Case
The few teeth we could see were wearing braces. He’d put the gun under his chin. A teenage suicide that killed himself over a girl he had probably never even slept with. I hated these calls.
To establish that it was a suicide, I had to ask the parents if they had noticed anything odd about his behaviour lately and if the deceased had been having any trouble at school. They always said no through their tears.
I’ve learned that there is a secret world beyond what people say. I think I’ve always had a sense of this and that’s why I became a cop and then a detective. There are omissions in any person’s monologue that speak volumes.
There are the ‘tells’ that poker players are familiar with, of course, but what I sense seems to be on a whole other level. The world we live in right here and now fades during these interviews. It’s solidity and predictability is boring. It’s relegated to the back burner while I look through the gauze and crystal castle of what isn’t there to get at the truth.
Every parent says that their suicidal teenager wasn’t going through anything too stressful. Every parent is lying. So is every friend, teacher and sibling in these cases. It’s a feeling of responsibility they all feel that gets covered up with a mystified expression that fools even them.
Something that the deceased never told the grief-stricken friends and family floated around the room waiting for me to snag it during my travels through the invisible world.
I can see through the father’s sweaty upper lip to a child hood problem with anger and possessiveness. This isn’t his first wife. The child has been pushed into playing sports that he has no interest in. The child was interested in a girl that he thought he had no chance with because of the father’s constant attacks on his ego.
The mother’s not talking at all showed me that she had not been allowed to support her stepson.
The mother collapses into her husband’s arms. The mother excuses herself to make tea in the kitchen. The mother sweeps her hair back, lights a cigarette and tells me the truth about the boy. The mother screams at me to get out. The mother is pregnant with another child so she does not care so much about this one’s death.
In the real world she does/is none of these things. She dabs at the tip of her red nose in more silence.
The boy’s name was Jamie. I look through his stuff in my mind.
It was a suicide.
I close the book on the case, mention I feel a cold coming on to a few co-workers, and go to a bar they don’t know about when my shift is over.
tags
To establish that it was a suicide, I had to ask the parents if they had noticed anything odd about his behaviour lately and if the deceased had been having any trouble at school. They always said no through their tears.
I’ve learned that there is a secret world beyond what people say. I think I’ve always had a sense of this and that’s why I became a cop and then a detective. There are omissions in any person’s monologue that speak volumes.
There are the ‘tells’ that poker players are familiar with, of course, but what I sense seems to be on a whole other level. The world we live in right here and now fades during these interviews. It’s solidity and predictability is boring. It’s relegated to the back burner while I look through the gauze and crystal castle of what isn’t there to get at the truth.
Every parent says that their suicidal teenager wasn’t going through anything too stressful. Every parent is lying. So is every friend, teacher and sibling in these cases. It’s a feeling of responsibility they all feel that gets covered up with a mystified expression that fools even them.
Something that the deceased never told the grief-stricken friends and family floated around the room waiting for me to snag it during my travels through the invisible world.
I can see through the father’s sweaty upper lip to a child hood problem with anger and possessiveness. This isn’t his first wife. The child has been pushed into playing sports that he has no interest in. The child was interested in a girl that he thought he had no chance with because of the father’s constant attacks on his ego.
The mother’s not talking at all showed me that she had not been allowed to support her stepson.
The mother collapses into her husband’s arms. The mother excuses herself to make tea in the kitchen. The mother sweeps her hair back, lights a cigarette and tells me the truth about the boy. The mother screams at me to get out. The mother is pregnant with another child so she does not care so much about this one’s death.
In the real world she does/is none of these things. She dabs at the tip of her red nose in more silence.
The boy’s name was Jamie. I look through his stuff in my mind.
It was a suicide.
I close the book on the case, mention I feel a cold coming on to a few co-workers, and go to a bar they don’t know about when my shift is over.
tags