“Don’t kill the boy,” I say. Use the word “kill” rather than “hurt” or “injure.” It brings the situation home. It makes it real. Clevenger behind me, staying back far enough to give Stoke a sense of security. Best not to have him get rash until the boy is clear.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Stoke says, readjusts his grip. Somewhere, a million miles behind me, Clevenger backs up further and gets on his radio. We need more cops.
“Fine,” I say. “Kill yourself. But let your son come over here. He’s got no business with your final solution. Stop scaring the child and let him go outside.”
“None of this is my fault. I was forced into this. Do you hear me? You think I picked getting shitcanned? You think I wanted Jen’s mother to get fat and diabetic and get her feet cut off and drop dead and make my wife all cold and withdrawn? You think I wanted to start fucking chicks out at the damn strip club? Where they give mercy jerks for a twenty spot?”
People will say the darndest things in situations like this. They deflect blame and culpability like they were oil and water. Let them talk; it takes energy to be spastic, crazy and angry. They wear down. Drop their guard. Then come in with the haymaker.
“That bitch stole everything from me! Everything! I can’t afford food! I can’t afford this house! She won’t even let me keep the kid overnight! I get all the problems and all the bullshit, and she just packs up and leaves when it gets tough! Well she ain’t fucking getting my boy! SHE AIN’T!”
Ten minutes ago Clevenger and I were interviewing witnesses. That might as well have been in the 1950s it feels so long ago. I look at Stoke.
“Listen to me. My name is Richard. I’m a policeman and I want to help you. Okay?” My first name. Rapport building. He doesn’t really acknowledge me beyond simply shutting up, and that’s fine. It’s a start.
“Sure. The woman backed you into this. They all did. Let me make sure I’ve got this right. Let me start with her mother, okay? Gets sick because she doesn’t take care of herself, right? Doesn’t take care of herself even after she’s sick. Her body speaks up when she needs her feet amputated. That’s what you said, right? Good. She still doesn’t take care of herself even after all that and in the end she just dies.
“Then your wife, she gets all upset about her mother. Now, this is the same woman who had all the signs in front of her and didn’t notice. You all could see that coming a mile away and yet you
r wife still gets bent out of shape? How? Why would your wife be upset about that?”
Stoke has no answer. I fix a knowing eyeball on him and say: “Because she can be, and she can take it out on you. So she does. She steals the little man here—the only other man like you in this sea of women—and goes and lives with yet another woman. Who is, by the way, probably feeding your wife more lies about you.
“So you go and find a titty club. Perfectly reasonable. Your wife ain’t taking care of it, so you have to spend her mom’s money to get it taken care of. Makes sense, right? Mother-in-law caused all the problems, might as well be her dime that fixes those problems.”
Paraphrase and summarize. Rapport building. He nods.
“Now, tell me what happened at work, Jefferson.” His first name. Rapport building.
“I was drunk,” Jefferson says. “Not a lot, not any more than Todd is every damn day. But the boss loves Todd and hates me so I get caught with a beer on my breath and get fired, boom, just like that. What was I supposed to do? Fucking cunt. What was I supposed to do?”
“Okay. Tell me something else, Stoke: was your boss a woman?”
“YES! Yes, damnit, I fucking said that! Why would I call a man a cunt?”
“Just checking. Like I said earlier, I want to make sure I understand you completely.” People will never listen harder than when they hear their own words coming out of someone else’s mouth. By asking questions and repeating things people know you are really listening rather than just waiting for a chance to interrupt.
Rapport building.
“See your problem pattern here?” I ask.
“Yes, I do.” He says this matter-of-factly, shoots a glance at the boy. The boy is small. Brown hair trimmed into a bowl cut. Slicks of bright red blood from both nostrils. He’s shuddering like a man who has just been stabbed clear through in the eye.
He is cradling his left arm. I see the purple discoloration just below the elbow. Not good. He turns another tint lighter towards pale. His eyes have cried so hard they are bloodshot and sandpaper dry. He has run out of tears.
Pitiful. Thomas looks pitiful. No child should have to be exposed to this kind of raw-nerve horror. Kids have two things in early life: Mom and Dad. People fail their children in ways that should never be. People expect their children to endure things they would never put themselves through. Just look around.
Jefferson has decided to make his boy sit in a front row seat while he puts on the failure show of his lifetime.
I continue: “You see your problem pattern? Yes? Then why are you making it your boy’s?”
“What?”
“Your boy stands by you, Jefferson. Even now he is respectful, obedient. With your gun to his head he’s in his dad’s arms. What do you think about that?”
“He’s my boy,” Jefferson says. “I raised him to be this way.”
“Right. And now you’re going to kill him because you and pussy mix about as well as a pissed off bull and an anal probe.”