Hour 23

by Robert Barnard

  Ingram was a dark and stout man who somehow looked wider than he was tall. His shiny bald head and several chins were the punch lines of many jokes told around the station whenever he was out of earshot.

  “Run this by me one more time, fellas,” Ingram said, holding a thin stack of police reports in his hands. “Talk to me slowly. Like I’m stupid.”

  After waiting and hoping for Jim to butt in, Min sighed and started to reiterate what he had already scribbled into his report. “We arrived at the residence, knocked, no answer. Heard a scream. Entered the home and followed a trail of blood to the kitchen. We found John Cooper attacking his wife—she was in bad shape. John ignored our orders to back away. I fired several shots into John, and he continued to beat his wife. Officer Whiteman then shot him once in the head, fatally, and—”

  Sergeant Ingram raised a hand to Min, indicating that he should pause. “Sound right so far, Whiteman?” the sergeant asked.

  Jim nodded his head.

  “All right,” Ingram said, “carry on, Officer Chow—and be very careful what you say next.”

  Min gulped. “After John’s death, we radioed the station for an ambulance and back up officers. I began administering life saving procedures to Geraldine.”

  “Uh-huh…” Ingram said, nodding with a smile.

  “After our life saving techniques failed, Geraldine passed away—as best as we could tell. After a short while she sprung forward and began to attack Officer Whiteman in the same manner that her husband had attacked her.” Min spoke with a stutter. “After the use of a taser failed, I employed lethal force.”

  Ingram grinned, the widest his smile had been all morning. “What’s the matter, boys?” he asked. “Are you waiting for your union reps to show up before you start telling the real story?”

  “That is the real story,” Jim insisted.

  “All right gentleman, allow me to tell you the problems I have with your ‘real’ story,” Ingram said, his voice ripe with indignation. “It’s a hoot and a holler of a story. But, if you stick with it, you better believe Internal Affairs will be so far up your asses that neither of you will shit for months.”

  The smile on Ingram’s face drooped into a blank, menacing stare. The sergeant paused, and collected himself.

  “For starters,” Ingram said, “the coroner did a quick check on John Cooper, and guess what? John Cooper was dead for—at the very least—an hour before you two goons ever set foot in his front door. The coroner is willing to bet his pension that he’s absolutely certain of that fact.”

  Jim and Min sat still and silent on the sofa.

  “Furthermore, you admit that Geraldine Cooper was dead—and then you shot her! It’s all written right here in your report,” Ingram said, and he began to paraphrase from a long white form in his hand. “‘Mrs. Cooper was dead, she had no pulse, but after several seconds she leaned up and began attacking me. So, I had no other option but to shoot her with my service pistol upon my partners futile attempt to tase her.’ Do you two realize the river of shit you’ve dived into?”

  Hoping that their sergeant’s question was rhetorical, and each sensing that the less talking they did, the better, Jim and Min continued to sit in silence.

  “These reports are numbered, see it? See this number at the bottom of the page? Do you remember that from academy? You can’t crumple this up and start writing a new report, this is it, sayonara, say goodbye to it because it has to be entered into the system. This is enough of a clusterfuck as it is, and I don’t owe the either of you any favors, so don’t expect it to go missing!” Ingram was marching back and forth in the living room, his heavy legs shaking the floorboards beneath him.

  “Sir, we’re not asking to rewrite the report,” Jim said.

  “Good,” Ingram said, “because you’re going to need to focus all of your creative energy towards filling out security guard applications at the East Violet Mall. For real, boys, you better get your story straight because the hammer is going to fall hard on this when the captain sees it.”

  A phone began buzzing in the sergeant’s pants. Ingram jammed his meaty hand deep into his left leg pocket and grabbed a small flip phone, then pulled it out.

  “Speak of the Goddamn devil, that’s the captain calling now. Because that’s what I need right now,” Ingram said, and he flipped the phone open. “Good morning, captain,” he said, and he walked towards a far off corner of the living room.

  Min and Jim looked at each other, and then at the sergeant. The expression on the sergeant’s face changed from anger, to vacancy, and then to seriousness as the heavyset man paced back and forth. Every few moments, Jim could hear the sergeant utter an uh-huh, but not much else. On the other end of the line, the captain was doing most of the talking.

  Ingram plodded back towards Min and Jim, folded his phone in half, and stuffed it back into his pants pocket. “Listen, boys, in about five minutes an ambulance is going to pull up outside,” he explained, “and it’s going to take you to East Violet Memorial. Don’t argue it. Higher-ups want a full panel blood test on anyone that was in direct contact with the deceased.”

  “Is that really necessary, sir?” Jim asked, leaning forward on the couch.

  “Don’t argue it,” Ingram repeated. “Go get any of your personal belongings that you may need from your car. You could be there a while.”

  TWO

  Nolan Fischer sat on the foot of his bed playing a Grand Theft Auto game, ignoring the digital clock on his bedroom dresser. He couldn’t decide whether he would completely ditch school or not.

  Since his parents left for work before his bus arrived, and came home after school ended, he could easily stay in bed all day without them ever finding out. If the school secretary at Henderson High decided to call his parents, they would dial the only number they had on file—the Fischer’s home number. If a message was left on the home answering machine asking why Nolan was absent, Nolan would simply delete it before his parents came home. It was an ingenious trick he wasn’t shy of using, and it had been successful in the past.

  I should just go and get the day over with, Nolan thought. He let out a yawn. The high school senior had stayed up all hours of the night before writing a last minute research paper on William Wordsworth.

  Nolan twisted a joystick on his controller, and a helicopter on screen blew up into a million fiery bits. Rad. After the explosion finished, Nolan paused his game and looked at the clock for the first time since he heard his parents leave for work. It was 7:02. The time to decide whether he would cut class or not had passed. He either had to commit to staying in his warm, messy bed or hop up and quickly get ready if he wanted a chance at catching the bus.

  “I wouldn’t have to leave so early if I had my own car,” Nolan said to no one, his feet landing on the shag rug beside his bed.

  He glanced around the room and assembled an outfit in his mind: a pair of jeans on the floor beside his dresser seemed clean, there was a t-shirt hanging from his closet door that he was almost certain he hadn’t worn that week, and his mom had left his favorite black hoodie neatly folded in a laundry basket by his door.

  Nolan gave a quick sniff to each article before putting it on, just to make sure it didn’t smell too foul. The only piece that seemed questionable was the t-shirt, but Nolan pulled it on anyways, certain that the fresh scent of his hoodie would mask any of its stink.

  Before leaving his bedroom, Nolan grabbed a pile of textbooks and papers from his desk and shoved them into his favorite backpack—a yellow JanSport that had been missing a strap since Sophomore year, but that Nolan loved regardless. He nabbed his iPhone from beside his television and slid it into a front jean pocket. In a hurry to catch his bus, he absent-mindedly powered off his video game console and television before saving the progress in his video game. Shit, he thought, as soon as his finger left the power button of his Xbox.

  The unkempt teenager turned out of his bedroom and breezed down the flight of stairs that led to his family dining r
oom. He caught his reflection in the mirror above his fireplace and shook his head a few times until his shaggy, auburn hair was the perfect amount of messy. Satisfied with his appearance, he made his way to the kitchen, grabbed his keys from a hook and went out the backdoor of his house towards his driveway.

  The morning autumn air was cool and crisp. As Nolan walked down his driveway, each breath he exhaled appeared before him as a tiny cloud of fog. The sky was milky, bleak, and pale; the sun struggled to pierce the thick clouds that hung overhead.

  Pigeon Hill Road was empty and quiet. Nolan turned his head left, right, then left again, hoping to catch some sign of life on the desolate street. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone—7:10. If he had missed his bus, it was only by a minute or so.

  Nolan began to turn around and head back inside, annoyed by losing the progress in his video game and the effort he exerted into actually putting on clothes. Before getting far, he heard the sound of a chugging diesel engine and squeaking airbrakes coming down the hill. He sighed as a bright, yellow bus appeared from a bend up the street and slowed to a stop in front of his house.

  The passenger doors of the bus flapped open. As Nolan approached, he noticed a Ford Explorer trailing close behind the bus’s rear bumper. Every window of the vehicle was darkly tinted. Nolan squinted his eyes, trying to make out who it was that might be driving the unfamiliar SUV. All he could see was a reflection of the drab sky above him.

  “Mornin’, Nolan,” a bus driver grumbled as Nolan boarded the bus. Ned was a squat, frail, older gentleman who had been driving Nolan back and forth to school since Nolan began junior high.

  “Good morning, Ned,” Nolan said.

  “Apologies for the delay. Runnin’ a bit behind schedule. Hate to leave you out in the cold like that—hey, ain’t you got something warmer than that sweater? Your mom let you leave the house like that?”

  Nolan raised his hand as he strolled the aisle towards the back of the bus. “It’s cool. I’m fine.”

  Nolan’s house was the first stop on Pigeon Hill Road, and as such he was free to pick any seat aboard the bus. He walked towards his usual—the last seat in the back, on the passenger’s side.

  He pulled out a pair of earphones from his hoodie as he plopped onto the cold vinyl seat. He stuffed the earphones deep into his head—the squishy kind that cancel out the noise around you—and tapped an icon on his iPhone that started to play his favorite Nirvana track list. With his forehead pressed against the chilly window, Nolan watched his house pass out of view as the bus took off.

  The school bus bounced down Pigeon Hill Road and started to make its usual morning stops.

  First was Britney Miller, a freshman who wore too much black lipstick and smelled like the inside of a Hot Topic. She boarded the bus, shot Nolan a glare, then slid into the seat just behind the driver’s seat.

  After Britney’s stop was Jared Moore. Jared and Nolan weren’t really friends, but Nolan was a frequent customer of Jared’s older brother, Nicky. Nicky bailed on college after one semester and moved back into his parent’s basement. As a day job, Nicky worked at the Xtra Mart in town, but his main source of income was slinging weed to the younger underclassmen he once went to high school with. It was pathetic, Nolan thought, even if it was pretty good weed.

  Next on the route was Kevin Dobbs, a quiet jock who was blowing out of Henderson High on a football scholarship after graduation.

  Two houses down from Kevin was David Kline. Nolan and David had been better friends in middle school, but the two still swapped Xbox games and from time to time hung out together.

  Not long after David’s house, the school bus made a U-turn in the Xtra Mart parking lot, just before Pigeon Hill transformed into Maple Ave. After it turned around and was once again pointed towards the high school, it picked up the last few students on the route.

  The first stop after the U-Turn was Chloe Whiteman’s house.

  Chloe had moved to East Violet at the start of ninth grade, and her and Nolan had been inseparable friends ever since. They sat next to one another for all of freshman year home-room, bonding over similar tastes in music and obsessing over the same junk T.V. shows.

  When it came time for the Winter Ball their sophomore year, Nolan asked Chloe to be his date. The two agreed to go—as friends—yet still ended up sharing a short, awkward kiss towards the end of the night. The dance was winding down and many of the other students had already left. The pair were slow dancing to Unchained Melody, and at the start of the second chorus, Nolan leaned in close and made his move. Chloe reciprocated, but their teeth had bumped together in a short, awful clink and the exchange was dry and inelegant. It became an unspoken rule between the two to never mention it again.

  Throughout their junior year, Chloe and Nolan started to seriously date other people for the first time in their lives.

  Nolan had hooked up with Ashley Connolly, a short, chubby brunette. After three weeks of dating, Ashley gave him an uncomfortable hand job behind the sports equipment shed during a homecoming football game. Two weeks after that, Ashley dumped Nolan. Not a week after their breakup, Ashley was caught making out with Claire Haines in the girls locker room—an event that turned into a legend of mythic proportions around Henderson High.

  Chloe had gone steady for several months with Andy Kinney, a lanky baseball player whose parents ran the Fat Rooster Diner in East Violet. Chloe and Andy lasted far longer than Ashley and Nolan—nearly half of junior year—during which she and Nolan inexplicably stayed friends, despite Andy’s fervent jealousy.

  Chloe broke it off with Andy without ever giving Nolan an official explanation. Rumors around school suggested that Andy had been caught cheating with a girl who went to school in the nearby town of Riverside.

  Now at the start of their senior year, Nolan was beginning to realize how much he would miss his best friend after graduation. Chloe made no attempts at hiding her desire to go out of state for college. She blamed her father for being dragged to a place as boring as East Violet in the first place, and she could not wait to graduate. Nolan, however, had yet to fill out a single college application.

  Chloe boarded the bus, turned to see Nolan in his usual seat. She walked down the center aisle and dropped in beside her friend. When Nolan felt her land next to him, he yanked out his earphones.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “Wasn’t your dad supposed to give you a ride in?” Nolan asked. Like Nolan, Chloe didn’t have a car, and on most Wednesday mornings her dad would take her out for breakfast and drive her to school himself.

  “Yeah,” Chloe said. She frowned. “But you know how it goes.”

  Nolan nodded. Chloe’s father was constantly stuck working overtime for the East Violet Police Department. Her father had primary custody of Chloe since her parents divorced four years earlier, and the crazy shift work at the department resulted in Chloe doing much of the cooking and cleaning around the house. Her father’s insane work schedule did come with a few benefits; on more than one weekend, Chloe and Nolan had hosted some crazy keggers in Chloe’s backyard. Many of them lasted until sunrise, Chloe and her friends half awake in lawn chairs that circled a fire pit in her back yard.

  “You finish Miss Naccarato’s paper?” Nolan asked.

  “Like, two weeks ago, Nole.” Chloe studied Nolan’s tired face and disheveled appearance. “Did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me guess, you finished it last night.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nole,” Chloe said, “did you put the entire thing off until last night?”

  Nolan yawned. “I work best under pressure.”

  “Nolan,” Chloe said. “Do you want to be the only one in our class who repeats senior year?”

  Nolan smiled. “Take a look at it. It’s not so bad.” He unzipped the main pouch of his backpack and dug out his English folder. Opening it, he saw the only papers inside were graded assignments from one week earlier. Feeling a quick s
ting of panic, he grabbed at other folders, opening each one before closing it, grunting, and going on to the next. Each time he was disappointed.

  Chloe rolled her eyes. “You forgot it at home, huh?”

  Nolan checked his textbooks, seeing if maybe he had folded it and tucked it inside one of them. No luck.

  “Dammit,” Nolan said, dropping his hands back into his lap in frustration. He remembered that Miss Naccarato’s policy was to take ten points off per day when a major assignment was handed in late. If his work was a B- or C+ at best, a day late penalty could mean the difference between passing and failing.

  “Here, this will cheer you up,” Chloe said, pulling a brown paper bag from her little gray backpack. “I’m guessing you haven’t had breakfast.” From the paper bag Chloe pulled a bagel, a plastic knife, and a small tub of cream cheese. She halved the bagel, smeared cream cheese on each piece, and handed the fatter of the two halves to Nolan.

  “I appreciate it,” Nolan said as he chomped down and took a bite out of the bagel.

  Chloe and Nolan were halfway finished with their breakfast when gagging noises started to resonate from the front of the bus.

  “That’s enough to make you lose your appetite, huh?” Chloe said, chewing slower.

  Nolan didn’t seem bothered. “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t really tell,” Chloe said. She wiggled in her seat to get a better look. “Some girl up front is sick, I think.”

  Another retching sound came from the front of the bus.

  “Oh, gross. You bitch!” a girl cried out as she stood up in her seat.

  “What the hell’s going on back there?” Ned grated, his eyes flicking back and forth between his rearview mirror and the road ahead of him.

  “What’s happening?” Nolan said, his interest piqued by the sudden burst of profanities.

  “I think someone just threw up on Britney Miller,” Chloe said. She looked grossed out by what she saw—Britney standing up at the front of the bus, a wet, orange splotch in the middle of her black t-shirt.