Every Little Thing Page 26

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I know this man. I don’t think he’ll hurt me.”

  “Sir, let’s stay calm. I need you to place a sizeable object between you and the offender. A table. It might be best if you join the victim in his car and wait—” But Cohen heard the sirens coming. That quickly, the police station a two-minute drive from Lee’s house. He hung up on the woman and looked up. Lee was gone. Not in the kitchen. He heard Lee’s TV flick on, the news blaring something about a tropical storm. He’d crawled back into bed, bloody clothes and all. The knife still under the kitchen table.

  The cops came in like a small militia, shouting Police and pointing guns. Something in the panic of it all had amplified the wispy-crackling of static from their walkie-talkies. Cohen put his hands up and pointed to Lee’s bedroom. They arrested Lee on the spot, cuffed him, brutally, his chest crashing into the floor, his left cheek pancaked into hardwood. One cop had his knee pressed into Lee’s back so hard Cohen pictured Lee’s ribs snapping like spaghetti sticks. A man that old, knocked down and pinned to the floor. Three on one. All that shouting and panic. The contrast between how the police were looking at Lee and how Cohen was. It was too much to feel real.

  She was pregnant when she left you to live with Lee. And then the pattering of police boots derailed his train of thought. He looked over at the bloody knife under the kitchen table again.

  Three officers scooped a handcuffed Lee off the floor like he was a tagged animal. His glasses had fallen off his face. One officer looked down at his glasses, stared, like he was contemplating if he’d pick them up or not. He did and he put them on Lee’s face in time for Lee to turn to Cohen as they guided him out of the house, and Lee shouted, “I did this for you, and you had me arrested! I did this for you and Allie! But you just wanted my house, didn’t you!”He spat.

  All eyes on Cohen now. Three officers took Lee out of the house, and one stayed behind with Cohen. Notepad in hand. Cohen said, “That’s not what it sounded like.”

  The officer licked his fingers and grabbed the edge of his notepad. Found a fresh page. He motioned to the couch in the living room. “I’m constable MacDonald. We need to vacate the scene of the crime.”

  Cohen sat on the couch; the constable on the edge of the loveseat. The cop’s phone rang just before his mouth got started on his first question. He laid the notepad on the cushion beside him and talked for three or four minutes in yeahs and okays and uh-huhs. Cohen stood up. He went to go see if the paramedics had arrived and to see how Keith was doing, but the constable stuck his hand up at Cohen, Don’t move. Through the window, he saw that the paramedics hadn’t arrived yet.

  Two more officers, new on the scene, walked through the living room and into the kitchen with something like toolboxes in their hands. The constable clicked his cellphone closed and picked up his notepad.

  “I need a statement. What is your last name, Cohen?” and Cohen wondered how the officer knew him by name.

  “Davies.”

  A nod, a scribble. “I need to advise you that you’re entitled to have a lawyer present.”

  The comment never struck Cohen as accusatory or extreme. He knew the police had disclaimers to make before everything they did; that they were required to shout police at potential criminals before drawing a gun and to tell everyone they talked to that they were entitled to a lawyer. Bullshit formalities, for legal reasons. Cohen made a facial gesture that that was fine and told the officer his story. He told him why Keith had come by— suspicions that he and Allie were more than friends—and he gave the details of that conversation. He mentioned Lee’s contempt for Keith.

  “...I know they don’t get along. I know Lee’s thrown flower pots at the man’s car. I know Lee’s been increasingly unstable, but I never saw this coming. I never saw Lee capable of this. He’s a kind and big-hearted man, but he’s suffering from a mental disorder. Dementia is part of it. But, still.”And then he thought of it and mentioned that he’d found that knife in Lee’s room a few times and kept taking it back out.

  “And that never struck you as bizarre or foreboding? It never struck you as a safety risk for others, or Lee himself?” The constable scribbled hurried little words as they talked.

  “No, because it was one of many random things I’d find in his bedroom. I found a corkscrew on his nightstand one day. He doesn’t drink wine. I’d ask him about the knife and he’d get confrontational, and it’s just not worth upsetting the guy. We were in the process of finding suitable long-term care for Lee—”

  “By we, whom do you mean?”

  “By we, I mean Allie and myself. As I mentioned, Allie and I,we were...together. In the past. For years. Lee was a family friend of hers. So Lee and I got close, developed a friendship separate from me and Allie. Recently, she called needing help looking after Lee until she could secure long-term care. I was in a position where I could work from Lee’s until she’d done so. I was happy to help. As a friend of Lee’s.” He was starting to feel like he was lying.

  “How long have you been looking after Lee?”

  “Not quite three months?”

  “Is that six weeks? Seven?”

  “I don’t know. I’d need a calendar. Jesus.” And the officer flipped to the back of his notepad and stuck a calendar in Cohen’s face. “Going on eight weeks, I guess.”

  “And has his condition been the same or has it worsened or improved in that time?”

  “Worsened.”

  “And were you advised by a medical professional to seek a proper care regime for the man? Meaning a facility with trained professionals?”

  “Well, yes, more or less—”

  “I ask that because the phone call I just took confirmed that Lee appears to be unaware of the consequences of what he’s done. This indicates severe mental impairment. It may be construed as negligence on your and Allie’s behalf to have not sought the proper medical assistance. As a result, a man has been stabbed.”

  “No one can predict something like—Honestly, no one would have guessed Lee was capable of violence.”

  “And yet Keith Stone has told police that Lee recently punched Allie Crosbie in the face, just weeks after nearly breaking her hand in a doorframe, on purpose. And you yourself told me he’s thrown flower pots at Keith in the past, correct? That he’s been carrying a knife on his person?”Cohen had no retort. His jaw lowered, shocked by the truth of the statement, but no words came out. The officer nodded and said, “He hits a woman and keeps a knife on his bedside table, and you tell me he never struck you as violent?”

  “You’ve got to understand. I still think of Lee as the man he was before this disease—”

  “I need to ask if you’ve been having sexual relations with Keith Stone’s partner, Allie Crosbie, since moving into Lee’s, as his makeshift caregiver.”

  “Does that really matter?”

  “Yes. It may.”

  “How so?”

  “Motive. I’m told that Keith Stone, the victim—”

  “Motive?”

  “I’m told that Keith Stone, the victim, says it felt like you were part of it. That you were distracting Keith so that Lee could sneak up on him, from behind, and stab him. Or, at best, that you had to have seen Mr. Brown coming, given the length of the kitchen, but that you didn’t warn him at all—”

  “Did Keith leave out the part that I just saved his life? Lee knew what he was doing with that knife. I stopped Lee from hauling the knife up through the man’s organs and he’s telling you I, what, put a hit out on him?”

  “Second thoughts, perhaps? You changed your mind about a criminal plan?”

  “Cold feet, yeah, that’s it! Are you kidding?”

  “Sir, I should advise you I’m officially taking your statement, and sarcasm will not come across to those who read it. Sarcasm will not help anyone and certainly not you. I’ve written here now that you’ve said, Cold feet, yeah, that’s it. Do you understand?”

  “Do I need a lawyer
?”

  “At this point, I’d like you to come down to the station with me. You’re entitled to a lawyer’s presence, yes, and I’m to make that perfectly clear. Not that anyone is accusing anyone other than Lee Brown of anything here. Mr. Stone is understandably in shock, but has, yes, implied you were negligent, at best, in this incident. And that you may have a reason or two to have wanted him hurt. It’s my job to explore that notion while the incident is still fresh in all of our minds. Understood?”

  “So how does this work? I’m more than willing to be truthful and detailed, but I want a lawyer.”

  THE INTERROGATION ROOM was a small, cold rectangle. Cement walls. No windows. One long strip of fluorescent lightning buzzed above them. There was a steel table welded to the floor with a single handcuff chained to the tabletop. They didn’t use it on Cohen.

  Cohen didn’t know his lawyer. He chose one from a list an officer offered him, and not too long after the phone call, a tired-looking man with a tan briefcase had shown up and introduced himself. His limp handshake and his baggy black eyes said, I don’t give a shit. They said, I’m too tired for this.

  Cohen had too many questions of his own to care about answering theirs, paired with visions of Keith in critical condition, Lee in a prison cell, Allie, five or six years ago,pregnant. He had no idea what Allie knew about any of this. How much of it was true, how serious it all was. And he had no idea Zack’s father had officially placed a complaint with the police, just two nights back, stating that Cohen had threatened him, in public, and not for the first time. The words the police used: slander, assault, and uttering threats. The quote, “Maybe I should stick a knife in your hand to teach you a lesson.”

  Cohen shouted, “I never said that! I never said to teach you a lesson, and the quote is out of context. He’s a negligent father, and because of that negligence, his son cut his hand on a knife! So I was only referring back to the child’s hand injury, by a knife!”

  “So the to teach you a lesson was implied in the threat?”

  “I didn’t threaten the man. I was making a point. I was referring to his parental negligence by referring to Zack’s bandaged hand.”

  And Cohen’s lawyer intervened. “We’re not here about—”

  But Cohen, overtaken with emotion, silenced his lawyer. “You’re taking out-of-context paraphrases, from negligent fathers and from jealous fiancés, to concoct what theory exactly?”

  Looking over a file, smugly, like a man in control, “You do have a history of violence and questionable behaviour. Keith Stone has told us about your role in Allie’s father’s death. It means, you can rationalize devious action the way criminals can.”

  “Whatever Keith told you about Allie’s father is only half true. I’d talked him out of...what he did. And then he did it anyway. And it was fucking horrible, for me more than anyone!”

  “Your name also surfaced from an incident in Halifax. In which you jabbed a key into a kid’s face.”

  “That’s. Different. It didn’t even go to court. It was self-defense. They had my goddamn arm stuck—” Cohen paused, looked at the man. “Keith and Allie are the only two people on earth who’d know that. Are you even allowed to take sides like this? To take their comments and use them against me?”

  Cohen’s appointed lawyer was staring at Cohen like he didn’t know what he’d walked in on, and he started rummaging through papers, frantically.

  “It was uncontrolled retaliation and speaks to an inability to contain your anger.”

  Cohen turned to his lawyer, “Can he cite something not on a criminal record?”

  The lawyer looked like his allegiance to Cohen was shifting. He went to say something but the cop cut him off. “This I do have on file. Last week you threatened to stab a man in the hand, in front of many witnesses. You were fired on the spot for an act of aggression. It doesn’t bode well,Mr. Davies. You said what you said in front of a child, no less,which by anyone’s standards shows an inability to control your own anger. When we visited your employer yesterday, he reluctantly informed us that you did, unquestionably, have a troublesome vendetta against this child’s father and that you uttered threats involving a knife. Tonight you allowed a mentally impaired man to stab your former lover’s fiancé.”

  The lawyer intervened, finally, “That’s unfounded specula-tion—” But Cohen shouted over him, “Allowed? I allowed Lee to stab Keith?”

  “The location of Lee’s bedroom, and the length of the kitchen, suggests that if you didn’t know what Lee Brown’s intentions were, you at least had to have seen him coming. This assumption can be verified by your and Keith’s statements of where you were standing when the stabbing occurred. We have statements, photos, and measurements of the kitchen, and you must have seen Lee coming with the knife. An old man like that.”

  “I didn’t see him coming because I had my head down, quite in shock, on account of some very big news Keith had just told me. He—He’s implied I have a—” Cohen’s lawyer put a hand on Cohen’s hand and said, “This is a bunch of speculation and nothing more. There’s nothing solid here. And unless you have a charge to lay against my client, we’re going to leave now.”

  The officer looked at Cohen. “No one is saying you didn’t stop him. Once the knife was in. But we have police officers, myself included, who heard Lee openly state he did this for you and Allie. We have a witness who has seen you and Allie out in public, alone. We have Allie Crosbie’s confession of recent sexual relations with you, and, I’m told, Lee is in his holding cell right now, incoherently yelling about how we’ve all sabotaged his last chance to make a difference. A statement that means his actions were premeditated. A plan was formed. You understand now? There’s clearly a lot of pent up anger in that man, which, of course, you could’ve used to your advantage. You seem remarkably indifferent to the fact a man has been stabbed. Chillingly so.”

  “And you seem remarkably intent on making the stabbing about something more than one man’s dementia. You expect me to show concern for a man who’s telling you I had him stabbed?” Cohen’s lawyer kept trying to tell him something. “And I might be a little more concerned about Keith’s well-being if I hadn’t of witnessed him being well enough to stick around and punch me in the face four or five times before calling his own ambulance.”Both the officer and the lawyer stared at Cohen’s fat lip—the crusty scabbing—and the black mounds rising along his cheekbones.

  The constable turned his attention to the lawyer now. “Your client has a bit of an attitude. I must say.”

  And his lawyer said, “I think we’re all done here.”

  Cohen and his lawyer walked to their cars together. Cohen apologized for cutting him off so many times in the interrogation and asked him, “I haven’t done anything wrong, right? They don’t have any charges or grounds for any further investigation or anything?”

  He wasn’t overly convincing as he said softly, “We’ve got nothing substantial to worry about here. Rest easy.”He took his keys out of his coat pocket. “This is me.”He pointed to his black sedan. It beeped, flashing lights as he pressed a door opener on his keychain. “We’ll be in touch.”

  A yawn.

  COHEN HADN’T BEEN home for weeks; when he plucked his keychain from his coat, he had to take a second look at his house key to be sure it was the right one. His mail slot was in his door, and enough mail had piled up behind the door to obstruct its swing as he pushed it open. His house was so quiet he pressed play on a stereo before picking up the mail. Sorting it. Nothing but junk mail and bills. He leaned against a hallway table. Looked around his house like he was searching for something. Something that should be filling the house with more life, sound.

  He went upstairs. Turned his shower on, like maybe a shower could help. He ran the water, but took a second before taking his clothes off, leaning back against the bathroom counter—arms folded, head down—until the shower had been running so long, he could feel spongy moisture in the air. Breathe it in like smoke. He undressed, alm
ost tripped in tugging his underwear free from an ankle it had caught on.

  With the shower curtain drawn, and the temperature that high, he was standing in a hot cloud of steam. The free massage of hovering condensation. He put his head against the wall. Under the showerhead. Little bits of conversation coming to him. What Lee had done,what Keith had said,what the police had said. He’d left the police station opening and closing his cellphone. No calls from Allie. He couldn’t call her. It’d play right into the cop’s fantasy.

  His guess was Allie couldn’t possibly call him from Keith’s hospital room. Who are you calling? And she had to be torn: the stabbing would force her to bar Lee from her life. It was that black and white now, how she’d have to forget about a twenty-year kinship with the man.

  She was pregnant when she left you to live with Lee.

  He turned the water up higher. The sting was soothing after the first few branding jabs of water. He pictured Allie in the hospital room with Keith, playing the concerned fiancé. A hamster in a shaking cage. Her actions limited to what she ought to be saying and what she ought to be doing. But Cohen deserved an explanation, and he’d get it. He couldn’t call her, and yet the whole drive home he was opening and closing his cellphone, dialling the first few numbers and hanging up. He got out of the shower and checked his phone again, and there was nothing. Again.

  He brought the towel to his face. Pressed hard, scouring the water from his cheeks and eyes. A sigh. He thought about the day Allie had come by and found his computer open to the adoption website. She looked nothing like a woman who’d given his child away. She looked exactly like a woman who wanted him to have a child. She’d said it, and her face had been glowing. I’m so excited for you.

  Keith had said, shouted, Might not have even been yours in a crass way that marred Allie more as a slut than a mother of a child. Her and I started in long before she left you. Keith always spoke about Allie as if Cohen and Keith knew her to be a different woman. And through their eyes, she was: how Keith saw her and how Cohen saw her was a reflection of themselves. It was a reflection of what they wanted from life and what they needed from her to get it. He ran his towel through his hair, wondering what she might have needed from him, from Keith, and the kinds of things she might not have gotten from either of them.