Chapter 6

Intrigued. Puzzled. Disoriented. Hungry. Jeffery felt it all as he uncrossed his legs and allowed them to straighten as he grew taller and prepared to walk to the door. The door was still shut and locked, since childhood his mother had this method of dealing with his friends it went along the lines of: opening the door, greeting the person opposite of the frame, and shutting it again without letting whoever it was into the house while she called him and forced him to trudge all the way over there to let them enter.

It seemed like much too much time had passed by the time he had stood up to head towards the door, it felt like the man who wished to speak with him would have surely became aggravated and bored and would have left by now, Jeffrey however knew it was just that feeling of moving in slow motion that hits people when they stand up too fast and only a few seconds had occurred in real-time. He allowed his toes to sink deeply into the carpet and curled them a little before lifting them up again to rinse and repeat the act of walking he had become fond of as a mode of transportation for much of his life. He held his breath for the last step as he exited the room into the hall to prepare his sock for the harsh non-carpeted surface to follow. As his shoulders passed through the doorframe he immediately wished he could have taken back the breath-hold, standing on the opposite side of the open door and mom’s warm smile was an officer of the law. The feeling of not being able to breathe in and gasp sent his heart racing and an almost panicked sense of false dry-drowning filled his person. He quickly gathered his composure to steady his heartbeat and tried to keep the same pace he entered the hall with as he continued down it, failing of course from his terrible abilities of multitasking he stumbled on his fourth left step and only caught himself enough to stand upright when he was less than a meter from the cop. His mother looked happy and clueless, the thought that he may be in some sort of trouble hadn’t passed through her mind yet, and to tell you the truth, Jeffrey thought to himself, she probably didn’t even process the fact that this was a police officer even though his shiny brass badge was gleaming brilliantly from the soft light emanating from the standing lamp next to the door. She said something about leaving you two boys alone and began to walk away and the man at the door followed this up with something along the lines of ‘would you like to step outside for a moment sir?’ but Jeffrey was still stuck in the moment and was simply standing and staring and, from the policeman’s point of view, stalling.

The cop reminded Jeffrey of one of those awesome detectives from the Dick Tracey era. The way his tan fedora matched his long trench coat, his faded vertical striped shirt with bold brown suspenders almost melded his unclipped holster into the whole ensemble; making it almost a very normal sight that wouldn’t even put the most uneasy of anti-firearm activists in any sort of alarm. The man’s face was rugged and intimidating, it was that kind of face only highly experienced police detectives earn, the kind that looks scruffy even when freshly shaven, it was woven with wrinkles only possibly created through years of grimacing, looking at things every day that most don’t have to see once in their lives. Jeffrey was struck with the realization that perhaps this man wasn’t here about the parking tickets and tried to gulp down all the air he was still allowing to go sour inside his lungs which of course only ended in a giant lump in his throat. With the first fluid motion within the cop-civilian relationship Jeffrey slipped into his shoes, grabbed his jacket off the rack and shut the door behind him, all the while getting his breathing figured out again. Funny that in times of most severe desperation that we lose control of our most primitive living techniques and substitute them for intense observation of whether or not that girl finds us attractive, Jeffrey took a half-second to ponder.

The man pulled out a soft pack of Dubious Blacks and tapped the top until a filter exposed itself out of the torn paper, he then lifted it to his mouth, paused, and instead pushed it in Jeffrey’s direction.

“Cigarette?” The man offered. Jeffrey stuttered in response but still lifted the cigarette with his left hand and looked back at the door as if he was fine with smoking as long as his mom did not see it. By the time he turned back the detective had already put away the pack, lit his own cigarette, and had placed the lighter in perfect position to light Jeffrey’s as he spun back around.

“Your girlfriend has just been found dead. Murdered.” The man spoke before Jeffrey even had a chance to thank him for the smoke, so he took the sudden news with one hand in the air finger pointed towards the man and with his eyes open as if about to speak. This however did make it easier for him to make it to his next position, which was gaping mouth and hand on man’s shoulder. All Jeffrey could think to say was:

“Ex-girlfriend.”

“Well obviously she is now.” The detective said wittily as he took out a notepad and flipped to a new page to begin scribbling ‘took news suspiciously well, first thing he did was make a joke.’ He did not bother trying to be conspicuous about what he was writing down at all and upon reading what the man was writing as he wrote it Jeffrey quickly realized his poor choice of words and he became even more uneasy, more so than he ever thought possible. He also made the realization that these were his first steadily spoken words to the detective and he had no idea (unlike the rest of the world) that this dashed word could be so self-incriminating.

Normally, this sort of thing would be the key to naming a prime suspect for the case, which Jeffrey already was prior to the meeting at hand, through the testimony of Annalise’s neighbour, Janet, who told the police of an argument overheard earlier between the used-to-be-couple. Janet had that sexy shade of brown hair and she knew it, allowing it to fall in perfect waves down onto her cleavage line to make it seem all the more sexy, she was a meddler, and Jeffrey hated her. This Dick Tracey wannabe though was much different than any old cop, and he saw the extreme nervous uneasiness not as a sign of guilt but more of a sort of cute complete obliviousness to everything that made no doubt in his mind that this man was a killer. He shifted his eyebrows to get rid of the intensity he usually had, clipped his holster and stuck his hand out towards Jeffrey,

“The name is Detective Clark Wesson,” Jeffrey feebly stuck out his hand and let Clark do all the shaking, once again feeling lost for words. What was happening to him? He used to be such a good-on-his-toes type guy.

“There’s a bar just down the street, let’s go for a drink and see if you can help us out.” Detective Wesson said as he stepped away from the house in a very follow the leader fashion, he was not much for the classic stand and interview in the cold way of policing.