Guilty (2 page)

I lock the door behind me. I ride with the two cops to a morgue. I steel myself for the identification. I tell them, yes, that's him. That's my father. He looks like he's sleeping.

The two cops lead me away from the morgue. They offer me coffee and ask me questions. What has my father been doing since he got out of prison? Who did he associate with? Has he mentioned any names to me?

“What kind of names?”

“People he wanted to get in touch with. People he knew from before.”

I shake my head. “He had a job. He worked as a janitor in a building downtown. They set it up for him. That organization that helps people adjust when they get out of prison. He said he wanted us to be a family. He said he wanted to do the right thing by me. How did you say he got shot?”

“We're still investigating,” the male cop says again.

“You have no idea who did it? Did someone try to rob him? Because if they did, they picked the wrong guy.”

The male cop perks up when I say that.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that he's broke. Everything he had went to first and last months' rent on the apartment. Is that why he got shot—because he didn't have any money to hand over?”

The woman cop exchanges glances with her partner.

“Did he ever mention the name Robert Newsome?” she asks.

Robert Newsome? I get a bad feeling. My fingers and toes tingle.

“No.”

“Do you know who Robert Newsome is?” the male cop asks.

Yeah, I know. Supposedly my father broke into Mr. Newsome's house and robbed the place and killed Mrs. Newsome.

I nod.

“Your father didn't mention that he wanted to see Mr. Newsome or talk to him?” the woman cop asks.

“Why would he do that?” I say, as if I can't possibly imagine. I don't think they believe me. If they do, they're lousy cops.

“He wasn't bitter about what happened?” the woman cop asks.

“He told me he didn't do it,” I say. “He told me he didn't do any of it.”

There they are exchanging glances again. The woman cop's voice is gentle when she speaks again.

“Lila, he took a plea,” she says.

I glance at her partner. He's staring stonily at me, and I know what he's thinking:
You need to wake up and smell
the coffee, girl, because if you believe a man when he says he
didn't do a crime he pleaded guilty to, then you're dreaming
. And it's true. My father did plead guilty. He did it in exchange for a reduced charge, manslaughter instead of second-degree murder, ten to life and a good shot at parole instead of fifteen to life with life being a real possibility. But he explained that to me too. He said he did it for me.

“Your mother's gone,” he said. “I don't know exactly what happened, but I got framed up good. I know I never killed that woman. But if I don't tell them what they want to hear, if I go to trial, I'll lose for sure. I'll never get out. We'll never be a family.”

That's what he said.

I look at the male cop and think maybe he's right. Maybe I do need to wake up. Maybe he pleaded to a reduced charge because it was a good deal. Maybe he did it for himself, not for me. Maybe he spent his whole time in there thinking about what he would do when he got out. And maybe what he was thinking about wasn't what he told me he was thinking about.

Focus on the present, plan for the future
. That's what he told me every time I went to see him. For him, that meant staying clean and sober for one more day, keeping his head down for one more day, staying out of trouble for one more day, all so that he could get out when he was supposed to and be my father again. For me, it meant doing my schoolwork and pretending that I didn't hear what other people, including Aunt Jenny, said about him. If I did hear, I pretended I didn't care. Every single day. For ten years.

The two cops tell me again that they're sorry for my loss. They get a uniformed cop to drive me back to the apartment. I wait until the sun comes up before I call Aunt Jenny. It's only when I tell her what happened that I begin to cry. Once I start, I can't stop.

Three

FINN

T
he night lights up. An ambulance arrives, then another. Cop cars arrive—first one, then two, until, in the end, there are half a dozen. The coroner makes an appearance to look at the two bodies. The neighbors all have their lights on. Some of them are out on the street. They cluster together in little groups and talk about what has happened.

Detectives take my dad and me inside. One goes into the living room with my dad. The other one steers me into the kitchen. I try to make myself look as upset as I can so that the cop with me doesn't think I'm some kind of heartless freak. I do it by imagining how I would feel if my dad had been shot instead of Tracie.

The detective sits at the kitchen table. He makes sure that I take a seat facing away from the window so that I can't see what's going on outside.

“What can you tell me about this, Finn?” he says.

“He was here earlier,” I say. “The man. He came here. He asked for my dad.”

“When was this?”

“Tonight. Late.” When I heard the doorbell, I thought maybe my dad had left his keys at the club, that's how late it was. “After eleven. I told him my dad wasn't here. He was at the club.”

“The club he owns?”

I nod.

“Were you alone when he came to the door?”

I nod again.

“Tracie—she's my stepmother—she was at the club with Dad.”

“What did the man say when you told him your father wasn't here?”

“Nothing.”

“He didn't leave a message or a name?”

“No.”

“Did he seem upset?”

“No.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. He went away. At least, I think he did. I didn't watch him or anything.” Why would I?

“Then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happened after the man left? Tell me everything you can remember, Finn.”

“There isn't much to tell. I finished my homework. I fooled around on my computer. I was playing a game on it when I heard my dad and Tracie.”

“You heard them?”

“My dad yelled something, and then she yelled something to him. It sounded like something was wrong, so I got up and went to the window to take a look.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘What do you think you're doing?'”

“And her?”

“She said, ‘Do something, Robert.'”

“When you went to the window, what did you see?”

I tell him everything I can remember.

“You say your dad yelled ‘Hey!' at the man,” the detective said. “Do you have any idea why?”

“The man must have pulled out a gun.”

“Must have? Did you see a gun?”

“Well, no. I was up in my room. I couldn't see everything. But the next thing that happened was I heard two shots and Tracie fell to the ground. Then my dad and the man were fighting, and there were two more shots. By the time I got downstairs, the man was on the ground too.”

“Then what?”

“My dad said to call nine-one-one. So I did.”

He asks me more questions, mostly about what I saw from the window. He writes down what I say. He finishes just before my father appears, holding on to the door-frame as if that's all that's keeping him on his feet.

“Finn, are you okay?” he asks.

The detective who has been questioning me stands up.

“We'll need you both to come in later to make formal statements,” he says.

My dad nods, but it seems to me he hasn't heard.

“Tracie,” he says, his voice breaking.

I get up and go to him.

“I'm really sorry, Dad.”

“That bastard. Why did he have to come back here? Why couldn't he just leave us alone?” Tears are running down his cheeks. I put my arm around him. He collapses against me. The detective is staring at us. I glare at him. We are not on display. This is our house. This is my father's grief. It's private.

“Come on, Dad.” I steer him toward the stairs and help him up to his room. He drops down onto his bed. I help him out of his jacket. I tell him to empty his pants pockets, which he does—wallet, coins, a key ring with a small Swiss Army knife attached to it. I tell him I'm going to get his pajamas for him. When I return with them, his head is bowed. His shoulders are rounded. Suddenly I am seven years old again. Suddenly I remember the night my mother died. My dad's questions are good ones. Why
did
he have to come back here? Why couldn't he just leave us alone?

Four

LILA

A
unt Jenny wants me to come home. I tell her no. The rent on the apartment is paid up for two months, and I want to see what happens. I want to understand why my father was shot dead. I want to know, even though I'm afraid that I won't like the explanation.

Aunt Jenny says she'll come up and stay with me. I tell her not to. I tell her I can handle this on my own. I feel like I've been handling it my whole life.

Aunt Jenny used to take me to see my father twice a year, on my birthday and at Christmas. She only did it because that was all I ever asked her for—a visit with my father. As soon as I was old enough to get a job to pay for the bus tickets and to make the bus trip on my own, I started going once a month. I would see my dad in a public visiting room with dozens of other people visiting their fathers or husbands or sons or brothers or boyfriends. Mostly I would tell him about what I was learning in school. He said he liked to hear about that. He said he learned a lot from me.

We talked only once about why he was in prison. That was on my fifteenth birthday. My father gave me a small necklace with a heart on it. I wore it every day after that. I'm still wearing it. He told me, “I don't care what you hear from anyone, Lila. I didn't do it. I didn't kill that woman.”

I told him, “I know, Dad.”

That was a lie. I didn't know anything of the kind. But I wanted to believe my father. I wanted to believe that he was as good as any other father. I wanted to believe that, if he was in prison, it was all a big mistake. I wanted to believe it even though the whole time he was in there—since I was seven years old—all I ever heard from Aunt Jenny was that he got what he deserved.

When my father was arrested for the murder, Aunt Jenny said, “He's no good. I told your mother that from the get-go. I don't know why she went ahead and married him. He was always drinking or doing drugs. He was in and out of lockup—fighting, trafficking, petty theft, break-and-enters, you name it. I bet you anything he tells the cops he can't remember what happened that night.”

And it's true. I talked to his lawyer. I wanted to know what I was getting into when I agreed to live with him after his release. When he got arrested, first he said he didn't do it. But they got him with the goods right there in his apartment—stuff stolen from the Newsomes' house. So then he said he didn't remember exactly what he was doing the night it happened. He said he took some pills he scored. Someone at work gave them to him. He said he thought maybe he'd been drinking too. Then they told him,
Louis, it doesn't look good for you. We got you dead-to-rights
with the goods. We know you know where she lived and
that she kept all that stuff in the house. The way we figure it,
you broke in thinking you could score some goods to fence. You
didn't think she was in the house. Is that it, Louis? She surprised
you, right? And you panicked. That's why you shot her, right,
Louis? I bet you didn't even mean to do it, did you? But you
know how it goes—someone gets killed while you're committing
a criminal act, and it's serious. You could go down for life. You
don't want that, do you, Louis? Not with that little girl of yours
at home, already without a mother. So why don't you do the
right thing? Be a man. Own up to what you did.

And that's exactly what he did.

He made a deal. His lawyer said it was the smart thing to do because the cops didn't have the gun. He said that for all anyone knew, my father might have had a partner who did the shooting. He said he had a shot at reasonable doubt, and the cops knew it. But he also said that with my father's record, it was a crapshoot. He said if my father was smart, he wouldn't want to roll the dice any more than the cops did, so it was better to make a deal. He said that maybe if my father went inside, he could get himself straight. He said with the deal he made, he would be out before I graduated high school. My father agreed. He told me I shouldn't worry about him. He told me I was the important one, not him. He said he wanted me to be strong and do my schoolwork and make something of myself. He said he wasn't proud of himself, but he was already proud of me and he knew I was going to go places.

I didn't go anywhere except to live with Aunt Jenny. And I went to school.

Meanwhile, my father did his time. He went to rehab while he was in there. The days went by slowly, but it felt like we were both making progress. At least, it did when I was sitting across from him at the table in the visiting room. When I was at home with Aunt Jenny or at school, where everyone knew what my father had done, it felt different. Every minute felt like torture, as if it would never end. But it did.

Finally, my father got out.

Now he's dead. His picture is in the newspaper the next morning, which is how I finally find out what happened. The article in the paper says he was shot dead in a struggle with Robert Newsome. It says the second Mrs. Newsome is dead and that my father shot her. It says there was a witness who saw the whole thing, but it doesn't say who that witness is.

It makes me sick to think about it. After all this time, after believing him for all those years, he lied to me when he said he wasn't going to get himself into any trouble. Because what was he doing at the Newsomes' house? Why did he have a gun? Why did he shoot the second Mrs. Newsome?