Resurrection

Chapter Eight

George Scoffield, the driver of the snow-wrecked semi, sat in a brown folding chair across a table from Eddie, his face blotchy and bruised.  The fifty year-old man wept and wrung his hands.  The dry skin on his knuckles and wrists scraped against each other with a rhythmic grating.    Fluorescent light in the windowless room shone off the top of his bald head every time he bent forward to wipe his nose on his shirt collar. 

Eddie glanced at the camera in the corner of the room to make sure the recording indicator was lit.  He knew that Daryl was watching the camera feed in the next room and listening to everything, as was their procedure. 

Eddie removed his hat—a tan brown Penn Rider cowboy hat for the colder months—and set it on the table.  He tried to meet Scoffield's eye—the driver wore a heap of gauze over the eye-socket that had been emptied by the wreck—but the man glanced around the room or looked down into his hands like he was making sure the walls and his fingers were still there.

"Are you Mr. George Scoffield from Lubbock, Texas?" Eddie began despite the man's distracted sniffling.

Scoffield's face snapped alert as if he had just realized the officer was there.  The truck driver nodded profusely, and fell into yet another fit of weeping as he answered, "Yessir, yes, officer, that's me."  He buried his face in his hands and hitched a few breaths.

"I'm Officer Márquez with the Alamogordo Police Force.  Can I get you anything before we start?"

Scoffield muttered something from behind his hands.  Eddie asked him to repeat it and the driver smacked his hands against the table. 

" 'My wife's gonna kill me,' I said."

"I think you should be grateful to be alive today, Mr. Scoffield.  I've seen wrecks like that before, and usually there's no one left to tell what happened."

Scoffield nodded and chewed his lip. "Ya know, before last night I woulda said those exact words to you if it was you who came outta that accident alive." He leaned his head back and pressed his hands over his face again. "You don't got any morphine for emergencies, do ya?  Or sim'larly strong?  That stuff they pump into you can sure make you not give a damn 'bout missin' an eyeball."

"I'm pretty sure we've got some aspirin in the office somewhere." 

Eddie went to retrieve the aspirin.

As he went into the surveillance room next door, Daryl met him with a couple of small white pills and a Dixie cup of water. 

"Three steps ahead as usual, partner," said Daryl.

"Daryl, this guy is obviously in serious pain.  I'm wondering if we're gonna get any sense out of him."

"I think he's more scared of his wife than he is of you right now."

"I can't tell if that's a joke or not."

"A little of both." Daryl studied the image of Scoffield, body shaking from his heavy weeping, and then grunted, "I bet you a hundred bucks he'll cut the theatrics if he knows his wife won't be able to get to him in prison."

"Bingo, partner." Eddie nodded in agreement and strode back into the interrogation room. 

He put the pills into Scoffield's trembling hand and set the cup before him.  

Without sitting down, he said, "You're going to have to answer some questions while those kick in, Mr. Scoffield.  If you want a shorter sentence I need you to answer everything as honestly as you're able."

Scoffield's one eye glared up at Eddie with shock. 

"Sentence?!  I just lost an eye for gods' sake!  Prob'ly gonna lose my job and license, too, and then what will Hannah do?  She's got the di'betus and god knows she ain't got the stamina for work— It don't matter.   None of it don't matter."