Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

‘I don’t much like it either, ma’am. But your husband’s wallet is on the floor by the front door and he would have needed it if he was buying drinks tonight. I’d like to know how it got there if he was killed outside.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’ The boy’s face is pale, full of fear.

‘Also, the couch has been moved. There are dents in the carpet.’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’ the boy’s mother says.

‘I’d like to know why the couch was moved, that’s all.’

‘Sandy,’ the boy’s mother says, ‘did you move the couch?’

The boy shakes his head.

‘Why’d you move the couch, son?’

‘I didn’t.’

Carl gets to his feet and walks to the couch. He pushes it back, revealing stained carpet. He leans down and touches one of the dark stains. His fingers come away red.

‘Is this why you moved the couch, son?’

‘I didn’t move it, I swear.’

‘Bachman.’

He looks up, looks toward the hallway entrance. Friedman is standing there with a shoebox in his hands. He pulls a zip gun from inside.

‘From the boy’s room.’ He sniffs it. ‘It’s been fired.’

Carl turns to the boy.

‘You weren’t being completely honest with us, were you, son?’

‘I don’t know how that got there.’

Carl can’t help but feel for him. Part of it is the fear in his eyes, the sheer terror, but only part of it. Truth is, there were times growing up when he wanted to kill his own father. He thinks he understands what drove the boy to do what he did. There are things that happen in relationships that people can’t see from the outside. Little things that accumulate one by one. A tree gets chopped down one swing of the axe at a time, but eventually it falls. And sometimes it falls on the person who did the chopping.

Carl leans toward the boy, catches his eye, and says, with kindness, ‘I’m afraid we’re past the point where lying will do you any good, son.’

4

Sandy can’t believe what just happened. He’d thought he might get away with what he did, but knows now there was never any chance of that. His construct fell apart so quickly, so easily. A few jostles and it collapsed, leaving behind a mere heap of rubble. He looks from the detective to his mother, but can’t stand to see what he sees in her eyes, disbelief and horror combined, so he looks back to the detective. There’s sympathy there at least. He’s understanding, if merciless.

‘We’re going to have to go over this step by step, son.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

But that, of course, is a lie. He knows plenty. He knows he’s caught. He knows it’s over. He knows lying further is pointless. But he can’t let it go. He can’t put the words into the air that he needs to put there.

The detective is silent a moment. He scratches his cheek. He looks to the corner a moment, then back to Sandy, eyes full of understanding.

‘Would this be easier if your mother wasn’t in the room?’

For a long moment Sandy doesn’t move. But finally, knowing there’s no way out of this, he nods.

‘Okay,’ the detective says.

5

‘Do you mind, ma’am?’

‘Do I. .’

Candice looks from her son to the detective. She feels dizzy. This is like a dream. This is the sort of thing that happens to other people. This is the sort of thing you read about in the paper. You shake your head at such horrible goings on, the world’s just spinning out of control, isn’t it, and you sip your coffee, and it’s sad, very sad, and it’s so distant from where you are that you can actually afford to feel sadness. Being in the middle of the experience she feels nothing but a kind of shocked disbelief, a strange unbelieving numbness. This simply isn’t happening.

She looks again toward Sandy but can’t see murder in his face. She should be able to see it on him, some horrible red blotch like a birthmark on his face, but when she looks at him she sees only her boy, her baby, whom she loves more than life, and she thinks of holding him in her arms, of nursing him, of his infant mouth on her nipple, of his infant tongue against it, pulling — not of death, not of murder, not of a black hole in her husband’s temple from which the life has oozed — so he couldn’t have done it.

He could not possibly have done what they say he did.

‘Ma’am?’

‘I’m not leaving him alone with you.’

‘Ma’am, we just want to talk to him.’

‘He couldn’t have done what you think he did. He couldn’t have.’

‘I think it would be easier to do this here. I can take him down to the station and do it there, I can do that, but this is better. For him.’

‘He didn’t do it.’

‘Ma’am.’

‘He didn’t .’

‘If you don’t step outside for a few minutes while we talk to your son, we’ll have you escorted out.’

‘This is my house. You can’t kick me out of my own house.’

Vivian, who till now has been standing silently by the door with her arms crossed, walks to Candice, puts a hand on her shoulder, and says her name. Candice looks up and sees her friend’s kind eyes glistening with empathy.

‘They’re just gonna talk to him, hon.’

‘They think he murdered Neil. I can’t leave him alone with them.’

‘We’ll be right outside.’

She helps Candice to her feet, and even though Can-dice doesn’t want to leave, even though she’s thinking no, I should stay, I should stay here with my son, her body rises, and she finds herself being led outside, led into the dark April morning, and was her biggest problem two hours ago that Neil had taken the car and left her without a way home? Is that really possible?

6

Carl pushes the front door closed behind the women and turns around to face the room. He looks at the boy but the boy doesn’t return his gaze. Instead he stares down at the table, looking sick. Carl knows the feeling. His stomach is cramped. The sweat beading on his face feels slick and oily. He can smell his own armpits, the awful stink of ill health. And an itch at the back of his brain that only one thing can scratch.

But he shouldn’t think about that. He can’t think about that. He needs to think only about what’s happening with this case.

He takes the box with the gun in it from his partner and walks back to the table at which the boy is sitting and once more takes a seat himself. He sets the box down on the table between them. He glances into it. As well as the gun there are several comic books, a Slinky, and three spent bullet casings.

There are only two bullet holes in the man on the street. Probably the boy missed with one, his hand shaking, the gun not having a rifled barrel.

‘I guess you know it’s over,’ he says.

The boy is silent. He swallows. Carl sees the thoughts behind his eyes passing like the shadows of clouds over a green earth as he tries, one last time, to think his way out of this, but he must realize there’s no way out because, after a while, he only nods.

1

Here we are, New Hampshire Avenue, a narrow strip of asphalt lined with dark-windowed stucco apartment buildings, trees, and parked cars. For the moment silence covers the street like a blanket. Even the neighborhood cats seem to be sleeping. Then the rattle of a doorknob, a man stepping into the early morning. A bespectacled man with black hair and green eyes. He wears white pants, a heavily starched white shirt with short sleeves, and a black bowtie. Perched atop his head, a white captain’s hat.

The air is still and cool and the sky dark, though it’s already begun its morning fade to the milky blue-gray of daytime.

A block north Wilshire Boulevard stretches out empty across the land.