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.

Notes on Comtois at Halftime

Halftime

First of all, if you're reading this now then you've probably been reading my story up to this point, so thank you.  It has been fun to finally figure out how I wanted to tell it after all of these years.  It took me a long, long time to decide how I wanted to lay it out.  I started and stopped many times since it happened and starting this blog and deciding to write again got me inspired to put some serious thought into how I should construct all of the layers to the events of March 2002 and beyond. 

I had always thought that the story in it's entirety would be maybe just a few pages, akin to a long article in a magazine.  Quite frankly, I'm shocked at how long it is up to this point. I really had no idea until I got to part IV or so how detailed and intricate it could be.  In telling the story verbally for all of these years I always realized that I could go on and on with the details that really make this story interesting, but instead I've always glazed over some portions to spare whoever was listening the time.  I hadn't really thought much about what happened in this much detail since right after it happened and I'm kind of shocked at how much of it has come back vividly.  I had actually forgotten some of the "fun" stuff until after I got into it on here. 

Without giving anything away for those who have no idea where this is going, I will tell you just a few things of interest that you need to keep in mind as you read.  I know I mentioned a few of these in the "forward," but some are worth repeating.  First, most of the names are real.  My friends, former co-workers, my lawyer (Dave) and Ice Cube.  I decided to change other names since I have this out in the open and wanted to be sensitive to the officals (police) and my good buddy "Jerry."  Also, out of respect I changed "Kira's" name for a multitude of reasons that may or may not come out as I move forward.  Some of you have ventured guesses to her identity and all have been wrong up to this point.  If it doesn't come out in the coming chapters I'll make sure to explain more after. 

I also think that you should know that I post these without much editing.  When I have time to go back and re-read a part I may edit a few typos or grammar errors but I haven't had the time to do much in that regard.  When this is complete I plan on going back through it extensively and editing.  Not for content as much as grammar and punctuation.  I know my style sometimes can be a little out of bounds in the grammatical field but I'm trying to write this as I'd tell it to you if you were sitting here with me.  The one blatant thing that stands out for me at this point is the fact that Part I should probably be Part II.  When I'm done I plan on writing a new chapter to start the story and then the story will continue with what is now Part I. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed delving back into what I went through way back right after I moved here.  Everything you have read and will read is true.  As crazy as it all sounds, this was how it all went down.  I couldn't even make this stuff up. 

I've heard from multiple people that I should try to get this published.  Maybe.  It was never my intent but the more I get into this the more I think I might try.  If any of you have knowledge on where to start I'd be more than happy to take a look, but I'm just looking forward to seeing what else comes out as I move forward with the story.  I've always wanted to write about this for two reasons:

1.  It's a good story

2.  I like to write

That's it.  If something else comes from it, great, but that was never the point. 

So, thanks for taking the time to read it, but also feel free to read the other posts on this blog that I wrote before getting into this monster.  I kind of feel a little saddled now that I'm so deep into it that I can't take a break and write some other stuff before getting back to it.  I've even been told to take some time off of work so I can finish the damn thing since I've apparently sucked a few of you in.  I wish I could.  I have two small children at home and life is very busy.  If you look at the posting times for most of the parts you'll know that most of my writing comes after everyone has gone to bed.  Writing this thing has put me back into the same sleep deprivation that you've read about when I was sitting in my cell.  Now, however, it's the story keeping me up, not the dread of staying in prison forever.  (Some of you are probably even pissed now that I've wasted some "valuable" time in writing this.  Sorry.).

I do think that I'm probably half way finished.  There is so much more to come and I get excited trying to formulate my thoughts on how I want the next part to go.  Every time I've been running recently I spend the entirety thinking of what direction I want this to head in.  Even I'm shocked at how much there really is to tell.

Please feel free to comment as we go.  I'd love to hear some feedback.  For those of you I see or talk to, I appreciate hearing what you've had to say.  It helps hearing what others think and it gives me ideas of how to structure future chapters.  Point out typos or grammar if you want.  It'll help me when I finally get to the editing stage.

OK, enough of this.  My kids are sleeping and my wife is getting home in a few minutes, so I should probably at least give the appearance that I accomplished something when she was gone. 

Irwin M. Fletcher

PS Have a nice day