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“Elijah…”
“Aspen…” he jibes back in a tone a petulant toddler would use.
“Who did that to your beautiful face?”
“One of your other boyfriends, my love. The one we’re off to collect from the precinct. You and he had better hope no one asks about my face, hey!”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Fox
ARNICA (ARNICA MONTANA)
The interview rooms at the police station look nothing like those portrayed in movies or on television specials. The station itself shares the bones of architecture with parts of the college and bar in town, hailing back to an era when white men claimed land that wasn’t theirs, and built with lumber and stone from land that also wasn’t theirs. Their pestilence brought promises, and the townsfolk subscribed, especially when gold, precious gemstones, and minerals were found and fed into a market coveted by greedy folk further south.
“How do you plan to communicate with him? He doesn’t speak?” the desk clerk asks as I’m brought through the swinging doors and along a hallway traversing dim offices with large desks and even larger frames slouched behind them. His badge states he is Officer DeVeris; to me, he looks like a beaver who saws for the whole dam because his teeth are enormous. Like tombstones. I wonder if his wife enjoys oral from that overbite.
“He can write or type, can’t he? He’s at Wyldan U. I am not sure he’s dumb, as much as deaf.”
“If he’s deaf, how is he going to understand what you’re asking him?” the officer asks.
“I didn’t think about that. Maybe we can text each other?”
George Uska sits his wide ass in the chair, both he and the chair groaning in unison as his mass settles. Beads of perspiration dot his reddened brow.
“I figure we can text each other, son. I’ll give you my number, and we can begin a conversation. That way, we have a record of the questions I ask and the answers you provide. Will that be okay?”
He mouths every word to me, slow and simple; just as he has assumed I am. I blink at him before retrieving my phone from my coat pocket. The longer we sit here with him convinced I’m a simpleton, the longer I’m away from Aspen.
“I can type the numbers in for you if you need help,” he adds in an accent so thick it makes me wonder where else he spent time as a child. Perhaps a divorce and shared custody agreement saw him in Arkansas or Georgia, because that southern twang coupled with his huffing and puffing and sweaty face is making me uncomfortable. A few questions, they’d said. I was over eighteen and wouldn’t need a lawyer. Just some general questions requiring simple answers. Where was I on particular days and nights? Easy. My schedule is on my phone, so they could do some actual detective work and discovery, but no, they want to have a conversation with a mute dude. Go fucking figure.
“Foxglove Muir, can I call you that, son?”
ME: 5.23 p.m.
My name is Fox
I type to the number he keyed into my phone, his fat fingers slamming those keys like a poker machine.
“Sure. Fox it is. So, Fox, can you state your first and last name for me, please?”
ME: 5.25 p.m.
You called me Foxglove Muir. My full name?
“Ah yes, son. But we need you to state it for the record.”
ME: 5.25 p.m.
Foxglove Anderson Muir. And I’m not your son.
“Right you are. Do you want me to talk to you, or text you back?”
ME: 5.26 p.m.
You are the one who stated you needed a record, Detective. Are you contradicting yourself?
His face darkens to a reddish purple. At this point, I’m pretty certain he knows I’m not a simpleton. Him, on the other hand, well, the jury is still deliberating that one.
