Bright Lights, Dark Nights (22 page)

“Do you have a plan?” I asked. He had awareness, at least, but it still felt like he was in over his head. I guess that couldn't be avoided.

“Yeah, I have a plan,” Dad said. “I need to defend myself and what I know. And I know what happened that night. Have some faith in me. For now, I just need to keep this thing from going viral.”

I went to check out what I could on my laptop in my room. Plan or no plan, I could still stay a few steps ahead of him.

Our local news site had some comments on the interview now. They were more revealing than the actual news. Everyone seemed to have issues with the police department. One person said she couldn't get past the bridge without doubling her chances of getting stopped. One person got the same officer pulling him over every time. Another person said they had to deal with three cops for going ten miles over the speed limit. Mr. Mills was right: the race stuff got heated quickly.

Proud Whitey:
Uh-oh, it was a black kid? Start the timer! How long before this guy's lynched by the media?

The Real Deal:
Lynched? Really, that's the word you're going to use?

Proud Whitey:
Waaah. How much does it pay being a professional victim? I could use the work.

Miss Monroe:
You're the one making it about race. Sit there complaining and collecting your welfare checks.

I closed my laptop, got into bed, and hoped all this bad-cop business would be gone by morning. I fell asleep to the sound of Dad typing away on the computer.

*   *   *

Dad was glued to his computer the next few days, and I tried to stay out as much as I could. It's a weird thing for me to sneak out of the house and have a secret from Dad, especially a cop dad, but he was so involved with everything going on in his own life he didn't bother to ask where I went anymore. So I was at Naomi's a lot.

Naomi's room was at the top of the stairs, and the next room over was Jason's. Privacy was not an option. We were allowed in there as long as the door was wide open. It was a new feeling to be in a girl's room that wasn't my sister's. It was kind of the same, with the same stuff you wouldn't find in a boy's room—makeup, teen magazines. But it felt a little more dangerous when it was your girlfriend's room.

It was both crowded and clean, full of stuff but organized well. There was a TV, an iPod speaker setup, a desk with her laptop, books and magazines, DVDs, a walk-in closet. Almost every corner of the room had some unique use. Each wall had its own central purpose—the door, the mirror, the window, the closet, and the bed.

Naomi and I were kissing there until we heard footsteps approaching. Then they stopped, and turned around, heading back away. We laughed. Naomi picked up my hand and was studying my hand and fingers, then reached over for a marker and started to draw. The marker tickled my palm.

“This is the only thing I can draw,” she said. “I had a book on drawing when I was a kid. The only thing I remember from it is how to make this cat.”

“This is my favorite cat,” I said. “I'm going to adopt it.” The cat was simple and cute. I couldn't draw much myself but had sketchbooks of comic-book characters I'd try to copy. I was okay at it.

“This door was open wider before, wasn't it?” Naomi's dad said, suddenly in the doorway, shoes off. He was finding ways to mask his footsteps.

Naomi had fought for the bedroom use. Her parents were initially set against it, and I was fine with whatever. If they didn't like us being in the bedroom, then I was happy wherever we ended up. But Naomi argued that all her stuff was in her room. Her parents argued she could bring it out into the living room. She argued, “But
you're
in the living room.” And they argued that so were a nice big TV and a comfy couch and plenty of room. Naomi insisted not everything she has to say needs to be heard by her mom and dad. But really she just wanted to be able to kiss.

“Put a brick there or something,” Naomi said, finishing the cat drawing. “There's a draft from you walking by it every ten seconds.” Sarcasm was so prevalent in the house it wasn't even acknowledged half the time. He set off to look for something heavy to block the door open.

“I want to draw you something,” I said while admiring my cat.

Naomi reached under her bed and pulled a sneaker out. She wanted me to draw on the shoe so she could look at it wherever she was.

I played with the marker cap while I thought of what I could draw. I thought of comic-book characters, the sea monster I had at the sushi place. I thought of noir movies. I decided on a cityscape. The view from on top of the city. I started by drawing boxes for each of the buildings and a skyline behind them.

Music started blaring from Jason's room. He was listening to Notorious B.I.G.'s second album. Naomi rolled her eyes and pulled her laptop up onto the bed. She opened up Facebook.

“Have you seen this?” she asked. “It's a page about the burglaries and all that stuff. Some stuff about your dad. Everyone keeps liking it, so it's always on my profile.” The page was called
POLICE AND COMMUNITY IN EAST BRIDGE
. It was supposedly about local politics, but it'd been made right after the Temple case blew up, and that was all anyone talked about on it. There were kids from school on there, people I recognized from the neighborhood, some people I didn't know, and, of course, some trolls. I had seen it, but I hadn't gone looking for it. Facebook and sites like it were a clutter for commentary I tried to avoid. I was connected like everyone else, but you lose something in all that connectivity. Individuality gets lost in the noise.

“There's a picture of my dad,” I said, looking at the screen. It was a picture from a newspaper article my dad was in a year ago. He's standing by his police cruiser with sunglasses on. He looked a little conceited out of context, when you grouped the picture with the case that was going on.

“You might not want to click it,” Naomi said, spinning the laptop to me. “I can't vouch for anything crazy that people write on there. I'm not even allowed to post on this page.”

I clicked on the picture.

Fannie Sanchez
: Same guy that pulled my kid in for doing nothing. Wrong place, wrong time, I guess?

Darren Harrington
: It's a long line of bloated egos, police force is full of em, they just want the badge and the gun so they can play tough guy.

Arturo Morrison
: He couldn't handle my gramma.

Ken Palmer
: I'm not urging anyone to do anything stupid, but I know this guy's address, DM me.

Naomi pounded the wall with her fist and startled me. “Jason, turn that down!”

I backed out of the picture and spun the laptop back to Naomi. “Yeah, I've seen enough,” I said. This was getting unnerving, fast. Was that even legal? I didn't want to look at Facebook again.

Naomi clicked on something. “It looks like your dad is replying to posts on here. That's probably not good,” Naomi said. I rested my head on Naomi's leg.

“There is no universe in which that is a good thing,” I said. The music was still blaring. “I don't want to look at it. What's he saying?”

“Just defending himself,” Naomi said, presumably looking for anything interesting. “He's on, like, every post almost. He's all over this page.”

“
Your gonna lose your job
,” Naomi read, overpronouncing the misspelling of
you're
. “
They should just start clean with a whole new police department.
”

“
It's ‘you're' gonna lose your job
,” Dad had replied. He was correcting grammar. My dad wasn't getting trolled; he was the troll. Naomi and I laughed at that. I needed a laugh. Hopefully he could pull some strings and get the address guy arrested before anyone took him up on it.

“A week ago I wouldn't have imagined this would be an actual issue in my life,” I said. “My dad on the Internet, riling up drama.”

Naomi read one of the other comments. “
My job is to protect the community, so every action I take should be viewed through that lens. I am serving us all.
”

“He almost sounds guilty,” I said, sitting up. I grabbed the marker and shoe and started coloring in some of the buildings on the sneaker, making them all black with white windows. Other buildings I left the other way for contrast. Her left shoe was going to look empty now, but her right one was decked out. “Who even talks like that?” I asked. “He's going to get ripped apart. Why can't parents just leave the Internet to us?”

“My parents are on Facebook, too,” Naomi said. “It's major drama in the Millses' home. Jason won't add them, so they were threatening to ground him, like he must be hiding something on there. Which, of course, he is.”

“Your dad friend-requested me,” I said. “Should I add him? I didn't know if that was weird or not. I probably shouldn't, right?”

“He's kind of funny. You can add him,” Naomi said. “You'll get a lot of requests to play games, though, heads-up.”

I presented Naomi her shoe. “Hope I didn't ruin it,” I said.

“Come here,” Naomi said when she saw it. She pulled me in by my cheeks for a kiss. And her dad was in the doorway.
Knock knock.

“You know, I think there is a draft,” he said. “Maybe we need a doorstop to keep this thing open. Maybe we should just take it off completely…”

And he left. “Your dad's the best,” I said, and Naomi laughed.

*   *   *

EAST BRIDGE OFFICER BEING INVESTIGATED HAS HISTORY OF PROBLEMS

Op-Ed by Barry Sharp

THE EAST BRIDGE police officer at the center of the Basement burglaries case is Officer James Wilcox, who the regular readers of the news may be aware of already. All it took was a glance at Wilcox's personnel file from the city to find a laundry list of earlier reprimands, which are very informative for his current and ongoing troubles.

Nearly three years ago, we find Wilcox's first suspension, one he did not fight and served a month of. The suspension was originally for two months. The suspension came about after an internal affairs investigation involving a neighbor who accused Wilcox of threatening him with his gun. In addition to the suspension, Wilcox was required to hand in his weapon when off duty for at least the following year. This is post-LEOSA, the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, enacted in 2004, which allows an officer of the law to carry a weapon at all times.

Following that incident, Officer Wilcox was also under investigation for leaving a crime scene unattended. The fallout of this case has been obscured or covered up, and no penalty seems to have been handed out.

Perhaps most telling of Wilcox's character, and most influential on his current investigations involving the alleged “Basement Burglar,” Calvin Temple, is a report from only last year in which he referred to an African American man involved in an altercation as a “gorilla.” In a police department with a long history of problematic racial relations, that they still have officers calling black men gorillas is ridiculous to me. That they're still on the street and adding to their extensive personnel files is even worse.

“As far as I know, he made his apologies and no charges were ever filed,” Sgt. Peter Chandler, president of the East Bridge Police Union, said about the incident.

There were five such incidents contained in the reports, but nearly all ended quietly or unclearly, presumably “swept under the rug.” How this case involving the Temple family turns out is anyone's guess, though don't be surprised if by this time next year, no one seems to remember a thing about it.

“Who is this guy?” I asked Dad.

Dad was freaking me out, slapping his palm against the table while he read the column. His face was red, his mouth was clenched shut. He paused a good few seconds before answering.

“Barry Sharp,” Dad said with distaste. “Some dirtbag that made a name for himself off the Eric Garner ordeal. He's a professor at the university, thinks he's a civil rights leader, goddamn Martin Luther King. If it were up to Barry Sharp, we'd have a perfect color-blind utopia, and everyone would be immune to the law.”

The article had been posted overnight on the news site and linked to on Facebook today. It'd run in the paper too, probably over the weekend. Dad hit the table again and let out a grunt.

“Hey, forget I said that, Walter, all right?” Dad said. “This guy just pisses me off, that's all.”

I was looking at the article on my laptop while he was at the table on his. “Did you really threaten someone?” I asked.

“What's a threat?” Dad asked. “To me, if I pull a gun out, say I'm going to shoot you, that's a threat. No. I had some words with that friggin' neighbor; he took them to mean something. This was years ago. It'd been a misunderstanding. We cleared it up.”