Finding Jaime

Chapter 110

"I know. Me too," I said. "But I don't know, Meg. They did a real number on him. There's less bruised and broken parts of him than there are parts that aren't. His head. Meagan, they took a bat to his head."

Meagan was silent. I heard her stifle a sob.

"What do we do?" She asked.

"For starters, we find the shits that did this to him. I've called the police and I expect them to be here shortly. Let them see what Jaime's 'friends' did. We know one of them is Justin and that he works for the pizza place. And presumably they go to Santa Monica High, so we'll start there. I'm going after these little assholes."

"Should I bring the kids?" Meagan asked, tentatively.

"No!" I said, louder than I meant to. "Sorry, Meg. No. Don't bring them yet. Jaime looks horrible. I don't want them to see him like this. I don't want them to remember him like this, if..."

I couldn't finish that sentence.

"Okay," Meagan said, quietly.

Two police officers appeared outside of Jaime's ICU room.

"Meag, the police are here. I'm going to talk to them. I'll call you later."

"Okay, Pete. Please let us know everything, okay?"

"Kay," I said.

"Mr. Wentz?" The officer closest to me asked as I came through the sliding door of Jaime's room.

I nodded.

"We were called for a report of an assault. You wanted to report it?"

I nodded again.

"My son," I said, indicating Jaime's broken body in the room behind me. "He was beaten last night and dumped outside our home."

The younger cop looked past me into the room. His eyes widened.

"Shit," he said. I glanced at him. He looked horrified.

"Would it be alright if we went into a more private area to take your statement? There's a conference room just across from the nurse's station."

"I don't want to be too far from him. We - we don't know the prognosis," I said.

"I understand. We won't be far. We can let the nurses know we'll be there and they can come get you if anything happens."

I nodded again and followed them to small meeting room

"Alright," the older officer said, taking out his notebook and writing down place, time, date and reason why he was meeting here with me.

"What can you tell us about what happened to your son?"

"Yesterday I took him to meet with some friends from his old neighborhood. He grew up in Santa Monica but he lives with me now in Beverley Hills. His mom died last fall and that's when we found out about each other," I started.

"Yes, we're aware of the history," the officer smiled.

"Okay," I said. "I dropped him off at a hole in the wall restaurant called Jose's on Catalina Avenue. He was going to hang with his, his 'friends' and had a curfew of 10. He said his friend Justin said he'd drive Jaime home and I was okay with that. We had met Justin a couple of times. He works at Stan's Pizza and delivered a pizza to our place. Dammit! These kids know where we live!"

"Okay. We'll circle back to that a little later. Right now, tell us about last night and what happened to Jaime."

I related what I had heard and previous encounters with Jaime's 'friends'. I told them where I believed they went to school and also told them about Emmanuel and Mrs. Lopez and how Emmanuel's connection to Frank had gotten him killed. I told them what I knew about Jamie's past with these thugs.

Then, when they were out of questions, I went back and sat beside the body that currently did not look like my son.

Nothing had changed. Jaime hadn't moved. Not a  finger, not a toe, not even an eyelash.

I was afraid to touch him. I was afraid to move any part of his body and cause possible damage to something that hadn't broken yet. I stared at the broken figure in front of me and wondered how anyone could be so brutal to another person.

I hoped. I prayed. I tried to come to terms with losing Jaime. Just in case.