By Spense
CHAPTER FIVE
Jeff had been pacing the living room of the Tracy apartment for quite awhile now. By this time it was late afternoon and he was beginning to wonder if he'd be wearing a path in the carpet that would be forever apparent when he finally heard the sound he'd been waiting for. The key grating in the lock of the front door.
"Finally," he breathed, turning towards the sound and facing his son as he entered the spacious penthouse apartment. "John! How did it go?" He asked anxiously.
John quietly divested himself of his coat and looked at his father. Jeff was shocked at how pale he looked. "Go sit down," he ordered, and headed for the kitchen, returning a couple of in a few moments with two cups of strong espresso.
John had dropped into a chair across from the one that Jeff had been occupying earlier in the day, and was sitting with his face in his hands. Jeff's heart sank. This did not look good. "Here," he said quietly, setting the strong beverage on the low mahogany coffee table between him, shifting the newspapers and magazines he littered it with during the long, interminable wait.
His son still didn't move. "John?" he asked, concerned.
"DAMN!" John snarled suddenly, followed by the sound of his tightly clenched fist impacting the solid wood table with a resounding thud. Surging to his feet, he swept the table clear with one single violent movement as he lifted his arm. Paper, china, and coffee flew over the room with a resounding crash. Before Jeff could even react, John was across the room, standing staring out the window on the panoramic expanse of the city.
Jeff watched in absolute disbelief as normally staid, self-contained son worked hard to regain his self-control, and realized that John's actions was more telling than anything he could have said. His heart sank.
John turned around and faced his shocked father. "I don't think I did much for us," he stated unhappily, without preamble. "That has to be the most adversarial and punitive process I've ever been through." Unbelievable words from the most imperturbable of the Tracy clan.
Jeff got up and walked over to his son and touched him gently on the shoulder. "Come sit down."
Returning to their chairs, John looked unhappily at the mess. Before he could say anything, Jeff just said "Leave it. Now tell me," he ordered softly, then settled back to listen.
John groaned. "Nothing I said was right, Dad. Everything got twisted!" He covered his face with his hands again for a moment. "Okay," he said after he had composed himself, meeting his father's worried gaze. "Here's what happened. Everything was going alright until they asked how Alan broke his collar bone last summer."
"Now, you have just told me that Alan broke his collar bone and wrist in a car accident, while he was driving. Is this correct?" Sylvia Wagner asked neutrally.
John gave an internal sigh. "Yes, while we were trying to escape from the kidnappers."
"For the record, at age fifteen, Alan does not have a driver's license. Does he have a learner's permit?"
"No," John answered. Crap. He just knew this was going to get bad.
"Why not?" Sylvia asked, setting John up nicely to hang himself.
John didn't have a choice in his response. There was just no way to make it sound palatable. "Because he wasn't old enough."
"So why, as the responsible adult present, did you allow Alan behind the wheel of a car?"
John thought a bit in order to frame his answer. "Actually, Alan had started the car and was in the driver's seat before I got over to the driver's side."
"How did Alan come to be in possession of the keys?"
"We didn't have the keys. I was planning to hotwire it. Alan just did it first." Crap, he shouldn't have said that. This woman was rattling him.
"Wait a minute. You were going to hotwire the car? You were stealing a car?" Sylvia pressed.
"Excuse me," Schaeffer broke in. "This incident has already been reported to you in full. You are fully aware that the car was stolen and why. You are also aware that restitution was made to the owner, and that John and Alan were running for their lives at the time. The issue of the car being stolen is not pertinent to your investigation."
Sylvia looked as though she would have liked to argue the point, but Schaeffer was correct. She already had the information, and it was not in the scope of her investigation. The question of why Alan was driving the car in the first placewas however. "Noted, Mr. Bradley. So John, why was Alan in the driver's seat in the first place?"
"Because he beat me over to that side."
"Why didn't you stop him from driving?" Sylvia asked.
If only it were that easy, John thought. "Because Alan had already hotwired the car, and when I told him to move, he began to drive away."
"Alan hotwired the car?" Sylvia asked, pointedly. "And where did he learn to do that?"
"I only wish I knew," John muttered. He'd still not gotten a straight answer on that one out of Alan. Nor had Scott that he was aware of, and it certainly wasn't from lack of trying. He was still amazed that Alan had held out this long on Scott. Scott could be very . . . persuasive . . . when he wanted to be. And Scott had made it abundantly clear that he wanted to know where Alan had acquired these particular skills.
Sylvia shook her head for a moment in disbelief, then returned to her matter-of-fact questioning. "So then you let him drive?"
"Well, no. I told him to move, he refused, then drove off without me. I had to jump into the car as it was moving away."
"Why didn't you stop him then?"
"Pardon me, ma'am, but have you ever actually met my little brother? Nobody can make Alan do anything he doesn't want to do." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, John knew they had been the exact wrong words to say.
"Is that how Alan actually broke his collar bone and wrist then? You resorted to physically violence in order to restrain him and gain control of the car? Or is that how the accident and injuries occurred - you trying to regain control of the car?"
"NO!" John exclaimed emphatically. "I would never do that to Alan! Or anybody else for that matter!"
"I'm sorry, but I find it very hard to determine why an adult of your age was unable to deter a minor of Alan's age from driving."
"Ms. Wagner, that is conjecture and opinion on your part, not part of examining the facts. In light of this, I am calling a halt to this interview. You have the actual sequence of events already submitted to your office as part of the evidence in the trial of these kidnappers. The information has already been placed into evidence. You may examine it there."
"So basically, I was guilty any way you looked at it. First, I let Alan drive, and then, in actuality, he drove until we ended up in an accident, regardless of the fact that I tried to stop him. I failed because I was the responsible adult and shouldn't have been letting him drive in the first place. And if those weren't the real facts, then I must have either caused the accident by trying to get the wheel away from him, or inflicted the injuries myself, trying to get him out of the car."
John looked at his father helplessly. "I mean, anyway she wanted to twist it, I was guilty. I just can't believe it."
Jeff's heart bled for his son. John would always do the best he could for his brothers, and to be blamed for something like this was unconscionable to him. During the incident in questions, he'd done amazing things in order to keep his brother and himself safe. Now, he'd be going over it for weeks trying to see if he could have done something different in that situation, second guessing himself, and then he'd turn to examining the interview to see if he could have said something different in order to sway it another direction.
"John, you did your best."
John looked at him gravely. "Yes, but I seriously doubt it did us any good at all, and I'm afraid it may have caused us more harm."