NovelPlus
Storytelling

Racist Woman Calls Cops on Man Reading in Park — Then the Officers Suddenly Stiffened

Chapter 6

Theme:
Font Size:
24px
Autumn came early that year.By October, leaves covered the park path in copper and yellow.Elijah still visited the bench.Not every day.But most Saturdays.One morning he arrived carrying the same thick biography and found someone already sitting there.Daniel Brooks.Off duty.Jeans, sweatshirt, coffee in hand.He stood immediately.“I can move.”Elijah looked at the empty half of the bench.“It seats two.”Brooks sat back down.For a while, neither man spoke.Children shouted near the playground. A dog chased a tennis ball across the grass. Somewhere behind them, two old men were arguing about baseball statistics.Eventually Brooks nodded toward the book.“Any good?”“Six hundred pages.”“That didn’t answer the question.”“It’s a biography. Six hundred pages is the answer.”Brooks laughed.Then he looked toward the path.“I wanted to thank you.”“For what?”“For not making a call.”Elijah frowned.“You think I did you a favor?”Brooks’ smile disappeared.“No.”“Good.”Elijah placed a bookmark between the pages.“If I had called your chief personally, what would you have learned?”“That you had influence.”“And what did you learn instead?”Brooks looked down at his coffee.“That the footage was enough.”Elijah waited.“And that I should have cared about the footage before I knew who you were.”“That’s closer.”A woman jogged past.Behind her came a father pushing a stroller.The same father who had witnessed the original encounter recognized Elijah and lifted one hand.Elijah waved back.Brooks noticed.“Do you know him?”“No.”“He seems to know you.”“He saw the video.”“Right.”Elijah sighed. “I may need a less famous bench.”Brooks smiled.Then someone approached.Patricia Lang.She stopped several feet away.Brooks’ body tensed automatically.Elijah noticed.Patricia looked different without anger animating her face.She held a leash attached to a small terrier.For several seconds, nobody spoke.Then she looked at Elijah.“I wanted to say something.”Brooks started to stand.Elijah touched his sleeve.“Stay.”Patricia swallowed.“I was wrong.”Elijah waited.“I saw you sitting here several days in a row, and I decided there had to be a reason. Then every normal thing you did looked suspicious because I had already decided you were suspicious.”She looked down at the dog.“I made things up in my head. And when the dispatcher asked questions, I made what I saw sound worse because I wanted the police to come.”Brooks’ eyes shifted toward her.Patricia noticed.“I already told Sergeant Ortiz that.”Elijah asked, “Why are you telling me?”“Because I embarrassed you.”“No.”She looked confused.“You inconvenienced me. You exposed something about yourself. Those aren’t the same as embarrassing me.”Patricia absorbed that.Then nodded.“I’m sorry anyway.”Elijah looked at the terrier.The dog was trying to eat a leaf.“What’s his name?”“Walter.”“Walter has poor judgment.”She almost smiled. “He does.”Elijah nodded once.“Apology accepted.”Her eyes widened.“But acceptance is not erasure.”The smile vanished.“I understand.”“I hope so.”Patricia walked away.Brooks watched her go.“That was more generous than I expected.”
PREV NEXT

News in the same category

Racist Woman Calls Cops on Man Reading in Park — Then the Officers Suddenly Stiffened

7 Part