The Freaking Record

Ben walked into the squad room and straight up to Anderson's desk. "Hey, Trigger Happy, could you run the camera and tape recorder in the observation room? I got a talker. You're not going to believe this shit."

"Yeah, sure, Ben. Let me grab a cup of coffee." Anderson sighed. He didn't mind the Trigger Happy thing, really. It was standard for anyone on temporary suspension for shooting a perpetrator. He'd be a desk jockey for at least another week. He walked over, got his coffee, then followed Ben down the hall.

He wanted some idea of what was going on, so he asked, "Anyway, Ben, what've you got? They said earlier you were just handling a domestic dispute."

"It's a dispute, alright. Get your ass in there and run the tape. This one'll fuck you up." Ben walked into the interview room as Anderson entered the observation room next to it.

Anderson watched Ben and the suspect out of the corner of his eye as he set the video camera and the tape recorder. Ben had stalled, as usual, before saying anything. Give the suspect some water, offer a cigarette, but wait till the camera's rolling before starting the interview. The department had stopped calling them interrogations a few weeks back. Said it had bad connotations. Fucking PC world.

Ben knew it was time to start. He sat down across from the suspect with pen and paper and began to ask questions. "OK, sir, could you state again your full name?"

The suspect seemed pretty hyper. Medium height, thin, hands that couldn't stay still. Brown hair, grayish green eyes, kind of a boyish look. You could tell he was 40-something, but he had that 'kid looking for his mommy' expression in his eyes. Clothes pretty much Dockers standard -- pastel sports shirt, khaki pants, both spattered with blood, brown leather shoes.

"Geez, how often do you guys ask the same questions? Ok, ok. My name is Troutman. Harold Troutman. Most people call me Fish."

"Once more, Mr. Troutman, I have to advise you that you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you still wish to proceed?"

The suspect jumped up and pounded the table. "Gosh darn it, yes! We've done this three times already! That's so old school, you know? It doesn't matter. The law is thirty years behind the times, so it doesn't matter. Technology moves at light speed and the law moves at the speed of a glacier. To heck with it. Just ask the questions."

Ben was watching the suspect closely, trying to be prepared just in case he became violent. "Take it easy, Mr. Troutman. I have to follow these rules or I get fired. I'm just trying to feed my family, ok? What kind of work do you do?"

"I'm a teacher. English, 9th grade, at Taft. There's another thing, you know? I don't know why only students come in with guns. One of these days it's going to be a teacher. Most of the punks and Barbie dolls should be taken out of the gene pool. It'd be doing the world a favor."

"Alright, Mr. Troutman, let's get to tonight's events. Could you tell me what happened? Start at the beginning," Ben asked. He jotted down notes, but it was just for show. The video would be used in court.

"Yeah. Do you think it would be ok if I stand up? I think better if I'm moving."

"Sure, go ahead. But I have to ask you to stay on your side of the table. And try not to get too excited, Mr. Troutman. You seem to be pretty nervous."

Troutman stood up, backed away from the table a bit, then started pacing as he talked. "It all started when I got home today, or actually, I guess it was yesterday now, right? Anyway, it was another crappy day at school. Add all my classes together, I've got about 120 students. Exactly 14 of the slugs did their homework. Fourteen! Pure willful ignorance. One of 'em, I call him Ugh, is a sixteen-year-old freshman. On the football team. He's gotta be 200 pounds, 6'2". He's a genetic freak or something. Anyway, he gets all ticked 'cause I told him I'd give him an F if he didn't do the homework. Of course, that gets him kicked off the team. So he stands in the door after class, looking down on me, doing some kind of pro wrestling glare or something. Knuckle-dragging Neanderthal." Troutman stopped pacing and stared blankly at nothing in particular, reliving the scene.

"So you had a bad day at the school, Mr. Troutman. Go on," Ben said. Guys who freak out like this, they could go on forever. They have to be coached so they get to the point.

"Oh. Well, in a way it's good no one did their homework. The few papers I had to grade, I did at school real quick, so I didn't bring any work home. Those days are gold, you know? As usual, I'm the first one home. My wife gets off later 'cause she's the drama coach. My son goes to karate class and my daughter usually plays outside with her friends."

"How old are your kids, Mr. Troutman?"

"My son, Travis, he's 15. Good kid. And Sherry's 8. A real cutie. Got me wrapped around her little finger and she knows it." Troutman's mood changed temporarily. It was almost like a normal, everyday conversation. He reached back for his wallet, ready to show some pictures. "Maybe I could look at that later, Mr. Troutman," Ben said. "For now, let's just continue with last night."

"Oh, right. Anyway, I got this new game a couple of weeks ago. Sorta like Tetris, but it's with triangles you have to blow up before they fill up the screen. You know how it goes -- first couple of days, you're just learning the game. Then, it's like you set a new record every game or so, once you get the hang of it. About the second week sometime, you get really lucky and set some kind of freaky high score you might never break. At least, that's what I did this time. So for about a week now, I've been getting better and better, but still wasn't really getting close to the record. Yesterday, I just knew it was time to bust out. So I started playing on the computer in the living room."

"A computer game. Is that what started the confrontation with your wife?"

"Don't sneer at me! You don't know what happened. Just let me tell the story, ok?"

"Sorry, Mr. Troutman. You're right. Go ahead."

"Thank you so freakin' kindly. So I get started. Blow a couple of games early, then hit a couple of high scores. I'm getting close -- I can feel it. Somewhere in there, the wife and kids come home. Around 6:30, the wife starts nagging me about dinner. I tell her I'm not hungry. She whines about my not paying attention to the family, but leaves me alone. Even brings me a sandwich later. I can hear the TV in the den, so I figure they're busy. I just keep playing, getting closer to the record all the time. I mean, I know this is kinda stupid, right? Spending hours on a silly computer game. But a guy's gotta blow off steam. What do they call that? Sharpening the saw, right? It starts getting late so the TV gets turned off, then the downstairs lights, and I hear them all trudge up to bed. But I'm too close to stop now. I know it's late, but hell, tomorrow's Saturday, so if I want, I should be able to play all night."

Ben breaks in for clarification. "Mr. Troutman, how long would you say you'd been playing this game last night?"

"Let's see. I got home just about 5 p.m. Pretty much jumped right on it. Then I guess my wife came down a little after 2 a.m. That would make it, let's see....geez, a little over 9 hours. Wow. I didn't really think about that. That's pretty bad, isn't it?"

"We all have to relax, I guess. So you said your wife came down just after two. What happened then?"

"Just a second. See, I finally broke through. I had this killer game, was just blazing through all the triangles, getting bonuses I'd never seen before. I was already 30,000 past my record, just playing to see how high the new record would be. So down comes my wife in that ugly robe she always wears and starts bitching at me to come to bed. I don't even answer her. I'm in the zone, you know? Like Michael Jordan in a playoff game. Unstoppable. And then the screen goes blank. Just goes blank. I look up and there's Beth, standing there with the power cord. She unplugged the computer! Oh, man! I had a freaking record, and she unplugged the computer. Anything else and I could have saved or something. But she has to unplug the darned thing."

"How did that make you feel, Mr. Troutman?" Ben had to get a little clarification and he knew it. How a guy felt at the exact moment would be important at the trial.

"How do you think I felt? I was outraged! You know, ready to turn into a seething green monster. So I punched her!" Troutman smashed his right fist into his left palm. That's when Anderson noticed that his fist was swollen and red, like he'd been hitting a wall or something.

"You hit your wife, Mr. Troutman?"

"Oh, I hit her alright. And after I hit her the first time, I got even more pissed that she'd made me do it. So I hit her again and again."

"How many times do you think you hit her?"

"I don't know. Heck, do you think I was counting? I just kept hitting her because it felt so good. I mean, she went down after the second punch, so I sat on her chest and just kept pounding her. It wasn't right, I know. I mean, she's a good wife and a great mother, but she just pissed me off, you know?" Troutman paused for a second, then looked over at Ben. "She's dead, right?"

"Yes, Mr. Troutman. She was DOA at St. Francis."

Troutman walked back to the table and sat down, then put his head in his hands. "I didn't really want to kill her. Like I said, she was a good wife." He looked back up at Ben. "How's my son?"

"He's going to be fine. Can you tell me how that happened?"

Troutman went on with his story, but he was calmer, sadder. "He's the reason I finally stopped. He came flying down the stairs and knocked me off Beth. I grabbed the closest thing I could and hit him with it. I think it was one of my wife's doggy statue bookends. We use 'em at each end of all the software CD's. Cast iron dogs -- big ass things with a leg hiked up like they're taking a leak. Probably what my wife thought of all those computer games. Anyway, I hit him with that. I had to. The kid's a black belt in karate. I had to defend myself. Is he hurt bad?"

"We got a call from the hospital earlier. Looks like a broken jaw and a broken nose. He's gonna be eating dinner through a straw for a while, but he'll be ok."

"What about Sherry? Who's got her?"

"A neighbor lady came over. Bridget. She took Sherry to her house."

"Does my daughter know what happened?"

"Not yet. She knows the police were there and she knows her mom and brother were taken to the hospital. She probably saw the blood in the living room when she left."

"Poor kid. Why the heck did Beth have to unplug the computer? Shoot!"

"I think I've got everything I need here, Mr. Troutman. Is there anything you want to add?"

"Add? No, I don't think so. I guess I'm going to jail for a while. Yeah. Could someone call my sister in Austin? She'll take the kids. Beth and I already agreed on that. The kids like her. I messed up. Darn! Beth should have known better. I mean, shoot, I coulda set the freakin' record!"

Anderson shut the camera down, then rewound the tape. He watched Ben and Troutman walk out of the interview room. A blue-suiter cuffed Troutman and took him toward the cells and Ben came into the observation room.

"That is one sick mother fucker," Ben said. "You know how his wife died? They won't actually be sure until a full autopsy, but she either drowned in her own blood, or she suffocated. One of his punches smashed her larynx. The doctor in the ER said her face was completely destroyed. Definitely gonna be a closed-coffin funeral. Damn. How can a man do that to his wife? To anyone? And over a stupid computer game."

Anderson felt shaken. He popped the tape out of the camera, swallowed, then looked at Ben. "What's so hard to understand? He told you, he could've set the freaking record."