Page 31 of Brutal Prince

“It’s unwise to think in the realm of ‘what ifs?’”

We fell silent to the sounds of a shoot-out on Criminal Minds. One of Mom’s favorite shows. The popping sound of fired guns taking me back to that moment on the Southside sports field.

I tried to dissolve the images from my mind with each brushstroke of her long dirty yellow hair, but it failed to work.

“These ends need trimming,” and reached for my hair cutting scissors on the side table. It occurred to me that I left the nail cutting scissors in my jean pocket on my bed and should remove them before I inadvertently do myself some damage.

“It does bother me that no one has been punished for murdering him.” She’s said this on numerous occasions. There were no apparent witnesses and he was found lying on the grass. Police assumed it was just a random drive by attack. It was also conveniently out of range of the security cameras. There weren’t many security cameras back then like there is now.

“Don’t worry I plan to punish him,” I mumbled louder than I intended.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

I smoothed down her hair with my hand until it shone a satiny glow and began slicing an inch of split ends from the bottom. Her hair drifted down onto a towel I lay on the bed behind her.

The advertisements came on and Mom muted the volume.

“Would you ever want to know why?” I asked her. The one question burning a hole in my brain. The one question I had yet to ask him. If he wanted me to come to him – whatever the hell that means – then I want answers. I deserve answers.

“Yes. I’d like to think it was a simple case of wrong place wrong person.”

“Have you ever wondered…” I hadn’t asked her this question before, but it had been playing on my mind, “if it was a set up?”

It was Friday evening, the sun was falling but it wasn’t quite dark. During dinner Dad received a phone call on his cell and said he had to go into work to check on something. He didn’t go into details. I went with him because mom had a shift at the hospital. He told me to stay in the car, as he would only be twenty minutes at the most. When he took much longer, I left the safety of the vehicle to look for him.

“A set up?”

“Someone rang him to pull him out there and then-”

“- Now you just stop right there. Why would someone deliberately do that to your father?”

I had my reasons and kept them to myself. “And how come no one saw?” Apart from me that is. “Plenty of students said they heard a sound like a gunshot, but no one claimed to have seen the murder take place.”

“I don’t want you torturing yourself like this. It was an unfortunate random act. That’s all.”

“But it was Friday evening on campus. Do you know how many students live on campus?”

“If I remember rightly there was an important college baseball game on. Weren’t the KVU Pumas in the finals or something?”

“Not all students like sport.”

Mom switched the sound back on Criminal Minds to indicate that the conversation was over. Not in my mind, though. The debate carried on pointlessly.

Only two people could explain what happened that evening and one of them was dead.

SIXTEEN

Ollie

“What’s this all about?” I asked Cody when he took the seat opposite me in Stads burger joint.

Gretta had a shift and bustled about looking cute in her uniform. It was too busy to pull her aside to ask her out again. She’ll keep.

“I got some dirt,” he whispered, placing his cell phone on the table.

Lise Fontaine stepped over to us with my order – cheese burger and fries, and a caramel frappacino. “Here we go,” she said far too cheerily, placing our food down. “Do you want anything, Cody?”

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