by E. McNew
What started as a somewhat calm football game and dinner, quickly turned into a crazy and chaotic night. I was sipping on egg not and brandy, but I wasn't going overboard. Derrick and Donnie lost complete control. Within a matter of hours, they were literally chugging the alcohol from the bottle. Donnie hopped on one of his dirt bikes and thought it would be fun to go on the four wheeling trail. This trail was probably about 2 miles away. He pretty much took off without even saying anything. Hours and hours went by, and he still had not returned. It was starting to get dark, and it was definitely cold outside. Dinner had been done for a while, and it was starting to get cold. I told my drunken husband and Casie that we should probably call search and rescue. If he were stranded out there in this weather, he would definitely freeze to death. I got on the phone and made the report, and the woman was super nice and said that she was sending her team out right away. When I hung up the phone, I turned around and Derrick was burning rubber in his truck heading towards the trail. These guys were a bunch of idiots. I assumed that Donnie was probably going to return, but now Derrick would be lost. There was no stopping them. They were drunk and they were not controllable.
About an hour after Derrick left, Donnie came stumbling into the house with three other people at his side. It was two girls, about my age, and a guy that looked a little younger than me. I could tell that these kids were drunk, and they definitely weren't belligerent. Donnie was a horrible sight. He had blood all over his shirt and it looked like he was stabbed in the arm. The brunette girl was holding his arm, which was wrapped in a bandage. She walked him into the kitchen and told him to sit down. She introduced herself and said that she was a nurse in the military. I have never seen these people in my life. Donnie was slurring and he could hardly explain to Casie and I what had happened. The girl claiming to be a nurse was able to translate his drunken slur. "So basically, we found him when he left the McDonald's drive-through. He was bleeding, and at first when we tried to help him he yelled at us. We weren't going to let him just take off in the condition that he was in, because he would probably end up killing himself traffic. He got this cut on his arm because he walked through the drive-through and tried to order a burger. They wouldn't let him order, and told him that he to go inside. A person that was in a car behind him apparently said something to set him off. He walked up to their car and punched their windshield. That is how he got this cut on his arm."
Sadly, I wasn't surprised over the stupidity of his actions. It was almost kind of humorous, but it was just so stupid that it made me feel stupid to think it was funny. This cut was very deep, and it definitely needed stitches. Donnie refused to go to the hospital. The nurse found a first aid kit in the bathroom and cleaned out the wound. She tightly held the gash together, while her friend tightly wrapped the bandage around his arm. I was sitting outside smoking trying to let the weirdness sink in. I heard a clinking truck about a mile down the road. It wasn't driving very fast so I didn't think it was Derrick. The truck turned into the driveway. It was so messed up that I didn't even recognize it. It looked like Derrick had been 14 wheeling. It really looked more like he was on a suicide mission. The radiator with absolutely crushed in, and the headlights were practically hanging from their wires. Derrick stumbled out of the car, extremely drunk, but I didn't think he was as drunk as he was when he left. I wasn't even really all that worried about him when he was gone. He deserved to get a DUI. He knew how stupid it was to get behind the wheel drunk and he chose to do it anyway. I was not having sympathy for him that night. He walked in and he and his brother started talking, but I couldn't understand what they were saying because they were slurring. I made their plates of dinner hoping that they would eat and began to sober up. They scarfed down their food and slowly became a little bit more aware.
The three kids that had escorted Donnie home were in party mode, and they walked down to the liquor store to get more alcohol. I was kind of confused and wondering why they were hanging out over at this drug house on a holiday that most people spent with their families. After Casie told them about the baby, they began to ask me questions every chance that they had. They only asked me when she wasn't around, and I thought it was really weird. They didn't even know who any of us were, but they were asking me detailed questions about who I thought was responsible. I gave them honest answers, and said that I didn't know for sure, but if I had to guess it would be Donnie. I thought that saying this would cause them to want to leave. But they didn't, they just started drinking more and more, and eventually they were dancing like whores in the living room.
All of the guys in the house quietly snuck to the back room and shut the door. When the girls realized that there friend was back in the room with Donnie and Derrick, they freaked out. "Eric! Get out of there, NOW!" The blond girl angrily screamed. I assumed that he was her boyfriend. This is where everything went bad, and it became officially the worst Thanksgiving of my life. The blond girl was trying to force her way through the closed door. It pissed off Donnie. He shoved her back. The brunette retaliated and pushed Donnie who then punched the brunette. The other guy jumped in the middle and tried to calm both of them down. He ended up getting knocked out in the process. Donnie literally grabbed the two girls by their hair and pushed them off of the cement stairway. They landed on the ground in the front yard.
I was just standing to the side definitely not wanting to get in a fight. I thought for sure that after Donnie did this, the kids would be running for the hills. It only intensified their anger and they retaliated even more. They were trying to physically fight Donnie. He took it as a challenge and pretty much beat the crap out of both of them. The young kid was caught in the middle, and I felt bad for him. He was just trying to keep the peace, and I could tell that he was worried about his girlfriend. He approached Donnie calmly and tried to ask him to calm down, and he promised that he would get the girls off of his property. For no good reason at all, like Peter from the Family Guy, Derrick walked up to the kid and punched him in the face, knocking him hard to the ground. He was knocked unconscious. The girls took off down the street yelling that they were going to call the cops. I thought it was probably a good idea that they did that.
Now there were two drunken idiots on one side and a knocked-out kid on the ground. I wasn't going to just leave him there, so I started dragging him into the house so I could get him on the couch and make sure that he woke up okay. He woke up about five minutes later, and I could tell that when he sat up, he was dizzy. Derrick quickly apologized to him, and he apologized about his girlfriend's behavior. It was bizarre how the guys suddenly became friends. The kid was worried about the cops coming because he was on Probation. Donnie didn't want to deal with the cops either. They both ran out back and hid in the shed. Casie somehow disappeared. She was nowhere to be found. I figured that she probably went over to her mom's house. She was already emotional and heartbroken, and I couldn't blame her for wanting to get out of that situation.
Derrick and I sat on the front porch waiting for the cops to come. They showed up and took a report. We explained that we were just the guests for Thanksgiving dinner, and everyone else who had been fighting had disappeared. The cops seemed like they were having a busy night and told us to call them if the same kids showed back up looking for more. Somehow, the fight started all over again after the police left. The girls showed up again looking for Eric, and when we told them that Eric wasn't at the house, they wouldn't take no for an answer. Eric and Donnie must have heard the chaos, as they came running out on their hiding. Everyone was beat up all over again. It was really bad. After the three kids stumbled away threatening to call the police again, I yelled at Donnie and Derrick and told them to get into the truck as I opened the driver side door. We went straight back to our house, and Donnie was dripping blood everywhere. Casie called me to say she was on her way.
Donnie was definitely not sane. He was standing in the doorway smoking and didn’t even noticing his gushing wounds. He wouldn't stop rambling on an
d on. He began talking about his baby, and that's when he had my attention. "I didn't know that you weren't supposed to do that," he sobbed to himself while looking down at the floor. "My dad beat the shit out of me growing up. I thought that's what you were suppose to do!" he cried. Oh God, I thought. He just confessed to the murder of his son.
Chapter 66
Luckily, the cops didn’t show up at my house that night. When I woke up the next day, Donnie and Casie had already left. I had a talk with Derrick who wasn’t very happy with himself and his actions from the night before. I told him what I had heard his brother say. He had a look of disappointment. He knew that something was eventually going to come out from someone, or whoever had any information regarding the death of the baby. “There is just too much bad shit that happens when I hang around my brother,” he said, more to himself. He looked my way and said, “We are never, ever hanging around them again. I’m over it,” wanting to make sure that I agreed. I did. We decided to hang our heads low, and we hoped that the police wouldn’t end up showing up at our house to arrest him.
Within a matter of days after Thanksgiving, Donnie had been arrested for assaulting the girls that night, and a detective was trying to get a hold of Derrick and me by phone. We thought that it was probably a good sign that he was calling us because that meant that he did not have enough evidence to arrest Derrick. At this point, we were smart enough to know to never speak with any detectives about any case that could possibly go against us. We avoided his phone call and did not return his messages. By the next week, he was showing up at our front door. The first time he came, we were at the grocery store. We came home to a card on our front door.
Since Donnie was in jail, we knew that they either had enough evidence from the assault to arrest Derrick or they had been waiting to find any little reason to arrest him. If they had evidence against Derrick, they would have arrested him when they arrested Donnie. Derrick obviously was going to flat-out deny any involvement in the physical altercation, and of course, I was not going to testify against him because we were married. We were both uneasy with the idea of this detective continuing to stop by our home unannounced. I convinced Derrick to call the number on the card, and we would just make it clear that we didn't have any involvement and the detective would be on his way.
Just a few minutes after Derrick made the phone call, the detective was back at our house for an interview. He came inside and he was pretty rude. Derrick told him his side of the story and the detectives practically laughed. "We all know what really happened that night, and the young man that you knocked out, Eric, ended up with two concussions to his head. Now I just came here to see if you would take responsibility for your actions like an adult, and we could work with you. But if you make my job more difficult than it has to be, you're probably going to be in jail for a long time." Derrick and I already knew all about the game that he was playing. He was trying to make threats and scare us into confessing. It wasn't going to work. The detective turned to me, "Now Elizabeth, I know that you were there that night. And I know that you saw exactly what went on. Am I going to have the same problem with you as I do with your husband?" "I'm not exactly sure what that is supposed to mean, but when there is a fight between 10 different people at the same time, it's kind of hard to see exactly what happened with one particular person. I wasn't paying attention to Derrick. I was paying attention to the women because I was worried that they were going to try to involve me in the fight." This wasn't a lie. I was almost positive that there was a law protecting me from having to testify against my husband. I wasn't going to lie to the detective, but I also wasn't going to offer information that would be incriminating to Derrick. The detective was extremely rude, and I thought that he had a lot of guts to be so hostile when he was in our own home. Derrick asked him to leave after a few minutes, and as he walked out the door. "We are going to pin you for this, Derrick. You can either make it easy on yourself, or we can do it the hard way."
About two weeks later, I had my routine visit at the Probation Department. I was assigned to a new Probation Officer, and for the most part, she was pretty nice. After she updated my file, she announced to me that someone wanted to talk to me. I thought that I was going to be arrested or something. She got on her phone and dialed an extension. Probably 30 seconds later, a man walked through the doorway. I was pissed. It was that same rude investigator that stopped by our house. He was using the fact that I was on Probation as leverage to get me to talk. "As with the terms and conditions of your Probation, it's mandatory for you to cooperate with law enforcement," my Probation Officer said, almost as if it were scripted. The detective was acting extra nice. He was too nice and seriously phony. Ms. Jeter, let's go for a quick walk. I followed him down the hallway and through the exit door of the Probation Department, and then across the hallway into the Police Department.
When he led me back to his office, he immediately picked up a small black box and pushed a button. Obviously, I was being recorded. I was so incredibly irritated that they were using this as a method to try to get more information with the threat of violating my Probation if I did not offer what they wanted to hear. I went through the details of the night, step-by-step. I told him that I didn't see Derrick knock anyone out. "I don't know, maybe I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but I can't remember." "Why won't you just tell the truth? That's all we need from you. If you just tell me the truth then I can let you go and you won't end up getting in any trouble over this." “See, this is why I don't talk to people like you. I've been there, done that. You guys lie and say anything that you want if you think it will give you what you want to hear so you can close the case and move onto the next investigation. At one point I trusted you. I trusted higher authority, and I never thought that you would do me wrong. I was completely mistaken. My daughter was hurt and you guys had the nerve and ignorance to actually think I knew what happened. Well, I didn't. And there still hasn't been anyone put away for it. Do you have any idea what this did to my family and so many other people?" I was having flashbacks of sitting in that interrogation room a couple years ago, and I was taking my anger out on this guy. I was extremely upset and crying. I think I shocked him a little bit because he lay off trying to get me to talk. "And why would I get in trouble for this? I have not done anything wrong. It is not my fault that this happened to take place in the same area as myself." "Well, because you put Eric back into the house after he was knocked unconscious, it sounds like you were an accessory to the crime." I was furious. "So you are telling me that because I tried to help this kid, I'm going to go to jail over it?" "I'm not saying anything, it's not going to be up to me. It’s up to the District Attorney's Office." Luckily, I had to take a drug test before the Probation Office closed for the day. They were closing in about 10 minutes, so he knew that I had to go back. For some reason, he felt compelled to escort me back. "Are you going to pass your drug test?" "Yes. That's not going to be a problem,” I dryly said.
From reading a copy of the police report that Casie brought to our house shortly after Donnie was arrested, we all knew that the District Attorney was taking this very seriously. I began wondering if we were both going to be arrested for this. Derrick tried to play it off like there just wasn’t a way for us to get into trouble over it, but I had my doubts. It was early in the next year, 2009, and I only had about six months until I’d be released from Probation for good. This worried me even more. I knew that there would be something that ruined it all and kept me from moving. The best way I could cope was to use drugs. We both used. We regularly hung out with our neighbor who was a closet-tweaker and owned his own small business cleaning hot tubs for expensive vacation homes in the local area. He gave Derrick part-time work, and he would pay him with drugs. After the death of the baby, Derrick had a difficult time showing up at his regular job on time. His boss agreed to let him go and not contest when he filed for unemployment. From Derrick taking his truck on a 4-wheeling drunken ride, he had pretty much totaled it. I
t was useless, but we were at least able to sell it for parts. Pretty much, we were jobless, carless, on drugs and living in a trailer. Everything turned into complete shit.
Chapter 67
Since Donnie was in jail, we were hanging around with an entirely new group of people. These people all worked for our neighbor, Aaron. One of these men was in his 60s. He looked as if he could be a homeless man on the streets and he practically was. Aaron paid for him to stay in a room in a crappy motel. Although he was married, it didn't stop him from sleeping with the woman who managed the place. She gave him a discount. I spent most of my time obsessively researching the law, trying to figure out what to expect. So far, it had been a couple of months, and we hadn't heard anything about the case. A part of me assumed that if something were going to happen, it would have already happened. Another part of me was worried and I had a bad feeling. I was able to find a website that provided a list of all of the local criminal cases. It appeared to be an automated system, so I was hoping that if a warrant were to be put into place it would show up here. I checked this website every day. So far all seemed good. If we could just get through the next few months, we could be out of here and on our way to Texas.
Aaron somehow acquired a car - if you could call it that. He was selling it for $500, and we thought that we would probably be able to get it for $400. The vehicle ran extremely well and had low mileage. It was really ugly, a burgundy color, and made in the 80s, and it was a Lincoln town car. Luckily we were able to get the vehicle before someone else did. After almost four months without a car, we were happy to have anything - as long as it ran. We were smoking crystal meth on a daily basis, and it seemed like the supply just never ran out. We smoked more than we had ever done together and even more than when we were hanging around Donnie. I became paranoid that we were going to be arrested for the Thanksgiving fight, and I didn't want to be left alone at home. The drug-use contributed to my paranoia. I started to go on the jobs with Derrick, and I helped him clean out the hot tubs for the vacation homes. Plus, I thought it was fun to be able to see these homes. They were huge and some of them had more than three stories. I pretty much clung to Derrick wherever he went.
