The Gray Case

twenty-five

As he closes the door shut behind him, he shakes his head.

Robertson then proceeds to shut his eyes, too, exhaling distress out of his lungs in front of all the family, until he presses a button on the recorder placed firmly between his fingers and a painfully familiar voice plays.

"It's not mine," Ryan says. They all listen to the words that escape the recorder, fleeting, but now, in the past.

"Then who is the owner of the gun?" The detective's voice keeps its tone low but clear.

Silence makes its entrance and pierces the air with a new atmosphere. Alexander can feel it, can see him, can imagine him-his step-brother.

Sat in front of Robertson, handcuffs tight and suffocating around his wrists. He sees him from where his mind reaches imagination; eyes cold and distant, the color indefinite.

He can feel the mix of the masked emotions Ryan holds in him solely through his voice that is hushed, afraid, but swift. He knows the truth.

"It's Dan's. Dan is the owner of the shooting range I usually go to," he says.

Alexander glances over at his family and Maya, feeling the heavy truth nearing. It's in everybody's face. In everybody's slight movements.

He finds immense desperation inching drastically in Margaret's pupils. The fear and nervousness that were in her earlier, have become inconsistent as Ryan speaks his own truth. She blends into the images she sees in the locked rooms of her mind, just as everyone does while listening.

If once there was surprise in Mark's features, then, it has condensed. But like a fire that burns on and on, never losing its spark, never being extinguished, blacks and grays cloud his face, incessant and deeper. Darker and not brighter, colder and not flaming, not hotter.

"He left it in my car the day we went shooting in the outdoor part of the range. He brought a lot of guns, but then forgot this specific one in my car when he was going back inside. I left but didn't notice it until I was home so when I did, I kept it inside my room until I had time to give it back, which was the day of the party. Then I put it in my car, but never saw it again. Dan noticed his gun was missing and couldn't stop calling to have it back. For a moment I thought I had mistakenly lent it to someone that goes gun shooting with me. But I talked to him and that wasn't the case," Ryan confesses, rapid in his talk.

His words evoke a flicker of some type of light, a hint of a fleeting, benevolent thunder in the room the rest of his family is. A hope that once was crushed now is re-evoked-gold colored on the edges but still indefinite, like his eyes, deep down. Alexander sees him again, his mind does. It projects Ryan's eyes, his movements, his loneliness in the obscure room he ended up in by his own doing. Or is it really? Still, Alexander looks, and the story he observes like then and now has remained unchanged-Ryan's words cannot be the product of a lying tongue.

"He didn't say much after this. I'm going to have to talk with this Dan he was telling me about, but until then, I'm not going to let him out today," Robertson says, earning futile protest from Margaret.

Like Alexander, she is able to realize but doesn't want to. Aware of the wrongs and rights of the situation they are all in, she ignores it all for her own well-being. Unlike Alexander, she crumbles more and more into pieces of an aching soul, making her son's scars her own as seconds pass and tears are dry on her cheeks.

On her own, she seems to know more than what her eyes seem to give out.
She has always have, when it comes to his son. As they prepare to leave, Alexander knows what Margaret feels, what she wishes to do. He knows, that one of her wishes right now is to be able to guide him into the route they have always walked together, to touch his hand no matter the condition they are in, in this moment. No matter he may be splattered with guilt, dipped in crimson colored water and engulfed in a never manifested fury that's never been listened to.