Ben runs to the TV and flicks it on. Music plays until the news comes on. The lead story is about the car crash and I notice Mrs Rosenberg look over at me anxiously, but I am as curious as Ben – so this is where my mother died, in the crumpled wreck being towed from the freeway.
“A senior police officer with the Seattle Police Department is in Harborview Medical Center today, fighting for his life. Senior Detective Thomas Shaw and his wife, Mary, were involved in a serious car crash last night on the I-5. Mary Shaw later died in hospital. Detective Shaw’s condition is listed as critical. The scene of the accident was closed to traffic for several hours this morning causing significant delays. Police are investigating.”
“Turn it off, Ben,” Mrs Rosenberg says sharply when she sees me swipe the rising tears from my eyes. My life has become a news report and it really hits home. It’s easy to listen to the news and hear of other people’s tragedies without thought, but different when that tragedy involves me.
The landline rings, startling us all, and Mrs Rosenberg answers it, speaks for a while then hands me the phone.
“Jason?” It’s Gran.
“How’s Dad?” I ask, afraid of the answer.
Gran sighs. “There’s no change yet but he’s doing well, they tell me. I’ve rung your aunt and they’re flying over tomorrow morning. Ben’s mum will take us to meet them at the airport. When they arrive, we’ll finalize the arrangements for the funeral.”
Funeral. The word is so final. I mumble a goodbye and hand the phone back to Mrs Rosenberg, who talks to Gran for a bit before ending the call.
I talk to Ben about school to distract myself. He says he was the center of attention as all my classmates wanted to know the details of the accident, but there were some things he didn’t know so he just made them up. He says this with a smile and I have to forgive him.
Mike arrives later and accepts Mrs Rosenberg’s offer of a cup of tea. I don’t think he’s slept at all because his eyes are bloodshot and there are dark circles under his eyes. He’s still wearing the same clothes he wore during the night. He rubs his eyes as he sits down, then wraps his hands around the mug.
“We’ve finished processing your house but we didn’t find anything; no prints, no shoe impressions, nothing. We’ve talked to the neighbors but no one saw or heard anything, even though whoever did it must have made a bit of noise.” He looks over at me. “It’s such a mess, Jason, you won’t be able to live there until it’s cleaned up. I’ve organized for some of the boys to come over at the weekend and help tidy up, but until then you’ll have to stay somewhere else.”
Mrs Rosenberg says, “He can stay with us. We’ll put a spare bed in Ben’s room.”
Ben beams at me. I try to smile back but can’t.
“Would you like to go back to your house and pick up some things, Jason?” Mike asks.
“Can I come too?” Ben asks.
I say “sure” before Mrs Rosenberg can disagree. I’m not afraid of going back to the house, but I’ll feel better if Ben is with me.
“Right, I’ll take you over in my car,” Mike says and finishes the last of his drink.
We drive the short distance to my house. The front door is still open and there are uniformed policemen inside.
“This is wild!” Ben says as he steps inside.
“I don’t think so.” I don’t match his enthusiasm.
“Sorry, Jase,” he says before he heads off down the passage.
It doesn’t look any better in the late-afternoon light and we crunch over the debris that litters the floor, although a rough path has been cleared. I can see where the surfaces have been dusted for fingerprints; the grey smudges are signposts of the forensics’ progress. In contrast there are flowers, neat and tidy in a box on the side table.
“They arrived today,” Mike says. “Sympathy flowers.”
I barely glance at them, can’t make sense of their presence; why send flowers when someone dies? The flowers will just wilt and decay, like the person that they were sent to commemorate.
Ben has already done a circuit of the lower floor of the house and meets up with me in the hallway. “Jase, did you see what they did to the computer? Do you want me to put it back together?”
“You reckon you can?”
“I’ll give it a go.”
“My class assignment is on it and I didn’t save it anywhere else, and I wouldn’t mind getting back my photos and email contacts.”
He takes it as a challenge, dashes off to the study and starts to sift through the electronic components lying on the floor. I silently wish him luck.
I go up the stairs and into my bedroom. Most of my clothes are on the floor so I pick out another pair of jeans, some boxers, a couple of T-shirts and a hoodie, and stuff them into my empty school bag. I check that my door key is still in the front pocket and look around for a book to take with me to read, but realize I finished my current book the previous night, when everything was normal. But Dad has one of mine so I go into my parents’ room. The sight of it disturbs me so much that I have to sit on the bed.
I remember that I sat on the exact same spot last night while my parents got ready to go out, complaining that I didn’t need a babysitter.
“I wouldn’t call it babysitting,” Dad said. “More like child minding.”
“I’m not a child, either.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said, and I knew that was the end of the conversation.
He was standing in front of the dressing table mirror, adjusting his tie while Mum was in the en-suite putting on her make up. The memory of it is a physical hurt.
“Jason?” I hear Mike call out. He’s on the landing and I reply to let him know where I am. He enters the bedroom.
“What are you doing?” he asks with a frown.
“I came in for a book,” I say, indicating the book on the bedside table where it still sits in spite of the upheaval.
“Is this a kids’ book?” Mike says as he picks it up. “Anthony Horowitz – never heard of him. Your dad was reading this?”
“Yes, he says some of them are really good – like the books he used to read as a kid. And he likes something light to read at night.”
“I’m not surprised after all those law books he goes through. I don’t know how he does it after a full day’s work.”
He looks at me then, and we both realize that Dad might not be back to read his law books. Without a word we both leave my parents’ bedroom and head downstairs, entering the study where Ben is on his hands and knees searching under the desk.
“What you looking for?” I ask him.
“The motherboard,” he answers. “I’ve got everything else I need but can’t find the motherboard. I’ve looked everywhere else so I think it must be under here.
“Hey, what’s this?” He pulls out a clear glass bottle half filled with a brown liquid. “Bourbon,” Ben says when he reads the label. “Did your dad drink this stuff?”
“Not as far as I know.” I take the bottle from him and place it on the desk.
“Got it.” Ben emerges from under the desk with a circuit board in his hand. “I don’t know if it’ll work when I put it together,” he says as he places it into the box with the rest of the electronic components. “But we’ll give it a go.” He looks at the books on the desk and on the floor where they have been tossed. “What’s with all these books?” he asks as he picks up a large heavy one from the desk and looks at the title.
“Dad was studying part-time – he wants … wanted … to be a prosecuting attorney.”
“What do they do?”
“They take cases to court, prosecute criminals, stuff like that. Dad said he was tired of catching people only to have them get away with it; he wanted to make sure they went to jail. He thought … he thought that with his training in the police department …” I pause. “I’m not sure if he’s going to be able to do that now.”
Ben doesn’t say anything but puts the book on the nearest bookshelf.
“Go
t everything then?” Mike asks at the doorway.
“I think so,” I say and we walk down the passageway toward the front door, passing the flowers on the way.
“Do you want to take these with you?” Mike asks.
I shake my head. The flowers belong in the house with the rest of my memories of what my life was like before two policemen came to the house in the middle of the night.
“You take them for your wife,” I say.
“I can’t take them for Estelle, they’re for you.”
“But she’s in hospital too, isn’t she?”
Mike looks away but not before I catch the distress on his face; his wife has leukemia.
“Yes, but she’ll be out soon,” he says. “The new medicine is working.”
“So the flowers will cheer her up.”
“They’re meant to cheer you up.”
“Fat chance,” I say and walk out of the house.
Airport
“But I don’t want to go to the airport,” I tell Gran when she phones the next morning. I wanted to go to school with Ben, to regain some normality, but Mrs Rosenberg said it was too soon so I stayed behind to be at the receiving end of Gran’s late-morning phone call.
“Why not?” Gran demands. I hear the strain in her voice and my resolve fades away.
“I just don’t.” It’s not a good enough excuse, I know it, but I don’t want to see my Aunt Ruth just yet. I know she’ll start crying as soon as she sees me and I don’t know if I can deal with that right now. All I want to do is run away from anything that looks remotely like grief or sorrow – it just hurts too much to be reminded of the cause.
“Jason, please come,” Gran says. It sounds like she’s going to cry.
Oh no, more tears, I think. Will they ever stop? I rub at my own eyes, feeling the prickle of tears. I can’t refuse any longer so I sigh and say, “All right, I’ll come.”
“Thank you, Jason. It’s important that you are there when they arrive.”
“Yes, Gran.” I can’t hold back the tears as I put down the phone.
Mrs Rosenberg gives me a hug before she picks up her keys. She doesn’t say anything, just waits for me to dry my tears before going out to the car. We drive past the school on the way out. Ben is in there and I want to be with him. I yearn for the routine of school, home, bed; school, home, bed; broken after five days by the weekend. It’s a normal pattern of life I no longer have and I grieve for that as much as I grieve for my parents.
We pick up Gran from her retirement village and drive out to the airport, parking in the short-term parking. We go inside and Gran becomes agitated because she can’t find my aunt’s flight on the board, until I point out that we’re on the departure level and not the arrival level and that we have to go to another part of the airport. Mrs Rosenberg takes Gran’s arm and leads her through while I hang back, feet dragging. When we enter the arrivals terminal, the first of the passengers are just beginning to trickle through the arrival gates.
My heart slips a beat when I see Aunt Ruth. For a second I think that my mother has come alive and has walked through a portal back into the land of the living. Then I see Uncle John and their two daughters, Emily and Sarah, and I envy their family completeness.
There are hugs and kisses all round and Aunt Ruth cries when she sees me, as I knew she would, and I have to fight to hold back my own tears. We help them out to the car and load their luggage into the boot, but not everyone can fit in Mrs Rosenberg’s car, so Uncle John and the girls catch a taxi to their motel while we battle through lunchtime traffic, making our way to my house where I use my spare key to let them in. Gran has said that Aunt Ruth can use my mother’s car while they are in town instead of going to the expense of a hire car, but for some reason I feel uncomfortable about that – it’s Mum’s car. But I have remind myself that she’s never going to drive it again, and I have to stifle the tears. Why does everything have to remind me that my mother is dead?
“Oh, this is terrible,” Aunt Ruth says when she sees the destruction inside the house. “Mary wouldn’t like this at all.” She starts to cry again. I try to ignore her as I take the car keys from the rack in the kitchen, untouched by whoever ransacked the house, and walk into the garage where I press the remote to open the garage door. Bright sunshine floods the garage as the door winds up, and I open the driver’s door and slide in.
“You can’t drive,” my aunt says as I turn the key in the ignition. “You’re not legal age.”
I smile at her as I wind down the window. “Mum lets me back out onto the driveway.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Aunt Ruth says with a frown. “Does your dad know about this?”
I shake my head and my aunt laughs. “Just like your mother, never one to abide by the rules,” she says. “I sometimes wonder why she married a police officer. Are you sure you can do this?”
“I drove it in,” I say, remembering that just two days have passed since I did so, but it seems like a lifetime ago. I put the car into reverse and back out carefully. Once on the driveway I brake, put it into ‘park’, pull on the parking brake and get out of the driver’s seat, pressing the remote so that the garage door closes. I hand the keys to my aunt with a bow. “All yours, ma’am,” I say and she smile, but there is sadness in her eyes.
As I get into the passenger side I suppress the sob that rises in my throat – driving the car was so much part of my routine with Mum, and now it’s gone.
I stare out of the side window as we leave the house so that my aunt can’t see my tears. Maybe she knows this; at an intersection, she reaches across and pats my shoulder without saying anything.
We follow Mrs Rosenberg to the motel where Uncle John has already checked in. Mrs Rosenberg leaves us there and I wish that I were going back home with her – to Ben’s home, that is – but Aunt Ruth wants to see my dad, so Gran and I take off in Mum’s car with Aunt Ruth driving.
Aunt Ruth parks the car and we make our way to Intensive Care, and because only two people at a time are allowed in Dad’s room, I wait in the family room. There’s a kids’ program on the TV, which I try to watch, but instead I gaze into space, thinking that I am now virtually an orphan, with Mum dead and Dad as good as, the thought making me feel uncomfortable and insecure.
Mike comes in and sits down beside me. I’m surprised to see him.
“Your gran said I would find you here,” he says and rubs his eyes, which are still bloodshot. I wonder if he has slept at all since my parents’ accident.
“Any more news about what caused the crash?” I ask him. It’s important to me that I know all the details, as if that will help me understand how my world has changed.
He clears his throat and hesitates before speaking. “I’ve just been talking to your gran. We have some new information. It appears the rear tire on your father’s car was shot out, that’s what caused the car to lose control and roll.”
“Shot?” I say, not understanding. “I thought it blew out?”
“Not by accident,” Mike says. “Someone shot out the tire with a .50 caliber round – we found it embedded in the wheel rim. It’s very deformed from the impact but ballistics are looking at it.” He shook his head. “I doubt it will tell us who the shooter is.” He looks down at his shoes and says, as if to himself, “Must have been very good – that’s a sniper shot.”
I try to process this. “You mean someone was trying to kill them?” I ask, my voice rising in anguish. “Why would anyone do that?”
“We’re looking at your dad’s recent cases, something he was working on maybe, or someone he put away. We’re following up everything, believe me, Jason.”
“But you work together – wouldn’t you know what was he working on that would have made someone want to shoot him?”
“You would have thought so, but it appears your father was investigating something on his own and we don’t know what it is. He never filled me in. I suspect he was keeping stuff at the house, because there’s nothing at his
work desk that we don’t know about.”
“Wait a minute – could whoever shot out the tire also have broken into the house?”
“I’m not sure, Jason. I wish I had the answers.” He looks at me and his face is very serious. “Listen, do you have any idea where he would hide anything – somewhere secure?”
I shake my head. “Dad never talked to me about his work, not while he was running an investigation, anyway. And he never said anything to me about hiding anything.”
“He never had a safe or something? A secret hiding place?”
“There’s no safe and if there was a secret hiding place then it’s still a secret because I don’t know where it is.”
“I’m sorry, Jason, I had to ask. We’re just trying to figure it all out.” He stands up and pats my shoulder before leaving the room. I’m left staring at the cartoons on the TV and not really seeing what’s on the screen. Someone tried to kill my parents – who? I had never before thought that my father could be in danger because of his job, but thinking about it, I guess that was naive. My dad was very good at what he did and he’d caught many criminals. I should have expected that one day there would be repercussions – that someone would get back at him. I’d just never thought that it would be this kind of repercussion.
Computer Bits
Back at the motel, my cousins nap while Gran and Aunt Ruth go over the funeral arrangements, but I stay outside the conversation, thinking that these decisions don’t have to be made just yet. I still have trouble believing that my mother is dead, never mind organizing her funeral. And does no one care what Dad thinks? I stifle the rising anger. It’s all too much and the ache inside me worsens. I’m relieved when my uncle drives me back to Ben’s house late in the afternoon. I knock at the door and Mrs Rosenberg answers it.
“We must get a spare key for you,” she says as I go in. “Then you can come and go when you want. This is your home now, until your dad is better.” We walk down the passage together. “Ben is in his room. Do you want anything to eat?”
“No, thanks,” I say. “We ate at the café at the hospital.” I know now why Ben is a little on the chubby side, with his mother offering food all the time. And she bakes something every day, from scratch, totally awesome.
“Hi, Jase,” Ben says as I come into the room. He’s at his desk putting together the computer parts from my house. “You look terrible.”
“Thanks, Ben.” I flop down onto the rollaway bed that Mrs Rosenberg has put out for me. “Honestly I’d rather have gone to school.”
“That bad, eh?’
“That and worse.” I sit up. “Mike told me that someone was trying to kill my parents. It wasn’t just a car accident – someone shot out the rear tire.”
He looks up from his work, surprised, and says, “Serious? Someone shot out a tire. I thought that wasn’t possible, I mean a moving target and all that …” He stops when he sees my face – obviously it was possible. “Who? It would have to be someone who knew what they were doing.”
“No one