John Burley - No Mercy

‘Mr Tanner, please,’ someone said without much conviction. Ben wasn’t certain if it had been Detective Schroeder or himself.

‘ Kevin? ’ the boy’s father went on, his voice continuing to escalate. ‘Kevin? Son?! Kevin?? Tell me this ain’t you!! Kevin, are you dead?! ARE YOU DEAD, BOY?!!’

There was no answer from the form beneath the blanket.

‘ What did they do to you?! ’ he asked the dead boy lying pale and mute before him. ‘WHAT … DID THEY DO TO YOU?!! ’

At that last tortured utterance, Phil Tanner’s feverish eyes leapt up at Ben and fixed themselves upon him as if Ben, himself, had been responsible for the boy’s death.

‘ I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY DID TO MY BOY!! ’ he said again, only this time it wasn’t a question but an accusation. Ben took another step backward. His left hip bumped into a small metal table supporting an electronic scale. The scale skittered to the edge of the table, hung on precariously for a brief moment, then went crashing to the tiled floor below. The sound was thunderous in the small room, and Ben could hear Tanya’s voice calling from the front desk, ‘Dr Stevenson? Is everything okay?’

‘That’s enough, Mr Tanner.’ Carl Schroeder took the man by the arm and tried to lead him away.

‘ FUCK YOU!! I WANT TO BE WITH MY SON!! ’ Tanner protested wildly, trying to shake off the detective’s grasp.

‘You will spend the night in jail if you don’t get a hold of yourself,’ Schroeder said quietly but sternly. ‘ That’s enough! ’

Phil Tanner looked from the detective, to Ben, to the body lying on the table before him. His eyes were wide and uncomprehending. The muscles of his neck and forearms bunched and jerked beneath his blue shirt, and Ben thought to himself in a strangely detached way that if Tanner leapt for him across the table, he would break to his right and make for his office. If he could get the office door closed, he’d be out of harm’s way long enough for Detective Schroeder to subdue the man. Fight or flight, Ben thought randomly. Let Schroeder do the fighting; he was trained for it. Ben would opt for the latter.

Suddenly, as quickly as it had come, all of the struggle within Phil Tanner was gone. His eyes appeared to clear a little, but the inner strength he had brought with him when he arrived was gone. His shoulders slumped forward, his body bending at the waist as if he’d been sucker-punched low in the gut. A calloused hand touched the table where his son lay supine beneath the sheet, but Tanner would not look at him. For a long time he said nothing, staring at the broken remnants of the tattered scale splayed out across the floor. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reacted like that.’

Schroeder placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘You’re under a great strain, sir,’ he observed. ‘Under similar circumstances, I don’t know if I would’ve behaved any differently.’

‘Well, I’m sorry anyway. It’s just …’ For a moment his face struggled for control. ‘It’s just that I … well … I don’t want him to be dead.’ This last part came out so softly that, if there had been any other noise in the room, Ben would not have heard it. Phil Tanner’s eyes filled with tears. ‘When I got home this morning and he wasn’t there … and then they told me that a boy had been found in the woods … I just …’

‘It’s okay,’ Schroeder said. His voice was calm and empathic. Ben stood in silence, studying a thin strip of grout between the floor’s tiles as if it were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen in his entire life.

Tanner looked up at the detective. ‘I just didn’t want it to be him . I thought … you know … I thought maybe I’d come here and it wouldn’t be him. I wanted it to be someone else’s son. Not Kevin. Not my boy. That’s what I was hoping for. I wanted it to be someone else’s goddamn son. Can you … can you believe that?’

‘Yes, I can,’ he answered.

Phil Tanner stood next to the table, head low, as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do next. He stood like that for a minute or two, and none of them spoke. Then, suddenly, he looked up as another realization occurred to him. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. His eyes revealed a sickening dread. ‘What will I say to his mother? She doesn’t know . How am I going to tell my wife that our boy is dead? ’

The intrusive ringing of the phone at the front desk had finally stopped, and the CO was quiet and still, at least for the time being. The only sound in the room was the shushing cadence of breath that slid slowly in and out of each chest but one.

There was nothing else.

‘You’re not going out tonight, Thomas. End of discussion.’ Ben was tired of arguing, and he was through being reasonable.

‘ Fine, Dad! ’ his son yelled back, throwing up his hands in frustration. ‘ Whatever you say! ’ He stormed out of the kitchen and up the stairs toward his bedroom. Six seconds later came the sound, and the subsequent reverberation, of Thomas’s bedroom door being slammed shut hard enough to make the pictures in the downstairs hallway rattle.

Joel sat quietly at the kitchen table, pushing string beans around the perimeter of his plate with his fork. He’d wisely decided to stay out of the fray. His father looked down at the remaining vegetables. ‘You planning on eating those?’

‘No,’ Joel replied honestly.

Ben continued to look at him, eyebrows raised. Joel stared back, mentally preparing himself for the stand-off. Nobody told the Punisher – his favorite comic book hero – to eat his vegetables, he thought crossly. You’d get so far as ‘Pardon me, sir, but are you planning on eating—’ Then, blam ! You’d be staring down the barrel of a .45 long-slide.

‘I guess you’re prepared to sleep in the kitchen tonight then?’ Ben asked. ‘You want your pillow?’

Joel sighed, rolling his eyes. Alex looked up at him from where he lay on the floor next to Joel’s chair. Two abandoned string beans also lay on the floor next to the dog, Joel’s failed attempt to feed the beans to his canine companion. Apparently, Alex didn’t care much for string beans, either.

‘Dad, I’m full. This is my second helping.’

‘That’s your first helping,’ his father responded. ‘And don’t think I didn’t notice those two beans on the floor next to Alex, too.’

‘I dropped them. Honest. It was an accident.’ He looked over at his mother for support.

Ben shook his head. ‘Give me at least some credit, son.’

‘How about if I eat three beans?’ Joel suggested.

‘How about if you eat all of them?’ his father responded.

‘Okay, I’ll eat half,’ Joel agreed, and shoveled the appropriate number of beans into his mouth, chewed them up, and swallowed them in one giant gulp followed by a milk chaser. ‘Now, may I be excused?’

‘Yes, you may,’ Susan said. ‘The rest of those beans will be waiting for you at breakfast.’

‘Thanks, Mom.’ He jumped out of his chair and darted from the room. Alexander the Great immediately got up and followed him, the boy’s 180-pound shadow. Joel’s parents watched him go. For a moment they sat in silence at the table, enjoying the sudden tranquillity that their son’s departure had left in its wake.

‘I’m going to go talk to Thomas,’ Ben announced.

Susan placed a hand on his sleeve. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’