The Curious Case of Christopher Comtois (Part XIII)

Waiting

     I was exhausted. More exhausted than at any point in my life. I actually tried to think of another time in my life when I felt more mentally and physically tired, but couldn't. I stretched out in bed and hadn't moved for nearly four hours. I knew the view of the ceiling in my cell better than the back of my hand and the snores from Pepe' became part of the regular background noise. I wondered how the search of my house had gone. I pictured Kermit answering the door in his boxer shorts and wondered what conversations the police would have with him. Even though I had nothing to hide in regards to molesting any teenagers, I tried to remember everything that was in my room and hidden away in drawers and closets. I thought about e-mails that I had sent and what I had been looking at on my computer. It isn't every day, or any day, that strangers have total access to everything in your life. It made me very nervous to have the police looking through all of my belongings without me being present. I hoped that Kermit would be with them as they searched to try to give some context to whatever it was that they found. Without me there, I worried that letters or e-mails could be twisted and used in whatever fashion Laney wished. I knew without a doubt that Laney wasn't in Denver to help me. Not a chance. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that he had to be pretty pissed off that he even had to come to Colorado. I was sure that it wasn't in his immediate plans. He came because Franklin called him and it wouldn't have looked good if he did nothing when another officer told him that he might have the wrong guy. The more I went through it in my head, the more I came to detest him. I didn't even consider trying to sleep as there was simply too much information to process.

     I wanted to talk to my mom. I wanted to talk to Kira. I wanted to go home. I had had enough. The closer it got to the beginning of Thursday, the more scattered my thoughts were. Why was I still in jail when anyone with a brain would know that I was innocent? How far would Laney go to keep me locked up? I began to focus on the DNA test. I had read about people spending years of their life in prison and being set free due to a DNA test. I didn't want to spend years, or any more hours, in jail. I knew that I was innocent, but Laney knew I was guilty. Why would the Florida authorities insist that they be the ones to run the test? Was Laney buddies with the DNA guys who would conduct the test? Was he so sure and arrogant that he would forge a DNA test to keep his suspect behind bars? I started to panic about agreeing to the test. I felt totally powerless and became very scared. I was nearly shaking as the thought of Laney and Florida making me a match to the suspect's DNA went through my head over and over and over. I was picturing the moment when Franklin or Dave told me that my DNA was a match. Every time I'd finish the thought I'd go back to the beginning and go through it again. A side thought would have me heading to prison for the rest of my life, just as I had imagined the first few nights I sat in jail. I was freaking myself out again and nearly frozen with fear. I had absolutely no control of the situation and it was a very hollow feeling. I had hit bottom many times in the darkness of night during the previous four evenings, and early Thursday was another nosedive into the black cavern. Thankfully, the lights flickered on and it was breakfast time at the usual crack of 5:30am.  Pepe' stopped snoring and rolled over and fell off of his toboggan. It was a good segue into the day.

     There were unfamiliar faces at the breakfast table. Most of the guys that I had come to know since Saturday were gone. Only Cube and the light skinned-Afro guy were left. I wasn't around for a large chunk of Wednesday and apparently a bunch of guys had left and had been replaced by new criminals. Pepe' sat next to me at the table but I didn't know any of the others. Cube and the other guy were both at separate tables. There was no conversation. I realized that other than Cube, I had been on the floor the longest. I figured that over 50 guys had come and gone since my arrival on Saturday afternoon. I was beginning my sixth day in jail but it felt like my sixth year.  I couldn't tell if I had lost weight or if my jeans weren't fitting me since I'd had them on since Saturday morning. I could smell myself. I really didn't have an appetite but forced myself to eat the toast and whatever they were calling oatmeal.

     I was getting to know all of the officers on the floor on a superficial level. Some were more talkative than others, but it was impossible to be there for as long as I had been and not talk to them due to our multiple interactions each day. A few who seemed like hard-asses in the beginning had softened a little with me. I figured that most everyone they deal with is only on their floor for a day or less. So many come and go that it didn't make sense to try to talk to them, especially since most were legitimate criminals who probably didn't like the police very much anyway. I had been cordial, polite and talkative since my arrival and although they didn't know any specifics of my case, I was at least respectful and most likely different than most of the guys that they deal with regularly. Plus, I was on their floor for an unusual amount of time and they were becoming familiar with me just as I was with them. As I walked back to my cell after breakfast, one of the officers who I liked stopped me to ask if I wanted to use the phone and take a shower. I didn't hesitate. It didn't look like anyone else was getting to shower or call anyone, so perhaps my good behavior was earning me some points. I wondered if Franklin was friends with any of these guys and relayed what was going on with me. Regardless, I got excited to have a little time to myself to clean up and call my mom and Kira. The officer told me that I could have an hour to use the phone if I wished. He'd come back in when I was done with a towel and soap for the shower. I was actually kind of shocked that I was being given such freedom. It came at a perfect time since I had been in such a bad place emotionally through the night.

     The phone rang several times at my mom's house before she picked it up. After the usual rigmarole of waiting for her to listen to the recorded lady tell her where I was calling from and accepting the charges, I finally got say hello. I spent the first ten minutes explaining everything that had gone on the day before. I went through it so fast that she had to ask me several times to slow down. I was naturally excited to be able to relay all of this to my mother and to hear her reaction. She was audibly excited and told me that she had spoken with Dave a few times over the past 24 hours. Dave had known that Detective Laney was coming to Denver and was coming to see me at some point on Thursday morning, which I looked forward to. Franklin had obviously been in touch with him. She also knew about the DNA test. Just hearing her reassuring voice helped calm me down after I had done such a good job of winding myself up with all of the possibilities that my imagination could conjure. I told her about Lou's visit and went into detail about my interaction with Laney. I asked her if she thought if there was any way that Laney would rig the DNA test so it came out positive. I knew what her answer would be but it helped to have her say what my intelligence already knew. She told me not to think like that and that everything was going to work out. For the first time, I told her how difficult the nights were and how my imagination went into overdrive. I had avoided letting her in on any of my inner turmoil up to that point so that she wouldn't worry, but it helped me to hear a logical person who wasn't sitting in jail tell me that I was being ridiculous. Although my mother and I didn't have a touchy-feely type of relationship where we shared feelings and such, the wear and tear of the events of my life had left me feeling very emotional. I opened up to her more than I probably ever had. It was this vulnerability that had led me back to talking to Kira again, and calling her was next on the list after my mother had to head to work. We said our goodbyes and I hung up and started the process of calling Minnesota.

     Since time had morphed into segments of fast and slow, I really couldn't remember when I had spoken to Kira last. Each day and night seemed like weeks and months. When I worked at camp, we used to talk about "camp time." When you live in an environment such as a summer camp, where you eat, sleep, play and interact with everyone for an extended amount of time, and cram a maximal amount of activity into the day and night, "normal" time changes. We would say that each day at camp equaled about two weeks in the "real" world. We put more activity and emotion into one day than most people do in two weeks.  You forge bonds with people that would normally take years to develop. That is why my camp group of friends is so tight nit. I imagine that it's the same with any group of people who share their living space and social and work lives on a daily basis for many months. I wondered whether or not it was the same in jail in regards to "friendships," since inmates are all forced to do everything together in close quarters for tremendous amounts of time. I didn't want to find out. As I dialed Kira's number, I tried to recall the last time we spoke and how much she was caught up on my goings-on.

     Kira answered almost immediately. She accepted the charges and said that she woke up early hoping that I'd be calling. She seemed to be overflowing with emotion and talked for two or three minutes before I could even say "hello." I remembered while she spoke that the last time I called she wasn't there. It must have been two days or more since we actually spoke. So much had gone on since then that I had to cut her off and remind her that I had limited time. "I'm in jail, you know," I told her. Always the wise-ass. Her initial ramble was semi-frantic, going on and on about worrying and wondering what was going on with me. She said that she had been trying to call Kermit to get any information that she could. I reminded her that Kermit was probably voted "Least Likely To Call You Back" in high school. His phone habits are atrocious. There was a time seven or eight years previous when I drove out to visit him when he was still in college in the middle of Kansas. We had the plans on the books for months, but in the days leading up to the trip, I couldn't get him on the phone. He didn't own an answering machine and never picked up the phone. I knew he knew when I was coming, so I didn't worry about it. I went and he was expecting me. When I was in his apartment before and after we went out, his phone rang at least once an hour. He didn't pick it up. After ten or so times of this happening, I asked him why the hell he wasn't answering the phone. He said that it was his girlfriend calling and that they had broken up, which I wasn't aware of. I asked him when that had happened, and his answer was that she didn't know yet. "So, you're broken up but she doesn't know?" I asked him. "Yep.” They had been dating since the prior summer at camp. The phone rang again and finally stopped. I was confused. They were broken up, she didn't know and she was calling. "I don't understand," I told him. "She'll figure it out," he said. His method for breaking up with her was by simply not answering the phone. "What if it's someone else, like me, calling you," I smartly asked. "She'll stop eventually," he said. The plan wasn't well thought out, but it was pure Kermit. I told Kira that she should probably avoid him and try to call Aimee, who she had also met during her Colorado visit. I gave her Aimee's number.

     I had no idea how long I really had to talk and kept looking to see if the officer was coming out of the office. I knew that he could see me on one of the many closed circuit cameras that were mounted in various areas of the floor. I had seen the screens during my many treks through the office en route to the meeting rooms. I told Kira everything that had gone on since the last time we spoke. As I ran through Franklin and Laney, the DNA test, Dave, my bond amount, Lou and Kermit's visits as well as my new roommate. I grew more confident that things really had been turning in a positive direction. When I listened to myself describe to her all of it in detail, I stepped back outside myself and gained some rational insight that I may actually get out of this mess. A logical person hearing the course of events would conclude that I would probably get out of jail sometime soon. Kira basically said that over and over. "There's no way they can keep holding you with all of that information," she said. When I thought of it in those terms, it made sense, but it was much different being on my side of the coin. I tried to explain that to her. She knew that I was an ultra-positive person in regards to things that happen in life. "Things usually work out," I often said. I could tell that it was hard for her to hear me so despondent and negative. I was clearly focusing on the worst case scenario and she did her best to talk me down from the ledge. It was these types of conversations that kept me going on a semi-sane path and also why I felt myself giving credence to the fact that I may have made a mistake when I told Kira that I only wanted to be friends with her.

     We were able to talk for nearly 40 minutes. I had to call her back once after the 30 minute time limit cut us off. When I finally saw the officer come around the corner towards me, I told Kira that I had to go. She told me that she loved me and I said it back without thinking. I knew as the words came out of my mouth that I was coming from a very vulnerable place and that it was probably unfair of me to even be talking to her, but I knew that I needed the emotional support that she was giving me. I was able to talk to her in a different fashion than I did with my mother, or even my friends who came to visit. Regardless of my lack of attraction to her, we did have an emotional connection and I let myself go with it, almost unconsciously. The officer gave me the signal to wrap it up. He had a towel and box of soap in his hands. I had nearly forgotten about the second half of my "free time." I finished my conversation with Kira by telling her how excited I was to be able to take my second shower of the week. It’s funny how legitimately happy I was at being able to do something like take a shower, which most people do every day without thinking. Those people in the group that do not shower every day are called “my friends.” I hung up and thanked the officer for letting me use the phone. He told me that he'd give me 20 minutes or so to shower and that he'd come back when I was done to let me back in my cell. By the time I was finished, it was nearly seven o'clock in the morning, and with the sun rising, I knew that more possibilities were on the horizon for the day.

     Whereas I had left my cell for breakfast at a low point, I returned feeling clean and revived. I was actually kind of happy to see Pepe' sitting at the window looking down towards the street. I walked over and said "hola," to which he replied back the same. I sat down on the opposite edge and just started pointing at various objects that we could see. I pointed at a car and said, "car." I did this two or three times until he caught on. He finally said, in a very broken English accent, "car." I pointed at the clock tower and said, "clock." He repeated it. After three or four more, he pointed at his shoe and said, "zapato." I knew that shoe was "zapato," but I said it anyway. He laughed and nodded his head, "Si. Si," he said. He pointed at a car and said, "carro." I repeated. He laughed. I pointed at my pants and said, "pants." He repeated. We both laughed. This exchange lasted the entire two and half hours before lunch. It never got old. We just went on and on. We even refined it as we went. I'd point at something and say it, he'd say it back, and then he'd point at the same thing and say it in Spanish, which I'd repeat. And every time we laughed and nodded our heads. Sometimes one of us would mispronounce the word and the other would say, "no, no" and say it again. We'd keep at it until we got it right. I was using my time in jail to learn basic Spanish. It was obvious that I had a much better grasp of the Spanish language than he did with English, which I found nearly inconceivable since he lived in America. During our conversations, which took exponentially longer than simple conversations should take, I figured out that he had been in Denver for quite some time. How he never learned even basic English words and phrases was beyond me. I liked Pepe'. I really had no idea why he in jail for sure, but he seemed like a kind man. I could tell that he was still very confused about what was happening but he was a break in my monotony. I tried to tell him how badly he snored. I had to lie down and pretend to be asleep and then make horrible snoring noises. I sat up and pointed at him and said "dormir." I did this three times before he understood what I was telling him. He laughed and shook his head no. I just kept saying "yes" while I made more snoring noises. It was a great escape from the solitary time in the cell during my first five days. I hadn't been very excited about the prospect of having a roommate when he first arrived the day before, but the more we "talked," the more thankful I was that he was there. The randomness of the experience wasn't lost on me and I check-marked Pepe' in my head as someone to remember when I told this crazy story after I got out.

     As it got closer to 9:30, a few guys yelled over to ask what time it was. I was always alerted when it got close to lunch or dinner since guys kind of sensed that enough time had gone by since the last meal and got antsy. It was amazing how close it was to being meal time when I'd get new requests for an update.  Pepe’ and I shuffled out of our cell still laughing about our Spanish/English lessons and Cube came over next to me as we sat down at our table. "Where'd you go last night?" he asked. The mood in the room was much lighter than it had been at breakfast. A few of the guys that had just arrived looked like they wanted to talk and I ran down everything for the table. Guys who hadn't been around for long asked questions about what I was going through. The light skinned guy I knew was at another table, and I could see that he was talking about my ordeal with those around him. It was kind of like "Groundhog Day" as it felt like I was doing the exact same thing as I had done before with a new group of guys. They all had the same questions and reactions. Now, though, I had more information than before and they were all very interested in Laney and his visit. One guy chimed in that he had a buddy that took a DNA test and it came out positive, although his friend maintained that he was innocent. I didn't say it, but I assumed that his friend was guilty. The guy didn't exactly look like a Rhodes Scholar and I figured his buddy didn't either. Who was I to judge, though, since I looked like a hoodlum. At least I didn't smell like one after my shower.

     The interesting thing about all of these interactions, the time with Pepe’, the meal discussions, etc., is that the weight of what I was facing was always on my mind. I couldn't escape it. Sometimes I'd find myself drift off, even when I was talking, and think about going to prison. The realism of where I was and what I was going through was always just a blink away. It was the elephant in the room, for me at least. I wondered if the other guys on the floor had this huge emotional weight on them like I did, or were they all so used to it that it wasn't even a second thought. Although I didn't show them my intense worry, they all seemed so cavalier about their situations. I guess I appeared the same way to them since I was able to laugh and joke about it in conversation. My playing it off wasn't an act to appear tough, but my way of dealing with it the only way I knew how. I was extremely concerned about what was to happen to me, but it wasn't like I was going to break down and cry to these guys. Sometimes I felt like it, but I have always been pretty good about keeping my emotions in check, at least externally.  It seemed like these guys all slept like babies while I struggled to get even an hour each night. Maybe knowing you're guilty and making your own bed, so to speak, allows you to get a better nights rest.

     After lunch, Pepe' and I returned to our cell and picked up right where we left off. I would turn around to look out of the door window every so often expecting to see an officer coming towards us. I hoped that Dave or Harrison or even Laney was coming to see me. The closer it got to noon, the more I was aware that nothing new was happening for me. It was hard to remember that although I was sitting stagnant in jail, things were in motion on the outside. I'd start to go down the path of worry and then snap out of it when Pepe' would point at something new and give me the Spanish word for it.  Who knew that a man that I would never, ever meet out in the "real" world would provide me with the break that my mind desperately needed.  I was very aware of how important it was for my attention to be constantly diverted from the incessant thinking of where I was and what I was facing.  Learning Spanish with Pepe' was the closest thing to recreation that I could get and I was thankful. And I was growing my bi-lingual vocabulary.  Senora Shirck, my high school Spanish

teacher, would be proud.  As proud as a teacher could be for a former student learning Spanish while sitting in a jail cell accused of molesting a teenager. 

     Pepe' and I eventually stopped after a few guys needed time checks, which Pepe' translated to Spanish for me.  It was getting close to dinner time and I wondered if anyone was coming to see me at all.  My mom told me that Dave was coming in the morning, and when your you haven't slept and your "day" starts so early, 12:30pm seems late.  Just before it was time to go out and eat, I saw a pair of officers head down the hall and past my cell.  Usually when multiple officers would go to a cell, it meant that someone was leaving. Sometimes the inmate would be leaving after bonding out or they were being transferred to another facility, most likely the County Jail.  All I knew was that when two guards went and got someone, we never saw them again.  There had been a few times when it looked like two guards were coming to my cell, which briefly got me excited that I was leaving, but this time, they stopped in front of Ice Cube's cell.  I stood up and watched out of the window on my door as Cube stepped out into the hall with his hands cuffed behind his back. This was normal procedure when guys were leaving and not going home.  A few guys shouted their goodbyes as Cube walked past their cells.  This was also normal procedure, it seemed.  When he walked past my cell, Cube looked up at me and just nodded his head.  It was a fitting ending.  It seemed like a long, long time ago that I met him.  Although I never really found out much about him, he was a good guy. Very mellow and very funny.  He always seemed legitimately interested in my story and what was happening with me. As he walked out with the officers, I thought back to how I was feeling when I first met him.  How nothing that I was going through seemed real.  I met him, among others, just over an hour into my ordeal.  Now it was my sixth day and I was the last man standing from the original group of guys that spent most of Saturday together. I was actually sad to see him go.  If this were a movie, I thought, this would be the scene where I watched him walk out while flashbacks of us laughing during a meal or talking through the bottom of our doors were shown in slow motion.  I doubted that I'd ever see him again, but he did promise that Grant Street would be off limits to him and his friends from any car break-ins or burglaries.  At least my jail time had gained my neighbors and me some safety from the criminals on the other side of Denver.  Just after he was out on the elevator and out of sight, the doors to our cells began to click open and it was time for dinner.  

     It was odd not having Cube at the meal with me.  I wouldn't categorize him as my best buddy, but there was something about having familiar faces in the group of guys around me.  The light skinned guy was still around and we had been talking for a few days.  There was a big, tall guy that had arrived a day or two ago whose cell was across from mine who I began to have some interaction with and, of course, there was Pepe'.  Other than that, everyone seemed new to me and they were just starting to get parts of my story during the short meal times.  I had grown weary of explaining and re-explaining whatever news and information the new people wanted to know.  I think that it was just me simply being weary of the whole of everything.  I could definitely tell that I was less talkative and engaging than I had been when I arrived.  During dinner on Thursday I didn’t have much to say.  I had been going non-stop with Pepe’ for awhile and the fact that no one had come to see me was hovering over my head. 

     Dinner concluded and Pepe’ and I went home to our cell.  Just before we had left for dinner, he began trying to ask me questions about his situation and when he would get out.  He picked this back up when we got back.  It took quite awhile for me to understand what he was trying to ask.  By the time I thought I had it, I realized that I had no answers for him.  He really seemed confused and I felt bad that no one from the Police Department was helping him.  The City of Denver is 33% Hispanic and obviously they deal with people who don’t speak English on a daily basis.  I imagine that it had to be horribly frustrating to not be able to communicate basic questions and needs.  As difficult as it was for me to get answers to even the simplest of questions, such as when I’d get a phone call, tooth brush or shower, I couldn’t imagine trying to convey these things to those who didn’t speak my language.  Pepe’ had now been my roommate for more than a full day and not once, to my knowledge, had anyone come to see him in any sort of official capacity.  I put this thought in the back of my head to remind myself to ask someone about him. 

I didn’t have much down time immediately after dinner.  For nearly two hours, Pepe’ and I tried to have a “normal” conversation.  We were getting a little better at making the other understand whatever it was that we were trying to say.  Simple ideas or sentences sometimes took forever to convey, but eventually the basic premise would click.  It reminded me of when I was teaching golf at Club Med.  We had five or six of us on the golf staff at the resort.  Each week we’d get our schedule of what we were doing, which could include sitting at the “pitch and putt” handing out clubs and teaching a group beginner lesson or teaching intermediate group lessons on the driving range in the mornings.  Both of these were free to guests and some days you’d have one person who would show up to a lesson and some days you’d get fifteen.  We also offered a specialized week-long group lesson package. Guests had to sign up for these lessons and they were at an additional cost.  The same group would meet every day for three hours with the same instructor.  Group sizes were anywhere from two to eight.  I normally didn’t teach these intensive lessons as the rest of the golf staff were more advanced in teaching than me.

     One of the few times I did teach one of the week-long group lessons, I was given a French couple who didn’t speak any English at all and a German family who spoke just a little English.  From the onset, it was obvious that it was going to be difficult to communicate with them as I didn’t know any German and could only ask for cheese in French (fromage).  The week itself was a blast, but I’m not sure how much golf instruction they got.  To explain something that would take 15 seconds to an American took nearly five minutes to get across to the group.  I would say whatever it was that I was explaining, and then look at the Germans to see if they got it.  If not, I’d say it slower and use more hand motions and sign language, then look at them again.  Sometimes it would take two or three tries before they’d understand.  They would nod their heads and say “yes, yes” and then translate what I said to the other couple in French.  When the French understood, they’d then nod their heads and say, “Oui.  Oui.”  It was mind-bogglingly slow, but we had fun and they bought me beer every day after the lesson.  While conversing with Pepe’, it took me right back to talking to the Germans and French.  With Pepe’, though, there would be no beer at the conclusion. 

     Finally, around four in the afternoon, my cell door opened and I was taken back to the conference rooms where Dave was already sitting down.  I was extremely happy to see him.  Although my day had been filled with conversations with Pepe’, meals, phone calls and a shower, I was very anxious to get updated on where everything stood.  There was so much happening in regards to the DNA test, Laney’s visit and search of my house as well as Dave’s ongoing work to put my case together that I needed to know where we stood in regards to it all.  Dave apologized for not coming sooner and made him promise not to apologize to me anymore.  He always started by asking how I was doing.  I told him about my new bi-lingual skills and the fact that I got to shower.  I let him know that I was doing alright but was growing more and more frustrated when I had time to really think and process it all.  He promised that he was doing all that he could as fast as he could, but “these things take time,” he said more than once.  He had done some work on my alibi, specifically pulling phone and bank records and talking to some of the people who I was with during the weekend in question.  “I’m going to keep working on this, Chris, but honestly, we’re just waiting on the DNA test to come back,” he told me.  “Denver sent your samples to Florida this morning and Franklin told me that the results may be back as early as tomorrow.”  Hearing this got me very excited.  For the first time, I was hearing an actual possible end to all of this madness.  Dave told me that Franklin had called him earlier in the day and filled him in on Laney’s visit our conversation.  “Laney isn’t here to help me,” I said.  I asked him if he knew anything about the search of my stuff, which he didn’t.  Laney only told Franklin that he was going to back to Florida and that he’d be in touch.  Dave agreed that Laney probably was looking for more evidence to keep me in jail.  “The DNA is the key,” he said. 

     There really wasn’t anything new from Dave, but I appreciated him coming down to see me anyway.  Our visit was relatively short as he said that he had to get to a meeting on the other side of town.  As he left, he told me just to stay positive.  “We’re just waiting now,” he said as he walked out the door.  I had been waiting since Saturday morning.  Back then I was just waiting on any information as to why I was in jail.  Now I was waiting for the results of a DNA test that would set me free.  I immediately felt the same panic as the night before when I went over and over the possibility of Laney and Florida rigging the test.  I shook it off as I walked back to my cell.  I really wanted to stay positive, as difficult as it was. 

     Three hours passed pretty quickly.  Some of it was spent just lying on my bed.  I picked up the bible for the first time in a few days and read a little bit.  My focus was on not thinking about anything and not winding myself up.  Pepe’ was napping on the toboggan.  I had a few conversations through the bottom of the door with some neighbors and spent a little time just looking out into Denver.  Before long, it was visiting time.  As I walked back to the visitation room, I tried to guess who would be waiting for me behind the Plexiglas.  My only thought was that I hoped that it wasn’t Jerry.  Thankfully, when I turned the corner to my cubical, Kermit was sitting across from me and had already taken the phone receiver off of the holder. 

“You score 50 goals yet?” I asked him first. 

“Nope,” he said. 

“No playing while I’m in jail,” I said.

“Or course not.”  I knew he was lying.

“Were you in your boxers when they came over?”

“Yep.”

     I told him about my visit with Laney.  “I saw a photo of the guy that did it.  How I got involved in this is beyond me,” I said.  I asked him about the search of the house.  “They took a black stocking cap of yours and the football jersey you wore in England.”   I was instantly mad.  “Seriously?  How many fucking black stocking caps are there in the world?  And you can’t even see much of the guy’s shirt in the picture.”  I’m sure I was being too loud.  “I’m not sure what else they got,” Kermit said, “but I think they took a couple of papers or photos or something from your room.  He asked me where he could find your cologne.  I laughed and told him that we didn’t own any cologne.”  I wanted to know more details about the search, but it was obvious that Kermit didn’t know anything else.  “What were you doing while they were there?”  Kermit just looked at me.  “Fucker.  You were playing hockey,” I said.   “I was on the couch and those guys came in and asked me what was downstairs.  I told them clothes and boxes and stuff.  I took them down there and they started flipping through that row of hanging clothes in the back room.  When they got to the football jersey, Laney took it down and the other two guys came over to look at it.  I couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but I did hear something like, “We got him.”   Laney was pretty much a dick.  Your room is trashed” 

     Before he could continue, the officer in the room announced that time was up.  I hadn’t even been able to give him an update of where things stood.  “Florida has my DNA and any day now the results will be in.  It may even be tomorrow.  I’ll call you when I can if something happens,” I said as we started to hang up. 

     I was not happy walking back to my cell.  I don’t think I wanted to know what Laney had found and taken.  When I was just guessing what was going on, at least I could resolve myself to the fact that I was just guessing.  But now I knew for sure that Laney still believed I was guilty, which fueled my worry about the DNA test and why Florida wanted to do the testing themselves.  I didn’t want it to be night time.  I didn’t want to be going back to my cell.  I didn’t want to be in jail.  I wanted to talk to Laney and I wanted to talk to Franklin.  Hearing Kermit tell me what Laney had taken from my house made me very angry.  The powerless feeling was overwhelming.  I asked the guard who was escorting me back to my cell, one who I had spoken to a few times, if he thought that DNA tests could be rigged if an agency thought you were guilty.  “Anything’s possible,” he responded.  Not the reassuring answer I was looking for.

     Pepe’ and his snores filled the cell again when I got back.  Must be nice to be able to rest so peacefully, I thought.  I’d pay good money to be able to sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time.  I spent the the remainder of Thursday avoiding any thoughts of where I was or any specifics of my situation.  I did everything in my power to stay away from it.  I tried for at least an hour to count up the total amount of hours that I had slept since Saturday morning.  My best educated guess was around eight.  I thought about playing baseball, which was my go-to thought when I wanted to avoid thinking about something.  I don’t know why, but picturing myself on the field and really focusing on being there helped take my mind away from whatever it was that I was trying to avoid.  It was like my version of counting sheep.  I really had to concentrate and focus on it while I was in jail since the “bad thoughts” were always trying to pry themselves into whatever distractions that I was attempting to use.  I wanted to read my arrest report again, but decided not to.  It was intense working against myself to avoid going into a dark place again, like I was an addict who was doing my best not to shoot up again, even though the needle was sitting right next to me.  I was so tired and exhausted that my thoughts just jumped all over the place.  I may have even fallen asleep for a few minutes at a time, but I couldn’t tell.  Every so often I’d become aware that no one had asked for a time check all night.  There had been so much turnover on the floor that maybe the new guys didn’t realize that I could see the tower.  I kind of missed the responsibility of being the time keeper.  Every so often I’d look out to check the time myself and want to shout it out so that everyone else would know. 

     Somehow I made it past midnight and it was finally Friday.  Thankfully, I was able to pass the time without too much difficulty.  It was just about four in the morning when I heard some movement on the floor.  The lights flickered on and I could see other inmates standing and looking out of their door windows trying to see what was going on.  Whatever was going on was new.  It was an hour and a half before the regular breakfast time.  An officer that I didn’t recognize walked into the middle of the floor.  He had a clipboard in his hand.  Three other officers were behind him.  I heard several cell doors click open, including mine.  The officer with the clipboard yelled, “If I call your name, please step outside of your cell and close the door behind you.  Make sure you put on all of your clothes that you have with you.”  I listened as he started calling names.  “Chris Justice,” he said, somewhere in the middle of the list.  I stepped out in front of my door, closed it, and looked around to see who else had been called.  The light skinned guy was in front of his door.  No one was talking.  When the officer finished his list, I heard the cell doors all lock again.  There were probably a dozen or more guys on both sides of the floor standing in front of their cells.  The officer yelled again, “Please turn around and face your doors,” he said.  I did as he asked.  I turned my head and watched as the other three officers began putting handcuffs on the guys on the other side of the room.  After they had cuffs on, they were led to the corridor outside of the elevator.  Eventually one of the officers got over to me.  He told me to place my hands behind my back, which I did, and he put the cuffs on me.  I hadn’t had cuffs on since Saturday, and I didn’t like it.  “What’s going on?” I asked.  “You’re being transferred to the Denver County Jail.”

Everybody Knows One

Everybody wants to be a part of something. Even if you are one of those "I'm an individual. I don't need to be a part of anything" groups, you're still in a group. Get it? You are, so get over it. The funny thing about non-conformists is that by non-conforming, they are, in essence, creating a group of people who are conforming to be non-conformists. Whatever it is that you're into, someone else is into it, too. If you can imagine it, there is a magazine dedicated to it and somewhere in America people are having meetings about it. People love the common thread. If you're ever in the Ukraine and you're wearing your "I Love Little Rock" t-shirt, don't be surprised if an older couple from Minneapolis accosts you. Americans just love seeing other Americans in places other than America. The conversation goes something like this:



"Hey, are you American?"
"Yes I am"
"Well, I'll be. We are too! We're Jim and Delores from Minnesota. Where you from?"
"Little Rock"
"Little Rock?  Do you know Roger and Margie Swenson?"
"No."
"Well, they're from Little Rock, too. What are you doing over here in the Ukraine?"
"Just visiting"
"Well, I'll be. Have a great time. Maybe we'll see you out again somewhere."

Inadvertently, you will see Jim and Delores again on that same vacation, and it'll ruin your night.


True story: A friend (who will remain nameless, but we'll call him "Rob Justis") from Iowa spent a semester in Australia. Who did he end up dating? A girl from Iowa. Somehow, that same girl who he would never talk to at home became more attractive simply by being in the southern hemisphere. It was because of the common thread factor that they got together.  Americans love Americans when not in America.

"You're from Iowa? Wow! Me too! What a small world we live in! Let's date."

We are all part of one of two groups at all times. We are in a group called "The Public" or we are in a group called "The Staff." 97% of Americans, when joining or re-joining "The Public", forget all common sense. You can be the part of The Public when you leave the house, join The Staff for the morning, re-join The Public for lunch, go back to The Staff for the rest of the afternoon and finish out the day as The Public (until you return home). The IQ level of The Public is much, much lower than that of The Staff. If you remember that one fact, it'll help your blood pressure during your shift as The Staff. THE PUBLIC, ON WHOLE, ARE MORONS. You can have an IQ of 150 (is that good?) while you're an employee. That same IQ can drop to single digits (is that bad?) as a member of The Public.

(Note: Not all Public members are morons and not all Staff are intelligent. The +/- factor is somewhere around 37%)

Groups are everywhere. At work, at school, in prison, on the sidewalk. You can be part of several groups at one time. Right now you are a part of a group that reads blogs. You might also be a part of a young attorney's group, while at the same time being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous as well as a person who is a life-long Seattle Mariners fan. People often use these types of markers to describe you to someone else. "You know Regina? She's the young alcoholic lawyer who loves the Mariners."


But, for the love of God, don't be the person who goes overboard. Don't be defined. Don't be the guy who runs AND has short-shorts and gel bottles in a plastic belt and wears his race shirts at all times when he is not at work. The person who somehow works running into every fucking conversation with anyone who will listen.

Dale (at work): Hey, Roger, how's it going?
Roger: Great, I'm running the Super 5K for Gout Awareness this weekend!

Parsa (at a dinner party): Roger? I haven't seen you since last Christmas!
Roger: Well, I've been busy RUNNING, that's why.

Father Bilgaw (at Church): Good morning, Roger.
Roger: When are we gonna see you at the track, father?
Father Bilgaw: (excitedly) Son of a bitch, Roger, I hit the tri-fecta on the third race on Tuesday!! It paid 120-1!!
Roger: Father Bilgaw?



As in stocks, you want to diversify. Spread yourself out. Be a part of a bunch of groups. You can LOVE golf. You can. But you can't wear golf shirts, talk about golf, check your shoulder turn in the mirror, watch golf, travel to the Greater Hartford Open, include Tiger in your daily prayers, etc., Don't be known as "Bill The Golfer." You know what?  Bill sucks. He is the worst golfer that you've ever seen. He's the guy who's the most into it that you know, but you could beat him left handed. And you hate golf. And you're not even left handed.

The key? Be low-key. Go to Europe and be Lee Greenwood but don't wear your "God Bless The USA" t-shirt. Order some shit that you're never heard of. Don't eat at Burger King in Belgium. Watch NASCAR but don't wear your #3 jacket EVERYWHERE. Love stamp collecting but don't talk about it (the first rule of stamp collecting is: Don't talk about stamp collecting). Be a fan of The Beatles, but don't put BTLSFAN on your license plates. Don't be known as "Sally- The Quilt Lady."

Don't listen to me, though. I'm the blog writer/trail-runner/skier guy who loves the Chicago Cubs, Missouri Tigers, Jimmy Buffett, The Who and the guy who plays Born in the USA 31 times at an pub in London.

There's no reason for the following photo, minus the fact that this a group that you may not want to be a part of:

The Curious Case of Christopher Comtois (Part XII)

Searching

     Geoff Laney was not pleased.  “This is bullshit,” he said to no one in particular as he walked out of the Denver City Jail.  He was flanked by a couple of other Orlando Police officers who had made the trip to Colorado with him.  He knew that he’d eventually have to come out to Denver at some point, but he wasn’t expecting to be there just five days after his only suspect had been arrested.  Since Friday night when he had put out the arrest warrant on Justice, Laney had been planning his next moves.  He’d need to collect more evidence, talk to more of Justice’s friends and acquaintances and finally go to Colorado to pick him up and bring him back to Florida.  He had assumed that Justice would fight his extradition and then not be able to afford the high bond amount, which was exactly the way that it had played out thus far. That would give him somewhere in the ballpark of two weeks to get things straight before traveling west.  He wasn’t prepared for the phone call that he had received the day before from Detective Harrison Franklin of the Denver PD.  

     “I’m not sure what the hell kind of police work they do out here in Colorado, but Justice is lying and I can’t believe that Franklin is buying it,” Laney told his crew.  “I spent two and half months putting this case together and he meets Justice for ten minutes and all of sudden I’ve got the wrong guy.  This is bullshit.”  

     It was late when the officers from Orlando pulled up outside Justice’s residence on Grant Street.  Justice had told Laney that his roommate, Kermit, would be home and most likely in bed asleep.  They were all tired since they were on east coast time, but Laney was anxious to get in and take a look at where Justice lived.  They parked on the street and made their way to the doorstep outside of the duplex on the corner.  After several knocks, a light turned on inside the house and soon after the door was opening.  It was obvious that the person who answered the door had been sleeping.  “Are you Kermit?” Laney asked.  The man at the door nodded “yes” as he rubbed his eyes.  He was wearing boxer shorts and a t-shirt.  “I’m Detective Geoff Laney from the Orlando Police Department.  These other men are officers in my division.  We met with your roommate, Chris Justice, this evening, and he gave us permission to search the premises.  Do you mind if we come in?”  Technically they could come in regardless of what Kermit said, but Laney wanted to be cordial.  Kermit said that he didn’t mind as he opened and held the door for the men as they entered.  Laney explained that they would be focusing on Justice’s room but that they may need to look in other parts of the home.  They asked which room was Justice’s and Kermit pointed at the closed door next to the living room and said, “This one.”  Laney thanked him and apologized for being there so late.  He told Kermit that they may have questions for him at some point. Kermit nodded and sat down on the couch.  He asked if they minded if he turned on the television.  One of Laney’s men waved back to indicate that it was OK.  Kermit turned on the TV with a remote and got up to move a video game system onto the floor.  He turned it on and pulled the controller towards the couch and sat down.  "NHL Live 95" appeared on the screen.  "Let me know if this cord is your way," Kermit said to the group of officers.

     Laney and his men went into Justice’s room and took a quick look around before Laney gave out his search instructions.  The room was small.  There was a bed next to the window, a computer on a small desk next to the bathroom door and a dresser against the opposite wall.  There were a few posters and photos on the wall and a small closet in the corner.  Laney knew what he was generally looking for and he reminded his officers of what they had discussed on the plane.  “Anything related to music or Justice being in a band, a black stocking cap, any cologne, some sort of red sports jersey and anything else that would seem to relate to young girls,” Laney said.  The suspect had been wearing a red sports jersey and a black stocking cap in the photo taken on the night of the crime.  He had also spoken extensively about his music career and mentioned the brand of cologne that he was wearing.  Laney instructed one of the officers to log on to Justice’s computer and go through his search history and his email accounts.  Justice had given him all of the passwords to his computer and accounts when they met at the jail earlier in the evening.  Laney asked the other officer to check the rest of the upstairs for anything out of order.  The man left the room and closed the door.  

     The search began much like one would see in the movies, with no regard for keeping things neat and orderly.  Laney walked over to a small, two-drawer end table next to Justice's bed and took out the top drawer.  He dumped the contents on the bed and began to go through the pile, which included a stack of various papers and random odds and ends.  He looked at each piece of paper for a few seconds and discarded each one on the other side of the bed after determining that it wasn't important.  Old bills, junk mail, photos, blank checkbooks, letters, etc., none of which indicated anything abnormal.  Laney knew that the search would be slow and painstaking but that important evidence was there to be found.  The pile of unwanted junk piled up on the bed.  

     The other two men were doing the same as Laney.  One officer was sitting on a small chair scrolling through e-mails and looking for anything on Justice's computer that would incriminate him.  E-mail after e-mail was read, as well as saved documents and the internet search history.  Nothing raised an eyebrow.  After an hour or so Detective Laney asked the officer on the computer to move aside so he could empty the two drawers under the computer onto the bed, just as he had done with the drawers next to the bed.  The pile had grown and spilled onto the floor.  So far nothing the officers had looked at gave any indication that Justice had anything to hide.  Laney walked out to see if the officer in the living room was having any luck.  He just shook his head "no" without saying anything and Laney went back into the bedroom to start on the new pile he had dumped onto the bed.  As he began to go through the fresh stack, he started discarding papers and keychains and other trinkets on to the floor.  Finally he saw something that caught his eye.  "Hey, come over here and take a look at this," he said to the officer on the computer.  He handed him a piece of paper that appeared to be a letter written to Justice from someone.  There was no date on it and there was no envelope.  It read:

Fletch,

Knaggs and I just crossed the California border.  Wish you were here.  Best vacation ever.  Call us when you have no class.

Jimbo

P.S. We're getting the band back together

     "This is it," Laney said.  The other officer nodded.  "I knew he was in a band.  Everyone has been lying for him.  It's right here.  "Getting the band back together."  Laney took out a zip lock bag and put the letter into it unfolded.   He was confident that this was the break that he needed to help put his missing pieces together.  So far, his investigation hadn't been able to connect the suspect and the extensive talk of his musical career to Justice.  This letter, he felt, proved what all of the witnesses had talked about.  Justice having some sort of musical career was a centerpiece in what every witness, including the victim, had mentioned.  Most of the evening with Justice prior to the crimes being committed was spent listening to him talk about his exploits of being a professional musician and in a touring Christian rock band.  "Keep looking for anything connecting him to music, " he said loud enough for both officers to hear.  He put the letter in the zip lock bag and set it aside. He resumed going through the stack.  

     There were probably over one hundred photos included in the various stacks of papers.  Most were just Justice and friends taken in various locations.  None seemed out of place.  As he flipped through another ten or so pictures, one got his attention.  It was a photo that looked like Justice standing on a small stage with a microphone in his hand.  He was by himself with a monitor in front of him. There was a banner sign behind him that said, "Music Plus Karaoke."  It appeared that it was taken in a bar.  The Justice who committed the crimes spoke about being the lead singer in his band.  This photo looked very much like Justice singing somewhere.  Laney again showed the other officer.  Without speaking, he took out another plastic bag and carefully put the photo in it and placed it on top of the bag with the letter.  The pieces of the puzzle were coming together, he thought.  He knew he would find what he needed.

     The officer on the computer worked for nearly two hours and broke the silence in the room.  "There isn't anything on here, Geoff.  No links to the website that the suspect talked about and no e-mails or otherwise that look suspicious.  I went through his search history and hard drive and there was no downloaded child porn or anything out of order,' he said.  Laney looked up and asked him to start checking inside the closet on the other side of the room.  He continued and moved another stack of papers that he'd already gone through to the floor, which was totally covered with the contents of the drawers that he had already gone through. He started the search by trying to keep things in neat stacks on the bed, but gave up when papers started falling on the floor.  It was hard to tell what had been checked and what hadn't.  It looked like a hurricane had come through the room.  Papers were everywhere.  Drawers and desks were turned upside down.  Hanging clothes from the closet were stacked in corners.  Shirts that had been folded and inside a dresser were strewn everywhere.  

     After three hours of searching, all three officers stood in the mess in Justice's room and mapped out what they wanted to do next.  The officer who had been looking through the closet pulled out a milk crate that contained gloves and winter hats.  He dumped it on the bed.  Laney sorted through the mix of clothing.  There were running shorts and gloves and six or eight stocking caps.  He took one and held it up.  It was a nondescript black stocking cap.  "Is this black?" he asked the two other men.  They both looked at it in the light and agreed that it was black. "This is what he was wearing in the photo," Laney said. Again, he took out a plastic bag and placed the cap inside and tossed it onto the other two bags of evidence.  The search of the room was nearly done and Laney walked back out into the living room.  Kermit was still on the couch still playing his hockey video game

     "Kermit, do you know if Chris ever wears any cologne?" he asked as Kermit pushed the pause button on his game.  Laney had briefly looked around in the small bathroom that connected the two rooms but couldn't find any cologne.  Kermit laughed.  "Nope.  I don't think that we have any cologne in the house," he said, still chuckling.  .  

     "What's downstairs?" he asked as he looked at Kermit.  "Just storage and random stuff," Kermit said, looking up at Laney.  "Can you take us down there?" he asked.  Kermit stood up and walked towards the kitchen and down the stairs.  The three men followed.  When they got downstairs, Kermit pulled the string hanging from the ceiling and turned on the light.  The basement wasn't finished and there was a weight bench on one side with some clothing on the floor.  The washer and dryer was behind them in the corner.  There were two rows of clothes handing on hangers from the rafters.  "Whose clothes are these?" Laney asked Kermit.  "They are all Chris's" Kermit said. Laney started flipping through one of the rows.  They were a mix of button down shirts and jackets and a couple of suits.  After going through one row, he turned and went over to the second row on the other side.  He stopped midway through and took a hanger off of the rail that it was hanging from.  It was a red football jersey with a black number 6 on the front.  "Is this yours?" he asked Kermit.  "No, it's Chris's.  It's the football jersey he wore when he played football in England," he told Laney.  Laney took out a photo from his folder.  It was the photo of the suspect that was taken the night of the crime.  He held up the picture and put it next to the jersey on the hanger.  Although the rest of the red jersey that the suspect was wearing was obscured, it was obvious that it was a red sports jersey with a black ringed collar.  He motioned for the other two officers to take a look.  "This is what he was wearing that night," he said to no one.  He wished that the suspect photo showed the entire front of what he was wearing, but it was obviously red with black.  This was it.  He had all that he needed.  It was late and he was tired.  "Kermit, I think we're done here," he said as he started to walk back upstairs.  Kermit pulled the light off and followed them.  Laney had the red jersey in his hand.

     Laney took a few steps back into Justice's room and picked up the bags containing the letter, photo and black hat.  "We appreciate your cooperation tonight, Kermit.  And we're sorry that it was so late." he said.  He shook his hand and gave him his card.  "I may need to talk to you at some point if you don't mind," he told him as all three officers put their jackets back on.  Kermit stood behind them holding the door as the officers shuffled outside back onto the porch.  The door closed as they walked towards their rented car.  Laney opened the trunk and found a larger plastic bag to put the jersey into.  He closed the trunk and got into the driver's seat.  The other two officers were already in the car.  It was nearly 2am.  They were parked directly behind Justice's green Jetta. 

     "Guys, I think we're done here.  I'll call the Denver P.D. in a few hours and let them know that we are heading back to Florida," Laney said.  All three were very tired.  It had been a long day.  "I'll tell them that they will need to send Justice's DNA back to us immediately so we can run the test."  Laney was satisfied.  He had his connection to Justice and his music.  He had the hat and shirt that he wore that night. Soon he'd have a positive DNA test.  He knew that he was nearing the end of the road and that Justice would soon be in Florida waiting for his trial.  "Great job, tonight, guys," he told the other two as they pulled into the hotel parking lot.  After a few hours of sleep they would get back on a plane and go back to Orlando to get ready for Justice to join them soon.  

     

     

    

     

   

     

The Curious Case of Christopher Comtois (Part XI)

 Flurries

     On one hand, I had gotten three glorious hours of sleep.  It was like gold.  My body and my mind had run out reserves days ago.  I couldn’t shut down my brain and physically I had tapped into my adrenaline so many times just to stay upright that I was like a junkie on the come-down.  My normal stress levels in everyday life are unusually low.  Even in what most would consider a “stressful situation,” my needle didn’t move all that much.  During the first few days of uncertainty and confusion, I think I was simply in shock.  It takes awhile for you to mentally switch over from your normal life to what I was going through.  It’s not like I wasn’t taking it seriously, but none of it seemed real.  There were just so many unanswered questions that I was left scratching my head hour after hour.  It was overwhelming. But the events of Tuesday and half of Wednesday had left me behind again and I was trying to catch up.  Something had to give and I’m sure that I appeared to be dead as I slept on Wednesday afternoon.  No dreaming, no movement.  Comatose.  I was so completely in a fog when I woke up to my door opening sometime late Wednesday afternoon that it took me a few seconds to remember where I was.  Just a few seconds, though.

     When the officer walked into my cell, I honestly thought for a brief second that he was there to take me downstairs and let me leave.  My internal engine didn’t even have time to get cranked up to celebrate when I noticed the Hispanic man and the other officer holding what looked like a toboggan.  I sat up in bed rubbing the sleep from my eyes and watched the second officer laying the toboggan on the floor against the wall across from my bed.  There wasn’t much room for anything additional in my room and the toboggan left just a few feet of floor space between it and my bed.  The Hispanic man shuffled inside and the first officer spoke in Spanish as he pointed at the toboggan.  The two officers turned and appeared to be leaving when I asked what was happening.  One said without turning towards me, “You have a new roommate.”  A roommate?   Seriously?  That’s all the information I get?  I knew that some of the guys on the other end of the hallway were doubled up in their cells, but no one near me did.  I just sat there.  The Hispanic man just stood inside the doorway holding his pillow and blanket.  My first thought was that I was glad that I had the bed.  The toboggan looked uncomfortable.  After a minute or so, I broke the ice and said “Hello.”  The man just looked at me.  He was horribly ragged.  I guessed that he was probably 45 but he looked 60.  He was slight in build with unwashed black hair with some grey coming in.  It was uncombed.  He had on a wrinkled button down shirt and jeans.  Finally he said, “Hola,” and set his pillow and blanket down on his new plastic bed and took two steps over to the window and stared out blankly.  His back was to me.  I had no idea what to say or do.  I wasn’t scared, but again just trying to take in what was happening.  I was still extremely tired and felt like lying back down but felt like it would be rude since the guy just got here.  I asked how he was doing and got no response.  He was motionless.  I asked him his name.  Nothing.  “Nombre?”  He turned and said, “Pepe.”  I cycled through my very limited Spanish and wished that I had been a better student in high school, and again my freshman year in college when I had taken Spanish.  “Me llamo Christobol,” I said to him, “Hablo Ingles?”  I was semi-impressed with myself for being able to call up the most basic of my bi-lingual skills.  He just said, “No,” and then some Spanish that I didn’t understand.  I spoke slowly in English hoping that he would pick up a word or two.  I said the same sentences over and over thinking that he would eventually have an idea of what I was trying to convey to him.  He again said something that I didn’t understand and I recognized that he was also saying the same things twice.  He motioned to his mouth and rubbed his stomach, which I figured meant that he was hungry.  I just said “no” a few times and slowly tried to get him to understand that dinner was hours ago.  I instinctively added “el’s” and unnecessary “o’s” to the end of English words.  “No el food-o” I told him.  “Dinner-o quatrto horas ago.”  I held up four fingers and said, “Quatro horas.”  He smiled and nodded his head as if he understood. 

     I didn’t have time for this.  I didn’t want to spend the rest of my day trying to converse in slow, simple sentences over and over.  He kept asking me a question in Spanish and I kept telling him, “No comprende.”  He posed no threat to me, but for some reason I was overly annoyed.  Even though he represented a complete break from the normal monotony, I had weirdly grown comfortable with my routine.  I didn’t want to babysit.  I could tell that he was confused and the more I looked at his face it appeared that he had a growing red bruise on his forehead.  Maybe he had been in fight when he was arrested.  Perhaps he resisted arrest and the police had done it to him.  I tried to ask him why he was in jail.  After about six attempts, slowing down more each time, I started adding sign language along with my words.  I mimicked a signal for “why” by putting my arms up to my side with my palms up with my shoulders shrugged then pointed at him and then held my hands behind my back like I was in handcuffs.  After three tries he finally nodded and said, “Yes.  Yes.” and said what I understood to be that he had no idea.  I knew how he felt.  I doubted that he was wrongfully accused.  We went back and forth for nearly an hour getting nowhere.  He was Pepe’ and he didn’t know why he was there.  I got it.  My journey had just gotten stranger than I could have ever imagined.  Not only did I have my own thing going on, but now I had a beat up Mexican guy living in my ten foot by eight foot cell.  I knew the dimensions since I had painstakingly measured it with my feet over the course of two hours the day before.  My Midwestern upbringing wouldn’t allow me to be rude and just sat back down on the bed leaning against the wall to mind my own business.  I could tell that he was confused and maybe a little scared.  Obviously he had done something to justify him standing at my window, and I laughed to myself since I didn’t exactly look like an upstanding citizen myself.  I wondered what he was thinking about me.  I got the sense that he wasn’t too bright, but, then again, I have friends who speak broken English that I didn’t think were too bright, either.  The thought suddenly popped into my head that I had just spent four hours without having a conscience thought about my own situation.  It was a good feeling to let my mind take a break from constantly running on overdrive.  It was after five o’clock and I got a little depressed when I figured that nothing new would be happening on Wednesday.  The workday was over and all I had left to look forward to was hopefully having a visitor.  I had three hours to kill and Pepe’ to talk to.  Sort of.  He hadn’t moved from where he stood since he went to the window but there really wasn’t anywhere to move, anyway.  I had stood in that same spot for hours upon hours watching the free world in motion.  Although we were from the opposite spectrums of life, I assumed, we were both now in the same boat.  Literally.  Right around the time that I tried to engage in more awful Spanglish with the accompanying game of charades, the door in the cell unlocked and I stood to see one of the same officers coming down the hallway.  Since it was still light outside and the clock tower said it was nearing five thirty, I knew that something new was coming my way.  I was glad for the break from my new roommate.  The door opened and I said,” Buenos Tardes” to Pepe’ as I walked out into the hallway.  I figured I’d be back.

     The officer took me on my now-familiar walk to the conference rooms and I saw Dave seated inside.  I think that I had totally forgotten that he had been to see the judge earlier in the day to have my bond amount set.  I walked into the room and greeted Dave and told him that I had a lot of news to share with him.  As I sat down, he started by telling me my bond amount, which was set at $150,000.  I was a ldisappointed that it was so high since I didn’t think that Aimee’s dad, Tom, would want to put up that much.  Even 10% was $15,000 in cash that was not refundable.  If it were under $100,000, I think that there was a chance that he would do it, but one fifty was a little steep.  I asked Dave if he minded if I called Mr. Wagstaff to tell him the amount and I picked up the phone to call back to Kansas City.  When I got Tom on the phone he was happy to hear from me.  It was the first time that I had spoken with him directly since all of this began.  The entire Wagstaff family is huge supporters of the University of Kansas, which is the chief rival of Mizzou.  The rivalry, especially for those of us who grew up near the border of Missouri and Kansas, is very intense.  We don’t like them and they don’t like us.  It’s usually good natured, but not always.  My relationship with Aimee and her family had always been a fun one when it came to our school affiliations.  As Tom and I began to talk he threw in a jab about things like this happening only to Mizzou folks, which I found to be very funny.  I was happy that even during an intense life experience like the one I was going through that we could still joke around about “normal” things and not focus so much on the bigger picture.  He asked me how much the bond was, and, when I told him, he said that it was just too much for what he could do.  I could tell that he felt bad that he couldn’t immediately help me.  I reassured him that there were some things that had just come up that may get me out sooner than we had originally thought.  I didn’t want to stay on the phone for long since Dave was sitting in front of me and I didn’t want to take advantage of his time.  I thanked Tom for his support and that I’d call him as soon as I could.  After I hung up, I gave Dave the entire rundown on the DNA test and everything that had taken place in the morning.  I even told him that I had managed to sleep for a few hours and that I had a new roommate who didn’t speak any English.  My spirits were about as high as they had been at any point in the week.  Dave explained to me what he had gotten done in regards to accessing my records and talking to a few of my friends.  The DNA test, he thought, would change everything.  He would continue to gather up all of the necessary information, but he knew, as I did, that a negative DNA test would be the conclusion that we were looking for.  We talked about how long the test might take and whether or not the state of Florida would have to handle it.  He was going to talk to Franklin as soon as he could and he had spoken with my mother several times to keep her up on how I was doing.  I could not overstate how reassuring it was to have Dave working for me.  As I sat there and listened to him, his demeanor and calmness, I was convinced that I had the right person on my side.  Although the fact that Detective Franklin had believed me, initiated contact with Laney and had set up the DNA test was the break that I was praying for, just the presence of Dave and his trust in me from the onset was what kept me from going crazy while wallowing away the hours of nothingness.  While sitting there listening to Dave talk about the timeline and his plan if we ever did have to go to trial, I was about as thankful as I had ever been that he and Franklin found their way into my life.  I still had an unshakable knot in my stomach that would not go away and the stress that had piled on me since the beginning was taking a toll, but Dave was on the case he reminded me to remember when I was back at my cell that he was out there doing his best for me.  At some point he filled me in on how my school and kids were doing.  The word had gotten out from him and his son that it appeared that I was really innocent and that everything was a huge mistake, which was a relief to hear since I didn’t want my class and the parents to have to continue to wonder what it was that I had done to cause all of this.  They still had not found a permanent substitute for my class but the board was actively searching for someone.  The length of my stay in jail was still very much unknown, so they’d have to find someone who was available for an undetermined amount of time. 

     Eventually we had to wrap it up.  Dave packed up his stuff, shook my hand and again told me that he’d be back when he could.  He told me that the DNA test had turned this into a waiting game, one that I had gotten pretty good at recently.  Well, maybe not “good” at.  It was a work in progress.  Dave and I said our goodbyes and I was escorted back towards my cell.  I felt like the events of day were absolutely a turning point and although I was still very much in the middle of a tremendously serious situation, the reality was that I was simply waiting for the results of a test that would 100% eliminate me from the discussion.  I really didn’t know when everything would conclude, but I kind of started looking at everything as an adventure.  I wished I had a camera and could document everything that I was seeing and going through so I could show people once I got out.   I constantly look at life like it’s a movie.  Every interaction that you have with others is like a scene.  There is a story line and drama and happiness and action.  Every person that you come in contact with is like a co-star of your movie and they shape your life experience.  I remember living in London after college and before leaving making sure to take photos of some of the more mundane things from my daily life.  Each photo was of something that shaped my own experience:  The guy who saved me a USA Today at the train station each day so I could keep up on the news back at home, the restaurant where I worked, the guys I played football and rugby with, the policeman who I talked to most every day when I walked down the street towards the bus.  I wanted to be able to look at those pictures and remember what it was like when I was there and now I was starting to look at jail in much the same way.  I wanted to pose for a photo with Ice Cube and maybe a couple of the guards who I had some conversation with.  A picture of the shower and my cell.  I wondered if I would be able to take a toothbrush with me as a souvenir.  I was pretty sure that no one else in jail was having these thoughts.  Even I realized how ridiculous it was that I had switched gears so quickly from the ultimate fear to wishing I could take vacation photos from my stay in the Denver City Jail.  I think I was growing delirious from the intense pressure of everything that had happened and the overload of information that had come my way in such a short amount of time.  Eventually I found myself back at my cell door and could see Pepe’ still standing at the window looking out.  He hadn’t moved at all since I left. 

     Before the guard left me as I walked into the cell, I asked him if a shower would be possible the next day.  I had gotten to have a least a moderate relationship with a few of the officers on the floor and knew which ones seemed more reasonable than the others.  They pretty much knew nothing about my situation, but I tried to remain calm and respectful at all times with them.  This guard in particular was more talkative and didn’t seem like he had been worn down by his job like some of the others did.  In response to my question, he said that he’d be back on shift in the afternoon on Thursday and that he’d make sure that I’d be able to take a shower.  Asking for simple things like a shower really began to bother me.  Not that it hadn’t already, but I was growing less and less tolerant of the way prisoners were treated.  I just didn’t understand why getting a shower and a new toothbrush each day was such a chore.  I just felt gross.  Although I hated shaving on a daily basis for work, I had at least a six day growth on my face and wanted to get cleaned up.  I felt extremely sluggish after not being able to run for such a long time.  I wanted to feel some sense of normalcy and feeling so dirty without being on a camping trip was just adding to my displeasure. 

     Jail simply wears you down.  In a way, it reminded me of the years I spent in the Army Reserves.  When I was 17, I joined the reserves as a way to help pay for college.  My father was in the Army back in the 1950’s and he always spoke fondlyof his years in the military.  I was probably the most unlikely candidate for army service since my ability to conform was, well, not an ability that I possessed.  Actually, I enjoyed it. At least some of it.  I went to Fort Knox in Kentucky for basic training the summer after my junior year of high school and had a great time.  At that point in my life I was just learning how my personality navigated itself through the world and basic training was my first real experience away from home.  I think that joining the army was the initial spark that started the fire inside me for adventure and my craving for new experiences and continual forward motion.  Basic training was fun.  Not many people leave basic saying anything in the neighborhood of “fun” when describing it, but, for me, it was something new and different.  I got to shoot M-16s at targets, throw hand grenades, run the same obstacle course that the platoon in “Stripes” ran (yes, “Stripes” was filmed at Fort Knox), camp out in the woods, crawl in the mud while machine gun fire is zipping by above you, among many other things that you don’t get to do every day. I even found the drill sergeants and the yelling and mind games to be fun.  I took it all in stride, much the same way as I was taking being in jail in stride.  I didn’t even mind the structure, which is what the military is based on.  There was a certain amount of comfort in knowing exactly what was happening each day and when it would happen.  My life in jail had become very much the same.  In a very strange sort of way, I had grown comfortable with the daily routine, although I hated the extreme amount of down time added with the heavy weight of why I was there.  In the military, everything was “hurry up and wait.”  We’d have to march across the base to some location and then stand around and wait for hours for the next thing to happen.  This was exactly what I was doing on a daily basis in jail.  We had to hurry up to eat our food so we could go back to our cells to wait for for the next meal, visitation, phone use, etc.  As I walked back into my room it was probably 7:00pm and I hoped that I’d get a visitor that night.  I really wanted to just sit down and take everything in that had happened that day, but I knew that I’d have to try to talk to Pepe’ again. 

     I went in and sat down on my bed. I said “Hola” to Pepe’ and asked how we was doing.  And asked again slower.  He looked very tired.  His bruise was becoming more noticeable.  I pointed and said, “Que paso?”  Which I thought meant “what happened?” If not, it was close and I figured he’d understand.  He gave me a lengthy response that got him animated.  He feigned punches and the only word I could pick out was “policia,” which I took to mean that he had been hit by the police.  I assumed that he did something to instigate them.  “Por que’?” I came back with.  I wanted to know why they hit him.  I honestly didn’t know if I was using the right Spanish words, but he immediately said “no se” a few times.  He didn’t know why they hit him.  I didn’t buy it.  The police don’t generally just hit someone.  Then again, the police don’t generally arrest innocent teachers for crimes that took place when they were 3000 miles away from the scene, either.  I was in no position to judge.  Pepe’ just stood there and looked very sullen.  I wondered if he was married or had kids, so I just started rambling out various Spanish words in the form of questions.  Ninos?  Ninas?  El wife-o?  La familia?  He nodded yes and said “si” after each word.  He understood.  He pointed back at me and said, “Familia?”  I tried to tell him that my mother was back in Missouri.  “Mi Madre esta es en Missouri,” I said.  I was becoming very impressed with myself again.  I was sort of having a conversation with a man who spoke very little English.  A man who had been beaten up by the policia.  No matter.  We went back and forth with this for the better part of the next hour.  I was actually enjoying myself.  Maybe having Pepe’ as a roommate wasn’t going to be so awful.  It was a total departure from the other five days in my cell alone.  Maybe Pepe’ would be the perfect distraction from the brutal alone time that I had become accustomed to.  It was slow going in the conversation and it took several attempts at understanding even the simplest of answers, but it was a break from the norm.  From what I could make of what he was trying to say, he had gotten into an argument with his wife or grandmother or perhaps his neighbor and someone had called the police and he was arrested.  All I knew for sure was that he argued with someone, the police came, he got hit by one of them and now he was in jail on the felony floor with me.  Since my floor didn’t have just the run-of-the-mill petty criminals, Pepe’ either wasn’t telling me everything that happened or he had a checkered past that included more run-ins with the law or perhaps he had other warrants out for his arrest.  Regardless, we were together in a very small cell and that he’d be sleeping on a toboggan while I got the “nice” bed.  I realized that it was nearly visitation time when someone down the hall asked for a time check.  It was 7:55 and I half wanted to give it in Spanish, but didn’t think that “a la siete y cinco y cinco” was the correct answer. 

     As had been the case each night of my stay, a guard came to my cell at eight o’clock and told me that I had a visitor.  I was anxious to find out who had come to see me and to be able to unload all of the happenings of the day.  I really wished that I could use the phone after the visit but knew that I’d probably have to wait until the early morning again.  When I made my way to the visitor area and walked to an open cubicle, I was surprised to see Lou Greer sitting across from me.  Lou was the father of Kyle, one of my fifth grade students, and also a member of the school board.  Out of all of the parents from my class, I was probably the friendliest with him.  From the very beginning of the year, Lou and I had become friends and I had been out with him on more than a few occasions to watch a football game or something similar. I had been over to his house a couple of times for dinner and I really liked his family.  He had been one of the first to “welcome” me to Colorado.  He had gone to undergrad at the University of Missouri at Rolla, one of the schools in the University of Missouri system.  Mizzou was the flagship, but there were satellites in Rolla, St. Louis and Kansas City.  Rolla was an engineering school in the rural town of Rolla in southern Missouri.  Lou had played football there years earlier.  Many years earlier, I usually joked with him.  His son, Kyle, was probably my favorite student in my class.  He had a black and gold Rolla football sweatshirt that he wore for something like 50 straight days.  He was very quiet but a good kid and fun to have in the classroom.  Seeing Lou sitting there immediately brightened my spirits and we both picked up our phones at the same time to begin our conversation.

     “How you holding up?” he asked first.  I described the rigors of jail life and that I looked forward to getting out and running again.  Lou and I had put on a flag football game earlier in the school year with the kids in the fifth through eighth grade.  I quarterbacked one team and he did the same for the other team.  My team was Mizzou and his was Rolla.  We all wore black and gold, which made my job to find an open receiver very difficult.  A bunch of parents came out to watch the game and it turned out to be really fun and great team building event. Of course, Jerry didn’t like it.  Neither did the Kindergarten principal, all of which I found amusing since Lou had been on the school board for awhile.  Even after seven months, I still didn’t understand the dynamics of the board.  I really liked most of them, but Jerry was so polarizing that it seemed like everyone just kind of let him do his thing, which was to be unpleasant.  I wondered if he made everyone hold hands before meetings. 

     Since Lou was the first person that I really got to talk to after the flurry of information and activity from the day, I took him through everything.  Lou said more than once not to worry about my job, which was pretty much, or completely, opposite of what Jerry had said on Sunday night.  Talking to him was very comforting.  I enjoyed his company and I found it extemely nice of him to take the time to come down and check on me.  We had a good talk and he told me that all of the kids from my class were hoping that I’d be out soon.  Kyle was taking it pretty hard, he explained.  I told him to say hi to everyone at school and to tell them that I was doing OK.  He seemed encouraged with all of the information that I gave him and, as usual, the time had sped up on me and our visit was over.  I didn’t have the kind of friendship with Lou where we’d end by touching hands on the Plexiglas, but I imagined in my mind how funny that would be.  He said goodbye and to “hang in there,” which was a popular phrase for my well-wishers to end our conversation with.  I hoped that they hadn’t meant it literally, as in “HANG in there.”  I didn’t have my belt, anyway.  The cops knew what they were doing.  I waved as he walked out and was soon being escorted back to my cell.  After all that had happened with Franklin, the DNA test, Dave’s visit, my phone calls to Kira and Tom Wagstaff, I didn’t have the usual dread that I normally had following a visitor. Plus, I knew that Pepe’ was waiting back at home for me to come back and resume our riveting discussion.  I looked forward to some “under the door” conversations with Cube and the light skinned, afro guy that I had gotten to know.  I knew that they would be interested to hear the latest from me. 

     The return to my cell was normal: very little conversation with the guard and the lights in the hall were dimmed for the night.  I realized that I hadn’t read the Bible lately but could probably recite most of the stories by heart.  Once I got back into my confines, I noticed that Pepe’ had moved to a reclined position on the toboggan.  He was awake and we exchanged Spanish and English “hellos” when I sat down on my bed.  My arrest report was still sitting where I left it in the morning and the Bible was on the floor near the bed.  I wondered if Pepe’ had tried to read the narrative of the night in Orlando but assumed that he probably knows about five English words in total.  I tried to engage my neighbors in conversation but it seemed that everyone was already asleep, which was extremely odd considering the fact that there was always noise and muffled talk going on at all hours.  I just sat on my bed and took myself through every stop in my Wednesday adventures.  Pepe’ had closed his eyes so I figured that I’d be on my own for awhile.  I wasn’t tired at all, but certainly not rested.  A little adrenaline was still present in my blood and I was wide awake as it got nearer to nine o’clock at night.  Pepe’ had the path blocked to the window as he had shifted the toboggan to fit the room a little better while I was gone.  Some spring cleaning.  It really opened up the space, I laughed to myself.  As I reclined into bed, I started flipping through the arrest report again.  Eventually all of the good feelings from the day were gone from my body and the dark fear and dread began to return.  I tried to fight it off, but my imagination began to run amok.  What if Laney and the Florida PD were convinced that I was their guy and they wanted to test the DNA themselves and rig it so it came out positive?  What if they were so sure that they had their man that they’d lie to put me in prison?  Laney had done so much work on this case that I was sure that the worst circumstance for him would be exactly what was happening:  he had the wrong guy.   As I read through the story of what happened on January 5^th, 2002 at the Radisson Hotel in Orlando, I wondered what the actual suspect was doing that night.  Did I know him?  Did he know me?  It was all too overwhelming to think about, really.  The “why” and the “how” of exactly what led me to this position in life was too much to really comprehend.  My head literally started to hurt with all of the unanswered questions and possibilities that were flooding me.  Luckily, someone down the hall needed a time check and I was snapped out of my blank stare towards the ceiling.  It was nearly ten o’clock.  As I began to lie back down, the lock on my door made the familiar mechanical clicking noise to alert me that someone was coming to my, um, our, cell.   It might be for Pepe’, but I hoped that something new was coming my way.  After all that had taken place during the day, I couldn’t even begin to guess what could happen so late at night.  Maybe I was going home?  I allowed myself to briefly get excited that maybe the ordeal was coming to a close.  In the span of just ten seconds, I had at least seventeen guesses of what was going on.  I even thought that someone finally figured out after me asking anyone who would listen that I really, really wanted another toothbrush.  Anything was possible in jail.  Nothing made a whole lot of sense.  The door opened and a familiar officer stepped inside and told me that someone was here to see me.  I asked if he knew if it was my lawyer, which he didn’t.  As he led me out into the hallway he told me that Detective Franklin was waiting for me in a conference room with another officer that he didn’t know.  I was anxious and excited that I’d be seeing Franklin again.  Every interaction with him thusfar had brought nothing but positive and I hoped that this would be more of the same.

     There wasn’t much going on in the administrative office as I shuffled through behind the guard.  It was now a familiar area for me, one that most of the other guys around me didn’t get to see since they didn’t have lawyers or visitors.  There was usually someone sitting at what could be a “control desk.” I’d always greet whoever was seated at the console when I passed by.   I was pretty sure that there were only three or so guys that worked that station and I’d said hello to each of them multiple times.  Regardless of the situation I found myself in during my life, I never forgot the simple life lessons that my parents instilled in me:  Treat others with respect and say “please” and “thank you.”  If I did those two things, they told me, I’d get what I gave.  Although the world, adulthood and life in general put those lessons to the test on more than several occasions, I still believed that being respectful went a long way with the people who would notice such things.  Not everyone did, especially when you’re masquerading as a criminal in jail.  My patience had been tried more times during my incarceration than I could count, but getting visibly or angry at my treatment wasn’t going to make anything better.  I unequivocally knew that the longer this mess went on, the more I wasn’t sure how long my good nature could last.  I could feel myself being less and less tolerant with the police officers and guards who blatantly viewed prisoners as lesser individuals and treated them, us, as such.  My luck was on the upswing all day, though, and a new turn in the road was ahead.  I hoped that Franklin had good news for me. 

     Franklin was standing outside one of the conference rooms when I turned the corner to the hallway separating the rest of the darkened rooms.  All of the doors were closed and he was kind of half in and half out of the room next to him.  I could see that someone with black hair was seated inside but he was obscured by the reflection from the other windows of other rooms.  Franklin took a few steps towards me and then looked at my escort and sort of waved him off.  He extended his hand and I did the same to greet him as he said, “Chris, I have someone that I want you to meet,” We shook hands and kept moving a couple of steps until we were both standing just inside the open room.  The man who I’d seen through the windows stood up and Franklin motioned towards him and said, “Chris, this is Detective Geoff Laney from the Orlando Police Department.”  He continued by pointing back at me and continued, “Detective Laney, this is Chris Justice, the gentleman I spoke to you about on the phone this morning.”  I stood in silence for a moment.  I wasn’t sure what to say. Laney was maybe five feet, seven inches and looked like one of the pilots from the movie “Airplane.”  He had a Tom Selleck mustache and looked like a detective should look.  In 1978.  I was standing mere feet away from the man that I called from my house on Saturday morning.  I wondered if he had gotten my message, and instead of just letting that thought run through my mind, it made its way out through my mouth.  That’s the first thing I said to him.  “Did you get my message on Saturday?” I blurted it out like he was a friend who hadn’t called me back.  He sort of chuckled and nodded a “yes.” I was sure that he was a bit taken back by my “greeting.”  I immediately apologized and extended my hand and told him that it was nice to meet him.  I was horribly conflicted since it really wasn’t nice to meet him.  Whatever blunder that caused a squadron of police to visit my house three times on Saturday morning and land me in the worst circumstances imaginable was directly attributed to him.  I didn’t know Laney and had never met him.  Before Saturday morning I had never heard the name “Geoff Laney,” but sleepless night followed by sleepless night followed by sleepless night gave me plenty of opportunity to imagine what kind of dipshit detective he had to be.  I had a slew of things that I wanted to say to him before he could even get a word in, but I withheld my candor until I could get a grasp of why he was in Denver.  Wait, was he taking me back to Florida now?  I panicked inside.  I wasn’t ready to go back to Florida.  Did I screw up and sign the wrong extradition form?  Had Franklin been working with Laney the whole time and suckered me into taking some bogus DNA test to trap me?  My mind was going so fast that I honestly forgot exactly what was happening for a moment.  It was one of those moments in life when hundreds of thoughts race through your mind in a split second and each thought is presented, debated and discarded before moving onto the next.  Time stopped and it seemed like Franklin and Laney were frozen while I thumbed through the files in my brain to find the right one for this particular situation.  The “What To Do When In Jail For Molesting A Teenage” file wasn’t easily accessible.  I just stood there. 

     Laney started.  “Chris, Detective Franklin called me this morning and explained his conversation with you yesterday.  Obviously whatever you said to get him to believe you moved him enough to reach out to us down in Orlando.  I know that you’ve read my arrest report and I gotta say that I was very surprised to hear from him.”  I didn’t move.  I carefully took in every word that he said. Although my lifelong case of A.D.D. normally caused me to unconsciously wander off in the middle of sentences and conversations, I was supremely focused on what he was saying.  What a total fuckface, I thought.  I was so angry on the inside that I nearly started to shake but forced it all back down.  I had a a bad habit of not listening to entire discussions and instead drawing conclusions before the person talking to me had reached the end of whatever they were trying to say.  This man had only said one thing to me and immediately I translated it in my mind as, “Chris, you’re guilty as hell and I’m super annoyed that this idiot next to you bought whatever sob story you sold him.”  I remained motionless and let him continue. I concluded that he hadn’t hopped on a plane to come all the way out west just to tell me that I was a liar and that Franklin was stupid.  “But the more I listened to what he told me about your story and your account of where you were when the crime was committed and the number of people that you came in contact with and the electronic trail you immediately recalled made me re-think everything that I’d been doing on this case since the onset,” he told me.  “When another officer from another state takes the time to call me to tell me that I may have the wrong man in custody, well, I simply wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t follow up on it.”  He sat down and shuffled through some papers and asked me to sit down, which I did.  Detective Franklin stood behind me.  I still wasn’t sure where all of this was going and wondered if I should put a halt on it until I could get Dave down to the station.  His original warnings of the police not being my friend and not to talk to them were beating me over the head.  Franklin had tried his Jedi thing on me and he didn’t even have much investment in the case yet.  Laney had gotten to know me for over two months and had talked to my friends and co-workers.  He believed that I was the guy who beat-off with a 14 year old in a stairwell so much that he had me arrested.  He wrote that report with my name in bold print over fifty times.  I was still resisting the incredible urge to ask him the thousands of questions that I had, but figured that I’d get my chance to talk.  I was proud of myself for showing unprecedented restraint.   In the movie version of this scene in my head, I had him by the collar against the wall shaking him while screaming about how badly he screwed this case and my life up.  Franklin was backing me up.  We kicked the shit out of him.  Those were my thoughts as I stared back at him waiting to see where he was headed.

      He pulled out an eight by ten color photo and slid it across the table.  He turned it so it faced me right side up. I looked down as he said, “Chris, do you know this man?”  I assumed that this was the guy he was looking for, which clearly wasn’t me.  The guy in the photo had on a black ski cap, was clean-shaven and probably in his late 20’s or early 30’s.  I couldn’t tell what he was wearing as the picture was only his face from the shoulders up.  It looked like he had on a t-shirt with a v-neck collar.  He was sort of smiling but it looked like more of a smirk.  The one thing that immediately caught my attention was the awful silver necklace that he was wearing.  It was oversized and looked like a small link chain, like one you’d lock a gate with.  It was “stylish,” if you liked that sort of thing.  Which I didn’t.  I looked at the photo for well over a solid minute or two.  I wanted to know him.  I really wanted to know him.  It would have been so much easier if knew who he was.  But I didn’t.

     “No, I don’t know who that is, and I’d never wear that necklace.” Franklin laughed.  Laney did not.  I was just being honest.  The chain was horrible.  Laney asked if I was sure.  I pushed the photo back over towards him as I again said that I had no idea who he was.  Laney asked me when I moved to Colorado, and without hesitation, I said, “You know when I moved to Colorado.  You know everything about me.”  Laney loosened up a little and sat back in his chair.  “Chris, I came to Denver to talk to you myself.  If there are things that I missed in my investigation and you’re not the right guy then you shouldn’t be here.  I understand your frustration but I’m here to help you.  I’m man enough to admit when I make a mistake.  I’m trying to put all of this together.”  Fair enough.  I told him that I had moved out in August after flying from Portland, Maine to Orlando and driving a moving van across the country.  I added that I hadn’t been back in Florida since I crossed the Georgia state line on my way to Denver.  I wanted to continue with the story of my entire eight months in Colorado per each day, but he had more questions.  “I know you’ve taken a DNA test, and that’s a huge sign that you’re confident that the results will show that you’re not the man who committed the crimes that you read about.  Detective Franklin gave me the rundown of where you were that weekend, but can you go through it again for me?”  Finally, the right question.  I took up the next ten minutes explaining in vivid detail the events of the weekend in question.  I had had enough alone time recently to go through it all in my head so many times that I could recount nearly every conversation that I had and who I had them with, what I wore each day, what I ate, who I called, what ski runs we took in Vail, everything.  He just sat and took notes and nodded and mumbled “uh huh” every once in awhile.  As I spoke, I was still processing the weekend and even the events leading up to the weekend.  I had forgotten that I had been in Vegas for New Years Eve, which was the Tuesday of the week before. I had driven there with a buddy from Denver and met up with a couple of other friends.  It was a spur of the moment trip and one that I took partly to get away from the phone at home so that I wouldn’t have to talk to Kira if she called.  I wanted to avoid her completely since she had just left the Sunday prior, and I thought that she might still be stinging a little.  I told Laney that I had a couple of photos taken in Vegas and that I had a full goatee at the time.  I didn’t shave it off until weeks later and the guy in the photo was clean shaven.  At the end of each new description I’d add in who he could call to validate that part of the story.  He kept taking notes and he let me keep talking.  When I was done, he didn’t look up for a minute or two as he continued to write.  “Chris, have you ever been in a band?”  What?  Like a rock band?  I asked him to repeat his question, which he did verbatim.  “No, I’ve never been in a band,”  I forgot the part about the guy who did it talking about Britney Spears or whatever.  He started to ask me something else but I had a sudden tangent and interrupted him.  “By the way, my ex-girlfriend Kristi works at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and I don’t wear any cologne,”   He looked puzzled.  I began to say something about him apparently really wanting to know where my girlfriend in Orlando worked and what type of cologne I wore, but backed off when I remembered what Amanda had told me would happen to her if Laney knew that she had been the one who tipped me off about him asking questions.  He didn’t appear to get what I was saying and just continued with his questions.  “So, you’ve never been in a band, you were in Vail and at home on the day in question and you have no idea who the man in the photo is, right?”  “Yes, that’s 100% true," I said emphatically, "and my lift ticket from that day is sitting in the truck of my car, which is parked outside of my house.  You can go get it if you like."  He sat back and started straightening up his papers and putting them back into a folder that was sitting on a stack of similar folders.  “Well, that was my last question, Chris.”  He paused for a moment and then hesitated to regain his thoughts.  “Do you mind if a couple of other Orlando officers and I go to your house and take a look around?”  I became visibly annoyed.  Hadn’t I given him more than enough detailed information for him to let me go?  How many more verifiable facts did he need from me?  I gave him my DNA and a by-the-hour report of my exact whereabouts during the weekend in question.  I told him who to call and where to find each person who could corroborate every single piece of my story.  I told him where to find my Vail lift ticket with the exact date of the crime stamped on the front.  Unless he believed that everyone who said they saw me in Colorado that weekend was lying, it was a scientific impossibility for me to have physically been in Orlando when the crimes were committed.  I would have had to leave my house on Saturday night without Kermit knowing.  Since he went to bed around 10pm Mountain Time, the absolute earliest I could have left would have been 10:15pm or so.  I’d then have to drive myself to the nearest airport, which was Centennial, a small, commuter airport about fifteen minutes away from my house without traffic.   When I got to the airport I’d have to immediately get on a jet that I had waiting for me and fly the three hours to Orlando.  That would put me on the ground in Florida no earlier than 3am Eastern Time on the morning of the 6^th, approximately one hour after the crime in the stairwell had been committed.  Even under perfect conditions, if I didn’t leave my house until 10:15pm, the probability that I could even be over Florida airspace when the crime was in progress was zero.  This isn’t even taking into account the fact that the suspect began his interactions with the coaches and cheerleaders much earlier in the evening, which was around 8pm Eastern.  I would have just been leaving Vail at that point.  In world of reality, there was no conceivable way that I could have made it to Florida until mid-Sunday morning via an early commercial flight out of DIA unless there was a red eye available, which would have still gotten me there well after the fact.     Let’s suspend time and distance factors for a moment and say that I did somehow make it to Orlando sometime Saturday night.   There was no possible way that I could have made it back for breakfast with Kermit at the Southside Café early on Sunday morning, unless Scotty beamed me back with a transporter.  With the information that Detective Laney had at his disposal, assuming that he didn’t discredit every witness I gave him, I would had a window of maybe ten hours, give or take an hour, to get to Florida, get to the hotel, meet the cheerleaders, wait around the hotel for awhile, hide in the stairwell, molest the girl, get out of the hotel, make it back to the airport, fly to Denver and drive back home in time for breakfast.  Regardless of what Detective Laney chose to believe, the fact remained that I had multiple, multiple sources of evidence that proved, at the very least, that I was sitting in my car probably 10 miles east of Vail when those cheerleaders and coaches first met the guy in the photo.  What the fuck else did I have to tell this man before he realized that I was the wrong guy?  Quite frankly, the more I thought about it, the more upset I became that I wasn’t going home right then and there.  Laney had painstakingly dug through my past for several months and talked to everyone I knew in Florida, and somehow concluded that he had enough information to arrest me.  With what I had just given him, I estimated that it would take maybe half a day for even the dumbest cop in America to realize that the guy sitting in jail wasn’t the guy that he was looking for.  The level of conspiracy that I would have had to concoct for me to be the right suspect would have put me well ahead of the Kennedy assassination, with all of it being done just to go back to Orlando to try to find a 14 year old girl to molest.  I wanted Franklin to step in and tell this moron how absolutely ridiculous this was, but I knew that he had to respect his fellow officer.  Franklin had gotten him to come across the country because it took him about fifteen minutes to figure out that something wasn't adding up, which made him a hero in my world.  Earlier in the day, on the way back from the lab, I told him that if this all worked out for me that I’d name my first born “Harrison.”  If I had a boy, of course.  No, this was all on Laney.  He could put his pride down and admit defeat and move on, but now he wanted to go to my house to look around and investigate me more.  I didn’t think he wanted to go there to look for evidence that made me more innocent.  He was looking for more reasons why I was guilty.  He simply had put too much time and effort into the case and there was no way he was flying the white flag, regardless of what he was telling me. 

    I gave Laney permission to search anything he wanted.  I had nothing to hide.  I reminded him about the lift ticket in the trunk probably five or six times.  I told him to ask Kermit to show him where the keys were so he could open it up.  I even gave him permission to break it open if Kermit wasn’t home.  As he began thanking me for my cooperation and promising that he’d check into everything that I had told him, he stopped for a moment and asked if I owned a computer, which I said that I did.  “Would you also give us permission to search through your hard drive?”  I was tired and at the end of my rope, so I just said, “Sure.  I told you I have nothing to hide.”  I didn’t even give it a thought as to why he would want to look at my computer.  “I’ll need your passwords if you don’t mind.  Any email accounts, logins, etc.”  I gave him access to every account and password I could think of and then made one last tired plea, “Detective Laney, I didn’t do what you wrote in that report.  I appreciate you coming here to fix this.  You can look whereever you want and talk to everyone I told you I was with and you’ll realize that this is one big mistake.   I wasn’t in Florida and I didn’t molest any cheerleader.  That guy in the photo is the guy who this and he’s out there somewhere living his life while I’m standing here talking to you.”  He just looked at me for a second and said that he promised to check into everything and get a resolution as soon as he could.  Franklin didn’t say much as they both walked with me back towards my cell area.  Laney was trying to make small talk and posture like he was there to help me.  I really wanted to believe that he was, but I was so mentally exhausted, worn out and confused that I didn’t know what to make of anything that had happened over the past 14 hours.  From Detective Franklin taking me away from lunch, the DNA test, my phone conversation with Kira, Dave and Lou’s visits, my new roommate Pepe’ and now having Geoff Laney fly in from Florida, it had been quite a day.  I glanced at the clock tower as we stood out in front of my door and it was nearly midnight.  The door was open and Pepe’ was snoring.  Laney said that he’d be staying in Denver for a few days and that he’d check back with me.  He walked a few feet away towards the office door.  Franklin waited for an extra second to say goodbye.  I knew without a doubt that he was on my side and even maybe even a little frustrated with the way Laney was handling the case.  I couldn’t tell.  He told me to stay positive and that he’d come around when he could, which I hoped would be sooner than later.  I was in the most intense circumstances that I could conjure up and he had stuck his neck out for me when he had every right to do nothing.  I appreciated him more than I could ever communicate.  I had nothing left in me as I slumped down into my bed.  I was more tired than at any time since I’d arrived, but for the fifth night in a row I knew that there was way too much to think about to have any hope of sleeping.  The Mexican snores coming from Pepe’ filled my ears as I closed my eyes and gave away control of where my thoughts were going to take me.  I hoped that Laney was a good guy and would realize the impossibility of me being in Florida that weekend.   He had spent over two months finding reasons why he thought I was a child molester.  I hoped he would spend at least a day trying to find out reasons why I wasn’t.