by Rick Murcer
I remember pulling out my cell and dialing 9-1-1; but I also recall sirens already blaring and not far away. Someone must have heard Maggie’s scream and called the police. I waited for my call to go through anyway. The operator answered and the conversation went something like this:
“9-1-1 operator. How may I help you?”
“My girlfriend is hurt down at Little Sable Lighthouse, send help, an ambulance.”
“Who’s calling, and what’s your girlfriend’s name?
“I’m Chase Andrews and Maggie Burrows is . . . just send an ambulance,” I screamed.
The woman on the line told me to calm down. I started to scream again and then heard another sound—the iron door at the front of the tower had slammed shut.
Help was already here. Then again, I didn’t remember hearing a police car pull up, and the siren still bellowed a few blocks away.
All that ran through my mind was that there was someone here to help me, us.
As I began to run, I said to the love of my life, “I’m getting help, Maggie.”
Motoring around the south side of the lighthouse, wiping at my face, I held out hope that whoever was there could fix what was going on, and tomorrow it would all be okay. I recall feeling even a little relief, but that’s not how it went down.
I’d reached the side of the lighthouse and saw a figure crest the sidewalk trail, just as I tripped over something metal. It jabbed my calf as I tumbled head first into the cool sand, but that didn’t stop me from yelling.
“Help us! Please! Help. I need help.”
I was at least a hundred fifty feet away and couldn’t make out any detail of the figure as they disappeared over the hill, but I do, and will always, remember the slight hesitation the person had made, as if contemplating a great truth, or lie, before moving out of the picture.
Scrambling to my feet, I started to run again and went down immediately, getting a face full of sand this time . . . and sharp pain coursing through my ankle. I looked down and saw a tire iron wedged between my sandal strap and my foot. I did the classic double-take because I felt something sticky on the handle as I pried it from my sandal.
At that moment, the Oceans County Police Unit had arrived, lights flashing and sirens dying the way they do when their trip is over.
Standing, I was already yelling for them. As the two officers, one male, one female, stormed over the hill, their flashlights lighting up the beach like a new morning’s dawn, I got another glimpse of the tire iron in my hand. Two things were certain: it had come from my car, and the sticky substance on the handle . . . well, it was blood.
Chapter-4
“Please. I need your help,” I yelled. “My girlfriend is hurt, over on the rocks.”
The first officer had rumbled down the slope, a woman. She shined her light in my face, then stopped, slowly moving the light to the hand holding the tire iron, then flashed it back to my face.
“Drop the iron, son; then we can help you.”
I didn’t actually see her pull her gun, but I heard it as it ripped from her holster. A moment later, the second cop did the same. I didn’t really think much about it because all I wanted was help and maybe release from the reality that I hoped to escape. That “strength in numbers” quote I’d heard my entire life was no longer just a phrase, but carried real substance for me. Maybe these two could make Maggie better, make all this go away.
Foolish man.
“I want you to put the tire iron on the ground and then lay face down, okay?” the lady officer said again, this time with more insistence.
“What? I don’t understand how that helps Maggie. Please. Help her. She must have fallen from the lighthouse. I . . .”
“Now, young man.” This time her partner was speaking, and he sounded pissed. Real pissed. Then I was hit with another light at an angle more to my right, blinding me for a moment. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw the tire iron, and the sand sticking to the blood, and finally realized what was happening. They thought I’d hurt Maggie. Thinking back, I guess I would have assumed the same.
“Wait. I didn’t do anything to her. I tripped over this and . . .”
The next second, I was face down in the sand with a huge weight on my back and shoulders. My ankle turned underneath the force as I went down, causing persistent flashes of pain to tango across my eyes. I yelped. But the two cops couldn’t have cared less. Apparently, I was the object of their biggest moment in law enforcement and needed to be treated accordingly.
Struggling against the man on my back was useless. He wrenched my right hand around to my hip, and I felt the cuffs snap tightly, then on the other hand.
“Just lay there, boy, or my voice will be the last thing you ever hear,” he barked.
“Better listen to him. He ain’t a patient man,” she warned.
He got off from me, and I didn’t move. Partially because I believed him, partially because the gravity of the last five minutes had caught up with me, and I suddenly felt as tired as I’d ever felt in my life. I was more than ready to have someone else take control. I listened to the waves and rested my head on the sand, waiting for the tears to stop.
“You watch him, and I’ll go check out the rocks,” the male officer said.
She agreed.
The next thing I remember hearing was the male cop swearing, then he retched up his last meal. A moment later, I heard footsteps kicking up sand as he rushed back to me and his partner.
“Damn it. Call the State Police. Now. He’s killed her. Good God. Hurry. I ain’t ever seen nothing like that.”
Hearing him talk was like someone throwing ice cold water on me in the middle of the night. They really did think I’d killed Maggie. Killed Maggie. That thought was far beyond terrifying.
“Wait. I didn’t kill her. I found . . .”
“I told you to shut the hell up, you little bastard.”
He jerked me up from the ground, and I felt something hit the back of my head, a sharp pain, and then my eyes couldn’t focus.
“If you talk again, I’ll make sure you get a nice, long stay in some hospital . . . if we get you there on time, that is,” he’d growled.
As the fog cleared, I sensed that he wasn’t kidding. In fact, I totally believed him.
I was then hustled over the path and tossed into the backseat of the brown-and-white county cruiser, just as an ambulance and two state cop units pulled into the parking lot.
Then I saw something odd as I stared out the window, something that didn’t really register until later. Maggie’s yellow VW Beetle moved past the entrance of the park and disappeared around the bend, heading toward town.
Chapter-5
So there I was. Sitting in the back of the Sands restaurant, where Maggie worked, surrounded by four cops, a State Police Detective, and the Sands owner, Jeff Clark.
The cops stared at me, like Satan and I were on a first-name basis. Detective Jan Green, a tall woman with short hair and a handsome face, was sipping coffee and going over the notes she’d made after grilling me two different times. Same questions, different wording. Good technique, I guess, for someone who had been lying to her. But I hadn’t. Jeff, who was there because he’d always been tight with local law enforcement and made his place available as a pre-jail holdover, was the only one who hadn’t condemned me, at least with his eyes. He was a man of faith and, for the most part, lived it.
They hadn’t let him speak to me, but he’d given me a reassuring wink during the time he wasn’t trying to shake the shock and sadness from his round face. I guess I understood that too. When you worked for Jeff, you were family, and Maggie had been one of his favorites. She’d been very much like a daughter to him. But he also knew how much in love we were, and I wanted to believe that he knew I hadn’t killed her . . . but doubt and the heart were always uneasy bedfellows.
Detective Green came back to the booth where I was cornered, cuffs still clamped to my wrists, and sat down across from me for the third time, her face even
harder than before. I got the impression that she had no difficulty being a bitch of the highest caliber. That thought made me even more nervous.
“I don’t get something, Chase. You said you got upset when Maggie told you her plans, then you stood up and just kind of stared over the railing. Then you stormed down the steps, right?” I didn’t like the tone in her voice.
“Yes. That’s right. I told you that twice.”
“And that’s when she tried to talk to you and scratched your arm, right?”
I sighed. “No, detective. She scratched me when she fell back as we were going up the staircase.”
I was suddenly struck with that replay in my mind’s eye and felt the wind leave my sails. Her laugh, the way we were breathing, the smell of her hair were all vivid and alive. If I were designing torture techniques, forcing people to remember things would go to the top of the list.
“Okay, just wanted to make sure I got that right. So that must have been when you went back to your car to get the tire iron. I mean, you couldn’t have that little hussy ruining your life . . .”
“What? I never went back to the car to get anything. I went down the beach, like I said. And what part of ‘I wouldn’t ever hurt her’ don’t you get? And don’t call her a hussy.”
She was starting to get under my skin—I guess that’s what they do—but she was not even in the ballpark when it came to Maggie and me.
“Oh, I get it. And I’ve heard it a hundred times, but you know, what am I supposed to think? You were the last one to see Maggie alive; you were pissed; and your tire iron had blood and two strands of long black hair on it. As soon as we get the prelims back from the lab, I bet those hairs will be hers. So, can you see the problem I have?” She was glaring at me. I briefly wondered if her eyes were going to turn red. It was like she hated and pitied me at the same time.
“I don’t care about your probl—” A vision of someone hitting Maggie with a tire iron exploded into full-blown imagery, and I couldn’t finish what I was saying. Like I said before, if you haven’t been there, you don’t know what it’s like. That image of Maggie being hit, along with the detective’s matter-of-fact words, created a phrase that hadn’t run across my thoughts, until now. Murder. My Maggie had been murdered.
“What’s wrong, son? Are you ready to tell the real story here?” Green asked. Her voice was as soothing as the lake’s waves.
“I . . . I . . . It just occurred to me that Maggie was murdered,” I answered, but the voice didn’t sound like mine. Maybe I was in full-blown shock after my trip down denial lane.
Leaning over the wooden table in the booth, her eyes grew soft. She sort of reminded me of my mom after I’d screwed up somewhere, and she wanted to tell me that it was okay.
“You want to tell me what really happened? I understand. People get mad; they lose it, then regret what they did. Do you regret what you did, hitting her, then sending her over the railing like that? It’s all right. You can tell me, then it’ll be over,” she said, so understanding, so smooth. And it was all a lie. Damn. She was good. For a second, I thought I was going to say I did it. Then I got angry, again.
“I-DID-NOT-KILL-MAGGIE! Got it? I would die before that would ever happen. Just because we’re young doesn’t mean I don’t understand the concept of sacrifice. We are . . . were . . . that much in love. She was the only thing I could count on as being totally real,” I said, enraged.
“Okay. Take it easy.”
She began leafing through her notes and looked up at me, her eyes were hard again. I guess she’d decided the good-cop approach hadn’t worked.
“You said you heard the door slam and then tripped over the tire iron when you ran after whomever it was to get help. Is that—”
The front door burst open and my uncle, Jack Andrews, an attorney, stormed into the main dining floor, looked around, spotted me, and hurried toward us. He was a smallish man with round, wire-rimmed glasses, short, neat hair, and a gift for double-talk like no one I’d ever met.
On his heels strode my dad, my mom, and my two best friends, Aaron Rich and Chuck Fowler. If that’s what the cavalry looked like to a wagon train surrounded by hostiles, then the folks in the wagon must have gone crazy with relief. I know I did.
“I’m Chase’s attorney, Jack Andrews. Are you charging him with anything?” my uncle asked, talking directly to Detective Green as he stepped between two of the county officers.
The detective looked at her hands, glanced at me, and sighed. “We’re just trying to verify his story. If he’s innocent, then he’s got nothing to—”
“You didn’t answer my question, Detective. Is he being charged?”
By then, my dad had worked his way through the cops and stood with his hand on my shoulder. He bent to my ear. “You okay?”
I nodded, then felt the tears well up.
How in God’s name was I ever going to be okay?
He didn’t look me in the face, but I could tell by his touch that he understood what I was thinking.
Letting out a breath, Detective Green slid out of the booth and motioned for Uncle Jack to follow. He shook his head, eyes blazing.
“Say what you got to say. But if you’re not charging him, we’re out of here. You’ve already broken about five different laws, as far as I can tell. And you and I both know that anything he’s said to you, if you do charge him, won’t be admissible because his attorney wasn’t present.”
“Look. We just want to find out what happened.”
“So do we. But you, of all people, know there’s a right way and a wrong way,” answered my uncle.
“I can hold him for another twenty-four to forty-eight hours, you know, before I have to charge him or let him go.”
“You can, but then we’d just get him released because you must only have circumstantial evidence or he’d already be booked. Besides that, he didn’t do it, and I can tell by your face that you’re not sure either.”
She put her hands on her hips, looked toward the ceiling, and started to speak. But the door flew open again, and Maggie’s mother rushed in. She turned toward me, and I could see she’d been more than crying. Her rage . . . well, I’ve never seen anyone wear a look like that. She cocked her head, flashed the scariest grin, screamed something at me, and then raised the pistol in my direction.
Chapter-6
I sat frozen in place, wondering what it was going to be like to be shot. But that didn’t happen. I’d never seen Aaron, my best friend from the time we were five, move that fast. He was always the brains in the group, but also the last one picked for any sandlot game we’d play. I won’t say he was frail, but it was close. He barely hit a hundred forty pounds on his six-foot frame.
Before the cops, or anyone else, could react, Aaron tackled Mrs. Burrows, who was no heavyweight herself. I think her and Maggie could have been twins if they’d been born the same year.
They both hit the gray-tiled floor with collective grunts as the gun skittered under one of the booths at the front of the building. Maggie’s mother struggled against Aaron, trying to get up and reach the gun. I heard him yell as one of her blows struck him in the face. But my friend held fast.
By then, two of the county officers had joined the fray, and Jill Burrows had little chance of getting off the floor and completing the task of shooting me. It didn’t, however, stop her from threatening to finish her chore.
“You killed my little girl! I warned her. I told her all men were the same. You killed her. I’m going to make you pay, Chase Andrews. You hear me? I’ll finish this.”
Her words and sobs reverberated throughout the Sands as the two officers hustled her out of the glass doors and into one of the cruisers. One of the other cops retrieved the gun, looked it over, and took it outside. I supposed to give it to one of the other cops . . . and keep it far away from Maggie’s mother.
Green had pulled her weapon during the scuffle. She now put it back in her shoulder holster and motioned for me to get up. “I don’t think that
woman likes you, but don’t worry. She’ll get some time to cool off.”
She did that sighing thing again, and I almost felt sorry for her. I think she wasn’t totally sure what to do.
“Your attorney is right. I don’t have enough to hold you. Your story has been consistent, and you do have a mark on your leg that could back up what you’ve said about tripping over the tire iron. The CSU will see if they can put the science to your claims, and I’ll get a report tomorrow.”
By then, my family and friends were surrounding me, and I felt better. But I was sure I’d never be the same. Green spoke again, her face as determined as I’d seen it. “You better make sure you don’t leave the area until I get what I need, one way or the other. I’m not convinced you didn’t do this, and I’ll have some more questions.”
Pulling out her pad, she flipped pages, then stopped and let out a breath. “I have just one more, then you can go, for now.”
I nodded.
“You said you couldn’t make out anything about the person that you said had come out of the lighthouse and gone up over the hill.”
“That’s right.”
“Which direction did this person go? The moon gave you plenty light enough to see that, at least.”
I ran it over in my mind, including the slight hesitation the person had made. I felt my eyes grow larger.
“Right! They went right, to the south.”
She finally smiled. But not the let’s do lunch smile. More like a crocodile. “You sound sure. Okay. Go home, and I’ll be in touch with your attorney. And Chase, I mean it. Don’t leave the area, not even for dinner. Like I said, you’re still my first choice for this, and if I thought I could make it stick, you’d be going with me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Then my mom looped her arm through mine and ushered me toward our four-by-four truck.
Just before I climbed into the back, I stared at the setting moon, and it occurred to me, right then and there, that there had to be a second choice: the one who had really killed Maggie. Maybe I’d seen her killer, and not just her murderer, but the destroyer of my dreams.
