three of a kind.

14.

August 20, 1989

no one said anything as we drove aimlessly down the road, we were all in a deep state of shock. stuck in a loop of time, we all replayed our side of the story in our heads. i didn't dare ask for details, i couldn't stomach it in that moment. jose and kitty menendez were dead. that's all i thought about, and not in explicit detail at the time. just, they were dead. 

after driving for around half an hour, lyle pulled off to the side of the road near a ditch. we all hopped out, my legs threatening to give way at any given second from the panic of the ordeal. lyle grabbed the guns from the trunk, tossing them under a string of bushes and shoving as much dirt overtop of them as he could find. we didn't have anything to bury them with, and we didn't have time to either. we all were sunken with an indescribable urge to go back home.

lyle dusted the dirt off his palms and pants, standing up from the ground and immediately pulling me into him. i disintegrated, falling into him as i finally let my knees buckle. i began to sob again, the disbelief was overwhelming.

"c'mon." he sniffled, "we gotta get back."

that was our last verbal exchange until we got to the house, we didn't have the words to console each other. our brains were a jumbled up ball of yarn and any sentence we formed in our minds were incoherent and refused to leave our tongue. we just drove, miles and miles closer to the homicide we'd created.

we pulled into the drive, relieved and simultaneously concerned that there wasn't a police car or worried neighbor in miles. i knew that everyone in the neighborhood heard those gunshots. san francisco heard them. hell, texas probably did. that was the problem, our whole downfall. it was unheard of. 

shit like this doesn't happen in beverly hills.

 the rest of the time we spent there that night was a tizzy. lyle dialed 911 and reported the murders to the police. erik was a shell of himself, sobbing in the middle of the entry way floor. i laid beside him, repeatedly having to drag him out of the room where his slain parents laid pitifully in the floor. to say that any emotions we had were fabricated, is an absurd belief. the three of us were filled with unimaginable anxiety, grief, regret, relief, heartwrenching sadness and panic all at once.

"somebody killed my parents!" lyle cried into the speaker of the phone.

i could hear the faint voice of the panicked operater who could barely understand him. "were they shot?"

"yes!"

he was hysterical. 

"erik get away from em!" he sobbed as he watched erik attempt to go into the den again, still on the line with the police. "my brother and our friend rose garcia."

i gave in to erik, walking in the den with him while lyle struggled to put words together. i had the urge to be with them too, god only knows why. i hated them. i hated them. however, seeing them helpless, covered in their own blood, deceased, it was like looking at them for the first time.

i cried as i bent down next to kitty. she wasn't recognizable, she was severely disfigured, she had no face. she died the same way she lived, running from her problems instead of facing them. jose did too, a coward. the horrid wave of sadness hit us both, how did this happen?

as much regret that filled us all, did they really think this would end any other way? that thought is the only thing that kept me alive: our parents killed us first.

the police arrived, along with the forensic teams. we were ushered outside as men with video cameras carefully rushed in. we were taken into squad cars and brought in for questioning. the officer tried to make small talk with us on the way to the station, offer some consolation. not one of us said a word. we sat there next to each other in our guilt, and drowned.

erik was logically brought in for questioning first. lyle and i knew that he was in the worst state, and if he walked in and confessed we were all fucked. erik came out of the interrogation room, succesfully corroborating our story, then followed lyle, and now my turn. 

"take a seat ms. garcia." the detective said to me as he pulled out my chair. "about how long have you known the menendez family?"

"6 years." i made no eye contact.

"where were you around 8:30 p.m. tonight?"

"the movies, Batman." i replied.

"okay, and do you know of anybody that would have any type of ill will towards Jose or his wife?"

i looked up at him for the first time, "no sir. not to my knowledge. he's a business man, they all have enemies."

he nodded, asking a few more general questions before allowing me to return to the boys. 

him asking me about someone's ill will towards Jose Menendez was ironic, anyone who was around him long enough knew it was of no shocking matter that he would be gunned down. it just wasn't. they didn't suspect us, not at all. 

we all stood there for a few minutes, staring at the wall. we weren't sure what to do. how to feel, where to go, it was all uncertain. 

"..what now?" i choked.

lyle shrugged, "i guess we could stay with the tennis coach, i can't go back there right now."

erik nodded in agreement, even though in that moment i knew he felt the opposite. "you can stay with us there until your dad comes home..if you want."

"sure." i whispered, before falling back into the neverending silence.

lyle called their tennis coach, who had already gotten wind of the news of the homicide. he was quick to offer the three of us a place to sleep before we even asked. we patiently waited on him to pick us up from the station, none of us felt like going back to that house right now. we got away scot-free tonight. i didn't know how long it would last, nobody did. jose and kitty menendez were dead, and we were carrying the weight. there was no satisfactory in it, not an ounce. after all, our intent was never to kill, it was to live.