Page 3 of His Witness

I turn on the tv and stand there, holding my coffee, my mouth dropped open when I see the overwhelming police presence at Club Curve, where we were last night. The yellow crime scene tape waving in the breeze and the blue and red lights of what seemed like hundreds of flashers on the cruisers blocking anyone from getting within a hundred yards of the club.

The reporter is standing there all bright-eyed and happy at god only knows what time of the morning it is when this was taped. It’s still early and I’m usually not up so early on a Saturday but something told me that today was going to be an unusual day.

Now, listening to her rattle off all the information she’s managed to collect in the eight hours or so since we were at the club, I feel my mouth moving but can’t make a sound come out. My hand waves frantically at air when I hear Tally’s bedroom door open up.

“What’s so interesting?”she says, grinning while she puts her hair up.

My mouth keeps opening and closing but I can’t make any sound come out.

I am so fucked.

The woman onscreen is babbling cheerily with a little snarky aside about the family being unavailable for comment and I wish I was standing right in front of her because I would ask her if she has a death wish. Why the hell would you try and piss off the new Campano family head about his father’s death. I mean, seriously, does she want to end up floating in a pond somewhere with cement shoes?

Unless they don’t do that anymore. I don’t really know how made men kill people and dispose of their bodies anymore. For all I know there’s some super-technical way to do it now instead of old school.

Which makes me think of school. I’m off for summer break, of course, but I still have personal development and yada yada to take care of. And I can’t do any of that if I’m dead. Which I will be if the guy who killed that man knows where to find me.

“Tally?”

She turned up the tv and she’s now staring at it like it holds the secrets of the universe.

“She seems really excited about that report and the possibility of a mob war. It’s really rather disturbing how macabre that is.”

Nodding, I can’t stop myself from saying, “I saw the man that got shot. I saw the whole thing.”

“I know. You said so last night.”

I turn to her and my heart races out of control. “No. You don’t understand. I saw the man that did it.”

“Holy shit!” She breathes out air like a deflating tire.

“I saw a mob hit by a rival mafia family. I’m going to die.”

“No, you’re not. Get dressed. We’re going to the police and get you some protection.”

I shake my head but she ignores me and starts throwing stuff into a bag like we’re taking a week-long tour of Rome or something.

She shoves me towards my bedroom door when I dig my heels in. “Let’s go! Hurry up!

Tally calls an Uber while I’m dressing and by the time I come out, she’s at the front door, tapping her heels and checking her watch.

“You know we don’t have an appointment. So we can’t be in that much a rush. And they’re probably not gonna believe me that I saw the guy.”

“I saw the guy that killed him,” I mutter to myself. The driver of the Uber shoots me a look and even though Tally’s been urging him to go faster, he just ignores her.

Until he hears me and starts speeding like a bat out of hell, squealing his tires as we pull up outside the police station in the little berg.

Tally drags me inside and babbles a bunch of shit that maybe she should have kept quiet in the open area of the lobby. A bored sergeant studies us like we’re some new invasive species. But he lifts up the phone and before too long, two cops show up to take care of us.

And I may mean that in the literal not figurative sense of the word. I don’t like these guys. At all.

Both of them are smug and arrogant. Both of them are condescending as hell. And their questions aren’t about me seeing a killer. Their questions are about the two of us and where we live and what kinds of jobs we have.

I may be naive but I’m not that naive and I keep yanking at Tally’s arm to try and get her to shut up.

“Stop,” I hiss under my breath.

She finally notices me and stops talking when she turns to face the two men and notices something on their faces that I don’t like and apparently neither does she.

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