Resurrection

Chapter Nine

For the second night in a row, Eddie watched an ambulance take Scoffield away.  The EMTs had applied a compress over his bleeding eye socket, sedated him, and headed straight back for the emergency room.  The conformer in place of his lost eye had come loose during the interrogation, a fact which Katherine had pointed out with no small hint of accusation. 

 As far as the officers were concerned, they'd gotten what they needed from Scoffield.  A copy of his confession had been sent to the D.A., who reassured Eddie and Daryl that they had garnered enough evidence to charge Scoffield with involuntary vehicular manslaughter.

As soon as he had a spare moment, Eddie rushed into a bathroom stall to press a wad of wet paper towels over his face and calm his nerves.  He could not, would not, get picked up off the floor by his coworkers again.  With each minute that passed, he pressed the sight of Scoffield's bloody face away from the forefront of his mind.  Slowly his terror at recalling his own encounter with the boy and the driver in the snow faded from immediacy.  A thread of fear still thrummed in his gut when he finally left the bathroom, but he didn't want to confront the questions it raised.  Not yet.

On his way down the hall, he stopped by the door to an unused office.  They had left Cheque to sleep in there until they figured out what to do with him.  Eddie's stomach tightened as he looked into the small window.  He half-expected the boy to be staring back at him with that same teary-eyed gaze he'd seen in the snow.  

The boy slept on his side on a cot against the wall, his head comically small poking out from a mound of blankets.  Not a tear or terrible thing in sight.  Just a little boy sleeping off his exhaustion.  Eddie shook his head at his absurd thoughts and joined Daryl in the interrogation room.

Daryl was not one to celebrate or self-congratulate on this sort of occasion, for which Eddie was grateful.  They both expressed relief at seeing the hysterical man taken from their custody.  A beer or two and a short retracing of the events— the way they usually unwound after a particularly busy shift— would have been in the cards.  

However, tonight had been messier than most nights.  Since the janitorial staff only cleaned on early Monday and Thursday mornings, it fell to them to clean up the blood in the interrogation room.  His partner was already dousing everything in a generous mist of Clorox.

Daryl said, "For a minute I thought you were gonna leave me here by my lonesome with all this blood."

Eddie answered, "Nah, just been holding it since before we started with Scoffield."

Half-heartedly, Daryl mm-hmmed, and said, "Well.  Tonight was fuckin' weird."

Eddie dipped a bloody rag in the mop bucket by the table and watched the tendrils of red curl and creep into the water.  He grunted in agreement.

"As a matter of fact," said Daryl, "these last two nights have been fuckin' weird."

"We've seen accidents worse than the one last night, partner.  And we've had perps get hysterical during interrogations before.  Hell, this is a pretty tame Friday night."

As Daryl scrubbed Scoffield's chair--it made a wet metallic wiping sound--and said, "You know what I mean."

He knew exactly what Daryl meant.  Eddie did not usually pass out at the scene of a fatal accident.  Eddie did not usually allow an interrogation to get so out of hand.  And, worst in Eddie's mind, he didn't usually lie to his partner.

"Did you get a hold of that Castellanos cousin?" Daryl asked.

..speaking of lies... 

Eddie answered, "Left a couple messages.  Haven't heard back yet." 

In fact, Eddie hadn't yet found the words to say when he made that phone call.  He would have to figure it out sooner than later. 

He deflected. "Checked on the kid before I came in.  He's still out."

Daryl laughed, "He passed out the minute his head hit the cot.  Didn't even have a pillow yet.    Snored right through breakfast and lunch.  Woke up hungry as hell at about six when you were headed to the hospital to escort Scoffield here."

"I'll see if I can get anything else out of him after we're done here.  Maybe Castellanos will finally call back tonight."

"It's Friday.  Guy might be out tossin' 'em back," Daryl responded.  He sprang up from a pink splotch on the floor and said, "Oh, reminds me!  We watching the game at your house or mine this weekend?"

"Eh... I dunno if this weekend is good for me.  Carmen's pretty sour about me not coming home for a couple nights." 

He had an idea that Ramona might also be pretty sour, but she was easier to cheer up than Carmen.

Daryl said, "It's almost Thanksgiving.  Family time means a lot to her."

"She knows the job," Eddie said with finality, wanting to move on from the subject of his family.

Daryl shrugged. "Well, my place still smells like my ex's mangy pit bull, but you're welcome to come to mine.  Still gotta figure out who to root for on Turkey Day."

Their conversation continued with predictions about who would be in the Thanksgiving Day game the following weekend.  After several minutes of rhythmic scrubbing and sloshing water, the room looked like its old mundane self again.  

They wheeled the ruddy mop cart back into the janitorial closet to rinse.

Daryl said, "Do you know what the kid asked me today after dinner?  He said— and don't make fun of my bad Spanish— something about 'visitar a mamá.' My Spanish is pretty horree-bleh, but I am fairly sure that means 'visit Mom.' I asked Perla to double check and she talked with him for a minute.  He wants us to take him to see his mother... at the morgue, Eddie."

They dumped the dirty water into the floor drain in the janitor's closet.  Eddie used the hose to spray out the corners of the bucket. 

"Kids deal with grief in different ways.  Maybe he just hasn't come to terms with it yet."

Daryl stared at Eddie with incredulity, saying, "Kids grow up real fast when they see death, especially as violent as last night's accident.  You've seen it too, Eddie.  They clam up or they cry their faces off for days or they use their imaginary friends to cope with it."

"Seen lots of kids who lost their parents, partner?"

Daryl shook his head. "You know what I mean.  Kids don't— Well, to be blunt, they don't get excited about seeing their dead parents' bodies."

Eddie turned the mop bucket upside down and hung it from a large hook on the wall over the drain. 

He said, "Excited?"

"Like he was asking to go to Chuck E Cheese.  He couldn't wait."

The desk clerk, Perla, sternly hailed them as they left the janitor's closet. "If you're done hosing each other down, boys, you'll wanna come to the front desk."

"Is it the kid?" Eddie asked, wiping his damp hands on the seat of his pants.

"Nope, a gentleman here about Matthew Wilson." 

Daryl whispered, "The dead sedan driver."

...the missionary Cheque was afraid of...

Perla said, "It's his brother."