Chapter 39: Monday Afternoon

I went back out to talk to the police. Alice stayed inside, comforting her daughter and friends. I told them that if I could have some of their yellow ‘crime scene’ lines I’d block off the house from the doorway, and they could do whatever they wanted with the body. Melanie still had her gun, though, so whoever went to get Lucy needed to stay on this side of the line.

They gave me a roll of tape and I went back in and tied it to a window latch, a chair I put near the door, and the girls’ bedroom doorknob. That blocked off several feet from the front door. I told Melanie that she was not allowed to shoot anyone who stayed on the door side of the tape, and went back out to return the rest of the tape and tell them that they could go get my sister.

After that we all sat around in the living room and watched the medical people examine Lucy, then put her on a stretcher. A policeman came up and put her gun in a bag without touching it. An older man in a white lab coat and gloves came up to the porch and examined Lucy again, then looked up at us. “I’m told that one of you knows this woman?”

I answered. “She’s my sister. If you do an autopsy I’d really like to know what drugs she was on. I’m a teacher and I want to tell my kids why she killed herself.”

“She didn’t kill herself. She was shot to death.”

“Yeah, but she was shot to death because she broke into a home, in broad daylight, carrying a gun, knowing that the people in the house had guns and might shoot back. She should have known she was going to be shot.”

“I see what you mean. Still, the official cause of death will be “gunshot wound”. There may be additional factors. I’ll try to find out if she was on any drugs and let you know. Maybe you can save some of your students.”

“That’s all I can do, at this point. Show them where they end up if they get into drugs.”

“You do what you can. Okay, I need to go with the body. I’m sorry for your loss.”

I just nodded. Lucy had been the only family I had left, but now I had Alice and Melanie. Shanda and her brother and sister, too. My new family was a lot nicer than my old family.

Once the coroner and Lucy’s body were gone, the police wanted to take over. Uh-uh. Nope, not happening. Not without a search warrant, and they had no grounds for one. No crimes had been committed in my house. Well, today. Several crimes had been committed on my front porch, but the criminal had been killed before she could get inside. They could investigate those crimes all they wanted. Out on the porch.

I think they would have arrested me for interfering with the police or some other made-up charge and gone on in, but they couldn’t. Not with the State Patrol and the FBI right there watching. Besides, I’d already told them that they’d get shot, and it would come out that they had been warned and they had no reason to go in beyond wanting to ransack a black man’s house.

They took their time, taking pictures of everything they could including our living room with a man, a woman, and three teenage girls in it. One of the girls had a gun in her hand. I was sure that would come out in the pictures.

Eventually the police let Liz’s parents in. Mr. and Mrs. Benelli, John and Sarah, were appropriately ecstatic at her rescue, horrified at her experiences, mad at every black in the world for putting her through that, thankful to me and the police for rescuing her ... Liz was right. Her father should have left her mother at home, but I guess there was no way he could do that. She had to come see her baby. It would have made the whole experience easier on everyone else, though.

After the reunion we started talking about all sorts of stuff. That started, of course, with her mom wanting to know why Liz hadn’t been to see a doctor yet. Well, who’s gonna pay for that? If you will, she can go just as soon as she wants to. I’m not going to make her go if she isn’t ready yet, and I can’t pay for medical care for every homeless waif that darkens my door.

The family gathering had to stop when the PPD and the FBI interviewers came to the door. The PPD had a female officer, Sergeant Harris, while Sandridge had volunteered himself for this task. He told us that he had a bunch of pictures for the girls to look through, but that could wait until after we were done talking about the shooting.

They were both unarmed, or so they said, but still ... Two honky pigs in my house, determined to cause trouble. Melanie still had her revolver on the table next to the couch. Alice had a 1911 in her purse. There were two more in the bedroom, but they weren’t as easy to get to.

Sandridge also said, well, he asked, if he could talk to Shanda Larkin and her parents, pointing at me and Alice, in private before we started. I just looked around. There were way too many people in our living room for that. Alice said “the bedroom?”.

I laughed. “I’m already closer to being in bed with the FBI than I ever wanted to be. How about out back?”

So, the four of us trooped out back and closed the door. Sandridge said that this would be quick.

There had been a custody hearing scheduled for this afternoon down at the courthouse for Shanda’s brother and sister, and he was supposed to make sure the three of us showed up once he was told what time it would be. When it got out that Shanda had been involved in a gunfight at the house they would be living in, it had been postponed. The courts may not be as enthusiastic about sending them here as they had been. The kids didn’t need to be growing up in that kind of environment.

On the other hand, while we may have proven that Shanda was in danger here, we’d also proven conclusively that we could keep her safe. He knew what key words and tricky phrases the judges liked to hear in these things, and he was pretty sure that, if the three of us still wanted them, he could talk the judge into sending them here. Then he looked at me.

“Mr. Wilkins, I don’t think you’re dirty. I know you’re dirty. You are filthy, nasty, disgusting dirty. You’ve got your fingers in all kinds of things you shouldn’t. I’m not sure I’ll ever collect enough dirt to put you away, though. Meanwhile, there’s nowhere those kids might get sent where they’ll get raised better than by you two. We are all astounded by how fast Shanda and Elizabeth have recovered. If you can do the same thing with Shanda’s brother and sister, give them a good home, and raise them to be good strong independent people like Shanda and Melanie and Elizabeth, I’m all for giving them to you until I can put you in jail where you belong.”

What could I say? I shrugged and said “We’ll have to move somewhere larger, but Alice’s house is just too far away if I’m gonna keep teaching at West Central. I still want them, though.”

Shanda was nodding her head, and Alice said something which was pretty much what I’d said but in different words. She didn’t think her house was too far away, and it had plenty of room.

Shanda also told him “We want them.”

Alice pointed out that Elizabeth’s parents were here, and she would probably be going home soon with them, so that would help. We needed another bedroom for ‘the children’, though. Unless I came up with one soon, we were going to have to shift to her house.

Sandridge said that, for now, the kids were still at home with their parents. The Larkins weren’t suspected of being child-molesters themselves, merely of supporting a child-sex ring. The crimes had been stopped and no one had told the Larkins that they were about to be arrested. The state wanted to make sure they had a place for the kids, first.

Yeah, that was quick. We went back inside and started the interview. That, now, that wasn’t quick at all.

Both of them had tape recorders, and when they started talking about how the interview would work Sandridge added that he was also wearing a wire, so if the two recorders somehow got turned off, we should not assume that we were safe to say anything. We should NEVER assume it was safe to say anything, if there was an FBI agent around. Good to know! I was getting the idea that Sandridge wasn’t really trying very hard to take me down.

That interview took all afternoon. Most of it, Alice and I and John and Sarah had to be quiet for. We weren’t there when the incident happened. We were just there as homeowner and parents, to allow them to talk to underaged witnesses.

They wanted background on why the three girls were there. Where they’d come from when they came here. Why they had been left alone. Why Melanie had a gun, who gave it to her, why he gave it to her, and what training she had in safe firearm use. On and on and on and on. The girls were getting irritated.

I interrupted once, when Shanda asked “Why do you need to know that?”

“May I?” The interviewers nodded to me.

“Shanda, honey, I know of two different reasons. There may be more. The first, of course, is that they are professional investigators. They want to know EVERYTHING about this incident. If this ever goes to court for some reason, they want to already know everything, because people live here. I’m gonna hafta fix that door, which means that by next week they can’t come back and look at it any more. Second, two of you are underaged, and cannot testify in court without your parents’ permission. For whatever reason, you may not be available later, so they want to get everything possible from you right now, okay?”

They all three nodded.

“Last, okay, three reasons, they are good at their jobs, and they enjoy it. They couldn’t BE good at their jobs if they didn’t enjoy it. They are both professional ‘Nosy Parkers’ who want to know everything about everyone else’s business. As long as you are answering questions, they are going to keep asking.”

“If, for some reason, it becomes relevant what shirt you are wearing, maybe one of the crime-scene guys noticed that yours is bright and Lucy could see it but the other two are dark and Lucy didn’t see the important one, the one with the gun, they are going to want to know what color, what brand, what size, where you got it, when you bought it. How long you’ve been wearing it, how you wash it, what brand detergent you use. If they wait a week, no one will remember what you were wearing. They’re going to try to get every detail they can right now because they don’t know what will be important.”

I can talk forever, but I gotta breathe sometimes. “Then, they’ll ask about your skirt. That might be important. Your shoes, your bra, your undies, they’ll keep going until you tell them to fuck off, they don’t need to know that. If it really is important they’ll push, but you need to know that they’ll also push even if it isn’t important because they don’t know what will become important later. Maybe someday someone will do a study that says women wearing too-tight shoes are 20% more likely to shoot their husbands. If so, it will be because all the investigators put it in their notes and someone noticed it.”

They all smiled at that. I couldn’t help but notice that Sarah Benelli was nodding. Did her feet hurt? I leaned over towards her husband. “John? Does your wife complain about her feet? If you say yes, make sure there’s no guns in the house.” I got some smiles for that.

I followed that up with “There’s a Penthouse survey that says that women who don’t wear bras have husbands who are 60% happier than other husbands.” I got some guffaws and giggles for that.

Sandridge wanted to know “When did you read that?”

“I didn’t, I just made that up. It’s probably closer to 80% anyway.” That got even Sergeant Harris to smile.

They weren’t just asking about the shooting that morning, either. They wanted to know everything that had happened, well, since they were born it seemed like. This was the first time they had really had a chance to talk to any of them about VMC, basketball, the championship game, any of that stuff. They kept at it until neither one could think of anything else to ask about, or even another way to ask the same question they’d asked seven times before. We even had to stop a couple of times for bathroom breaks.

Eventually, Sandridge said “Okay, thank you. Now, if you aren’t completely sick of us yet, I’d like to ask you to look at some pictures. These are all people we pulled out of a gang house yesterday. Most of them are in the hospital, but unfortunately two of the pictures are of women who were deceased when we found them. It would be a big help if you girls could identify them for us.”

Those were some ugly pictures. The Reds had been pretty brutal to their slaves. Still, they recognized one of the girls in the hospital as Marcie, so that was another girl from their team who’d been rescued.

Finally. After, what, eight days of hell? I’d told the police where they were, Monday? Tuesday? It may have been my fault that they were there, but it was their fault that they’d been left there for so long.