The roads had an eerie quality with Jesse racing down the suburban areas. They were quiet, naturally, due to the lateness of the night, and he was also using the back-roads rather than the actual roads. However, any route would have been quiet. The only large amount of moving vehicles he would have to pass that evening had already happened when leaving the Aryan Brother's Head Quarters - passing numerous police cars with flashing lights. He had wrongly thought that any more run-ins with any personnel from the public services would be possible, or at least would not happen again that night.
Taking advantage of the empty roads, cleared by the darkness and time of the night, Jesse drove as fast as he dared in the dimly lit areas. Reaching the main roads, the street lights lit up the road in front and behind him making the journey easier since he had a clearer view of what was, or rather what wasn't, around the car. However, it wasn't the road that Jesse was focusing on. The events of the evening and the past two years were milling around in his head. Somehow, his mind had cleverly focused on the actions that he had participated in, but there was one that kept sticking in his mind: Gale. Gale Boetticher.
He knew that shooting Gale was wrong – the flash backs and bad memories haunted him daily, as did every other killing that he had seen, let alone participated in. Having the door opened for him, shooting him. Hearing the metal on metal sound as it hit the kettle. It was a miracle that he wasn't finger-printed or seen by any of the residents either coming or leaving the building. But what he had just witnessed, made his shooting look petty, even perhaps a misdemeanour.
The shrill of the bullets speeding past his face resonates itself deep inside of his mind, much like a record stuck on repeat, with the whistle carefully changing after each release ensuring some form of insanity. The groaning of dying men seemed to match the sound of the car on the empty road, however unnerving. The yellow glow from the street lights carefully placed on the road turned red in Jesse's imagination as if it was a red waterfall of blood. The actual red lights hanging from metal beams above and around him, often going unnoticed. The cat's eyes in the road hindered his thinking process. It was if they were the whites of eyes whom he was driving over with the bump-de-bump-de-bump being their unfortunate heads. The wetness of Walter White's blood slowly seeping out of his dying body and seeping in to the fabrics closest to the wound hoping to stick, stitch and mend together and ultimately heal. The weight of Walter on top of him in the Aryan Brother's Head Quarters was also echoing itself on Jesse's body. It is almost like a yearning for the weight to be reapplied, much like the body feels 'off' after carrying a heavy rucksack, or a pile of books… or a dead body. The warm smell of blood and iron lingering in the car, wafting about delicately. However, despite how fragile and dainty the scent is, it is terribly nauseating. . Nothing is as it seems.
Jesse opens the driver side window to allow the fresh air to enter the car and try to disseminate the unwelcome smell. He is greeted with the coldness of the night, and the night smell mixed in with the typical city smell of car fumes. It may not have been much, or alleviated and cleared his mind, but it was better than that bloody smell. Anything is.
Arriving at Andrea's house, Jesse is met by a flashing blue and red haze. Police and ambulance vehicles had flooded the street. The lights acting as waves, retreating and returning. Retreating and returning. It was still dark, but the sun was slowly beginning to rise.
The drive way and surrounding area was littered with the emergency vehicles of various sizes and uses, making Jesse park the car unconventionally in the middle of the road. The keys left in the ignition so if it ended up being in the way, it could be easily moved. However, the car being traced back to Jesse is relatively slim, since finger-printing a stolen car from a wanted and deceased man, albeit involved in the case, is not top priority. The police had to deal with the bodies of two top police members who were to be exhumed from a Native American reserve, and they were also dealing with the case of a murdered mother.
Leaving the car, Jesse ran to the porch of the house, disregarding the cries of police and forensics alongside the yellow tape screaming 'CRIME SCENE: DO NOT ENTER'. Kneeling down on the grass to the porch, Jesse begins to weep. Although the body had been long removed, and the majority of the blood from Andrea's wound has been cleaned away, the path still had a red smudge in it. To Jesse, it felt like it was jeering at him. Look at all the destruction that you've caused. You've killed, and let killed both the innocent and the condemned. He saw her die. The bullet that fatally struck her, struck him too.
The innocent are always the ones mixed up in disasters like this.
The thought swirled around Jesse's confused head adding to the distressing situation. The innocent. The innocent. The innocent. The…
Jesse felt himself being jolted away, being pulled from his knees, being dragged backwards from the warmth of the house. The open door, the warmth and the light from the open door slowly getting further away. The mumblings from the television become inaudible, but something louder, something he had managed to block away before protrudes.
"Sir, this is a crime scene. You can't just enter without permission and kneel on the grass."
"The innocent," Jesse cries out quietly. "Why... Why them, why not me." He wipes his tear stained face with his sleeve. He lets himself be dragged without a fight. He is exhausted.
The two police officers that dragged him away pretend that they hadn't heard him.
"Fuck… You don't get it, bitch? It should have been me – not Andrea!"
One of the police officers turned round, and crouches down to Jesse where they had put him on the curb, just out of the taped off area.
"You know the deceased?" He asked.
Jesse nods, letting his head fall into his hands. "Where's Brock? Her son, where is he?"
"Come on, son," said the police officer who had crouched down. "Let's get you somewhere safe,"
Jesse moaned a long 'no'. Safe, it seemed, was just a human construct. Something created by humans to give the impression of being away from danger, from being away from harm. However, this was untrue. Time and time and case after case had proven that nowhere, and nothing was safe. Anything could be penetrated, be harmed from, even from the home. And if you can't feel safe there, where could you feel safe?
They put him in the back of a police car. It wasn't much, but it saved contamination of the scene from the areas that needed to be looked at and examined. However, it also meant that the police were one man down, although considering the amount of vehicles and people outside, one man down didn't seem to make that much difference.
"Can I see Brock?" Jesse asked from the back seat of the car.
"Brock?" The police man in the front questioned.
"Yeah. Brock. Andrea's son. About yea-high, smart, eight years old." He said, raising his arm to an approximate height of Brock. "Loves to play video games," he added.
Something inaudible to Jesse came through on the radio.
"What was that? Tell me! What was that?" Agitated and wanting to know that Brock was alright, Jesse became jumpy.
"It's fine. Could you please calm down, sir?" Asked the police officer in front. "My colleague wants to know what tattoos you have on your lower arms."
"Why? What are you going to do with that?" Jesse's thoughts were racing around his head. He wondered if a report had come in from the earlier incident or from a previous crime, and that the only thing linking him to the scene was his tattoos.
"Sir, I know that you're agitated, but it's for the best for both of us, trust me. All you need to do is hold your arms out."
Jesse complied, pulling back his sleeves. "This better be for Brock," he mumbled under his breath.
The police man spoke into his radio. "Yes, black tattoo on his right wrist. I don't know the shape, but it's got a small circle on it, and what could be perceived as two pincers at the start of the wrist."
Listening, Jesse could hear a young boy's reply from the other end of the radio.
"BROCK! Jesus, BROCK!"
"SIR!" Shouted the man in the front to Jesse, and then spoke into his radio. "Could you please repeat, there was a disruption my end."
"You want me to bring the kid over to you?" asked the voice on the radio.
It seemed like an eternity for Jesse. The five minutes of getting Brock to Jesse was torture. He was only brought out of his intense thinking by a light knocking on the car window. It was Brock – clad in slippers, and a dressing gown, with pyjamas underneath. Jesse didn't even wonder why Brock was still at the crime scene, nor why he hadn't been taken away either by a neighbour or someone in authority so the kid could get some sleep, or at least a form of some rest.
The police man outside the car, with Brock, opened the car door.
"Jesse?" Brock asked.
"Hey. Hey Brock, it's me." Jesse smiled, trying to keep the tears at bay, and speaking softly. It didn't work as the young boy flung himself into Jesse. "Hey kiddo. It'll be alright, I promise."
Underneath him, Brock was shaking, shuddering. "What's wrong Brock?" He felt like he was asking the obvious.
"It's me." Brock wept. "It was me.. It was my fault… I found her… I was too late…"
Jesse held him even tighter. "It's not your fault. You did everything you could. You're a brave, big man."