The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

trouble since. But still. She didn’t even wake up from the gun. Her sister’s been with her. They’re keeping her pretty far out of it.” He taps his forearm below the elbow with two fingers, then mimes a shot being administered.

“Listen,” he says. “I can’t give you much time. Boss is in at six, and I need you out of here by then. But no one around here’s going to ask him what needs to be asked, and I figure maybe you will.” He opens the door to the holding cells. Avi thinks about the room where Owen Curry is held and how it’s a cleaner, shinier version of this room. There’s the low smell of sealed concrete with damp already underneath the sealant, rotting out the walls and floors from the inside. The institutional mix of urine and disinfectant plays up the worst parts of both. The hum of bright white fluorescent lights reminds Avi of the green lights in Owen’s cell, the flimsy leash they keep on their monster.

Brennan brings a folding chair and sets it in front of the middle cell. Inside, a skinny man collects himself between sobbing fits. His eyes are red, the skin around them puffy, and his breath hitches against his control like an unruly animal. He looks at Avi, immediately pleading for absolution Avi is unwilling and unable to give.

“Scott,” he says, opting for familiarity. “My name’s Avi. I’m a reporter. I’m here to talk to you about what happened.”

Scott Lipscombe looks at Officer Brennan like he’s been betrayed. Brennan shrugs and leaves the room, locking the door quietly behind him.

“I think it could help you to have someone to tell your story,” says Avi. “These things, they’re tried in the press. I have some clout. I write for national outlets. And I think your story is going to speak to people’s fears. I think people will hear you if you talk.”

“Don’t want to talk,” says Scott.

“No, I understand that,” Avi says. “It’s fresh still. But talking can also be a way through it. Have you spoken with a lawyer?” Scott Lipscombe shakes his head. “That’s good. Believe it or not, that’s good. A story takes shape when you say it out loud. It crystallizes. The way you tell it becomes the way you remember it. And talking to a lawyer, it forces things into a certain shape. That’s important, too. It’ll be important later. But for now, what’s good, what’s best for you, is just to speak about it. Just tell me what happened to your son, Scott.”

“I shot him,” he says, starting to blubber. “That’s why I’m here, right? I shot my son dead in his sleep.”

“Can you tell me why you’d do that, Scott?”

“He was one of them,” says Scott Lipscombe. “Like the…uh. Like the Guthridge boy. Like Sam.”

The urge to chase this is almost overwhelming, but Avi knows better. He lets it lie for now. “How did you know?” he asks. “How did you know your son was one of them?”

“He wasn’t ever anything like us,” Scott Lipscombe says. “Like Nora or me. He plays piano and guitar and all. He makes these songs on his computer that I can’t barely call them songs. We don’t even have a history of anything like him in either of our families. Anyone else, their kid’s a stranger to them, they talk about some old aunt who ran off to New York or Grandpa Whoever that never was quite right. Nora and I, neither of us have any of that. He’s out of nowhere. I think the music stuff, I think that’s his ability. Like he can speak in music or something.”

Scott Lipscombe’s talking about the dead boy in the present tense, avoiding his name. He’s strung between poles of recognition and denial. The full weight of what he’s done isn’t on him yet. It’ll fall tonight or the next night in a cell like this. It’ll hit him alone and break the already broken pieces of him, smashing him to sand. Even if Avi got an interview tomorrow, there wouldn’t be enough of Scott Lipscombe left to talk to. He presses gently.

“So what if he was?” he says. “Why did it mean you had to kill him?”

“He was,” says Scott Lipscombe. “I’m sure of that. Not as sure as we—” He catches himself. “I couldn’t let it stand. I couldn’t let him be one of them after what we did.”

“What is it you did, Scott?” Avi asks.

Scott Lipscombe looks at the ground. “I’m not saying.”

The door opens behind Avi. Officer Brennan trails behind an older man, the boss he mentioned. Avi checks his watch. He was supposed to have more time.

“That’s enough of that,” says the sheriff.

“Scott, you see where you are here,” Avi says, standing and approaching the bars. “You know what you did, and you know you’re going to be punished. But it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not clean, Scott. If you go down carrying something, you’re going to sink. You’re going to sink into yourself forever.”

“You know,” says Scott Lipscombe.

“I said enough,” the sheriff says, laying a meaty paw on Avi’s shoulder. Avi exchanges a quick look with Officer Brennan. Whatever it is you can do, he tries to say, whatever your fucking ability, I need one more minute. Brennan’s face is a stony blank.

“I know, Scott,” says Avi. “But I need to hear you say it.”

“I don’t want to say.”

“It’ll feel good to say it, Scott,” Avi says. “It’ll change you to say it out loud. To have it said and heard.”

The sheriff is gripping Avi, pulling him off the bars.

“We killed them,” Scott Lipscombe says. The room stops; the sheriff’s grip goes slack. “We killed Sam Guthridge and his momma and his little sisters. I stabbed little Paige Guthridge, and the light poured out of her. Me and Danny Randall and Joe Sabine, and Alvin McLaughlin, and…”

Scott Lipscombe begins a list of names, and Officer Brennan fumbles his notebook out of his back pocket,