
Kevin Grady pushed his fingers so hard into his own eye sockets he saw stars. Murder wasn’t supposed to be a part of his job. Yes, he was the chief of police but he’d specifically moved out to the middle of nowhere to avoid having this be a part of his job.
No one got murdered in a town like Swinford.
Until last night.
And the two primary suspects were sitting in his office, handcuffed to folding chairs.
“Why did you handcuff them to folding chairs in my office, Andy?”
“I don’t fucking know, Kevin.” Andy Tucker, the only other officer of the Swinford Police Department, replied. “We don’t rightly have an interrogation room. We have your office, my office, and the lobby. Where else did you want me to put them?” The police station of Swinford wasn’t so much a police station as it was an old office building they set the police station up in when the original burnt down. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement until the new station was built. But seeing as the old station burnt down in 1972 and Kevin Grady wasn’t even born until 1974, it was looking less and less temporary.
They didn’t even have a holding cell. If anyone was arrested and needed to be held overnight in Swinford, either he or Andy would load them in the back of the cruiser and take the 45 minute drive up to the county jail in Carlston.
“It’s not a matter of which room you put ‘em in Andy. It’s a matter of why are they handcuffed to folding chairs?”
“Oh well, I didn’t want em tryna run or nothing.” Kevin’s fingers practically ached to thread themselves back into his eye sockets. Maybe even to press so hard his fingers poked all the way through and scratched that pesky itch that tickled the back of his brain. Being a small town cop had its perks. This night included none of those perks.
“First. Andy.” Kevin spoke deliberately and slowly. Not to be pedantic but so he wouldn’t fire the officer where he stood. No one else in town wanted this job and while the town was small and rarely needed much more than crowd control and welfare checks, it was still a two man operation. Minimum. Ideally he needed at least two more officers but there wasn’t any room in the budget nor were there any willing and able candidates in Swinford. And it wasn’t like the folks from the bigger cities were chomping at the bit to move to the middle of bumfuck nowhere to be an underpaid country cop. One deep breath for good measure and Kevin explained to his officer, “They turned themselves in. Second. They could just pick the folding chairs up and walk out, carrying them. Kinda pointless to make sure they don’t escape if what you strapped them down to can be used as weapon.”
“Oh! Yeah, like wrestling. Saw the undertaker use a chair once. Good point.”
“I make a lot of good points. Alright, I’m gonna go talk to these guys. You man the phones. Ya ain’t gotta tell me if you gotta take a call. Just go.” Andy saluted. Kevin wished he’d stop doing that. It was unnecessary. Kevin saluted back. Once, Andy had saluted and Kevin decided not to salute back. That man had stood there for an hour, hand on a brow before Kevin finally relented. Andy may have been dumb, but the kid had scruples and standards.
Walking into his office, two identical faces but 25 years apart in age looked back at him. Virgil Chesterfield and his son, Zeke, didn’t seem particularly nervous despite having walked into this station and, straight-faced, confessed to murdering Roy “Texaroy" Bowden, in his trailer two nights ago.
“Yeah. We killed him. But we can explain everything.” Virgil had told Andy. Andy had told Kevin who then had to get out of his comfy pajamas, put his uniform back on and come back up to the station.
Last night, Roy Bowden, who everyone called Texaroy but no one knew why, was found dead outside his trailer. Neighbors heard what they thought were gunshots and thought Texaroy was just shooting shadows or squirrels again. He did that a lot. Clarissa Kissinger marched her busybody self out to his property to give him an earful for doing all that shooting after dark but found him with nine bullet holes in his middle instead, the kind he could not have given himself. She called Kevin who had never driven down SR 31 so fast in his life but the whole town knew before he’d even called county to bring a body wagon. Why the hell did the town gossip have to be the one to find the old fool?
Kevin did not know how to run a murder investigation. He knew he ought to know. But he plainly didn’t. He’d been taught back at the academy but then he’d moved back to his hometown to become a country cop. That was 30 some odd years ago. He supposed it was more appropriate to say he didn’t remember how to run a murder investigation. Last night he’d just wrapped the place up in tape knowing most of the town wasn’t going to muck about with the property anyway. Texaroy had most of the town convinced he had the whole place booby trapped. Kevin didn’t think he did, but he still walked real careful when he first arrived. Kevin decided to wait till daylight to figure out how to figure out how Texaroy got dead.
If Andy was the town idiot and Clarissa, the town gossip, Texaroy was the town crazy and had been since Kevin himself was a boy. He had at least 30 different radio antennas on his property. Or, in some cases, pieces of radio antennas. He claimed all those radio towers interfered with the mind control agents the government put in the cellular signals. Every window in the man’s trailer was coated in foil and colored dark with what looked like magic markers. For privacy. He had the bones of at least 38 cars polka dotting 12 acres of woods he owned. At least Kevin hoped he owned it. He could have been squatting and no one bothered to be bothered by that.
He had a shed behind his trailer with a big wood burning stove. All year round that thing was lit, black, grey, and white smoke belching up from the chimney pipe that was more duct tape than iron. Texaroy was always making concoctions to protect you from things he made up.
“This here’s a tonic that fights infection from a robot-parasite they add to the toothpaste. So you can brush your teeth and kill the the robots!” Texaroy would explain to either Kevin or Andy about the potion he’d brewed when he excitedly brought it to the police station for distribution into the city water supply. The officers always nodded and said they’d pour it into the water tower themselves. Every once in a while Kevin would pop a dip stick in there of one variety of another to make sure it wasn’t an accidental drug Texaroy had just made. Never turned up anything.
So Texaroy was loony as the moon but Kevin didn’t know who would want to kill him. He was fairly beloved by most of the townies. Even the kids didn’t rightly mess with him. Sometimes they’d get a little close to his property with one of their bonfire parties but that just resulted in a bunch of Klaxon sirens going off. They’d clear off and leave him alone. That was until Virgil and Zeke marched themselves in to the police station/office building, claiming the dirty deed done dirt cheap. Virgil and Zeke ran the town lawnmower and small appliance repair and their trailer and shop was about two miles south of Texaroy’s place. Their properties didn’t touch but that was only because the state easement for those big Eiffel Tower looking power poles split them.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Now you’ve been read your rights and you understand them, right?”
“Yes, sir,” both men echoed.
“Now, Virgil. I need to be sure I KNOW you understand what’s about to happen. I’mma ask you some questions. And while I need you to tell the truth, by all accounts you are confessing to a serious crime. At least that’s what you said you were gonna do. And you say you don’t need a lawyer?”
“Nah. We don’t need a lawyer. We aint’ done nothing wrong, not really. Couldn’t afford one anyways.” Virgil explained, his nervousness beginning to show now.
“You told my officer you killed a man. But okay, wait. Do you remember I said if you can’t afford a lawyer, you can still have one? It’s my job to find you one before I ask you any questions if you want a lawyer here. Because if you say what I think you’re gonna say to me, Virgil, that is, in fact, doing something wrong.”
“Nah. We can explain. And we don’t need no lawyer. You’ll get it.” Virgil replied. Zeke shook his head like a puppy shown a treat. The girls at the high school thought this boy was the most impressive man to walk the earth since Jesus himself, Kevin’s daughter included. Zeke had graduated the last year but still lived with his dad for the mower money.
“Alright. If you are completely sure you do not want a lawyer in this room before you tell me you killed a man, fine. I’mma turn on this camera so it records everything." Kevin first uncuffed the two men and then flicked the little slide over to record on the old video camera he’d had the sense to bring from home to record this.
“Righty-oh, Copper!” Zeke said and then flashed a thumbs up and a sleazy car salesman smile at the camera. Kevin could almost hear the loose marbles rolling around that boy’s skull.
Kevin ran through all the regular stuff he thought he might need on the video. Names, birth days, address, other stuff that seemed official and somehow necessary. Then, not knowing what else to do, he said “So tell me what you told Andy when you came in.”
“Oh. Yeah,” Virgil said, “So me and my boy are the reason Texaroy is dead. But we didn’t murder him.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well I mean, we both shot him but it weren’t murder.”
“How do you reckon shooting a man is not a murder, Virgil?” A part far, far away in the back of Kevin’s mind said this probably wasn’t how you do an interrogation but he also couldn’t think of a different way.
“Well, we only shot him because he told us to.” Virgil shrugged this answer out of himself.
“Why would Texaroy tell you to shoot him?”
“He said he needed to try out his bulletproof juice.” Zeke offered.
“Bulletproof juice?” Kevin could not believe he had to say those words. And mean them.
“Yeah. You know how he’s always cooking up stuff like a wizard. Most of its bunk ya know, but the bulletproof juice. I dunno, sounded kinda legit to me.” Zeke smiled and shrugged, a motion for motion reflection of his father. Something about apples and trees made Kevin want some apple pie.
“So you shot him because he told you to shoot him because he’d drank bulletproof juice of his own concoction and needed to test it?” Kevin tried to clarify that metric ton off bullshit.
“You got it. See, I told you we didn’t do nothing wrong.”
“Why were you at Texaroy’s house that evening?”
“Oh we’d been taking up car parts from his junker collection to see if we could find any good bits that’d move on eBay.” Zeke explained. Virgil at least had the sense to now look horrified. Kevin let his eye fall closed and took a deep breath before forcing them open again. The urge to ram his fingers into his own brain surged once more. Virgil nervously glanced between the police chief and the video camera. To which Kevin only nodded. What he meant with that nod was ‘Yep. Your boy just confessed to a felony on camera. But good thing you declined a lawyer, you damp shoebox.’
“We were talking to him about a trade for parts after we did some looking.” Virgil clarified. Kevin doubted it was true but it was the least of their problems what with the looming murder charge. Best case scenario was going to be manslaughter but that was for the courts, not Kevin.
“Alright, once more, because I’m not totally clear on everything here. You went to Texaroy’s to talk about trading car parts. He claimed he wanted to test a bulletproof juice he made. So you obliged and shot him?”
“Yep. Still got it, Chief. Case closed.” Virgil said and made to stand as if the interview were over and he were free to go. Zeke copied him. It was sort of unnerving to watch the two move with a half a second delay between synchronized actions.
“No, no.” Kevin held up a hand to still the man. “I have just a few more questions and then some papers you’re gonna need to sign.” Virgil sat back down. So did Zeke. “If you shot him, was it not really obvious the bulletproof juice didn’t work?”
“Oh yeah. Hell, that was immediate. Texaroy hit the ground spitting and cursing. I hit him with the first shot square in the gut and gut shots hurt bad. He was screaming and screaming. Shit about the pain and please help him.”
“Why didn’t you help him?” Again, protocol or etiquette probably demanded the interrogator not scream at the interrogated but this whole thing was so assinine, Kevin couldn’t help it.
“We did, sir. Respectfully.” This came from Zeke again. Respectfully.
“How so? If you shot him once in the belly and realized the juice didn’t make him bullet proof, where did the other eight rounds come from?” Kevin was more and more sure he did not want to know this answer. Virgil explained this one.
“Well, you know when you go hunting and the deer knows the bullet’s coming just before it hits and they move. So instead of catching in the forehead or the chest, you get their belly but not good enough to bring em to ground. So they go run off and you gotta chase em down, follow the blood, and put em out their misery. Bleeding shame too cuz the meat’s always ruined after that. Scared deer tastes like ass that ain’t been washed. Anyway, we done figured this boy was bleeding bad. And you know well as I do the hospital is a solid hour drive and the town doc is out on his fancy pants ocean cruise. Wasn’t no way Texaroy survived it on his own. And didn’t feel fair to get him a belly bleed and let him die slow. So Zeke here used his .22 to make sure he was down and not feeling no pain.”
Kevin sat, mouth literally hanging open. He took a breath to start speaking but failed to complete that action. The air just sort of caught in his throat and his mouth kind of wobbled like his jaw was too loose. Kevin covered his loose jaw with his hand. He shook his head no and tried to remember how words worked. Shock. This is what it felt like to be in shock. Not the medical kind. The mind kind. Kevin was in shock. One final question found its way free of the chief of police of Swinson.
“Why didn’t you shoot him in the head instead of 8 more times in the back? If you get a belly shot on a deer, you brain it when you track it back down.”
“Fucker kept crawling away.” Said Zeke.
Kevin decided it was time to retire after this. Maybe he’d join the town doc on that ocean cruise and just never get off the boat.
Why all the 5 minute reads? Go turn these into chapters
The way I cackled. I'd retire, too, bud. 🤦🏼♀️