The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips (5 page)

But he went to Gabe’s. He didn’t want to, but he felt like he had to. He wrestled with the decision for two days. Guilt makes a mother of a wrestling opponent. But he finally convinced himself he wasn’t responsible for Gabe’s death in any way. If his involvement with Loraine had pushed John over the edge, that wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and besides, he needed to go. Loraine needed him, at least that’s what he told himself while driving to the funeral home. She didn’t, and she let him know that in a very firm but polite way not long after he arrived at the funeral home. Deep down he knew that’s what he should have expected. Loraine had never really needed him. By this point it was finally dawning on Andy that she’d been using him just as much as he’d used her. For what, he wasn’t quite sure. Not yet, at least.

No, the real reason he had to go to Gabe’s funeral is Andy had to tell the little guy good-bye. Andy Myers, the man who never liked children in the least, had actually grown to love Gabriel Phillips. He realized the depth of his feelings for the boy as he was paraded past the open casket with the rest of the mourners at the close of the service. Most people hustled by, hardly even looking down at the body. Not Andy. He stopped and looked Gabe in the face. He stood there so long that it created an awkward moment for the people in line behind him. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he didn’t fight them. If Andy had stood there much longer, he would have had a full-scale emotional breakdown. As he reached down to touch the boy, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was John. Apparently, John had watched how upset my dad had become, and walked over to comfort him. Talk about bad timing. Don’t get me wrong. Andy didn’t create an ugly scene. He was too good of a cop for that. But inside, his blood started boiling.

Immediately Andy pulled his hand back from the casket, wiped his eyes, and headed toward the door. He never even acknowledged John’s presence. He couldn’t, without blowing up. Andy already held John responsible for the boy’s death. Gabe died on John’s watch. It was as simple as that. Even if it was an accident, John could have kept it from happening. After all, what kind of idiot puts bunk beds in the room of a boy who suffers from dreams so horrific that they make him thrash around at night. In Andy’s mind, anyone should have known that was a recipe for disaster. The more he thought about it, the more Andy thought that might just be the point. Either John Phillips was very stupid, or very clever.

A
NDY WENT STRAIGHT HOME
after the funeral and nearly wore a hole in the carpet from pacing around his house. He wanted a drink, but he had to report for duty at three, which was just over an hour away. That gave him plenty of time to get smashed, but no time to get over it. He may have been an on-again, off-again drunk, but he at least had enough integrity about him not to show up at the police station gassed. Since Jim Beam wasn’t an option, he tried to work off his nervous energy by pacing and talking to himself. The image of Gabe lying in the casket kept flashing in his mind; that was better than the image of Gabe lying in a pool of his own blood, which had haunted him for the past few days. “I gotta do something,” he said to no one. “I have
got
to do something. Anything.”

He paced around for a while longer, his mind racing. When he couldn’t take it any longer, he grabbed a Big Chief pad, sat down at the kitchen table, and started writing. (If you don’t remember them, a Big Chief pad was sort of like a yellow legal pad except the pages were white and there was a picture of an Indian chief on the red cover. The pages on the one my dad used are yellow now, but the words are still legible. Andy gave it to me a few years ago. I still have it.) At the top of the first page of the pad, he wrote in large, bold letters:
TRUTH OR PROOF?
Then he quickly turned the page and wrote at the top of the next one:
WHO?
Turning the page again, he wrote:
HOW?
Finally he turned the page one last time and wrote:
WHY?

Then he started pacing again.

He walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, the pad in one hand, a pen in the other. Flopping down on the couch, he went back to the first page and started writing. Beneath his original question he asked another: “Can I remain objective while investigating this case?” He drummed the page with the pen for a few moments, let out a deep sigh, then made two columns on the page, one he labeled “yes,” the other “no.” Under “yes” he wrote a series of words, including “professionalism” and “duty” and “self-control.” Then he scribbled a sentence so quickly that you can hardly make it out. I think it says, “I’m a cop, dammit, of course I can remain objective.”

In the “no” column he wrote a single word: “Loraine.” In his mind, she was the only emotional attachment that would keep him from being completely objective. He paused a little longer and stared at her name. Over the past few days he’d tried contacting her, with no luck. Then there was the cold shoulder she’d given him at the funeral home. Part of him wondered if, in some way, she blamed him for her son’s death. She claimed John killed the boy because of her relationship with Andy. If Andy had stuck to his usual MO, John wouldn’t have had a beef with him because Andy would have dropped Loraine the second he met her kid. Now he wondered if perhaps that was part of her reason for allowing the chance meeting in the kitchen that morning. That thought pushed him up from the couch and made him walk around his house until he came to his bedroom. Sitting on his bed, he made one final note on the first page of his Big Chief pad, then turned the page.

He sat and stared at the word at the top of the second page without writing anything new. He sat there so long that he was nearly late for work. “Who are you, John Phillips?” he said to himself. Andy thought he should already know the answer. “I should have been paying attention,” he kept telling himself. “I let myself get distracted and I didn’t pay close enough attention. The moment was there and I blew it. ‘You knew my son,’ the guy says to me. Think, man. Think. ‘You knew my son? How?’ he said to me. So how did he say it? Crap, I can’t remember. Dammit, Andy. Listen closer. How did he say it? What kind of inflection was in his voice? Did you hear fear?” Andy got up and punched the air. “Stop staring at the boy. Listen. What did he say about himself? What did he give away?” He let out a long sigh. “I don’t remember. DAMMIT!”

This little conversation doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but then again, I’m not a cop. Andy had this theory that you can learn more about a person at the scene of the crime in the moments right after the deed is done than you can any other time. That’s when you get the raw emotion, the real person, before they’ve had a chance to put up a wall to hide behind. And, in Andy’s mind, the moment he recognized Gabe and said his name was the key to reading John Phillips. But he let himself get distracted, and he would never get that moment back. He needed to knock that wall down one more time. Outside of the wall, John Phillips didn’t match anything Andy knew about him. Mike Duncan said the guy had spent time in prison for assault; but at five-eight, maybe 150 pounds, John Phillips didn’t look like the assaulting type. Of course, looks can be deceiving. Bad guys rarely, if ever, look as bad as they do in
Walker, Texas Ranger
reruns. “So who are you, John Phillips?” Andy said as he got up to get dressed for work.

B
EFORE LEAVING
for the station, Andy phoned Ted Jackson to call in a favor. Ted personally delivered his response an hour into Andy’s shift. “Trask, 52-2,” the dispatcher called Andy and said, “please return to the station. A priority package has just arrived.” Andy knew this call was coming, which was why he’d parked his patrol car conspicuously on Main Street a few blocks from the station. Just the sight of a police car on a busy street makes every car slow down, even those that aren’t speeding. Not that it mattered. Andy wasn’t in the mood for pulling over speeders. He had a bigger fish in mind.

“10-4, dispatch. I will be right there.”

A couple of minutes later, Andy walked into the back room of the police station, where Ted sat waiting for him. “You know I wouldn’t do this for just anyone,” Ted said as he stood and handed Andy a file folder.

“But I’m not just anyone, Jax,” Andy laughed and said. “I’m part of the investigative team, right?”

Ted sort of rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want,
Detective
Myers. Whatever you want.”

“Screw you,” Andy said with a smile. He sat down at his desk, opened the folder, and asked, “So whadda we know about this guy?”

“Interesting fellow, this John Phillips. Doesn’t look like much of a menace. Little guys who like to fight as much as Phillips apparently does usually carry their emotions on their sleeves. One look and you know they think they are the baddest sons of bitches on the block and you better not cross them. You’ve met the guy. That ain’t Phillips.”

“So what’s his story?” Andy asked. “I was told he did time.”

“Damn straight,” Jackson replied. “He beat a guy nearly to death outside a bar up in Fishers eight years ago. Said the guy was coming on to his wife, and he didn’t like it. Guy he kicked the crap out of was nearly twice his size, but the big guy never saw it coming. Apparently, our Mr. Phillips is a bit of a rageaholic. He looks all nice and calm and easygoing; then something snaps and he goes nuts. A real Bruce Banner type, except he doesn’t turn green. In his trial Phillips claimed he couldn’t even remember beating the guy up. He said he simply asked the man to kindly leave his wife alone. That wasn’t his first arrest, but it was the first time he did any real time.”

“How much time?” Andy asked.

“Three years at Pendleton.”

“Any problems there?”

“At first, yeah. Apparently, with his size and body type, he figured someone would try to turn him into their bitch, so he started acting all badass the moment he first went in,” Jackson said. “Quite a few write-ups in this first few months. Then, after about six months, he became a regular at chapel. Started right after some church group did one of their ‘ministry’ weekends.”

“His ex-wife told me he found God in prison,” Andy said. “She said it was all just an act to make parole.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” Jackson replied. “Me, I figure to each his own. I don’t try to overanalyze that kind of stuff.”

“So the guy finds Jesus, keeps his nose clean, and makes parole. Any trouble since he got out?” Andy asked.

“Weeellllll, he didn’t keep his nose completely clean,” Jackson said. “There’s one last incident report from Pendleton on the guy, and this one doesn’t make a lot of sense. Happened toward the end of his first year in the joint. Phillips got into a fight in the yard. Says it wasn’t his fault. Claims the other guy attacked him with a knife. Seems there was some bad blood between these two that went back to when Phillips was first locked up. So Phillips says the guy came at him from behind and he defended himself. By the time the guards got there, the other guy was on the ground and Phillips was on top of him. The guy on the ground had a crushed windpipe. Like I said, when he snaps, Phillips can do some damage. Before the guards could get him off, Phillips had cut a hole in the guy’s throat with the guy’s own shiv.”

“Holy crap. So how’d he ever make parole after that? I’m surprised they didn’t ship him up north and put him into maximum.”

Jackson smiled and said, “Like I said, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Phillips wasn’t slitting the guy’s throat. He did a tracheotomy. Cut a hole in his throat and shoved a tube made out of a Bic pen in there so the guy could breathe. Turns out, he saved the guy’s life.”

“What?!” Andy asked. “You telling me he nearly kills the guy, then turns around and saves his life?”

“That’s what the incident report says.”

“So how’d he know how to do that?” Andy asked.

Jackson shrugged his shoulders. “Who the hell knows? Get this. The report goes on to say the two guys became inseparable after that. Both were regulars at the chapel until they got out. Weird, huh?”

Andy shook his head, then turned his attention to John’s file. He didn’t do more than thumb through it. Later that night he read the entire file for the first time. In the months that followed, he studied that file like it held the secret to life itself. I don’t want to say Andy became obsessed with this guy, but his actions speak for themselves. That day in the station he only gave it a quick glance, then tossed it onto his desk and asked his friend, “So, Jax. What does your gut say about this guy? Think he’s capable of killing his own kid?”

“I’d say we’re a long way from jumping to that kind of conclusion. The guy says the boy had a bad dream, fell out of bed, and hit his head on the bottom drawer of a dresser. The only thing that definitely says different right now is a bitter ex-wife.”

Andy paused and looked back down at the file. “Mind if I go talk to the guy, myself?” he asked. “Nothing too formal. Just a little fact finding on my own.”

Ted shook his head. “What? You want to blow this case, if it even is a case, before we even get to dig down and do our job? If you interrogate him without his lawyer present, the D.A. will shut this whole thing down so fast, it will make your head spin. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t intend to ask him about the case,” Andy said. “I just want to get a read on him. That’s all. Trust me. If he hurt the boy, I want to make sure he gets what’s coming to him. I would never do anything to get in the way of that.”

“Just watch yourself, Andy. Believe me, when you’re dealing with the death of a child, it’s easy to get sucked in emotionally. We just want to uncover the truth of what happened in that room. We’re not doing any kind of witch hunt here. Who knows? The guy’s story could well be completely true. Stranger things have happened.”

Andy nodded his head in agreement. “I know, I know. Don’t worry.”

Ted got up to leave. “Oh, I almost forgot, I have another little gift for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cassette tape. “I got a full statement from the kid’s mother yesterday. Thought you might want to hear what she had to say.”