Worship You

Chapter Fifteen - The Door

I started to hate him then, calling me 'son' like that. 

I said, "I'm coming with Cassie." 

"No. Not right now. I have to speak to her alone." He called out, "Ed!" And a uniformed trooper with a plastic cover on his Smokey Bear hat came over to guard me. 

Detective Dick took Cassie by the arm and led her away, holding his umbrella over her head. He didn't take her anywhere out of the rain, like he said. They just walked away a few feet and he stood with her under his umbrella as if they were two friends having a quiet talk in the rain. He put his hand on her shoulder and bent closer to her as he spoke. This was when he was telling her that Stan had been killed. Cassie just nodded and looked away back at the house. 

They made a big deal out of this in court, as if it's proof of anything, how a person reacts, especially under stress. How did you react when they told you Osama Bin Laden was dead? What? You didn't cry and scream and faint? You must have killed him then.  

In the trial, the DA said, "Did she react in any way?" 

And Detective Dick said, "No sir. Nothing. Complete stone face." He should've added, "And there I was being all warm and consoling and putting my hands all over her. I loved touching her, Your Honor. I really did." I wonder how that would have gone over with the jury. Creep. 

He kept saying things to Cassie and she nodded and then she shook her head and finally she looked back at him and shrugged. Then she said something to him, several sentences, talked for a while. He bent down to listen and he put his hand on her back. Down low, just above her ass.

And then Detective Dick turned and looked at me. For a moment we looked at each other and that's when he knew I was the one. He was a genius. He was that good. He just got these hunches one after another just like some fat bum at home watching the six o'clock news yelling to his wife, "The kid did it, Ethel! I know he did it! Looka how guilty the little shit is looking!" Case closed. 

I hate rich kids. Because that's who this Dick character is, with his little umbrella so he wouldn't get wet. His father's probably the pharmacist in the nice town a couple of towns down the interstate where the roads don't have holes in them.  

Anyway, it's at that point that Detective Dick decides that I'm going in the house with Cassie because he's sure I did it and maybe Cassie too. Because she told him that we went to New York for New Year's Eve and in Dick's mind that is So Wrong! and it's just what a couple of teenage thrill killers would do and so he knows we're immoral and all. Dick thinks he's smarter than anybody else because he's got the latest iPhone or something and that a stupid punk like me will be too weak to keep a straight face if I see a corpse and I'll break down and confess. All this happening around dead Stan Cioukowsky who I couldn't care less that he's dead. 

We end up following Detective Dick up the walk to the house, Cassie and me. Cassie's holding onto my arm and we're following Dick and his umbrella and then things start shifting on me. I do feel weird. I remember that somewhere I heard or read that people used to believe that a dead body would start to bleed in the presence of its murderer. I know that isn't true but - The house is stretching and twisting and the sidewalk is bucking and I feel sick to my stomach. And the sweat. Jesus. It's pouring down, cold as it is in that cold rain, I'm sweating sheets. I never sweat like that in my life. It had a funny smell. And I was sure everyone could see and was pointing, "Look at that kid sweat. Now that's something you don't see all the time. And smell that? That's guilt. You can smell it, you know." 

We came up to the door of the house and I know that I'm going through that door to another world and I may never come back.  

I pull away slightly, not wanting to go in and Cassie grips my arm hard, so hard I almost say something but she cuts her eyes at me, hard, and we go in.  

I found out later that the cops weren't going to do this, take Cassie inside but she insisted. She said she wanted to go in and look. And so Dick thought, "Why not? Maybe they'll break down and confess." This turned out later to not be such a bright idea. The jury didn't like him for it.  

Coming through the door, I took a deep breath and then we were inside and there he was on the floor.  

They had been there since four a.m., the cops, and they were pretty much done with the CSI stuff. They had a body bag open on the floor next to Stan and were about to put him inside, but Dick said something and they stopped and let us look.  

The blood around his head had soaked into the carpet and turned black and his face had gotten a strange gray color and was dented in on one side. His mouth was twisted down in a mask of tragedy, you know like Comedy and Tragedy? We had that in English class last year and those masks kind of scared me. Nobody's that sad, nobody laughs that hard. His skin had shrunk or something and his lips had pulled back off his teeth and they looked really bad, yellowed and chipped with big spaces between. It was sickening and I turned away. I had never noticed his teeth. 

We just looked at him. Cassie had both arms around my arm now, squeezing hard. She was shuddering with tension. We both were shaking. I would have stopped if I could, but it was out of my control. And then I noticed how her breasts were pressed against my arm, and I started to get turned on. That was weird. Even as scared as I was, even in front of those cops, I'm getting stiff and pushing out against the front of my pants. I don't understand that. Because sex was the last thing on my mind. But there was something. It wasn't anything specific, just the whole situation I guess, her and the dead man and the police. It was real basic stuff and it just made me over-excited, I guess. So sick.

My face turned red, but nobody seemed to notice. Like normal people, they had other things to think about. 

Detective Dick said, "Is this your father, Miss Cioukowsky?"  

Cassie nodded. Then she sighed. It was a long tired sigh, the way someone will sigh after a hard day on the job. I was looking at her and holding her hand. I didn't want to look at the corpse. They made a lot out of that in court, too.

"Did Lloyd Harper look at the body of Mr. Cioukowsky?"  

"No he never did. It was like he couldn't bear to look at it. He looked sick." 

 Finally, the Detective gave the sign and they lifted Stan Cioukowsky's stiff remains up and into the bag and zipped it. You could hear a soft ripping sound when the dried blood let go as they pulled the corpse away from the carpet.

They didn't arrest us then. But they did say they had the right to take our clothes, because: a warrant or something. They took the clothes we were wearing and all the clothes from our bags in the car. I got to wear home one of the white coveralls which were made of some kind of paper. They even confiscated my shorts. They kept my car too.  

Uniformed cops brought me home in one of the white pod-suits with the blue booties. My mother fell apart when she saw that. She told the cops she knew I'd get in trouble. Thanks, Mom. She had always known that I was guilty and had just been waiting for the opportunity to turn me in. Well, she's known me longer than anyone else. 

We had a couple of days to rest up. We didn't see each other just talked on the phone, very careful of what we said. We figured they were watching us, and listening to the phone. 

After they examined our clothes - looking for blood and stuff, I guess - then they arrested us for murder. 

There was a little blood on my jeans. Not more than a few drops, but that was enough.