Day 153 - Upside Down- Chapter 1 - (2267 words)

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Upside Down, back to front

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 1

After

It's something you learn early on, the ability to spot a liar. Or more rightly the ability to spot a lie as pretty much everyone is a liar in some form or another. You need to be able to know the difference between a lie, denial, delusion and plain obfuscation. Policework 101, everybody lies some time.

The man across the table from Detective Sherry is definitely lying, trying to hide something. The Detective knows this, like he always knows when someone is lying. Unfortunately that does little to uncover the truth, it just tells you to look for it, not where to search or even what to look for.

It just tells you to look.

"What else can you tell me?" The detective prodded at the man sitting across the desk.

Silence settles, empty on the desk. The man the detective interviews is not technically a suspect or a person of interest, but a man confessing to killing another man. Thats the very curious thing to the detective. Why does a man who readily confesses to murder lie about it? He is staring directly ahead looking towards the detective but not at him at all. Then a few mortally long seconds later he says something, but it's not an answer.

"What else do you want to know?"

That's calculated and obviously a deflection, not proof of anything but evidence definite but indicative of something to be sure. Most people are just not that careful when talking to the police unless they are guilty. Far from circumspect most people fall over themselves to share everything and nothing of consequence. Very few people think and act so particular about their answers and it rings giant alarm bells and he feels the need to dig further in to the man's story - whatever that may be. There's something there, it's deep and it's important to the man. The interviewer does not know how relevant this may be to the process, it may be evidence of many things, none of which have any bearing on the outcome of this interview.

Like Everest, you do it because it's there, it's a tough job and it would be easy to ignore it and move the process on - but it feels like a challenge, something worth pursuing, filling what appears to be a giant hole in this man's self-projected image. What helps is that this is not the first time that the detective had met this man. James and the detective had met before investigating a fatal car fire.

A man, met twice each time near to a death. One confessed and one coincidence? Only there is no such thing as a coincidence, not to the detective.

"Tell me about that day then, you know, the day when we first met. After the fire." Again the silence settles and the three-quarter gaze does not waver.

"I'm unsure that I can shed any more light on that day. I wasn't ..." and then a crack has appeared as the man tails off. The air changes between them, thins slightly as James's gaze moves edgewise for a moment and then it locks back in place once the thought is completed. "… wasn't there for most of it."

"Well let's start with the time you were there, when did you arrive?"

"Just... just before he started screaming." James does not blink, when recalling a horrific scene which makes the detective even more suspicious.

But suspicious of what?

"Tell me anyway." Sherry keeps his gaze fixed.

The man shifts uncomfortably in the chair, the stark room with its table, two chairs and a microphone suddenly takes on a smaller dimension with his discomfort and the gaze moves in a pattern. Detective Sherry recognises the pattern from the last obviously difficult question he posed. Is it practiced, or is it consistency. Again the interviewer know that it is an overlay to something else, but it's either a lie of omission in preparation or it's an honest emotional response to a dishonest, dishonourable emotion. Finding the difference and making the connection to the reason, that's what makes a good detective. Finding lies is easy, uncovering the truth, that's another story.

“Let’s try something easier. Tell me again about the man you killed last night. ”

“Ivan.”

“Yes, Ivan. How did...” Sherry does not get to finish the sentence as James' impatience bubbles.

“I’ve told you already, I killed him, how much do you need to know?”

“All of it. I need to know it all.”

Later

The air was still and silent. It was easy to think that nothing had happened here, but that emptiness lied.

James felt it was unexpected and tense, wondering if this is how it feels immediately afterwards? It was nothing like the last time he had heard someone die. Is violent death always this different? James hoped he'd never find out.

Isn't two enough?

The dissipating glow of twlight did nothing to alleviate the feeling around him at all. Noises were amplified, beyond the normal range of hearing usually. Right now he could hear the breathing of everyone in the room, his own the loudest even above the sobbing gasps of the woman, the burbling of the blood and saliva over her lips dwarfed by the rasping of his own shallow breaths. His airways were pumping hard, in and out rapidly as if exercising but not moving. The hangover feeling after an adrenalin rush.

Manisha has barely moved from the Ivan's side in the scarce time since she awoke to find herself with splitting headache, blood in her eyes and her husband shot with James standing over him. She has barely processed this surreal jumble of images. She's reeling in the still drunk phase of shock, where swimming through thickened air and slowed time is all she knows.

Reason comes with time

She cannot register Samir, her little brother and James's best friend. He is standing, almost silent apart from the noticeable breathing in and out of his mouth, each drawn so carefully as if he has difficulty recalling the skill. James stands with the gun held between him and his friend, and he fancies he can hear the rapid fire of the gun echoed in the other man's beating too-fast heart. He cannot in reality hear either of these things, but in his mind they drown out most other noises now.

James loosens his hold on the gun, lets it drop uncomfortably into the thumb and two-finger grip of his hand. Samir knows that it was he who had taken the fatal action, but is now protected by the posession of the weapon in his best friends hand. All of them huddle about now in deafening silence and now that his sister is conscious again, blinking away blood and tears, he feels released from the bondage of the moment.

The proof he is still alive, still breathing and still real hits him progressively and like a wave it surges forward no matter what and his knees buckled to the ground. Kneeling over the body... no not the body, Ivan... leaning forward, praying to no god at all for anything to come next. Forgiveness, absolution, penance or retribution it doesn't matter what anymore. How it all happened seems to mysterious to ever understand.

Sam cannot look at his sister or the body of his brother in law any longer and stares up like a child into the eyes of the man who is selflessly protecting him from his sisters judgement.

Saving him from the judgement of the law too. How good a friend is it that takes the blame for a crime they did not commit? They had commited a crime, James was not innocent, but Sam had pulled the trigger.

And now? He's crying without tears, or so it seems to the man looking back at him.

The gun is hot in James's hand, barrel burning his palm slightly. He shuffles his fingers uncomfortably and the weight shifts and becomes a pistol grip with a natural move that feels comfortable and disturbing simultaneously.

And now the noise is gone, his own heart beat and racing thoughts crowding the world out in a flood of red and blue.

A few minutes earlier, while Manisha was still out and the blood still pumped openly from Ivan's bullet holed head, James had taken the weapon from his frend and taken the action that framed the picture that Manisha woke to see.

It had taken a small effort to pick up the limp hand of Ivan and curl the fingers around the grip of the pistol. He raised the gun and pointed it carefully away from where he thought anyone was and he fired two rapid rounds hoping they go nowhere. The thoughts of neighbouring houses and their occupants had pressed in on him, but it was too late for the rounds fired. He had pointed down, a 45 degree down angle or so he thought. Minutes later, the noise brought Manisha back to consciousness and the thoughtt of other bodies in the line of fire makes him pause. He can't have hit anyone else could he? Does it matter? Is life more precious because it's an innocent bystander? Of course he answers yes to his own question. You know the answer already, that's why the question even exists.

Logically he processes what he thinks is evidence in his mind. There will be gunshot residue on three sets of hands. Sam's from the killing shot, Ivan and his own from the shots fired randomly. Would they even test for the residue if he confesses? They'd check for Ivan, prove the theory of self defense. Would they test Sam? Manisha? In the heat of the moment you can only plan so much.

Sam and James already know that all the planning in the world is meaningless sometimes.

All that planning and now here they are and there is a second, unexpected and equally violent death.

"Help, police... someone..." James realises that no one can or will hear that strangled voice particularly well, so he clears his throat and calls out again.

Before.

The day was intense, bright, loud and over saturated in colour. He was sure it was all in his head now - the import of future action often outweighing the reality of any given situation and yet knowing this and feeling this were massively apart on almost any scale you care to name.

"It's not too late to back out you know." Sam was serious in his suggestion, but was it really that easy to back out?

No. James knows this “You're joking right?"

They sat in their work positions, the ones they took on a regular basis. James was in drivers seat, he liked it there and the roads were home to him. He drove on instinct, a map buried in his subconscious mind like a homeowner should have in the dark. It was natural thing to be on the road, it had a feeling to James, not like a skill he had learned or that it was knowledge. Sam was the Hopper, in the back, across the bridge of the intercom and staving off boredom with his mate, his best mate in this country. It was racist, but an acceptable one between them to play on his Indian heritage in the hot box of the armoured truck. Samir, Sam to his white friends and skin tone envying Indian ones, was more Kiwi than Indian these days, he had come over when he was 4 years old and had little to no memory of the old country and what that life was like there. He couldn't possibly compare the heat and humidity of the back of the van with living in the sub continent of India with the relative. moderate climes of New Zealand.

"No, I mean we can call it off."

James does not look at the monitor or the mirror, afraid of the truth he might find there. Just because something is technically true means very little in the scheme of things if it cannot be true - not because it is but because it can't.

"You want to tell him that?"

And the usually affable, chatty and reasonable man is suddenly a stone.

"When is it going to happen?"

"I... "

"I know, yes I do. But my watch and I - I can't look at it. He gave it me."

James heart skips a beat. A million silly little scenarios run through his head. Are the being listened to? Are they being traced? Is there a GPS on them? Are they being strung up and along at once? What if...

"At the wedding, like 5 maybe 6 years ago. Before I knew him that well. If I had I would have said more. Manisha never listened to mum, but to me? I could have... but I didn't know then."

The cold shower of relief cascades and makes his skin crawl and shiver and thoughts of this nature realise they are not welcome or helpful here.

"We have to"

"Yeah"