Darynda Jones - Second Grave on the Left

“Maybe we should get that statement now,” Uncle Bob said.

He led him to a separate interview room while I hung back. My head was still pounding out a symphony, but it had moved from Beethoven’s Fifth to Gershwin’s “Summertime.” I did feel better about one thing. My stepmother may be nuts, but she wasn’t a murderer. Not that I knew of, anyway.

I took two ibuprofen and sat on one of the chairs in the waiting room. My lids grew heavier than I would have liked, but I wanted to wait on Cookie and see what Uncle Bob came up with. I was pretty sure we just solved a murder mystery. Still, my lids didn’t care. The world blurred, dipped, spun a little, did the Hokey Pokey and turned itself around. Then my dad came in. I figured he’d heard what happened and came to check on me.

“Hey, Dad.” I pried my body out of the chair and gave him a groggy hug. I hadn’t seen him since the night of the attack, which made me a very bad daughter.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, holding me tight.

“Um, what are you doing here?”

“I still have to give my statement on the attack.”

“Oh.” Duh.

“Why are you wrapped in a blanket? What’s going on?”

“Dad, I’m fine. Just the usual. PI stuff and all that.”

“Charley,” he said, exasperated, “you need to find another job.”

I scoffed as Denise and Gemma walked in. I was surprised to see the old ball and chain with him as well as my sister.

“What are you doing here?” Denise asked. “I thought she wasn’t coming.” She glanced at Dad questioningly.

He gritted his teeth. Sucks when the old hag spills the beans. Gemma raised a cordial hand in greeting, then yawned. She looked as exhausted as I felt.

“And why wasn’t I coming?” I asked Dad.

He shook his head. “We’re just going over some things. I didn’t think you’d want to be here,” he said, stumbling over his tongue. This was interesting. “You have to give a statement from your perspective later. I didn’t want to take up your time or influence your testimony.”

“Well, I guess we’re in luck,” I said, a humongous smile brightening my face, “I’m already here. I’d love to join in the fun.”

Dad worked his jaw as Uncle Bob joined us. “The congressman is writing everything down,” Ubie said to me. “I think he’s going to be a while. We can go over those tapes now.”

“Tapes?” I asked, all innocence and virtue.

“Yes, the tapes of Caruso when he was calling your dad. Leland started recording them. But I have to admit, bro,” he said to Dad, “I’m not sure Denise and Gemma will want to hear these.”

“Certainly, we do,” Denise said, strolling past them toward the conference room. My Dad was so whipped, it was embarrassing.

“This is awesome,” I said, following her with a new bounce in my step, “killing twenty-seven birds with one stone. Who knew a visit to PD would be so darned productive?”

“She’s still a little miffed,” Ubie explained to Dad.

Apparently, this was a community event. We, meaning the family and a couple other detectives, sat around the conference table while cops of every size and shape, mostly nice and really nice, lined the walls. Even Taft showed up. It was interesting, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why everyone was so fascinated with these tapes, especially Denise and Gemma.

“Who should I kill first, Davidson?” the speaker on the recording, Mark Caruso, asked. For the most part, he had good vocal projection, decent pronunciation. He just needed to tweak his tone to better reflect his mood. “Whose death will bring you to your knees?” That was a great opening. He’d really thought out these little speeches of his. “Whose death will send you spiraling down a pit so deep and dark, you’ll never be able to claw out of it?” I felt his question was more rhetorical than inquisitive.

Everyone in the room took turns slashing furtive glances in Dad’s direction, wanting to see what pent-up emotions Caruso could stir in him. This situation nailed why reality TV was such a hit. The human appetite to witness tragedy, to observe the subtle difference between pain and anguish, to see each emotion twist the features of a normally smiling face, was irresistible. It wasn’t their fault. A certain amount of morbidity was innate in each of us, part of our biological makeup, our DNA.

“Your wife, Denise?” Caruso said as though asking permission.

My stepmother gasped softly and tossed a hand over her mouth at the mention of her name. Dutifully, tears sprang to her eyes. But I had mad skill at reading people, and I could tell she was getting off on the sympathetic gazes sliding her way. Even more than that, however, I could feel the relief that swallowed her as she glanced toward me, because Caruso had come after me, not her. I supposed I couldn’t blame her for that, really, but I could have done without her fix for attention at my expense.

Caruso waited for a reaction. “No,” he said, his voice resigned. “No, you need to lose a daughter, just like I did. How about Gemma? The pretty one?”

Though Gemma had hardly moved an inch the entire time, she stilled. Her face paled, and her breathing stopped for what seemed like a full minute before she looked up at Dad. Denise wrapped an arm into his and leaned into him to offer support in her superficial way, but he neither looked up at Gemma nor acknowledged his wife’s ministrations. He was lost inside himself, a shell where my father had once been. Oddly enough, he was sweating nine millimeters. Why now? It was said and done. The guy was back behind bars.

And still, he did not answer the man.

Then everyone waited, knowing what was coming next. Who was coming next.

“Or how about that pistol of yours?” Caruso asked, his gravelly voice enjoying the moment. “What’s her name? Oh, yes … Charlotte.”

He said my name slowly, as though he relished every sound, every consonant as it rolled off his tongue. I felt each gaze present snap in my direction, but I lowered my eyes and kept them down. I could especially feel Uncle Bob’s, for some reason. He had always had such a soft spot for me. One that I took advantage of every chance I got.

But then Dad spoke, his voice crystal clear in the recording, each note strained, each syllable forced. He hadn’t said a word when Caruso mentioned Denise or Gemma, but when my name came up, he broke.

“Please,” he said, his voice hoarse with the emotion he held at bay, “not Charley. Please, not Charley.”

My heart stopped. The air in the room thickened until I thought I would suffocate on it. The truth of what was happening washed over me in waves of such shock, I sat utterly stupefied for a solid minute before glancing up. Now, everyone had cast gazes of sympathy toward my father. They saw a man in anguish. I saw a man, a veteran cop and detective, who had made a decision.

My father lowered his head and, from underneath his lashes, cast furtive, sorrowful glances at me. To say I was taken aback by his plea would be the understatement of the century. The whisper of emotion he fought tooth and nail to control was not the pain of fear, but the pain of guilt. His eyes locked on to mine, a silent apology dripping from each lash, and the agitation that overcame me pushed me out of my chair like a bully on a playground.

I stumbled to my feet, the blanket and the rest of the recording forgotten, and scanned the faces around me. Denise was appalled that her husband was begging for my life when he hadn’t begged for hers. Her shallow sense of reality simply didn’t run deep enough to grasp the truth. It must’ve been nice to see the world so one-dimensionally.

But Uncle Bob knew. He sat with mouth agape, staring at Dad like he’d lost his mind. And Gemma knew. Gemma. The one person on planet Earth I didn’t want or need sympathy from.