Can't We Be Seventeen? (If We Still Got The Right)

14 - Shoelaces

October 12th, 1989

(19 days after Veronica Sawyer's murder)

The room was freezing, and the cold metal chain on his left wrist only made it worse.

In front of him, the cop on the left chair sipped the last drops of his coffee as loudly as humanly possible, not bothering with the some of if dripping down his double chin and staning his white blouse with brown droplets.

"I've already told you. I didn't kill her," JD said. He tried his best to keep his voice calm. He knew losing his temper would do him no good, but all he wanted to do was scream at those two idiots who were wasting their time arresting him, while Veronica's murderer was still walking around freely, unscathed in spite of the fact that they had brutally killed a beautiful, kind, seventeen year old girl who had her entire life ahead of her. A life JD wanted to be a part of, but couldn't because they took her away.

"This isn't school detention, champ," the cop on the right said. "You can't lie your way out of this one."

"I'm not lying," he sneered. He had never felt so helpless before, and he hated it. "I loved her. I would never do something like this to her."

The cop on the left, the fat one who couldn't even drink a beverage without making a goddammed mess, grabbed a box.

JD watched silently as he pulled what looked like photographs out of the box. He carefully spread then on the metal table they were seated in front of. His eyes weren't looking at the pictures, they were glued on JD, watching his reaction.

They were pictures of Veronica. Pictures of the day they found her in the woods.

JD had images of what she had looked like burned on his brain every time he tried to sleep, but that was just his mind playing tricks on him. He had never seen the actual photos, and he wished it could have stayed that way.

Those photos of her broken and beaten up body, tied up like an animal and already starting to rot...JD will never get those images out of his brain.

Part of his brain told him those weren't pictures of Veronica. Not anymore. Because that stopped being Veronica the moment she took her last breath. All that was shown in the photos were the lifeless shell, but her smile, her laughter, the shine in her eyes, those were long gone.

JD averted his eyes. He couldn't see her like that anymore. He wanted to remember her alive, cracking jokes with him and sharing a slushie. When he thought of her, he wanted to remember the times she was happy with him, he didn't want to remember how much she suffered in the last moments of her life.

"Why you looking away?" the cop on the right asked. Apparently both of them had decided to go with the Bad Cop route. "Now you're too much of a coward to face what you did?"

"This is because of you. She's dead because you killed her," the fat cop said. "Why? Why'd you kill her, Jason?"

"I didn't kill her!"

"Your father said you were at home that Saturday. Is that true?"

"Yes. I mean, I left for a couple hours or so but..."

"Where to?"

"The local 7-eleven."

"At 2 in the morning?"

"That's why it stays open 24 hours, isn't it?" Bad idea to back talk, he knew, but he couldn't help it.

"But there's no proof of you there, is there? The cashier doesn't remember you."

"Of course not, he was high off his ass. Doesn't mean I'm lying."

"Your father said he was asleep, so he didn't notice you either."

"He was drunk!" Of fucking course his father wouldn't help him out. He probably lied about not remembering where he was that night just to screw him over. "But we talked, I told him I was leaving."

"Some people say you were agressive to her. That you got jealous easily."

"Who says that?"

"We're not allowed to disclose that information," the thinner cop says.

"You know what they found tied around your girlfriends neck and on her wrists?" The cop from the right asked rethorically. "A shoelace. That's how she died. Strangled with a shoelace."

"I know."

"And you know what they found when they searched your house? A pair of your boots, with no shoelaces."

"What?" JD asked.

"Know what else? Her blood. It was haphazardly cleaned, but they were able to find it on your living room carpet, on the hallway, and the office."

JDs mind was running miles. He didn't know what to think, didn't know what to say. He forgot how to breathe.

"My father was home," JD feels numb, so much that the words come out of his mouth and he barely noticed it. "He was home the entire time. I left, around two, and that's when she supposedly showed up. I left and she showed up. And he was there."