A Friend's Murder

The casket slowly descended into the hole they had dug.

Rain stung my hands like ice. I shoved them deep into my jacket pockets. Everyone was waiting like we were in line for a movie no one wanted to watch.

“… Amen.” The minister concluded the final prayer.

I looked around at all the faces and what their expressions told me. Numbness, tears, anger, guilt. I was glad I wasn’t the only one who felt guilty at this funeral. Somehow, Kiki had a way of doing that, even when she was dead, even though it wasn’t anyone’s fault. No one here, at least.

Then there was Terrence—Tre, her cousin. He looked thin. Too thin. He wore a black suit, like everyone else, but it looked weird on him with his thick dreadlocks. I hadn’t seen him in years, but we used to be tight. He’d been staring at the casket the whole time, but he suddenly looked up and we made eye contact.

His face was different than everyone else’s. There was hate in his eyes. Rage. Despair. Did he really hate Kiki?

He looked down in a flash, like he was caught.

It took me off guard. I forgot about Kiki for a minute as I studied him. I didn’t think he was the one that murdered Kiki, but I could tell that he knew something about it. Don’t ask me how.

Rain pooled up on the dirt piled on her coffin.

Afterward, I offered to buy him a drink. I needed to know what I saw. He suggested Sully’s Bar.

###

The music at Sully’s was loud, so that the hipsters in their raincoats had to yell at each other to be heard. Apparently, this was the place to be in Sacramento on a Sunday night. This wasn’t the right atmosphere for this kind of conversation, but I didn’t have his number anymore, so I was stuck here.

I’d already had two Jack and Cokes by the time he arrived. He stuck out like a sore thumb. Not his clothes—we had both changed out of our suits—but his expression. It was obvious he didn’t want to be here. I wondered if I looked the same way. Everyone else at the bar was laughing, yelling, unwinding. But the two of us were uneasy, sad, quiet.

“Tre, hey man.” I got up to give him a hug.

He hugged me with a noticeable effort. “Hey, Wes.”

He sat abruptly and ordered a light beer.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “It sucks.”

He took a long drink of his beer, taking his time before saying, “Yeah. I miss her already.”

We had to lean close together to hear each other over the noise, since neither of us felt like speaking very loudly right then.

“But you two were close, weren’t you?” He looked at me with a penetrating glare, unblinking, like he was testing me. It was awkward.

“Not that close,” I said. “Not since …”

“Oh,” he said.

I tried to bring up some small talk. Weather, news, what I’d been up to. None of it stuck.

“You alright?” I asked. Something was clearly wrong. This wasn’t Tre.

“I need to say something.” His voice was shaking.

I took another drink. “Say what?”

“I … you know how she was killed, right?”

A blurry photo of Kiki’s bloody face flashed through my mind. They had put it on Channel 5 a few days after it happened. I stared at a peanut on the counter. I said quietly, like I still didn’t want to believe she was six feet underground right now, “She was murdered.”

He seemed content to just sip his beer for a few moments.

“What about it?” I said.

He looked away from me and seemed to sink an inch lower with each word he forced out. “I … did it. I killed her.”

I glanced around in every direction. No one was paying attention to us. “That’s not funny.”

His eyes were bloodshot and desperate, pleading with me. I didn’t know what to say for a while, and he didn’t add anything.

“You couldn’t’ve,” I said.

After a deep breath, he said in the quietest voice, “I did.”

“Listen.” I put my arm on his shoulder. “A couple days ago some cops came to my place and questioned me. They would have thought I did it if I wasn’t out of town that day. They probably questioned you, too. And her—this was all so fresh to you that you probably weren’t thinking straight. They convinced you you did it, but you didn’t. You didn’t do it, bruh.”

He closed his eyes. “Thank you, bro. Thank you for not believing me. You’re a good friend … But I really did do it.” His words got high pitched and fast. He didn’t listen to me trying to shh him. “She just made me so mad. She was yelling, telling me I wasn’t shit. You know how she gets. And no one else was there and there was something in that corner … and I think I blanked most of it out. Next think I knew, her blood was all over me. I ran off, man. Now I … I don’t know what to fucking do. I know I should turn myself in, but I’m chicken shit.”

I looked around while trying to not seem too suspicious. Karaoke had started—Billie Jean. Everyone was laughing like they had been this whole time.

Tre was breathing hard like he had just been running. “I just needed someone to know. Honestly, I think I’d be relieved if you snitched on me. At least then—” he held his face in his hands and cried.

I put my hand on his back, unsure of what else to do. “Tre—”

“I can’t do this anymore!” He stumbled off of his stool and ran out the door.

I followed him, but he was too fast. He got in his car and screeched off down the street.

I just stood there, breathing in the cold for ten minutes.

He couldn’t have done it, but he really believed that he’d killed her. What was I supposed to do with that? Tell his grandma? Call the cops? Why the hell did he tell me of all people?

I got into my car and stared at the raindrops collecting on the glass. Terrence and I used to be real. Best friends. But we hadn’t talked for so long, since he had gone off to the police academy. Obviously, he hadn’t graduated. Maybe he really was capable of this. Some dots started connecting. When we were kids, he was pretty wild, sometimes violent. We both were. We wanted to be Bloods until grandma beat enough sense into us.

And I remembered the way he looked at me at the funeral: the hatred, the despair.

I couldn’t turn him in, even if it was true. We were like brothers. We always would be.

###

I didn’t remember driving home to my apartment. All I knew was that there was a stranger waiting outside my door. I tried to turn around, but he turned and saw me. He flinched like I had scared him. But then he smiled and walked over and stuck his hairy arm out to me.

“Hi, I’m Detective John Cowell.”

I shook his hand.

“I understand you helped us out a few nights back with some questions we had about the murder,” he said.

Then I recognized him. I nodded, cautiously.

“Well, there’s been some more evidence that’s come in, and we were hoping you could put the pieces together for us.”

I cleared my throat and tried not to show I was nervous. “What evidence?”

“Well, I don’t have the files here. Would you be able to come down to the station with me? It should only take a half-hour.”

“I—uh.” This might’ve been about Terrence. Not talking might make me complicit. Talking would be selling out my friend. I didn’t know what to do.

“Don’t worry,” he added. “You’re not under arrest or anything.”

I had to give him an answer. “Okay.”

“Great!” he said.

Even though I wasn’t under arrest, it wasn’t a fun ride in the back of his undercover cruiser. We were both dead silent on the ride until he turned on the radio and hummed along to Uptown Funk.

I followed him into the station and up some stairs, noting his not-a-care-in-the-world stride. Almost too obvious. He led me to a room with no windows and sat down behind a table with two file folders laid out on it. At least there were no one-way mirrors on the wall. Last time, they had just detained me right there on the street until I answered all their questions.

I sat down. I still didn’t know what to say or not say. Terrence’s life was literally in my hands.

“I have to read you your Miranda rights before we start,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’s routine for everyone.”

I nodded along. I was debating choices in my head for so long that his first real question caught me completely off-guard.

“Remind me where you were Tuesday night?”

“Me? I was, uh, at the Valencia Club. I told you this last time.”

He nodded and pulled out a notebook and flipped through the small pages. “There’s just some discrepancies,” he said routinely, as if he’d said it one thousand times before. “Some people think you did it.” He made eye contact then. “Some witnesses.” His tone had changed in an instant.

“What!” I broke eye contact with him, but then I thought that I ought to look at him when I said this. “I didn’t do it. That’s crazy. I was at the bar twenty miles away from where it happened. I told you last time.”

“You’ve known Kiki for a while, haven’t you?”

“I—yes.”

“And you … hired … her before.”

I swallowed. They found out. I blinked and nodded.

“Why’d you lie to us about that?”

I tried to breathe slower and regain my composure. “Of course I lied. Why would I want to admit that to a cop?”

He shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“But that doesn’t mean I … Do I need a lawyer?”

Cowell smiled again and shook his head. “No, no, you’re just helping me connect some dots. You’re free to leave at any time. I’m sorry I rattled you just now.”

I stood up to leave. I’d had enough of this.

“But I also think you seem like a decent guy,” he said. “And I want to give you fair warning. You’re not under arrest yet, but you’re still a suspect.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Your alibi didn’t add up. And we have witnesses stating they saw someone matching your description leaving the crime scene at approximately the time of death.”

My heart plummeted into my stomach. “This is crazy,” I said. “I can’t be a suspect.”

Cowell kept his eyes on me. “It’s you or someone who looks just like you, kid.”

It had to be Tre. People used to think we were twins. What if it came down to him or me? Could I live with ratting him out? I saw an image of Tre standing over Kiki with a bloody baseball bat. Her arms and head were smashed.

“Listen, kid,” he said. “The evidence is stacked against you. If I’m honest, I suspected you from the beginning. Not because of any evidence. It was in your eyes. You knew something you weren’t telling us. Either you murdered her, or you knew who did.”

“I didn’t!” I shouted.

We were both quiet for a bit. I didn’t leave. I was too scared. My heart was beating like I was sprinting. Racing against the clock. Against this bastard cop who didn’t even know me. I decided then. I had to tell him. Either that or I was withholding evidence. I wasn’t a criminal. I couldn’t go to prison. I couldn’t get the image of Terrence out of my mind. They would find out eventually.

“I didn’t know then. I swear.”

Cowell nodded. “But you do now, don’t you?”

I smashed my fist on the table. The pain gave me boldness. I was able to force the words out. “It was Terrence Powers. He just confessed it to me. I had no idea before that.” I couldn’t believe what I had just said. I wanted to take it back, but I couldn’t now. It was too late. I had condemned my friend.

Cowell scribbled in his notebook. “Every suspect says it’s someone else. If you’re going to accuse someone specific, it’s got to be rock solid. Just saying that he told you isn’t going to do the trick.”

“But—”

“We need evidence against him that outweighs the evidence we already have on you.”

“But he told me. Find him yourself and ask him. He’ll confess.” I had never felt so conflicted in my life. I was selling out Tre. My brother.

I remembered the last thing he told me.

Honestly, I’d be relieved if you snitched on me …

Was this the right thing to do?

“All right,” Cowell looked up. “If we’re going to track down this lead, I need to know that you’re not just bullshitting me. This is serious. What exactly did he say? What time did he kill her?”

“I don’t know.”

“What time!”

“Like, nine p.m.!” I said. I couldn’t remember exactly what he had told me.

“How did he do it?”

“With a—with a bat. He beat her.” I was talking faster than I was thinking now.

“Where’d he leave the bat?”

“I don’t know. He—he left it right there. I think.”

“Did he steal anything off of her?”

I sat staring straight ahead, not believing what I was doing. What if Tre got the death penalty? Would that make me a murderer, too, for selling him out?

He repeated the question.

“Her purse,” I said.

Cowell leaned back in his seat, satisfied. He pulled out a radio and said into it, “Powers, you hear that?”

The voice on the other end of the radio made me jump.

“A-firm.” Tre’s voice said. He wasn’t unstable anymore, he wasn’t despairing. He was pissed. “I never told Weston how or when she died.”

“Hear that?” Cowell said to me.

I was in denial. They couldn’t have figured it out.

Two officers opened the door behind me.

Cowell said with an angry smirk, “We recorded your interaction with Officer Powers in the bar. He never said any of that and none of the info was public. So then how did you know?”

I stood up, but I knew I was trapped. “I want a lawyer.”

Cowell nodded, still smiling. “Of course.” He stood up and pulled handcuffs out and said, “Mr. Knapp, you are under arrest.”

They pushed my face onto the cold table and handcuffed me. I didn’t try to resist. How did this happen? I was so careful.

We passed Tre while walking to the holding cells. He had that same look as he did at the funeral. It was me he hated all along. He had probably known the whole time, but they didn’t have enough evidence.

He looked away without saying a word.

I couldn’t help but admire the desperate genius of his ploy. I let a small smile escape my stonewall expression. Maybe part of me always wanted to get caught.