“My brother has always been who I’ve relied on, ever since our parents passed,” I start, unsure if our sob story is what the police want to hear. I doubt that it’s ‘Leigh’s not a murderer.’
“He’s four years older than me, and we’ve been through thick and thin together. Leigh would never do anything to hurt anyone.”
“Haven’t heard that one before,” snorts Officer T. Davis. He’s the one sitting with the unflattering facial hair and right hand set firmly on a stale-looking cup of coffee. Davis doesn’t recognize me, for which I am not surprised, but his impression remains as distasteful as the day I’d first seen him across the police tape of a crime scene. His partner is a bespectacled man by the name ‘Officer H. Martin.’ He makes a small noise of dissent at the other officer’s prodding. Officer Martin nods at me, and I take it as a cue to keep talking.
I think I tell them nearly everything there is to say. Leigh was only sixteen when Mom and Dad died in a freak accident but I was younger, which -only according to Leigh’s self-sacrificial logic- meant that he had to look after all my needs and me. We lived in an orphanage that really couldn’t have cared less how we got along. So, Leigh took over the job of both his and my guardian. And he did it exceptionally. He got permission from his teachers to skip class on occasion to visit me at family-related events in school. Leigh did it to make sure I never came home crying after that one eventful day when I found the popular girls telling everyone at school I was an orphan. They said that meant the entire class had to be nice to me because I was to be ‘pitied.’ And then the girls asked, with a nasty grin, if I wanted their dollar for lunch. I had thought things were better when they were blatantly mean. I talk about how Leigh always brought a chocolate cake from my favorite bakery and white lilies on my birthdays.
‘He’d never hurt a fly,’ I sneak in within stories and sentences, on the off chance that’ll do anything to change the officers’ minds.
Leigh was always busy looking after me while I was in middle school. Even after he graduated high school, he’s never been without assignments to submit for university.
“Leigh helped me with schoolwork sometimes. He always stayed on top of his grades and made time for extracurriculars, that’s how he got into med school.”
“We know as much from the file. What we want to know is what happened that night,” speaks Officer Martin, but Davis only scoffs.
“That’s putting it mildly. We don’t give a damn whether your brother bought you lilies or picked daisies from your garden.”
“Jesus, Martin… Kid, just tell us what you remember from last week.”
“I’ve been trying to say Leigh would never do any of the things you are accusing him of.”
“We have the camera feed. Hell, we don’t even need a confession at this point when the suspect’s practically glaring at us in the face. You’re just here for your brother’s supposed alibi.”
Officer Davis doesn’t relent; it’s annoyingly enough, the only good trait he has acquired throughout the years.
“He was with me,” I try, nervous beyond reason even though I know Leigh would’ve never willingly murdered anyone. “Leigh makes a point to be home by nine, even if he still has essays to finish or stuff to read.”
“No known traces of the murderer on site, only a bullet traced back to Leigh McGuire and clothing on the security cams found in Mr. McGuire’s possession. And you’re still saying he was at home?”
Well, I do tell the officers almost everything. Just almost.
There are only a few details I leave out, for the sake of my argument and Leigh’s innocence. It’s for good cause that I don’t tell them how I work five shifts a week after school to save up for college. I don’t tell them how upset I got when I found out our parents had been putting money in a fund under Leigh’s name meant to pay for both our extended education. Mom and Dad hadn’t put much thought into the distribution process, thinking they’d be around to make sure I got access to the fund when I needed to. I don’t tell them how I confronted him on how selfish he was to use the money as his own. I don’t tell them how Leigh had called me an ungrateful brat and slapped me afterward. I don’t tell them how sorry he was.
“Miss Julia?”
It’s to make my point stand that Leigh and I’s purchase of a gun goes unsaid. No one needs to know I can handle a firearm. Not that I think they’d believe an underage girl could manipulate a gun anyway, considering no one at this same police station had listened to the 12-year-old girl when she claimed the freak accident under investigation wasn’t an accident at all, but intentional gas exposure. She knew her parents owed someone a small fortune, as it was often a topic of quarrel. Everyone, even the policemen she’d bet her last hope on, said that the little girl had lost it a little witnessing the death of her parents and nearly her own. Especially because the supposed suspect was Javier Garcia, a friend of the deceased parents who was the only one offering to take the kids in. Out of absolute certitude that the girl was picturing things, the police hadn’t even bothered to mention that certain crevice of her imagination. Garcia never ended up looking after the kids but he still attempted to stay in contact.
I don’t remind Officer T. Davis of a crime labeled ‘freak accident’ under his jurisdiction four years ago.
“Miss Julia. We do need your cooperation with the case of Mr. Garcia’s murder. Julia?”