Ear-Witness (12 page)

“Don't play smart games, Jess.”

Another car pulled into the lot, circled around, then left. Sheena tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, like she was really irritated. She probably was. I swallowed hard.

“If you were me,” she said, “dealing with you, a witness to a crime, a witness who covered up for someone, what would you think?”

When I didn't answer, she did.

“You'd be suspicious about why,” she said.

“I told you why.”

“And you'd wonder about the other stuff this witness told you. Whether it's reliable. Whether the witness is covering up something else.”

“I'm not covering up anything! The Orellanas heard the same stuff I did!”

“That's true, they did. But they weren't able to identify either male voice. You said one was Mr. Bird, but you didn't know the other.”

“That's true!”

“So now I'm wondering if you were covering up again. When you said you couldn't identify that second voice.”

I shook my head. “I never heard the other guy before in my life.”

“We have a report that someone who could have been Raffi was there that night. That he came around from the back of your building. At about 3:00
A.M.
”

“Who? Who said that?”

“A neighbour.”

“That person's lying!”

“What makes you so sure? Raffi left work at twelve, and he usually stays till two.”

I swallowed again. “Raffi isn't a murderer! I know him. He's kind, and gentle. I've never even heard him raise his voice!”

“Is he a druggie?”

“Raffi? No! He hardly even drinks!”

“The guy this witness saw was big. The guy you saw when he broke in that night you were babysitting was big. Raffi's big.”

I groaned. “So is half the world! And the man I saw wasn't Raffi.”

“I thought you couldn't identify him? Couldn't see enough.”

“I couldn't, but if he was someone I knew, I'm sure I'd have...”

“He made some kind of noise, in the baby's room. So you heard his voice ...”

“It wasn't Raffi! And I think it was sort of a laugh,” I said. “But it didn't have any voice sound to it. It was like he let out his breath.”

“A laugh? The murderer comes back to the scene of the crime, scares the living daylights out of you, and then laughs? And you think he wasn't someone you know?”

I had nothing to say to that, so that's what I said. Nothing.

When my mother gets mad she paces and waves her hands around. Fortunately, she was mad at Sheena, not me, but I felt guilty anyhow.

“Can she do that?” she said. “Question Jess like that, without an adult present?”

Raffi shrugged.

So did I. “She did it,” I said.

“Cooped up in a cop car!” Mom said. “Confined! Like you were in jail!”

“It wasn't that bad. I mean she didn't lock me in or anything,” I said. “At least I don't think she did.”

Raffi wasn't too happy either, but for a different reason. “I don't like the way this is developing,” he said. “Do you think I'm a suspect?”

“Don't be ridiculous, Raffi,” Mom said “I should complain, that's what I should do. She's not going to get away with treating Jess like that.” She opened the fridge, poked around for a while, then shut it. “Who is it you report things like that to? The Police Complaints Commission, isn't it?”

“Mom...”

Raffi held up his hand, warning me off. “You'll only make things worse, Lynda,” he said. “Just draw more attention to me. Make that cop even madder.”

“But you haven't done anything!” Mom wailed.

“It's my fault,” I said. When nobody disagreed with me, I got up and started setting the table for supper. Raffi had cooked: soup from a can and grilled cheese sandwiches.

I looked over at Mom. “You can't complain,” I said. “Sheena phoned you. You knew she was going to talk to me.”

Mom looked like she didn't want to agree, but eventually she nodded. “I suppose,” she said. “I could have said I wanted to be there. I could have protected you better.”

“Let it drop, Lynda,” Raffi said. Then he turned to me. “Run what that cop said by me again, Jess. The stuff about the witness.”

“Somebody, probably Mr. Orellana, says he saw a big guy leave here at about three o'clock that night, a big guy who came from behind the building. The other thing is, Sheena thinks I'm lying about the night of the murder. She thinks I did recognize that second man's voice.”

“Supposed to be me, I guess.” Raffi looked at the floor for a while. “I don't feel too good,” he said.

Mom moved to the arm of his chair, and started patting his head. I picked up my backpack and headed down the hall. I can't stand mush.

“Sheena has a witness,” I said. “And she says this witness saw some big guy leave here the night of the murder. So she's decided it was Raffi, because he's big.” I was on the phone, the extension in my room, talking to Jon.

“Are you sure it wasn't?” he said.

“Jon! There are other big men!”

“Look, don't get me wrong here,” he said. “I'm just throwing out ideas. But I have this theory. Are you going to bite my head off if you don't like it?”

“I don't know. It depends on what you say.”

“What if... What if Raffi is Tammi's boyfriend? I mean, that wouldn't necessarily mean he's the murderer, but ...”

I closed my eyes. “I don't need this!” I said. “Raffi is my mother's boyfriend. He
loves
her! There is no way he's involved with Tammi!”

“And if you're wrong, Jess? What then? You could be in danger.”

“I'm not wrong. I can't be wrong,” I added.

I had some stuff to work out in my head, so I was glad when Mom and Raffi left for work. Mom doesn't like it when I just sit around and think.
Staring into space
, she calls it.

She's also not too keen on the fact that I like to be alone, or I did, before the murder. Since then, I haven't been quite so enthusiastic. Old buildings creak and groan a lot, especially at night. The sounds they make remind me of things I'd rather forget, like strangers creeping around the halls, and footsteps on the back stairs.

As soon as Mom was out the door, I headed for my room. When I told Sheena it wasn't Raffi in Tammi's apartment, I meant it. Later, after I talked to Jon, I began to wonder. What if I was wrong?

I clicked open my binder, took out a piece of lined paper, and put it on the desk in front of me. Then I wrote WHO WAS THE MAN IN TAMMI'S APARTMENT? across the top.

My window looks out on the brick wall of the house beside us, so I lowered the blind. It's a nice cranberry colour, one of those fabric things with cords that move it up and down in big folds. I sat looking at it for a while. Then I went out to the kitchen, got an apple, washed it, and came back.

The only time I really saw the man was at the window in Tammi's back door. He was just a shadow, a profile, wearing a peaked cap, the kind a ball-player wears. Raffi didn't even own a hat like that, or if he did, I never saw it. He had a black knit thing he wore in the winter, pulled down over his ears, but I never saw him in a ball cap.

I took a big bite from the apple. Raffi's hair was short. After he shaved it off a couple of months ago, he let it grow back, but just a
little, just enough to satisfy Mom. I closed my eyes, trying to picture the guy at the door that night. Did his hair show? I didn't remember any, but that didn't mean anything. Lots of guys shave their heads.

What else? A hand on the window. Fingers tapping like a drum; one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one after the other. A man's hand; it could have been black or it could have been white. In the shadows, it was impossible to tell.

When the hand poked through the glass, it was wrapped in something. A jacket? It was something heavy, maybe wool, or fleece. Raffi didn't have jackets like that. He had a leather one, and a windbreaker. It was some light waterproof material; green, with a purple-and-white band across the middle.

What happened next? The hand reached down towards the lock. I think he pulled his arm back, then put it through again. He probably pulled the jacket off, he couldn't have turned the bolt with his fingers covered, but I wasn't getting a replay. Nothing came.

I couldn't sit still any more so I got up and moved around my room. All this hard work wasn't getting me anywhere at all. I never even saw the man again, because after he put his arm through the window, Flavia and I took off down the hall. Was that it? Was that all I knew about him? It couldn't be; I didn't see him again, but I certainly heard him. I knew exactly where he was the whole time he was in the apartment. I knew from his light, and from the sounds he made when he moved around.

Footsteps, that's what came next. If you know people well enough you can tell who they are by the way they walk. I could tell the difference between Mom and Raffi coming up the stairs, or even between Mom and Tammi. I wouldn't necessarily know who Tammi was, I'd only know she wasn't Mom. Unfortunately, about all I remembered about the footsteps was how terrified I was when they were coming towards me, and how relieved I was when they were going away. Maybe that was good. Maybe if it was Raffi up there, I would have known.

But it wasn't the footsteps that came next. What came next was the laugh. That came after he turned the flashlight off, or maybe even just before. It wasn't a ho-ho kind of a laugh, it was a whispery sound, the kind you'd make if you were surprised, if something silly had happened.

I tried out a few whispery laughs myself, trying to make them sound like his. “Ssss,” I said. I practised a bit, pushing the sound out of my mouth, but I wasn't getting it quite right. There was something
missing. I ran through the alphabet in my head, like I was playing that hangman game, where you know some letters of a word and have to figure out the rest. “Asss, Bsss, Csss, Dsss, Esss,” I said. That sounded better, but I kept going. “Fsss, Gsss, Hsss,” I said. “Isss, Jsss.”

My name
, was that what I heard? Jess, sort of hissing out of his mouth, like he was totally shocked to see me there? My name, from the mouth of the killer!

I stared at my blind for a while, thinking how much that cranberry colour reminded me of blood. Then I put my thick fleecy housecoat on over my clothes, because I was freezing.

Maybe I was mistaken, maybe that's not what I heard at all. I played with that idea for a while, but I knew it wasn't true. It's pretty hard to mistake your own name. What was so amazing was that I didn't clue in before, that I sort of heard what he said at the time, but I didn't remember it until now.

I shivered, because there was something else. Something worse. If the killer knew me, then I knew the killer.

The phone was right in front of me. I looked at it, I even put my hand on it, but who could I call? Who could I tell?

Sheena, who was ready to nail Raffi already?

Mom, who'd fall apart?

Kelly, who wouldn't be at home, or even care?

I could call Jon, or Flavia, but I knew what they'd say. They'd tell me to call Sheena, because they'd be scared I'd get hurt, because I knew too much.

I didn't even want to think about that, so I didn't. Instead, I took a very long, very hot shower. Then I went to bed and pulled the covers over my head.

Stomping around the apartment the next morning, getting myself organized for school, I made a list in my head of all the people I knew who were big and who had anything at all to do with the Birds. There weren't many. Ray himself was big, but he was dead. Sheena was big too, but she was a cop. Jon was tall but not what I'd call big, and anyhow he didn't come on the scene until after the murder. Then there was Raffi. The list was useless.

By this time I was ready to get dressed, so I did what I do every morning. I put on some clothes; then I looked in the mirror. It wasn't a pretty sight. “Wonderful,” I said. “Good work, Jess.”