Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

Marlinchen stood in the doorway. It was she who’d tripped the floodlight. She was staring at the boy leaning against the side of the house. Staring at his left hand, the one missing its smallest finger.

“Aidan!”

“Stay where you are, Marlinchen,” I called to her.

She looked from me to her brother with growing incomprehension. “Sarah, don’t you understand? This is Aidan!”

If only it were that simple, I thought.

Maybe I should have handled it differently, but it was in my training: never cede control of a situation, not until you’ve satisfied yourself that things are all right. This situation surely wasn’t, and although Aidan had obeyed my commands so far, he was taller and probably stronger than I was, and I wasn’t easy about that.

By now the older boys were also outside. “Aidan?” Liam said, disbelieving.

“The rest of you kids,” I said, nudging Aidan back over to the wall, “go back inside. I’ll handle this.”

Only Colm obeyed me. Liam stayed where he was, as did Marlinchen.

I was patting Aidan down, feeling for suspicious objects. He didn’t move, accepting my touch like a horse being shod. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, faded jeans, and a dirty hooded sweatshirt. In the side pocket I felt a narrow, hard object, about a finger’s length, and carefully drew it out.

“What are you doing?” Marlinchen demanded again, close by my side. “Stop it! That’s Aidan. ”

“One, please step back,” I told Marlinchen. “Two, I know it’s Aidan. He was breaking into your house carrying a switchblade knife.” I showed her.

Colm reappeared at my side. “Do you need these?” he said, and my handcuffs gleamed in his hand. He looked pleased with himself for anticipating me.

I cleared my throat awkwardly. “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’m not arresting your brother, I’m just taking him downtown for some questioning.”

Marlinchen was about to speak again, when Colm put his hand on her arm and tried to pull her away. “Come on, Marlinchen,” he said. “Let Sarah do her job.”

Marlinchen yanked her arm away and shot him a glare. Colm’s attempt at authority melted away like a thin spring snow; he didn’t try again. Liam hadn’t obeyed my order to go back in the house, but at least he’d backed up to the open doorway. He was watching with a pained expression on his narrow face, as if he wanted to protest but didn’t know what to say.

I’d been in this situation before. A good number of arrests you make as a patrol officer are in front of appalled family members, standing around in harsh porch lights or in messy living rooms, half-dressed, looking at you as if to say, You can’t do this, that’s my husband. My daddy. My son. My brother. It was never easy.

“Sarah-” Marlinchen began, trying again.

“It’s okay, Linch,” Aidan said, speaking for the first time. His voice was rusty, as if with disuse.

“Sarah, can’t you just-”

“No,” I said, “I can’t. My first priority is keeping you and your family safe. I need to talk to your brother and find out what’s what, and I can’t do that here. I’m sorry.”

It’s a hardlesson to learn: good and evil aren’t like a game of cards. In cards, if you know that one player has three spades in their hand, then you can be assured that no one else at the table has more than one.

The mathematics of the human psyche are never that easy. Just because Hugh had proved himself a bad man, that didn’t make Aidan a good one. I had only Aidan’s word that his motives in climbing the trellis were innocent, and I wasn’t sure I could believe him. Victims of violence were at a higher risk of becoming perpetrators of violence themselves, and Aidan, by Marlinchen’s account, had been physically hurt and emotionally demoralized by his father.

Even if Hugh were safe in his rehab-center bed, the Hennessy kids weren’t. By Marlinchen’s account, they had enjoyed their father’s favor, and after Aidan was unjustly sent away, they’d gone on with their lives. Couldn’t he be more than a little angry about that?

I felt sorry for Aidan, but compassion was a luxury I could only afford in the abstract. Cops weren’t taught to discriminate among predators who were wounded by life and those who were merely vicious. That was a distinction made somewhere down the line from us, by judges and juries.

“So,” I said, taking a chair opposite Aidan, in an interview room at Juvenile Justice. “You’re climbing up the trellis to your father’s window, with a knife, at one in the morning after everyone’s in bed asleep. It looks pretty bad on paper.” I leaned back, inviting him to speak. “You don’t have to answer any of my questions, but it might help your situation if you could ease my mind about your actions tonight.”

He hadn’t said a word on the ride to the Juvenile Justice Center, not even to comment on the smell of superglue, as Kelvin had. I’d noticed his own scent, grass and dew, as if he’d been sleeping outdoors, and old sweat.

Now I had a chance to appraise him in good overhead light for the first time. The first thing my eyes went to was his maimed left hand; Aidan had laid it on the table as if daring me to ignore it. Either the little finger had come off pretty cleanly at the joint, or perhaps a surgeon’s instrument had evened out the damage. Still, there was something ugly about the dark pink skin of the stump, no matter how old the wound.

Beyond that, Aidan had made good on his early promise of height. At six feet, he’d easily outstripped his father, and I didn’t think Colm or Liam would catch up, either. His long blond hair was stringy and unwashed, and his cheeks were precipitously hollow. A leather cord, some kind of necklace, disappeared under the collar of his T-shirt.

“I wanted to make sure Hugh wasn’t home,” Aidan said. It was the first time I’d heard him speak since he’d said, It’s okay, Linch, back at the house. “I’d been around all day and some of the evening and I didn’t see him. But his car was in the garage.”

“What do you mean, you were ‘around’?” I said.

“I was watching the house,” Aidan said. “I was waiting for Hugh to go out, so I could come in and see Linch and the boys. When I kept on not seeing him, I thought he might be out of town. But I couldn’t be sure, so I kept out of sight, and later I tried to climb up to his bedroom, to make sure.”

“Well,” I said, “the fact that you were lurking around outside the house for hours doesn’t do much to defuse the fact that you climbed up the side of the house with a knife.” When Aidan didn’t speak, I went on. “In your covert surveillance of the house, who did you think I was?”

Aidan said, “I didn’t see you.”

“Really?” I said. “I was there for over an hour before we all went to bed.”

“I wasn’t around then,” Aidan said.

He didn’t back down easily. I retraced my steps. “So if you weren’t around when I arrived, where were you?”

“Trying to find something to eat,” Aidan said.

“Where?” I repeated.

“A neighbor’s garden,” Aidan said. “They were growing some green peppers and carrots.”

He had to be starving. I thought of the vending machines in the correction officers’ lunchroom, but I didn’t want to break the rhythm of my questioning. About some things, Gray Diaz was right.

“Tell me about the switchblade,” I said.

“Protection,” Aidan said.

“From who?”

“I’ve been on the road,” Aidan said. “Life out there can be dangerous. The knife was a good investment.”

His gaze was very even, unperturbed by my questioning. His eyes were the exact color of Marlinchen’s.