Jon stop me, tossing a hand in between my arm and me. I am puzzled, and then he points out a very clear lipstick stain on the side. This coffee was sipped at by some woman who was here before, perhaps one trying to break the charm on it. Maybe it�s a Bluebeard thing.
Jon is scratching in the dirty floor with the toe of his sneaker, and the security camera is going nuts trying to see what he is writing. I hope he will keep it up, so the cops will come in just to sate themselves.
There is a bureaucratic sense of entitlement around this place, something of a �we save your asses so you better be glad we even bothered to show up for work today�. It�s irritating. Officer Asshole probably couldn�t have stopped Andrew�s death even if he tried. Even if he were sitting there filing his toenails as Andrew was killed, he probably wouldn�t have got the balls to shoot whoever is capable of scalping a beautiful, helpless man lying on a closed-in porch. He probably would just have sat and stared with wide eyes and maybe pleaded for his life. Officer Chuck probably became a cop because he liked to beat up kids like Andrew when he was a kid. I am getting myself mad for no reason, so I stop and work, like Jon, at tracing things in the floor tiles.
Eventually, a new female cop walks in. She doesn�t look like Jodie Foster (or was she in the FBI?) bit she clearly hasn�t been hitting the donuts with Officer Chuck. She tells us, briskly, that we can go now.
I am stunned. �What do you mean, exactly?�
She laughs, grittily. �I mean you can leave. You are no longer considered suspects in this case. A resolution has been reached.�
�What, just now?�
She squints. �You are very cheerful almost-murderers. A man turned himself in, and his case checked out. DNA and everything. We advise you to return home, a grief counselor is offering his services, and try to get some rest. And I wouldn�t get any ideas about avenging Andrew�s death, we�ve got this whole justice thing now��
She starts to laugh and leaves promptly. I think she is someone�s mother: that bitter, no-nonsense tone was just perfect.
Jon stares at me for a bit and then we open the door to leave, whacking someone walking past. Jon apologizes and keeps moving, but I am frozen. The someone is wearing a black raincoat. He�s got the same filthy dark hair that I remember, and now that I can see his face I see strange cheekbones, darting eyes and thin eyebrows. His arms are cuffed back, but he hurls a gobbet of spit at my eyes as he storms, struggling, in the overweight arms of Officer Asshole, who hands me his hankie and apologizes. �Why don�t you get on out of here?� he suggests, kindly. �We�ll call you in when we need to.�
The man in the black raincoat is kicking him, and he winces. I move out the glass doors and with Jon into the waiting seats of a taxi. Home will feel so much better than these.