I quickly take control of the situation and call the police, ushering everyone away from the scene, but I’m one man and these people just keep coming, so it’s hard to keep everyone in check. Thankfully the police arrive quickly and we send everyone home, but somehow the reporters are already on our asses. We quickly take everything we can and flee the scene. When I come into my office I immediately start to do everything I can to make sure the picture stays right how we got it from the casket. Right away I put on gloves and carefully put the picture in a plastic wrap, take a photo of it and send it to forensics, although that’s going to take a few days at least. But nonetheless I look at the photo of the picture on my phone and take a good look at the man next to Travis once again. He has a very distinctive look, so I decide to check our criminal database just in case he’s maybe been in jail before.
After looking at my computer for almost three hours, I’m ready to give up. I’ve been glued to my desk since the moment I stepped through the door of my office, and my eyes desperately need a break. Just when I’m about to turn the computer off, I spot a pixelated picture of bright red scar tissue in the corner of the screen. And there he is. He’s staring at me through the screen, ten years younger, with a fresh scar on his face. Next to it it says "Jonas Parker, 3 months, violent assault with a knife”. But it can’t be this easy, it never is. Why would a random gangster we’ve never heard of before want to kill Travis and expose himself after? So I do my research.I try to dig up every piece of information there is about him, I even try to hack into some highly secured websites that mention his sentence, since I don’t have all the qualifications I need to enter them. I even go as far as to stalk his mom’s facebook. There’s a few other guys that went to jail at the same time he did, so I do a bit more digging and I find out they’ve all been arrested next to a small bar a few towns over. So I decide to pay this bar a visit.
When I get up the next day, I put on some ripped jeans and a black tee to look tougher and more normal. I drive for about half an hour, trying to think of all the possible motives this Jonas guy could have, but before I could get to any real conclusions, I arrive at the bar. It’s a shabby, small bar with a few locals hanging outside and the sounds of a football game coming from the inside, so I decide to take a peek. I open the door and immediately get hit with the smell of beer and sweat. Looking around, there’s about fifteen guys, sitting alone or in groups of two or three, either watching the game or drunkenly laughing, although it’s only 11 a.m.
It’s very dimly lit but I can still recognise a face I saw on my computer – one of the guys arrested alongside Jonas. He’s really immersed in the game and doesn’t even notice me taking a seat next to him, until I ask: ”Who’s playing?”.
He looks at me like I’m crazy and says: "You don’t know who’s playing in the rugby super league?”
I shrug.
He just looks at me weirdly:
"It's the Bradford Bulls versus the Catalans Dragons.” And he looks at the TV again.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, just watching the game, but I quickly get tired of it, since I’m not a big sports guy, and decide to just start "questioning him” .
"Do you maybe know a guy named Jonas?”
This is the first time he properly looks at me. He looks me up and down slowly and apparently he sees something suspicious so he quietly asks: "Are you a cop?” I'm so taken aback I can’t do anything but shrug. What did I miss? When I quickly look down I see my police badge peeking out of my pocket. I subtly put it back inside, but the damage is already done by now. Without giving me a chance to explain myself, he just sighs and says: "Look, honestly, I don’t give a rat's ass if you are a cop or not, as long as you leave me out of it. All I know is that Jonas comes here everyday around noon to drink his sorrows away. Now leave me alone.”
Although I’m impressed he told me this much, I can’t help but ask about Jonas a bit more: "What do you mean drink his sorrows away? Did something happen?” "Well, not too long ago word came out that Jonas was a fag, so no one really talks to him anymore. Apparently some pictures circled around with him and some other guy, naked. But Jonas is the one that got the worst of it. The other guy didn’t even get outed or anything, no one even knows who he is. I already told you enough, we are done here now.”
And he gets up and goes to sit in a chair a few tables away. It all makes sense now. Jonas and Travis had an "affair” and when the pictures got out only Jonas received backlash for it. But isn’t it 2008 already? I guess this part of America is still living in the 1960s. Anyways, because he got so mad at Travis, he killed him and even after his death he wanted to show everyone Travis loved that Travis was also gay. But maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions, so I decide to wait for Jonas since it's 11:52.
I’m desperate for a drink. Or maybe two or three. It feels as though all of the bottles of liquor I keep in the cabinet under the sink have evaporated into thin air. I don’t remember drinking that much. I make my way towards the bar Rough Rider, where I’ve occasionally ended my nights. Or mornings. Or, as I now will, an early afternoon. Arizona’s sandy ground leaves marks all over my black shoes, and I focus on the way I walk, so my socks don’t turn into bags of sand. I lower my head, thinking about the scandal I must have caused at the funeral and secretly hoping the detective showed up. He must be banging his head against a wall right now, trying to crack the pictures. ‘Who is the man next to Travis?’ he surely must be asking himself in agony. I wonder if he has yet found out that ‘the man’ often winds up in the bar I can now see only a few meters away. And then, as soon as I start making my way across the crosswalk, I turn my head to the left. If only I had looked both ways before crossing, and if only the man walking a few steps before me had done the same. Now, instead of seeing a car waiting for us to cross the street, I see one reaching the crosswalk at full speed. And maybe I see my life flash before my eyes, but I definitely see the car’s headlights flash. And the last thing I hear is everyone around us starting to scream.
I sit there drinking a pint of beer for about fifteen minutes when I get restless. I get up and start to walk outside when I hear a screeching noise from outside and a loud thud. Someone screams. I run out as quickly as I can, and the first thing I see is blood. So much blood. There’s a red Chevrolet covered with blood that starts to drive in reverse trying to flee the scene. I see people with their phones out, so I’m not worried about not finding the driver and focus rather on the bloodied body lying in the middle of the road. I run up to the body of what seems to be a middle aged man lying on his stomach. I turn him around trying to see his wounds and I’m met with a pair of dead eyes staring towards me, accompanied with a huge scar slashing his face.
Three hours later, I’m standing in the hospital lobby, nervously pacing up and down, ignoring the irritated look of the old woman with hearing aids who’s sitting in the corner. I’ve been here for at least an hour and still no update. I ask every single doctor that comes my way if there’s anything new, but no one wants to tell me anything. So when another doctor comes, I don’t even try to approach him but suddenly he’s right next to me: "We tried the best we could, but Mr. Jonas Parker couldn’t make it.”
So I guess that’s it. Case closed, the murderer is dead and nobody even bats an eye. When I come into my office, everyone is cheering, happy that they can take a few days off, since the murder has been solved. Everyone but me. I didn’t get the closure I need. Is that really all there is to it? A sulky gangster, annoyed that his friends don’t talk to him anymore just deciding to kill his ex because of it? Or is there something else he could have told me if he was still here? I can’t help but run different scenarios in my head while walking to my desk. I quickly scan the documents on my table, seeing one from forensics. It shouldn’t tell me anything I don’t yet know, but I decide to open it just in case. Nothing out of the ordinary, there aren’t any fingertips on the photographs. I guess he was at least smart enough to put on gloves. Nope, everything looks normal.
Except… part of the object is missing? What’s that supposed to mean? I read the document again, but that’s all it says. I take the photograph in my hands and look at it more closely and sure enough, one of the sides is raggedy, like someone has torn a part of it away. How did we not notice this before? I explain everything to my boss but he doesn’t care. Nobody cares. Maybe it got torn while we moved it from the casket, maybe it got torn when the killer tore it apart from other pictures, who knows. But I can’t accept that. Everybody is just so lazy, they try to sweep it under the rug, saying that it doesn’t matter, that it’s not important. Maybe I’m the weird one. Maybe there really isn’t anything odd about the torn side. I couldn’t do anything about it even if I wanted to anyways, not without enough manpower. So I just go home. Another case closed I guess. But what if…
Some time has passed since the incident. I haven’t actually spoken to any of the people from the funeral, I think that we just all process the trauma differently. I haven’t been able to get much sleep, I just go to work and then straight to the gym, during the car ride home I call my mom and then my childhood best friend to keep myself busy. Then I doordash dinner and fall asleep while playing some cheap love series in the background. The idea of Travis having the pictures in the casket haunts me on every step and I try to run away from it all the time.
Today I finished work quite early, since the idiots that were supposed to host the financial meeting haven’t shown up. I did my research and prepared for those guys, but surprisingly I can’t say that I am frustrated… I am very tired. The weather feels nice so I might walk home today. I actually put ballet flats on instead of heels, and I decided to take the path down the local bridge. After a rollercoaster of emotions I have been dealing with in the past month, the thoughts that have been tiring and suffocating me are slowly starting to disappear. The walk feels healing and nostalgic. I still can’t face my inner dialogue completely, so I play some jazz in my headphones and plan the rest of my evening. I think of what I am going to cook for dinner, what show is playing tonight and if the bills are overdue. Maybe I should bake banana bread again and offer it to my neighbours?
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