“And that’s fine,” she snapped back. “It would be nice if that was the truth because now we need to know exactly what did happen.”
“And remember the part about I don’t have a fucking clue?”
“Yep, I do,” she stated. “But we’ve also found two similar cases in Alberta and two similar cases in Saskatchewan.”
There was a moment of shocked silence from the other end. “What the fuck?”
“You heard me,” she said calmly.
“Well, it wasn’t me, and I’m sure somebody somewhere along the line should be able to prove that. And it also means,” he added, his voice rising, “that you now have the proof that I need to have my charges cleared.”
“Not so fast,” she replied. “Aren’t you the one who just told me that you spent months in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan?” And she wrote down a note to check Manitoba for similar cases.
“Sure, but I was always supervised,” he noted. “It’s not like, once you’re deemed a criminal, and you’re in the system, you get to walk around free and clear.”
“Did you get any day passes?”
“No.” Then he stopped. “Yeah, I mean. Fuck!” he said. “I don’t know. I had a couple day passes. I had a little bit of time out. Sometimes, you know, I was allowed to go visit my parents. When my mother had an accident, we weren’t sure she would live.”
“When was that?”
“It was in Alberta. You’ll have to ask her when. I don’t remember, honest to God. All that time in prison just runs into one nightmare after another.”
“What happened to her?”
“She got badly injured and was in the hospital. They gave me special permission to go see her, no thanks to you guys,” he snapped. “I fought like crazy and damn near had a complete breakdown when I wasn’t allowed to see her at first. It was some special dispensation that they gave me at the time, and I was pretty damn upset when I had to go back, believe me. I kept kicking and screaming, telling them I didn’t kill my sister.”
“And we’re back to that whole problem caused when you lied in the first place.”
“I get it. I get it. Do you think I haven’t regretted that all those years?”
“I’m sure you have,” she said gently. “So, when you were in juvie, was there anybody you were close to?”
“Yeah, a bunch of people,” he noted. “You asked me that before.”
“Sure, but at the same time you also told me that you didn’t have any friends.”
“Not now,” he stated. “Not when you’re free because everybody hates your guts if you can’t do anything for them. They all say they’ll stay in touch, but really all they want to do is hate you because you’re getting out, and they aren’t.”
“Did any of your friends go free?”
“A few of them, but I didn’t stay in touch. Again, it’s not a period of my life that any of us really want to deal with.”
“Do you know others who did stay in touch?”
“Not with me but with other people. They all seem to make friends pretty easily,” he murmured, with a jealous note in his tone. “I never had that ability.”
“In what way?”
“My friends all seem to be shit,” he replied. “I don’t know what it is. Everybody around me seems to have good friends, people they can talk to and can do things with, you know? I got into the drug crowd, and it seemed like all they wanted from me was what I could do for them, you know? Like drive a vehicle or go check out a store. They made it look like nobody would ever know who I was, so I was asking questions about what goods they were looking to buy. Shit like that.”
“Trying to further their crime area?”
“Exactly,” he said. “I never did make good friends in juvie. Most of the kids there were pretty upset, pretty pissy in their own right.” He shook his head. “I mean, obviously I made some friends, but it wasn’t easy, and I was just trying to survive.”
“I think that’s what everybody in juvie is trying to do,” she noted gently.
“Yeah, I’m sure they are, but it was not easy to do. Everybody’s got an agenda, even in juvie, and it could be just to survive the day.”