Rough Justice

The air had been muggy that night; a slight fog sent a chill down my spine. Sound seemed to have vanished after they ran away, leaving just me… and a body. Pavement, hard and freezing cold, supported my hands as I remained knelt down for what seemed like hours. The only smell was of the city, its usual mixture of pungent and pleasant odors. The body hadn’t been there long enough to affect its atmosphere. How does a person react to a situation like that? Wrong place, wrong time, someone dead on the sidewalk. Then the noise came, sirens shrieking in the night. They were coming. I felt this burst of panicked energy with the strong desire to run. Should have ran, gotten away from there, but I remained as the police arrived.

I had touched the body. Took me a few weeks to remember that detail. A huge mistake that was. Questions fired at me so fast there was no way of reacting correctly. I didn't stand a chance. To the police it was a simple case; dead body and person standing there. I guess leaving wouldn’t have helped with my fingerprints being there.

That night was like a horrible dream. Took a different route home, having forgotten an engagement with Danny… again. All my focus had been on how I had disappointed him until two thugs, obviously from the EhDonno gang, had pushed past, knocking me aside to the brick wall of an apartment complex. Then after seeing the body, it all spiraled down from there.

A throat was suddenly cleared, shattering my thought process. "Mr. Brooks?”

Snapping back to the present, my focus returned to one of the state attorneys who had been asking questions for the past hour. I seemed to do this a lot lately, let my mind wander into past thoughts, forgetting all that I was doing at the moment. The look on his face made it obvious that he was a bit flustered at my lack of cooperation. “I’m sorry but could you repeat the question, please?” That made him even angrier but, oh well, not much I could do about that now.

“If you were not involved, then who was?” The lawyer thrust the question out with a faked sarcasm. It was obvious to me, and hopefully to anyone else, that he was attempting to use that tone to make it seem like a crazy question to ask.

“I don’t know.” As the words came out of my mouth, my mind was saying something different. I couldn’t just tell them who it was, that would mean death for sure. If they had killed this guy I am sure the gang wouldn’t have a problem getting rid of someone like me. It would have been easy to tell the truth, I would have stood a chance with the jury if I had. Yet I kept silent.