Chapter 26

Orville showed up five minutes after I shot Lonnie. Thankfully, by the time Lonnie had shown up, pretty much everyone had gone. Beyond Tessa, Rosita, my mother, and myself, the only person still in my parents’ house when everything happened was my mother’s best friend, who wouldn’t have left even if I’d wanted her to. That was actually good, since the entire front yard had become a crime scene, which meant no one could leave the house until Orville showed up to begin the investigation.

“Jesus,” Orville said, scooting around the body, careful not to step in any of the blood.

“Yeah, it’s a mess. I tried to get him to drop the shotgun and go home, but he was determined to get to Tessa, with the gun. I had him at gunpoint as soon as he came through the fence, but when he started to bring up the shotgun, he left me no choice.”

“I’m going to need your sidearm,” Orville said. “You’re also going to be off rotation until we finish our investigation. You’ll probably also have to sit down with the DA.”

“I get it,” I said, handing over my gun in its belt holster. “I’m sorry to keep the schedule screwed up. You two have already been covering me for several days, and this will probably drag out for a week or more. Tell Al I’ll make it up to him.”

“He’ll understand. Did anyone see the shooting?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Rosita was out here with me when he first drove up, but I told her to go inside, call you, and keep Tessa out of view, hoping if he didn’t see her I could talk him into leaving.”

“We were looking through the window,” Rosita said from behind me. “So were Mrs. Brewer and her friend. We all saw him screaming at the house for Tessa to come outside, and Henry telling him over and over to put down the shotgun. Henry didn’t shoot until that man started to raise the shotgun, like he was going to shoot.”

“Okay,” Orville said, holding up a hand. “Let’s do this one at a time. If everyone could just sit up on the porch and not talk to each other, I’ll get each of you to give statements. I’m going to call the DA now and the coroner, but it’ll be at least an hour until they can get here.”

“The DA’s going to come out?” I asked.

I couldn’t remember ever seeing a DA show up at a crime scene, so it was a little surprising.

“Probably one of his investigators. There was a shooting by an officer in Charleston last year that went sideways and became a whole media circus thing and more, with marches and everything. Buxton isn’t exactly Charleston, but the DA put out a memo shortly afterward that any shooting involving an officer had to be investigated by his office, so it’s procedure now.”

Not being able to talk to Rosita or anyone sucked. Tessa was still crying, although it was hard to tell how much of that was residual fear that she’d come so close to being murdered, or some remaining, however misplaced, feelings she’d had towards Lonnie.

What this did do, was reinforce my original uneasiness with rejoining law enforcement. All I wanted to do was to live my life. I might not feel bad about killing Lonnie, since I knew if I hadn’t others would have died, but that didn’t mean I felt good about taking a human life. Lonnie was the first person I’d ever shot, and I didn’t know if I wanted to keep doing a job that could make something like this happen again.

If anything, it just got worse when the investigator got there. I was put in the back of Orville’s car while he spoke with Orville and everyone who’d watched what happened before he’d finally interrogated me, and interrogated was the right word for it. I was already getting a bad feeling about him after seeing the clear hostility he showed Orville when he demanded I be put in the back of Orville’s cruiser, but I hadn’t dreamed how far downhill things would go.

Opening the door to the cruiser, he jumped right into questioning me without preamble.

“Deputy, could you describe the situation leading up to your shooting Mr. Moss?”

“Sure,” I said. “Mr. Moss drove up in front of the house shortly after the end of the funeral reception for my father. He was already holding a shotgun when he exited the vehicle. Because he was armed, I pulled my service weapon and ordered him to put down the weapon. He demanded to see his ex-girlfriend, whom he’d been arrested for assaulting just days prior. I again told him to put the weapon down, and he repeated his demand. The third time I ordered him to put down the weapon, he screamed towards the house and began lifting the weapon in a threatening manner. Fearing for my safety, and the safety of the people inside the house, I fired two shots. Once he fell, I kicked the gun away and ascertained his condition, which was fatal. At that point, I kept everyone away from the body and had someone phone the sheriff to begin an investigation into the shooting.”

“I’ve been told that the person he was here to see has been staying at your parents’ home and is now working for your girlfriend, is that correct?”

“Yes, you see she...”

“All I need is a yes or no. Did you know this woman prior to the arrest of Mr. Moss?”

“No, I’d never met them before.”

“So you had no relationship with her before arresting her then boyfriend?”

“What? I have no relationship with her now. She was injured and had nowhere to go, because...”

“Again, a yes or no is all I need.”

“No, I have no relationship with her.”

“So you are claiming to have no personal stake in her disagreements with Mr. Moss before murdering him?”

“Murdering? Did you hear the part where he showed up carrying a shotgun?”

He ignored me, continuing to look at his notes as he fired off questions.

“Is there a reason you didn’t try to disarm him in a non-lethal method?”

“Does it look like I have a Taser on me?”

“Deputy, this is a serious situation so please just answer the question.”

“I know this is a serious situation, which is why these bullshit questions are starting to piss me off.”

“Deputy...” he said, warningly.

“I didn’t try and disarm him because one, the only weapon I had on me was my service weapon, which I am obligated to carry under department policy, and two, because he posed an imminent threat to everyone around him, including myself, and any attempt to disarm him without using my weapon would have ended in someone being hurt.”

I was pissed off and being snide, but the investigator didn’t even seem to notice. He made a few more notes and closed the door on me again, which meant I remained locked in the back of the cruiser until Orville let me out.

While the coroner showed up and began processing Lonnie’s body, the investigator went back and questioned everyone on the porch again before getting in his car and driving away. Once he was gone, Orville finally came and opened the door to his cruiser.

“What the f•©k, Orville?” I asked, hot from being closed in the back of the car in the West Virginia heat and pissed off for being treated like shit for doing my job.

“Calm down, Henry. It’ll be okay.”

“Calm down? Do you have any idea what kind of questions that guy asked? He wanted to know what decisions led up to me MURDERING Lonnie, like I didn’t give him every chance to put down his f•©king gun. He wanted to know if I was somehow secretly dating Tessa. I did my job when I arrested him and I did it again when I kept him from killing his ex-girlfriend. This isn’t what I signed up for, Orville.”

“I promise you this isn’t as bad as it seems. I know his questions were out there, but I talked to the DA already and I told him you were just doing your job. Let’s just let them look into it, and I’m positive you’ll be cleared.”

“Unless I’m not; then what?”

“You will be. Please just trust me, if nothing else. You’ve been doing a great job and I’d hate for you to leave without seeing what really happens here. Just promise me you’ll wait until we hear what the DA has to say, okay?”

“Fine,” I said.

I still wasn’t happy, but Orville had been a straight shooter, so it wouldn’t be fair to take out my frustrations with the investigator on him. Besides, I still wanted time to see if I could convince Rosita to move with me if I left, and since I’d already agreed to give over my savings towards the food bank, I couldn’t go without a job for very long.

“Take the next few days off. Be with your family. I was thinking about having a BBQ on Sunday. Al was scheduled to work anyway, and if it’s slow he can still come by for a bit. Why don’t you come, spend some time with Sarah and me, and I promise I’ll have some kind of answer by then, okay?”

Since I was under investigation, policy said I was suspended with pay until the investigation finished, which meant it wasn’t so much taking the next few days off as not being allowed to work again until this was cleared up, but I didn’t think Orville was being clever.

I nodded and he backed up so I could get out of the cruiser. Clapping me on the shoulder, he went to the coroner, who was putting Lonnie in a body bag, leaving me to go back to my family.

I didn’t even make it to the porch before Rosita rushed down the steps to hug me.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just pissed off. What kind of questions did the investigator ask you guys?”

“Just what we saw and if we heard anything he was saying before you shot him.”

“How about Tessa. Did you hear what he asked her?”

“The same things, plus if Lonnie had been in contact with her after he was released but before he came here.”

“He didn’t ask about anything else?” I asked, surprised.

“Like what?”

“Like if I knew her before I arrested Lonnie and brought her here the other night.”

“No. Why would he ask that?”

“I don’t know, but he grilled me pretty hard, like I’d done something wrong. I’d assumed he’d asked you all something similar.”

“No. He seemed pretty straightforward. I didn’t get the feeling he was being hostile or anything.”

“Huh,” I said, confused.

I couldn’t figure out what game he was playing, since if he was really trying to trap me, he’d be asking hard but straightforward questions to witnesses but playing the good cop with me, to see if I said anything voluntarily. I’d never heard of someone doing it reverse like this, since coming at a witness hard like that was a good way to get them to put their defenses up and stop talking.

Tessa, who’d been waiting on the porch, came down to where Rosita and I were standing and stopped a few steps away.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah. I think so.”

“I’m sorry about Lonnie. I know...”

“I’m not. I left him a long time ago, at least up here,” she said, pointing to her head. “If you hadn’t shot him, I’d be dead right now. So f•©k him.”

I wasn’t sure I believed she actually meant that, at least the second part. Although she really hadn’t opened up that much to me yet, I’d gotten the impression she was a gentle, caring person, which didn’t really match that kind of attitude. It might be better if she was more like that, though, so I wasn’t going to try to talk her out of it.

I spent the rest of the week at Mom’s. Tessa was still staying there, but she went back to work at Rosita’s, and I didn’t want Mom to be alone. I don’t know if it was the shock of what happened at the funeral reception or just time, but she’d broken out of the fugue state she was in, although that had become some weird combination of trying to pretend Dad wasn’t really gone and being angry at the smallest thing. Sometimes she’d be busy going about her normal routine, acting like nothing had changed and other times she’d snap at the smallest inconvenience.