Utah wasn’t supposed to be this hot, thought Eric. He was dripping with sweat, the majority of it beading up in the long strands of his impossibly straight hair. The sun was so far away, an almost inconceivable distance away, but yet Eric couldn’t shake the burden of the heat from his back. It was a heavy heat that wore down a man at an exponential rate, becoming more and more excruciating by the minute. It didn’t help that Eric was laboring over a four foot hole in the ground, having to dig through roots and rocks in the middle of the interstate forest. A rotting body must be buried deep with such proximity to the public.
As he dug the grave of the man who had tried, almost successfully, to kill him not thirty minutes prior, Eric dug into another recess. This one was much deeper, much more guarded, and held secrets much more dangerous than a dead truck driver.
There had always been yelling in the Dunbar household, but this night was different. The screams echoing from the living room down and down into the hall, finding their way to scared children quivering in their beds, well these screams were different. They were not yelling because they were angry, annoyed, or stressed. They were yelling out of habit, yelling for the necessity of it all: living together in post-argument harmony. The sweat was falling freely from Eric’s forehead as he replayed that night in his head. He was 17, his sister Faith, 14. The hole was now big enough for the truck driver’s body, so Eric stabbed the shovel into the earth, and sat down for a break, and a thought.
Faith was only 14 that night. Who can even remember what the argument was about? Maybe that’s why we hated them so much; we knew, we believed that seemingly sane people, as we believed our parents to be, would be able to handle such trivial issues as missed phone calls and forgotten errands with more control. However, we soon discovered that the charade of omniscient parent-hood is no more real than an over weigh saint flying around in a red suit distributing gifts to all of the World’s children in a single night. The spell was broken quickly, much like that of Santa Clause. I discovered he didn’t exist when I started to think critically at the age of 6, maybe 7. The thin veil of my parent’s perfection came tumbling down soon after.
We became desensitized to the yelling and violent verbal threats before either of us had reached our respective teens. However, what we were not used to was actual violence. That night we were rudely and unexpectedly introduced to it. My bedroom was closest to the war zone: the living room. Sometimes they would take it behind enemy lines, past both of their children’s bedrooms and into theirs, but often they chose to have it out right in front of the dog and God and everyone. Faith and I were always pretty sure that it could be heard from the street, but our parents didn’t seem to give two craps, so why should we?
The rumble and hum of a passing semi-truck caused Eric to snap to attention on the ground by the make-shift grave. He hoisted himself up with the aid of the shovel, and quickly and crudely finished the job. Eric could not take the next step as lightly. In fact, it had been in the back of mind, nagging at him the way public speaking or a final exam do. He was going to have to burry a man whom he had just had a hand, literally, in killing. His blistered hands moved slowly over the body, hovering a few inches from Mack’s skin. Eric’s finger nails were blackened with Idaho’s dirt, which spread up his hands and along his arms. In fact, the more he inspected his own body, the more dirt he noticed. His sweat had run through it, causing it to become and almost muddy substance. This sweaty mud-dirt ran down from his chin, along the way of his shoulders, and pooled up in the creases of his joints: elbows, wrists, and belly button. Eric noticed that his previous thoughts on his appearance, that he looked remarkably well considering the events of the day, were completely wrong. Eric was in fact covered in dirt.
Aren’t we all? thought the grave-digger.
Eric Dunbar grabbed Mack the murdering truck driver around the wrist and ankle, and dragged him through the grass and dirt to the edge of the hole.
This is it. This is the final resting place for the body, the final thing that will happen to him, besides decomposition. The last person to ever see him will be me. I know he was probably going to kill me, and that I didn’t exactly pull the trigger myself, but this whole thing just seems wrong. I can’t shake the feeling that neither of them should have died. Mandy was just innocently standing behind me as I laid into him about the phone, and then he was just careless with the revolver. I just needed to incapacitate him, not kill him. What if he really was someone’s husband? Or worse…
The thought of any child growing up without a mother and father under the same roof made Eric weep internally. A pang of guilt was forming in his gut, and his damned empathetic nature was trying to get the best of him again. He knew what it was like to survive only on flashes of the day, or even week, with a parent. Even still he had experienced the feeling of loneliness, even when one was surrounded by a large group of people, because the right ones weren’t there. Mr. Dunbar was never physically absent, but that didn’t mean his presence was lost on Eric. For starters Mr. Dunbar was not an easy man to please or entertain. He had his music, and a select group of shows that he paid attention to at night. Eric wasn’t the star of either of those shows.
Eric sighed, grunted his muscles into gear, and flopped Mack the murdering truck driver into the ground with one, unceremonious *plop*. Mack’s crumpled, lifeless body lay in the grave for five minutes, untouched, and stared at by Eric. Then, with no forethought or introduction to his action, Eric Dunbar jumped into the grave of a semi-murdered murdering truck driver named Mack, and began to claw around on his body. He was looking for the deceased’s wallet.
There, I will no doubt find some clue as to whom this scumbag worked for or where he came from. He said he was sent by Harrison, but why would the owner of a basketball team want me dead just because I quit earlier today?
Eric’s fingers found a soft, leathery object and he wrapped them around it, bringing it up from the deep recesses of Mack’s pants pocket like the claw machine in arcades. Eric pocketed the wallet and climbed out, bringing down upon him and Mack a significant about of loose dirt in the process. When he exited and returned his gaze to the murdered murderer, Eric gasped. It was the first time he had seen dirt on a corpse before, and this half-buried image of a man whom he had just seen die was the most disturbing thing he could imagine. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, but was suddenly queasy. The body was no more decomposing or committing foul odors than he, but for some reason the sight of it made him physically sick. There was a churning down below that could not be suppressed, and it brought Eric to his knees faster than a punch from Manny Pacquiao.
Eric’s mind was purging the body of the sights and sounds experienced in the last four hours, and it was a rough go of it. The act had him doubled over, trying to get control of himself. Vomiting only made the nausea worse. This went on for no less than ten minutes, it seemed. When he was done, Eric wiped his mouth, turned around to the shovel, and finished covering the body. With each toss of dirt, the story of Mack the murdering truck driver faded into obscurity. With each trust of shovel into the earth, Eric’s hands ached, back hurt, and blistered bled. Soon, there was a trail of blood leading down the rough wooded handle of the digging tool, sprinkling a light top layer of human life juice on the grave. A fitting image, and one that Eric would never forget.
--
“Sir, I’m just not sure what you want me to do with this card. Are you saying this…this Mister Harrison, Mister Boss Harrison of the Portland Trailblazers, tried to have you killed?” The police officer eyed the card as if it were written in a foreign language and was holding it like it was covered in some sort of virus.
Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying, you utter moron.
“Yes, that is exactly what I am saying, you utt – um, officer.” Eric’s brain was not functioning at normal speed.
The highway patrolman eyed him curiously, and really Eric couldn’t blame him. In had walked a young man covered in dirt, bleeding from his hands with even more blood n various parts of his body, claiming that he had just witnessed a murder and then the death of the murderer. He didn’t know the full identity of either of the victims, and to top it all off, he claimed he was completely innocent in the manner: Eric said he had no idea of the motive behind the first killing.
Poor Mandy. Poor poor Mandy, he just kept replaying over and over in his head. He had almost said this out loud too, half out of a lapse in judgment and half on the thinking that the officer would consider him sympathetic and more likely to be innocent. However, he smartly kept these thoughts, and other much darker ones, to himself as he was interrogated that afternoon.
Eric was led into “Interrogation Room 1” in which there was a single metal table, topped with a single metal microphone, and sandwiched by two metal chairs. Overhead, a single, uncased halogen light dimly lit the area directly surrounding the table and chairs. It was all so disappointingly cliché. The overly dramatic detective walked in, sporting the complete white oxford shirt, loosed tie, and brown-greyish suspenders. He slapped a manila folder of papers down on the table, paced for fifteen seconds, and then leaned on the table with his palms and said, “Well? What have you got to tell me?”
This is all so incredibly lame.
“This is all so incredibly lame, officer, with no disrespect. I’m going to speak for a few minutes and a lot of it is going to sound fabricated or hyperbole, but I only request your silenced attention for the duration of my explanation. I think the Law guarantees me that much, at least.”
The highway patrolman, Officer Browning was his name, took a few seconds to ponder these demands. He then walked up to the very cliché double-mirror-window combination and nodded. In walked a suit with a pitcher of water and two classes. He landed them on the table, closer to Officer Browning than to Eric, and then made his way to the corner of the room. He quickly realized his mistake, and closed the door, returning to his somewhat awkward position, clearly now waiting on Eric. Everyone was waiting on Eric. Center stage.
Browning was not a man of over-bearing stature or voice. In fact, he had a fairly calming demeanor, and in any other circumstance, Eric would perhaps have liked to enjoy a beer, maybe some pizza and a football game with the officer. Today, however, Officer Browning was in rare form. He did not deal with murder well in his sleepy Idaho county, and what was worse was that this man was obviously lying. He stared down the suspect and threw his hands up in impatience.
“Well?”
Eric was confused. They were the ones who were supposed to ask the questions. An officer or detective was supposed to slam his fists down on the table, erupt with a phrase such as, “Damn it tell me the truth!”, and then hound Eric until he broke down in a dramatic scene of tears and confession. Since none of this was happening, Eric decided to play dumb.
“Well what?”, Eric asked with a sense of Y’all brought me in this interrogation room. Now what are you going to do about the murder information I gave you?”
Midway through his question, Eric grimaced as a wry smile spread across Officer Browning’s face. He could imagine the roar of laughter causing the cops on the other side of the window to drop their do nuts and spew out coffee all over one another. He had realized his mistake in an instant.
“Yawwwwl?” Browning demanded condescendingly. “Yawwwl? Wail boy I reckon you’re not from ‘round here, now is you?”
Eric recoiled at the horrid and cliché southern accent the officer was now mocking him with. He had reverted, if only for the instant it takes to utter one word, back to his childhood, and said “y’all” in Idaho. The only people who said “y’all” this far West were poorly written movie characters and comedians begging for the cheap laughs in night clubs.
“Yes. Yes,” Eric’s eyes rolled. “Yes I’m from the South. Now let’s all be mature here and focus on the problem at hand. Two people are dead and I saw both of them die. ‘Got any serious questions for me, officer?”
Officer Browning did not care for Eric Dunbar’s tone.
“I don’t care for your tone, Eric Dunbar.”
That much was clear.
Browning regained his composure and put back on the interrogation face. “Well Dunbar, let’s have it. You’ve made quite the commotion coming down here and sprouting off your wild double-murder stories. Well then, let’s have your story. The whole of it. Leave nothing out.”
Eric took a deep breath and moved his hand, fingers spread out, through his wavy brown hair. He ran through the sequence of events in his read surprisingly quickly, even remembering smart details such as the faded wash on Mack’s jeans, or the way Mandy smiled as she looked up upon greeting him at the welcome center. He was mouthing silently to himself; he wanted to get it right and true the first time. Eric moved his dirt-caked hands around in front of him, as if almost conducting the symphony of movement that was the last six hours. Surely he looked like a mad man. As if he didn’t already come across like one. This was all so unbelievable.
This is all so unbelievable.
“This is all so unbelievable. I supposed the first part you would like to know is that I left Portland about nine a.m. this morning in a forrest green Jeep. It’s parked just outside. You see, I had just quit my …”
So, Eric proceeded with the entire day’s events, trying to leave out the personal bits that didn’t matter as much, but still always catching himself going just a ways too far into his thoughts or feelings at particular times. These digressions were met, nicely enough, with only raised eyebrows or inquisitive “hmmm”s from Browning. Either Eric was an incredibly good and sociopathic liar, or he was telling the truth. Either way, Officer Browning and the rest of the staff behind the glass were compelled to listen to him.
--
The most underrated and unexpected part about jail was how uncomfortable everything was. This may seem as quite a large understatement, but Eric Dunbar didn’t think so. All of the television and movies he had seen had prepared him for the nasty sorts of people one might be locked up with. Rap lyrics had warned of violence and the possibility of rape. Even some not-so-close friends had talked once upon a time about the horrid food and conditions of the toilet and bedding. However, no one had summed all of this up with a description that prepared Eric for what he felt: uncomfortable.
The cement floor was cold and hard to sit or lay on, but one got tired of standing at the cold, restricting bars all day. Once out of the central holding cell, there was no bench to rest on. There was only a bed and a toilet. The bed was barely made for sleeping, and there was not much head room, neither between the top and bottom bunks nor the top bunk and ceiling. One simply could not sit on one’s own bed in jail.
Eric’s cell seemed to have a unique ambience to it. He was sure that it was just like all of the others, and that the contractor had not taken special care to make cell seven any more dark or uncomfortable than the others. However, he was also sure that this was the most miserable any person had ever felt in a single 24-hour period. The noise was another unexpected issue. Jail was infinitely louder than Eric could have imagined. It was just one of those senses one didn’t consider when thinking about the horrors of being locked up: not being able to hear yourself think. With almost all of the attention on the solitary effects of the big house, most did not consider that with prisoners coming in and out, unruly convicts, and the distinct slamming of the doors to a cell were not thought of.
At ten pm that night, a guard walked briskly down the hall, letting his baton swing to an fro from his loose grip. He paused for a moment at each cell, peering in at its occupants, nodding, pulling on the door to ensure it was properly locked, and then moved on to the next one. He completed this same routine for each of the first six cells he came to, but in cell number seven, something was different. The inmate was behaving strangely, but not in the sort of manner that required corrective action. The night guard peered in and tapped his baton on the bars, trying to get inmate seven’s attention.
“Hey! Lights now scumbag ok?”
Eric Dunbar had been quietly sitting, Indian-style, on the concrete floor, staring at the wall opposite his bed for the last four hours. He seemed quite peaceful, a strange way about him. The guard would claim later that he was “weirded out” by Eric’s unexplainable confidence. He said he almost looked comfortable in there, “at home”, the guard would say. The funny thing was that Eric was far from comfortable. He decided to be as comfortable as possible and wanted to be at peace. He sat on the cold cement, let his ass go numb and stared at a blank wall for hours until the guard interrupted him.
When the guard called him over, Eric stood up with a soothing, yet creepy smile and sidled over to the bars. He looked at the guard expectantly, pointing his hazel brown pupils right into the guard’s, and pierced him with the very nature of his soul. The guard stared right back, wondering who this freak was, and why he had been sitting to himself in the middle of a jail cell, having a little Zen session.
Eric passed that night in complete peace. He was not worried about the body at the Idaho Welcome Center on Interstate 84. He was not worried about the body buried 30 miles down the road to the East, just off the interstate. No, Eric was thinking about the sun coming up the next day. He was thinking about the sight someone had surely found yesterday in the Idaho Welcome Center, and the credit that would give to his story. Eric was thinking about getting out, which allowed him to endure within.
The bed was only fit for sleeping, and really barely that. Normally, Eric was a scattered and troubled sleeper. However, the relaxed frame of mind he had dedicated himself to earlier that night would ideally have led to a trouble-free night of uninterrupted, deep-dreaming bliss for no more or less than eight hours. Eric was expecting this. Eric was looking forward to this. Rarely when he was working did he have time to decompress and bring his body to neutral before trying to sleep, and often went to bed with his mind still at full throttle. That night in jail he had planned on it being different. He actually had some time for himself, and used it wisely. He didn’t feel sorry for himself or cry out against the injustice that was his imprisonment. He did his best Andy Dufrense impression and kept quiet. Red would have lost two packs of cigarettes on Eric as well.
The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
That night, Eric’s best laid plans failed him as he laid down to sleep. Sleep did not come that night. He tossed and turned on the potato sack that they called a mattress all night, and “awoke” the next morning fried, cursing the sun light.
“I don’t know, Sergeant, he looks like death worked over. The night guard said he heard him moving in his bed all night. This was after Officer Burns found him sitting on the floor perfectly still. Burns thinks he had been there for hours, probably since Dunbar had been put in the cell.”
“Well, bring him out and take him down to Interrogation. We have things to discuss. Get him some coffee along the way.”
The snippet of conversation that Eric heard made him nervous. He was clearly drawing a lot of attention from the higher ups in the police department, and now they had even more questions to ask him. When the officer instructed by Browning, came calling for Eric, the prisoner calmly exited the cell without a word. He gave a curious grin to the officer on his way by, a face that said “I know exactly what I’m doing.
Eric confidently strode into Interrogation and placed his hands expectantly on the table as he sat. He was ready for whatever they had to throw at him. Eric was casually sipping his coffee when Officer Browning walked in, and apathetically looked up, barely moving his eyes above the horizon of the table. Eric stared at his coffee, stirring it slowly with his straw.
“I know what you want,” claimed Eric.
Officer Browning hesitated slightly as he took his seat, and then raised his blonde, thin eyebrows as he said, “Oh? You do?”
Eric smiled, saying simply, “Yes, I do.” There was an awkward moment of silence as Browning awaited Eric’s continuation while Eric allowed time for Officer Browning’s response. After three very long, very discomforted minutes, Eric gave him. He shrugged lackadaisically, taking a breath in as he leaned back in his chair.
“Well, Officer, I would venture a guess that you want me to confess to killing Mandy and Mack. I’ve admitted that I had a hand, literally, to play in Mack’s death. What I will not admit is that I had anything to do Mandy’s death other than by inadvertently avoiding my own. Simply put, Officer Browning, you think I killed Mandy.”
The words hung in the room, echoing off of the walls and from the corners. The weight of Eric’s last statement caused Browning to back away from the table. He slid his metal chair back over the concrete floor, crossing his left leg over his right as he did. Browning then placed his hands delicately on his left knee, pulling it in closer to his body. It was quite the condescending posture, and yet he made it seem so polite and well-intentioned.
Officer Browning smiled. “Actually, Eric, I do not think that you killed Mandy Thompson.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that Eric at first found himself nodding along in a agreement. He was lost in the minutia of what he thought would be another boring “you did it” “no I didn’t” exchange. A half-second later, he jolted, realizing that Officer Browning had just said the one thing Eric hadn’t expected or planned for. Browning had, essentially, declared him innocent. Eric had already admitted to a self-defense inspired attack of Mack the truck driver, one that in turn led to Mack’s death. However, the police did not seem too bothered by this piece of information.
Eric was baffled, and could only mutter a “You, you don’t?
Officer Browning nodded in a business-like manner and replied, “That’s correct.”
He was egging Eric on. Browning was divulging as little as possible so that Eric would ask all of the questions, and so that Browning would be able to give all of the answers. He was behaving like a teenager does around a friend when she has a secret to tell. Officer Browning had a teenage-girl secret, and he wanted Eric to keep guessing.
“Ok Officer Browning, I’ll bite. Why do you not think that I murdered Mandy today, when less than twenty-four hours ago you had me pegged as a double-murderer?”
“Because,” Officer David Browning said with a wry smile, “Mandy told me so this morning.”
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