Page 37 of Body Count

The cop part of me understood.Push and pull.Light me up and then calm me down.Good cop, bad cop.Plus, these two were bred-in-the-bone fuckholes.

“I never touched him.I saw him two, three times.I wanted to make sure he was okay.I was checking on him.Doing your fucking job.”

“You want to try that again?”

“I.Never.Touched him.”

“Fuck that,” Red Alvin said.

I shook my head.“I told you what happened.Are we done here?”

“You’re a lying sack of shit.”

Brother Gary looked up at the ceiling tiles like he was praying.And then he said, “Son, you’re not being honest with us.”

“Are we done here?”I asked.

“You need to start telling the truth.The truth will set you free.”

“Are we done here?”

“What happened?”Brother Gary said.“Did he try to say no?Did you get in a fight?You didn’t mean to hurt him; it just got out of hand.”

The room was full of the white noise of silence.

I pushed myself up.“We’re done here.”

“You fucked one of them over the arm of the couch,” Red Alvin said.His expression was set in redneck neutral, but I could hear the smirk in his voice.“He bragged about that part.And you let the other one blow you in Shepherd Park.That’s public indecency, Detective.There goes your badge.”

I had to breathe through my nose.

“Did you honestly think we wouldn’t find out, son?”Brother Gary shook his head.

Red Alvin still sounded like he was grinning.“You didn’t think anybody would notice?Pretty kid gets his face fucked up, and you just happen to be there, and you can’t explain how you got there or why you were there or what you were doing.”He adjusted himself through the track suit bottoms absently.“And you got your face fucked up too.What?That’s supposed to be some kind of coincidence?”

“Fuck you,” I said.“Fuck both of you.”

“And then you couldn’t stay away.Couldn’t leave it alone.Had to keep coming back.”He added lazily, “Sticking your dick where it don’t belong.”

“You got a statement from Tip.Talk to Jordan again.Ask him.I didn’t go anywhere near them.It was some big guy.Some Ozark Volunteers fucker with a beard.Quit wasting my fucking time and do your fucking jobs!”

I started for the door.

“Where’s Darnell?”Brother Gary asked.

Hand on the door, I stopped.I knew better than to respond, but I still said, “You’ve got to be out of your goddamn mind.”

“It’s a simple question, son.”

“You don’t know,” Red Alvin said.“You don’t know where he is right now, do you?And you’ve got no fucking idea where he was that night either.You’re too busy wetting your wick in the kiddie pool.Let me tell you something.People like you, you think you’re so smart.You think you got it all figured out.Poly this.Open that.Fucking around and telling each other nobody cares.That’s some fucking bullshit, though.Jealousy, man?That’s as old as Cain.”

I yanked open the door and left.

15

I didn’t remember walking.Somehow, I got to the station’s front doors, and they were locked, so I rattled one and shouted until the old guy with the mop-water hair let me out.He was looking at me like I was crazy.That was okay.Iwascrazy.

The buzz of the security lights got inside my head as I started toward Jefferson Street.Moths swooped and spun inside the dirty orange light.The air smelled like the river and like old cigarette butts and garbage that had cooked in the sun.It all registered, but it was secondary.The top level of my brain was replaying everything in that fucking room.

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