Full Release by Marshall Thornton (free novel 24 TXT) 📗

my dining chairs tipped over at his feet, his face a terrible dark red, his tongue hanging loosely from his mouth.

Chapter Six

What happened next is a blur. After I stumbled out of the garage, I remember pulling out my cell and dialing 911. They might have answered faster if I’d gone into my house and called from the landline, but I was unable to get myself to go inside. Suddenly, I was afraid of my own home. As though Eddie killing himself in the garage had tainted the entire place. Irrationally, I was afraid it would become nothing more than a place where some guy I barely knew hung himself.

Finally, an operator came on the line. I told her my address and that a friend had hung himself in my garage. Or something to that effect. She tried to make me go back in and make sure he was dead. I practically had to scream at her to get her to understand that I’d been in there and could tell he was dead.

Then, I heard sirens coming closer and closer. I remember thinking there are sirens all the time in Los Angeles yet somehow they sound different when you know they’re coming for you. A patrol car pulled up, parking across my driveway, blocking in my Civic. The siren was off, but the lights continued to spin. Everything around me flashed red.

Two officers got out of the cruiser and walked over to where I stood on the curb. Both appeared to be in their late twenties. One was tall and white, and the other was medium height and might have been Hispanic. Their uniforms didn’t quite fit; the tall one’s was loose and oversized, while the Hispanic officer’s uniform was tight and looked as though he was squeezed into it. Each had a collection of guns, billy clubs, and cell phones clipped to their nylon utility belts. Without introducing themselves, the tall one asked me what had happened while the other walked into the garage and began to look around.

I gave a brief rundown of coming home from the gym and finding Eddie hanging in the garage. The officer nodded as I spoke. The maybe-Hispanic officer inspected Eddie’s body and took a cursory look around my garage. Then he came back down the driveway and passed us on his way back to the patrol car.

The tall, white officer asked my name and wrote it down in a small notebook. “And this is your house?”

“Yes.”

He nodded and then joined the other officer back at the patrol car. They spoke for a minute or two, then came back up the driveway. They lifted the garage door, forcing it up a few more feet and making entry easier. The move caused Eddie to swing back and forth a few times. I thought I might vomit.

The officers stretched yellow crime scene tape across the entrance to my garage. Then the tall, white officer walked down my side yard and looked over the fence into the back.

Ten minutes later a van arrived. On its side in black letters it said CORONER. Two men wearing black jackets that said Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office got out. They walked up to the garage and stood chatting with the police officers. Then one of them slipped under the crime tape and walked over to Eddie’s body, did some more looking around, and came back out.

Strangers stood in front of my garage, staring at a corpse. I began to feel peripheral, as though I was watching some bizarre television show being filmed at my house without my consent. All I wanted to do was somehow run time backward and get to a place where I felt safe and in control.

A brown Crown Vic parked at the curb in front of my house. Two plain-clothes detectives got out of the enormous car, a man and a woman. Without a word they walked by me and conferred first with the police officers and then with one of the men from the Coroner’s office. Eventually, they came back down the driveway to me.

Detective Aaron Tripp introduced himself. He was a tall, light-skinned black man in a nice suit. His partner was Detective Lucinda Hanson. She was nearly as tall as he was, with dark hair and pale skin. I blurted out a couple of things in a rush. That I’d just come home from the gym. That I’d tried to open the garage door, and when I got under the door there he was. That I hadn’t gone in there all the way.

“Slow down, okay? What’s your name?” Detective Tripp asked, as he took out a spiral notebook.

I stopped, felt silly for not telling him in the first place, and said, “Matt, Matt Latowski,” He started to write my name down, but then stopped to make me spell it.

“All right, Matt, tell me what happened.”

“Um, as I said, I was at the gym and then, when I came home, I tried to put my car in the garage, but the door wouldn’t open all the way. So, I got out of the car and I tried to lift it, but could only get it up so far… I kind of bent over and got underneath and there he was.”

“Did you go into the garage?”

“No. I mean, I would have, but he looked so dead.”

Detective Tripp studied me a moment, then pulled his partner a few feet up the driveway for some kind of conference. He leaned over to whisper something in her ear. She listened, then whispered a response. Her response was longer, obviously detailed. She rested a hand on his arm while she talked. Finally, she stopped, took a step back, and raised a questioning eyebrow. Then she walked away.

Tripp seemed to take a moment to absorb what his partner had just whispered to him. He walked back to me. This time, the detective positioned himself a few steps to the right. I realized he did this so I would face