Young-The Interrogation

The Interrogation

Issue 14

Deputy Sheriff Freddy McTavis eased his large waistline into his chair to face the nervous man and his attorney across the interrogation room table. Deputy McTavis had never liked the well-tailored gentleman he brought in for questioning, recalling all the times he saw handsome Gram Tanner cut up in school and never get in trouble. Instead, teachers thought he was cute and ever so witty. Freddy never found his jokes funny, but the one time he remembered himself joking during class, he got sent to detention.
     Unlike short and pudgy Freddy, who failed to make their high school football team, tall and lean Gram became the star quarterback dating the prettiest girls. While Freddy obeyed every school rule, he saw classmates slip Gram cheat sheets during tests, and he knew Gram smoked marijuana under the school bleachers. Unlike many others, Mr. Tanner never got caught.
     After graduation, Gram went to an out-of-state university where he got a business degree and was his fraternity’s president. He returned home to become vice president at his father’s factory where Freddy’s mother still worked as a cleaning lady. Gram married his prom queen sweetheart, had three beautiful children, bought a large home in the town’s most exclusive gated neighborhood, became a deacon in its biggest Baptist church, and was now rumored to be mulling a run for city council. Freddy also heard that Gram’s dad needed the council to approve his zoning request to build another factory.
     Meanwhile Freddy began working for the local sheriff’s department right after high school. His job dominated his life. While occasionally disgusted with some of the people it forced him to deal with, the work gave him far more purpose and respect than he had ever known, though he knew some locals laughed at his girth. But he enjoyed helping people and, by age thirty, had saved enough money to move out of his mother’s apartment into his own trailer behind the railroad tracks on the edge of town. Never comfortable dating, he socialized with brother deputies at diners and fast-food eateries, as well as over weekend beers, cook-outs, movies, and videogames at the homes of the dwindling number still single.
     When Janiyah Sims was reported missing, Deputy McTavis was assigned the case and soon learned that Janiyah’s mother was Gram’s family’s maid. The girl’s friends also claimed to have frequently seen the nineteen-year-old in the same car with thirty-five-year-old Gram Tanner.
     Because Gram neither answered nor returned his calls, Deputy McTavis had rung the Tanner doorbell around 6 p.m. to ask an alarmed Mrs. Jenny Tanner in her kitchen apron if he could please speak with her husband.
     “What’s this about, Freddy?”
     “Well, Miss Jenny, y’all’s maid’s daughter, Janiyah, has gone missing—”
     “Oh, my Lord!”
     “And folks say they’ve recently seen her riding with Gram. Does he still drive that blue BMW sports car?”
     “Yes,” she answered softly looking away. The young Tanner children now huddled around their white-faced mother.
     “Y’all go back to the living room and watch TV,” she ordered in a loud voice as a blinking Gram Tanner came to the front door.
"Hey, Gram. Say, why don’t we go downtown,” Freddy suggested. “I don’t want to disrupt things anymore here at home,"
     “Are you taking my Daddy to jail?” the four-year-old girl asked.
     “No, darling,” Deputy McTavis said kneeling. “Daddy ain’t being arrested. He’s just gon’ help the police find somebody.”
     “Honey, what’s going on?” Jenny asked her husband.
     “I don’t know, babe,” he replied. “Just call Jack Cheatem, the family lawyer, and tell him to meet me at the sheriff’s department.”
     Sitting in an interrogation room, Freddy McTavis faced a far more-quiet and hunched-over Gram Tanner than he had ever seen. His hair was somewhat disheveled, his hands were clasped against his mouth as if praying, and his eyes seemed unfocused. His attorney stared at the deputy.
     “Gram,” Freddy began, “I ’preciate you coming down here. I figured it might be best if we didn’t talk in front of Miss Jenny and the young’uns.”
     Mr. Cheatem turned to see his client nod and mouth “Thank you.”
     “I’m ’fraid we’ve got ourselves a missing gal, Miss Janiyah Sims,” Deputy McTavish continued. “Now a mess of witnesses claim they’ve recently seen her in your car with you at the wheel throughout Raleigh Colston County. So I gotta’ ask if you know where Miss Janiyah might be and, if you don’t, then when and where did you last see or have contact with her, what’s the nature of y’all’s relationship—”
“Any charges against my client?” Jack Cheatem interrupted loudly.
Deputy McTavis blinked and jumped slightly. He always tried hard to set just the right mood to induce persons of interest to confess or offer good information.
"’Cause, unless you have any, we’re done here, Barney Fife. Come on, Gram.” Jack jumped up and motioned for his client to join him.
“You don’t want to help find a missing girl?” the deputy asked Gram. “Sheriff Moody and the D.A.’ll be here any minute—”
“Good. Y'all have a real fine circle jerk.” The attorney declared as he steered his client toward the door.
“This could be a deadly serious matter, Gram,” a now standing Deputy McTavis declared.
“Y’all just have a big time.” Jack grinned. “Hey, maybe they’ll let you pitch this time.”
Gram avoided Freddy’s face as he followed his lawyer out the door. In the parking lot he turned to him.
“What gives, Jack? I can’t believe you talked to him like that, a deputy sheriff and a classmate of mine.”
“Richly deserved -- every damn word. Assholes intimidating my clients need to hear the unvarnished truth.”
     Freddy McTavis slowly gathered his notes, figuring the star athlete son of his mother’s boss would likely skate over whatever he may have done, just like in school.
     Deputy Jethro Simpson opened the door. “Freddy, Willie’s still out sick and I gotta’ go on patrol. So the sheriff says somebody’s gotta’ clean up the men’s room.”

Douglas Young is an author and professor emeritus whose essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications in America, Canada, and Europe. His first novel, Deep in the Forest, was published in 2021 and the second, Due South, came out in 2022. His first book of essays, This Little Opinion Plus $1.50 Will Buy You a Coke: A Collection of Essays, appeared in 2024.