Ear-Witness Read online

  It’s a nice room, and since it’s only May, it’s pretty comfortable. The furniture is all old, but it’s painted and slip-covered so everything is either wood or a soft buttery cream colour, to match the walls and the rug. A huge painting of me, wearing my bright red sweater, hangs over the couch. Raffi painted it, as a surprise, for Mom’s birthday. I love it. It makes me look at least seventeen.

  Pretending I’m not scared, if it’s a lie at all, is harmless. Mom’s and Raffi’s lies, letting on there’s nothing to be scared of, are pretty harmless too. But there was another lie on my conscience, one I had to think about. I hadn’t been exactly honest with that cop when he asked if Mom had a boyfriend. Now I had to decide whether to tell Mom and Raffi what I’d said, or just keep my mouth buttoned and hope no one would find out.

  The last time I took the button-up option, I’d been grounded for a month. I was only twelve then, and still thought I was smarter than my mother. Kelly and I’d been fooling around with makeup samples in a drug store when all of a sudden she turned her back to the overhead camera and slipped a shiny new lipstick into the pocket of her jeans. Revlon. Some purple colour.

  She was caught, mostly because I lost my cool and started hissing at her, telling her what a stupid ninny she was and ordering her to put it back. Kelly was in big trouble. She didn’t exactly blame me for it, but she was a little chilly for a while. I hadn’t taken the lipstick, and I hadn’t helped Kelly take it either, so my problem wasn’t because of the shoplifting. It was because I pretended the whole thing didn’t happen. When the cop came to the front door to talk to Mom, to let her know about the riff-raff I was hanging out with, I left by the back. That was the worst thing I could have done. I wasn’t just grounded, I was grounded with housework: washing walls, and curtains, and rugs, and bedspreads; cleaning out closets and cupboards. Nobody needs to be that clean.

  Pretending something didn’t happen doesn’t work, so I had to tell the truth about what I said to the cop. But how?

  One way to confess something is to build up to it slowly. You act all quiet and depressed for a while. Then, when you’ve got everybody all worried you’re getting some terrible disease, you cry a little, and eventually burble everything out. But you’ve got all this sympathy first.

  Sometimes I think my mother must have taken a course about teenagers or read a book about us, because things I used to do, all my life, that worked just fine, have been bombing out like you wouldn’t believe. Now she’s into this dumb theory about not rewarding negative behaviour, so if I try acting depressed, she ignores me, or says something charming like Spit it out, Jess!

  So that’s what I decided to do. I’d just tell her, straight out, quick and dirty.

  “I lied to the cops,” I said. “Sort of lied, anyway.”

  Mom’s posture changed from rag-doll to stiff-as-a-board within micro-seconds. “What?” she said. “What? Why on earth would you do that?”

  “You had to be there,” I said. “This jerk cop asked if you had a boyfriend. But the way he said it sounded like he thought you were some kind of tramp, so I got mad. Then he asked if you had some guy living here. Only what he did was ask both questions at once. So when I answered the one about somebody living here, it was like I was answering both. Just Mom and me, I said.

  “Was that woman cop there?”

  “Yeah, but it was a guy who asked the questions.” I didn’t mention the interrogation I got about my father because my mother’s least favourite person in the whole world is Gordon March. It never seems to occur to her that if it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t have me. And if it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have a big fat child-support cheque every month either.

  My mother has such a hate-fix on my father that I decided to stop seeing him until she cooled off. That was three years ago. But I blame my dad too. He could have made things better. If he cared. If he wanted to see me.

  Raffi stood up and stretched. “So the cops don’t even know I exist?” he said. “They don’t know your mom is seeing anybody?”

  “You got it.”

  “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared of them. Me and every other black guy in Toronto. I need the police sniffing around me like I need a hole in my head.”

  Mom’s voice was shaky. “Don’t even joke about that,” she said. One of Raffi’s friends, who is also black, was recently shot at by the cops for no reason at all.

  Raffi hardly ever got upset, so when he did, you really noticed. “Derek is still in the hospital,” he said. “For nothing. For being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “He shouldn’t have run, though,” Mom said. “I’m not saying what the cops did was OK, but you have to remember, if they say halt, you halt.”

  Mom really likes Raffi a lot. He’s been her boyfriend since I was eleven, but he doesn’t live with us. He has a tiny apartment across the street. So I didn’t lie, not really.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was Saturday morning, the second day after the murder, and I was just about awake when Kelly phoned. “Where were you?” I asked. “I looked all over the school for you!”

  “I messed up,” she said. “I’ll tell you later. Can I come over?”

  “Now? Sure. Just don’t panic when you see the yellow crimescene tape. Ray Bird was murdered yesterday.”

  “Jeez, Jess, that’s, that’s ...awful. The big guy married to that airhead with the hair?”

  “Yeah. Well, Tammi is a bit of an airhead, I guess, but I feel sorry for her.” I yawned. “Are you coming right now?”

  “Can I?” she whispered into the phone. “The Pain is watching TV. If I don’t get out of here while she’s distracted, I’m going to have her trailing after me all day.”

  The Pain is Kelly’s little sister. “Come now,” I said. “Please.”

  Kelly weighs almost as much as I do, but she’s a little taller, a natural blonde, and absolutely beautiful. We’ve been best friends since kindergarten. Lately though, since she’s been going out with Joey, I’ve been feeling kind of pushed away. Once I tried to talk to her about it, but all she said was that having a boyfriend changed her life, and I couldn’t understand until I had one too. Sometimes I wish she wasn’t so pretty, but I guess that’s mean.

  After I got dressed, I watched for her from the front window. When I saw her trudging around the corner I raced downstairs and held the door open, so she wouldn’t push the buzzer. “The Countess is still asleep,” I said.

  When we got back upstairs, Mom was standing at the door, making a liar out of me. “I am not,” she said. “Although I might be if some dummy hadn’t phoned at the crack of dawn.”

  “Oh-oh,” Kelly said. “That was no dummy, that was me I waited ’till nine-fifteen...”

  “Not to worry,” Mom said. “It’s time I was up anyway. Have you had breakfast? Jess might make French toast if we ask her nicely.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. “Please, Jess, please.” This was exactly what I used to do to her. Please, Mom, please, I’d whine. It was one of those things that used to work.

  “Sounds great,” Kelly said. “I’ll help.”

  Mom wandered back down the hall. “Save me some,” she called. “I’m going to have a shower.”

  I took eggs and butter out of the fridge, and bread and maple syrup from the cupboard. Kelly leaned against the wall, watching, while I told her about the murder. After she heard the basics, she started asking questions.

  “If Tammi was in the apartment when Ray was killed she must have seen the murderer, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “I guess.” I cracked the eggs into a bowl, and messed them around with a fork. Then I added milk and some nutmeg.

  “So why didn’t he kill her too?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t mad at her,” I said.

  “Jess! She can identify him!”

  I turned the gas on under the frying pan, threw in a hunk of butter and watched it sizzle. “Yeah,” I said. “She could do one of those drawings. Pick eyes and noses and join the
m together.”

  “How many noses does he need?” Kel asked.

  “Ha ha,” I said. “Maybe she was in the back bedroom and he didn’t even know she was there.”

  “But wouldn’t she come out when she heard all that noise?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not, if she was scared.” I soaked six slices of bread in the egg mixture, and put three of them in the pan to fry.

  “And why didn’t she call the cops?”

  “When they were fighting?” I asked.

  Kelly nodded.

  “Maybe she didn’t expect the guy to have a knife,” I said. “Here, you can set the table.”

  “What about after, when Ray’s dead?” She took the knives and forks from me and stood there, holding them.

  “Well, we don’t know exactly when that happened.”

  “Look, you’re the one who said you heard somebody falling in the night...”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think he was killed then. And that’s when she started bawling.” I took the cutlery from her hand, and set three places. Kelly didn’t even notice.

  Mom, all pink and shiny from her shower, opened the fridge door and peered inside. “I don’t know what I want,” she said.

  I poured three glasses of orange juice and handed her one.

  “Do we know when she called the cops?” Kelly asked.

  “They came just after Jess left for school,” Mom said. “Tammi said she just woke up and found him dead. Right then. In the morning.”

  “Even though she cried all night?” I asked. “She’s lying!”

  “Maybe she was in shock,” Mom said. “Maybe she couldn’t function at all.”

  “And maybe,” Kelly said, “she was waiting for him to die.”

  Kelly has always had an absolutely wicked imagination, but this was too much. Mom and I stared at her.

  “That’s a horrid thing to think about,” Mom said. “I can’t believe Tammi would do that.”

  “Why not?” Kelly said. “If she hated him? If she had enough of being bashed around? Maybe she just sat there and let him bleed to death.”

  “You’re sick, Kel,” I said. “I don’t think so. Tammi isn’t the smartest person I ever met, but she’s not mean. And she was really upset that morning. At least I thought so.” I looked at Mom. “What do you think?”

  “She was really upset,” Mom said. “But that could be for any number of reasons. Watch the toast, Jess.”

  I flipped three perfect pieces onto a platter, which I put on the table. Then I carefully laid the last three in the pan.

  “How else can we explain why she didn’t get help until morning?” Kelly asked.

  “We can’t,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

  After breakfast we left Mom with the dishes and walked over towards the library, so I could return my book-report book and take out another. There was a tournament going on at the tennis courts beside the school, and we sat on a bench to watch. The players were all men.

  “So what’s happening with you?” I asked. “Where were you yesterday?”

  Kelly’s eyes followed the game in front of us as the ball flew from one end of the court to the other. “I did a dumb thing,” she said. “I went to that clinic, the place where you can get birth control stuff.” Then she turned towards me and made a goofy face.

  I was quiet for a minute. I wasn’t exactly shocked, but I wasn’t exactly expecting something like that either. “So what happened?” I said.

  She sighed. “I never even talked to anyone. I just sat in the waiting room for a while, and then I took off.”

  “You could go back,” I said. “You want me to go with you?”

  “I don’t know. Thanks, though.”

  An old man with a small rat-like dog on a retractable leash sat on the bench beside us. “Where are all the women?” Kelly said. “Don’t they play tennis?”

  “Home with the babies,” I said.

  She shrugged, looked sideways at the old man, and nudged me to my feet. We followed the path that ran beside the school and came out onto Jameson. “I came this close,” she said, showing me a space the width of her thumb, “to letting Joey do it. Without ... anything.”

  “Oh, Kel,” I said. “Aren’t you scared that ...”

  She shook her head and turned a bright pink. “It’s not that easy to stop him, Jess. And anyway,” she blushed, “I really want to do it.”

  “This is probably a dumb question,” I said. “But why? Why no condom?” This was something I couldn’t figure out at all. Why everybody didn’t use them, like you’re supposed to.

  She giggled. “You have to be there. Joey says it’s like washing your feet with your socks on.”

  I didn’t know what to say, then. It sounded to me like Joey wasn’t thinking of Kelly at all, but who was I? I thought for a minute, then I decided. I was her best friend, that’s who I was. Jealous, maybe, that she had a boyfriend and I didn’t, but I didn’t want her to get hurt.

  “Doesn’t he care about you?” I said. “What if he’s got AIDS or something? What if you get pregnant?”

  Kel looked up and down the street, like she was expecting to see somebody she knew. “He cares, and he doesn’t have AIDS, and I won’t get pregnant. He’s just stubborn.” Then she grabbed my arm and pulled me into the library.

  It was obviously time to talk about something else. “I had another scene with the Roach,” I said. “Yesterday. That’s why I was looking for you.”

  “He’s a slime, Jess. You’re going to have to do something about him. I still think you should let Joey and the guys talk to him. Or whatever. Shake him up a little.”

  “Um,” I said. Joey, Kelly’s boyfriend, was huge, with arms and legs as big as trees. I didn’t know whether I liked him or not, or even if I wanted to like him, but I knew exactly what I thought of his friends. I couldn’t stand them. Guys who pass around joints on street corners and elbow each other when girls pass by aren’t my kind of people. They might scare off Ronny Roach, but they scared me off too. I didn’t want anything to do with them. It was time to change the subject again.

  “Remember Mrs. Jones, in grade seven?” I said.

  “Mrs. Jones and the erogenous zones!”

  “Mrs. Zones, we called her. Do those, um, places really feel nice? When Joey does... whatever?”

  Kel bit her bottom lip and crinkled up her eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “If he’s gentle, they feel totally superb.”

  “I can just see you,” I said. “Making those little whimpering noises and heaving your butt up and down. Like in the movies.”

  Suddenly we were ten years old again, doubled over on a street corner, laughing so hard we almost peed ourselves.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Two double chocolate, one regular coffee,” Sheena said. “Jess?”

  I ordered a muffin and a tea. It was Monday, after school, a week and three days since the murder. The doughnut shop was crowded and full of second-hand smoke. My eyes stung, and after three minutes in the place I already stunk like an old ashtray. Sheena didn’t seem bothered at all.

  “Shoulda ordered something chocolate, Jess,” she said. “Makes you grow. Look at me if you don’t believe it.”

  “Is it a problem?” I asked. “Being so tall? Is that a rude question?”

  “Nah. It was me who mentioned it first. It used to bother me. I was the biggest girl in the whole darned town when I was growing up Now, on the force, being big is an advantage.” She grinned, then took a huge bite from her first doughnut.

  I peeled the paper off my muffin. “My problem is weight,” I said. Then I put the muffin back on the plate.

  Sheena frowned. “Nothing wrong with you. Still got a little babyfat maybe. That’s all.”

  “Nothing wrong that losing twenty pounds won’t fix,” I said. I looked down at the muffin. Blueberry, my favourite.

  “Ah,” she said. “Now I get it.” She took another bite. Crumbs dribbled down her chin and settled on the dark front of her uniform. “You
think about your body all the time, right? First thing the world sees about you, is that twenty pounds?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You want to be some anorexic model?”

  “Well I don’t want to be anorexic, just thin.”

  “Hate your body?”

  I groaned. How do you tell a cop to lay off?

  “Think you look like a sack of potatoes with a string around the middle?”

  “A walrus,” I said. “In tight jeans.” I had to work on my face. What she was saying was sort of funny, but she was making me feel stupid, and if it killed me, I wasn’t going to laugh.

  “Helps a lot, doesn’t it? Being so down on yourself?” She demolished her second doughnut, then wiped her chin with the paper napkin.

  I dipped the tea bag in and out of my cup, then sipped the contents. There aren’t any calories in tea.

  Sheena leaned across the table and looked me straight in the eyes. “There comes a point when you gotta decide, Jess. Get on with life, or dig a hole and bury yourself. I don’t figure you for a hole-digger, but maybe I’m wrong.”

  I looked right back at her. “You have crumbs on your uniform,” I said.

  “Thanks.” She brushed them off quickly, then pulled out her notebook. “Now,” she said. “We got business to discuss. You said the Birds didn’t have visitors. Could you be wrong? Mrs. Bird, says they had people there all the time. Mr. Bird did, late at night. And that’s why she didn’t pay any attention to their guest. Never even saw him, she says.”

  I closed my eyes. Tammi had to be lying, but why couldn’t somebody else be the one to rat on her? Why me? When I opened my eyes again, Sheena was still there, waiting.

  “This is a murder investigation, Jess,” she said. “Loyalty to friends has no place here.”

  I shrugged to give myself a little time. “The only person I ever saw there was Tammi’s girlfriend. The one who drives her home from bingo. Terri.”