I found that I still had some courage left. "I don’t know who caused his death," I said, "but John did not use drugs. I'm sure o
f it. He may have died from an overdose of heroin, but he didn't do it to himself."
Carpenter moved further into the room and sat down in the visitor's chair on the other side of the desk. I wanted to head for the door, but that was impossible without passing him on the way. I sat down again in his desk chair.
"Now, let’s discuss this reasonably," said Carpenter, apparently deciding to use another angle. "It's true that I'm against the homeless littering the streets of West River. It's true that I want to get rid of them. But I do not want to do it by killing them off one by one. If nothing else, do you know what that would do to my chances of advancing to any higher political office?"
I nodded, just like a schoolgirl sent to the principal's office. I began to realize just how much trouble I was in, breaking into a locked office building at night. I'd been too focused on my goal of finding out what really happened to Homeless John to think clearly.
My only hope now was to talk calmly and logically and offer some kind of rational explanation. "Councilman, I want to explain some things that you may not be aware of. It has to do with the people who have nowhere to go and end up on the streets. I’ll use John as an example."
He gave me a small wave of his hand, so I went on. "John was intelligent. He'd attended two years of college. He spoke coherently on all kinds of subjects. And – did you know he had a family?"
"I did not know anything about him personally," said Carpenter.
"But I did. He had a brother. A brother who did fall into drug use. John spent a lot of time trying to help him. He told me he saw the poison of drugs on the streets, especially in our downtown area. He focused on his brother because they'd had a rough time when they were kids and John felt responsible for Steven. I saw John as a person who simply fell on hard times and had nowhere to go."
Carpenter relaxed a little more, and looked at me as if we'd just met for the first time. "I never thought of them as leading normal lives at one time. This may determine a different avenue in taking care of the problem."
"Seriously? There are families – like the woman with the two children – who are at high risk on the streets. These people need help, not another person trying to get rid of them. It's not always their fault." I was actually impressed with the way he listened to my thoughts about the issue.
"You have some good points, Laila. I’ll take them into consideration, but no promises this late in the game."
He was a politician, after all. I decided he felt it was too late to change course. But maybe I would still get a chance to convince him that there was another side to the homeless issue. I still had three weeks to change his mind.
"As for pressing charges against you – just promise that if you want to know anything else about me, you'll come in during office hours."
A wave of relief came over me and I thanked him as I walked past him and down the hall.
Carpenter laughed. "These office hours will soon be all-nighters anyway, in which case, you won’t have to break in after dark the next time."
Chapter Eleven
After the adrenalin rush of my escapade at Councilman Carpenter’s headquarters, I was left feeling pretty drained. It was close to midnight when I finally walked into my living room. After Thor’s enthusiastic welcome, I let him out to have a short run.
While the dog was outside, I thought more about Homeless John. I had to admit that Daniel was right when he told me I really knew nothing about the man. I'd liked him because he seemed so normal when he came into Roasted Love for his coffee, even when I knew he'd been sleeping next to a sidewalk all night.
But it was true that our conversations only skimmed the surface of who he really was. He told plenty of stories that had entertained me, but still hadn't revealed much about his actual life on the streets.
Where did he go during the day when the cops forced him to leave the Piazza? Had he lied when he'd told me he didn't do drugs?
I wanted answers, not more questions – but questions were all I had.
When I finally got to sleep that night, my dreams turned out to be what I can only call a "weird hodgepodge." Not only did Daniel show up in them, but Councilman Calvin Carpenter was there. I saw him curled up on the ground outside Roasted Love just like John had done when he was still alive.
I awoke around five a.m. and turned over to try to finish my sleep. A short catnap helped clear out the weird dreams and when my alarm rang, it startled me fully awake. But thoughts of the bizarre dream still drifted across my mind before I rolled myself out of bed. Even on my days off from work, I tried to keep the same schedule for getting up in the morning. It was just easier that way.
Once I had two cups of delicious dark roasted coffee in me, I sat down at my computer screen, opened up Google and typed in Steven Collins Maxfield Correctional Facility. I was sure I remembered John telling me that that was where his brother was serving time.
There was no Steven Collins listed at that place. I wondered if maybe he'd been released, but I had no idea if two years was a normal sentence for a drug dealer or not.
When I did a general search on "Steven Collins" though, there were many, many hits. It was a common name, after all. At least three were listed in their eighties and nineties, and most of the others weren't within the right age range at all. If John's brother was no longer behind bars, he could be back out on the streets again and wouldn't show up on an Internet search
Finding him would be next to impossible.
No matter what, I would have to go back to the old downtown area. And I had to convince Chief Donald Hayes he had an unsolved murder case on his hands, not an accidental drug overdose.
I pushed Daniel from my mind because if I thought about him, I'd have to admit that I planned to break my promise to stay out of the world of drugs and dealers. But I just couldn't let this go.