In the Name of Justice

By Kalin Ringkvist

I dreamt I was back in school, at the age of 11 or 12 or so.

In the dream, my father worked at an insurance agency, which of course is not the case in real life.

And, in my dream, I was just beginning to experiment with drugs... and found myself taking way too much my very first time.

I snorted some meth and drank a pint of vodka or something to that effect, and found myself unable to cope, unable to comprehend reality, and basically, fucked up beyond all comprehension. I was at school, as I had mistakenly thought that getting high at school would make school more pleasant. Instead, I found myself unable to deal with my classes or understand anything that was going on.

My only solution was to sneak into the boiler room through a secret entrance that only a few of the students knew about.

I found myself in the boiler room, thankfully away from any teachers or students who may care about the fact that I was high on meth. However, I was not alone.

There were three other students in the boiler room with me; some of the few who knew about the secret entrance. There was a notorious bully--one who had tormented me on many occasions--and the bully's girlfriend. His girlfriend was standing in the corner, seemingly oblivious to her boyfriend, as though she was just as high as I was.

The bully, however, was his normal, sober self, and as usual, he was picking on the innocent, kicking, spitting at, and tormenting a younger, geeky kid who was well known in the school for having no friends. The kid was crying, and lying on the ground as the bully kicked at him mercilessly, and laughed.

"Stop!" I said, "Leave him alone."

But the bully ignored me.

The geek then began crawling, and dragging his body across the floor into a conglomoration of pipes, sobbing, "Please... I've never done anything to you.... please."

And I was still unable to tell if this was really happening. This must be a dream, I told myself.

I continued to watch, occasionally asking the bully to stop, and getting no response. Suddenly the geek made a rapid movement and the bully suddenly jumped back several paces. The geek stood up slowly and I saw that he was holding a gun, pointed at the bully.

"Where did you get that?" asked the bully.

"I just found it," said the geek. "It was behind that pipe." He pointed.

"Look, I'm sorry," said the bully.

"Step back," said the geek.

The bully obeyed, taking five slow steps backward.

Then the geek opened his mouth and turned the barrel of the gun away from the bully and inserted it, pointing it straight toward his brain. "I'm gonna kill myself, now," he said. "I hope you're happy."

And the bully's eyes went wide. "No! Please, no!" he yelled. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please don't do that, please!" And the bully fell to his knees. "Please, I'm begging you, please don't. I"m sorry. I'll never mess with you again, I promise. I swear to you, I never meant it to go this far... I was just having fun and I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry."

And the geek, eyes filled with rage, and through teeth clenched around the barrel of the gun, said, "It's not just you. It's everyone." And I saw the tears streaming from his eyes. "I hate my life. My parents don't give a fuck about me... everybody hates me... I have nothing to do... my life sucks... I hate you, but it's not you that is making me do this."

"No, no no!" said the bully. "Look, if you put the gun down, we can all leave the way we came in and then I'll go and tell the principle that I was down here by myself and that I found that gun, and he will come down here and get rid of it. I won't mention that you were down here, I won't say a word about what's going on right now. Nothing. You won't get in any trouble at all. I'll be the only one here who gets in any trouble, I promise."

"No," said the geek. "This gun is a sign from God. I've wanted to do this for a long time."

"No, it's not," said the bully. "God would never ask you to do something like that... certainly not here... not like this."

"I have to..."

"No..." The bully stood up slowly. "Ok, look... I'm gonna step forward and I'm gonna take the gun away from you very gently, and then we are going to put it back where we found it, and I'm going to go to the office and tell them about it. You won't get in trouble, I promise. No one will ever know this happened... you have my word... and you have my word that I will never pick on you again."

And the bully stepped forward.

"No!" screamed the geek. "I'm gonna do it! I'll kill my self right here. Stay back!"

"Stop!" said the girl in the corner. "Both of you stop it!"

"Stop!" I echoed.

"No, you won't," said the bully. "Your life isn't that bad... I've got it bad too you know. My parents hate me... your parents might neglect you, but at least they don't hate you like mine do."

And the bully stepped forward again, and cornered the geek against the wall. He slowly reached out and wrenched the gun out of the geek's mouth, but just as the bully was gaining control over the weapon, the geek fought back, screaming, "No! Asshole! I want this!"

And they began to struggle. The geek began hitting the bully with his free hand and frantically pulling at the gun with the other.

Suddenly the gun went off, stunning all of us for nearly ten seconds.

"You fucking idiot!" yelled the bully. "Someone is gonna get hurt!"

And the two pulled even harder at the gun.

The gun fired a second time. The two fought for a moment longer before noticing the bully's girlfriend falling to her knees, holding her chest, with a look of terror in her eyes. The two boys stared at the girl for a long moment. She opened her mouth, and blood began to pour out. A moment later she slumped to the floor and her hand fell to the ground to reveal the blood coming from her chest.

The geek and the bully simultaneously screamed "NO!!!!"

They both began sobbing and the bully hugged the geek in a frantic embrace as they both screamed. After a moment, they seemed to calm down, though both continued sobbing.

"Please," said the bully... "Please give me the gun."

And the geek screamed "No!!" once again, and immediately kneed the bully in the groin, then lunged forward, grabbing the bully's ear in his teeth and pulling.

A stream of blood poured from the bully's ear, and he stepped back, clutching his hand to the side of his head.

The geek immediately raised the gun to his forehead, and fired.

The bully screamed and cried, kneeling down beside the kid. "I didn't know," he said. "I didn't know this was gonna happen."

He turned to me, tears streaming like a waterfall. "I didn't know this was gonna happen. I didn't know this was gonna happen... Oh God... Oh God... this can't be happening... Oh God... no no no no no."

And I just stared in utter shock, unable to move, unable to think... all I could do was to just pray that this was either a dream or a meth-induced hallucination.

"Please believe me," the bully sobbed to me. "I didn't know this was gonna happen... I never wanted this... I never wanted anything like this..."

"I know," I said.

"Please don't tell anyone" said the bully.

And at this point, I blacked out.

I woke up nearly two weeks later in the hospital. At first, I had no recollection of the incident in the boiler room.

"Mornin, son" said the doctor as he entered the room. "I'm glad to see you survived. That was one mighty concussion and a whole lot of methamphetamines. You had enough meth in you to send horse into psychosis, son."

"What?" I asked.

"You got high on meth at school," said the doctor, "and then you fell in the parking lot and hit your head on the curb and got a concussion. You've been in a coma for the last two weeks. You're damn lucky to be alive, kid."

"What's going to happen to me?" I asked.

"You're gonna probably be sent away to drug treatment. The school agreed not to press charges since your parents agreed to check you into a professional treatment center... if you survived, of course, which it looks like you probably will survive, though you may have some minor brain damage."

"Press charges for what?" I asked.

"Posession of narcotics", the doctor replied. "Duh. You were aware that meth is not only illegal, but extremely dangerous, right?"

"Yeah," I replied.

"Then why did you do it?" he asked.

"Because I'm an idiot," I replied.

"Yeah," replied the doctor. "Well, hopefully you're gonna think next time."

I spent two months in rehab, and was released early, as I was not a true meth addict. The experience had been my first and only time experimenting with meth, and the doctors and nurses did not need to tell me twice that it wasn't a good idea to experiment again.

So I finally went back to school, fully expecting to see the bully and his girlfriend, and the geek roaming around the playground as usual. When I did not see them for several days, I started to worry, that perhaps my horrifying hallucination in the boiler room was not a hallucination at all.

But then after a few days, on the bus ride home from school, I heard someone talking about the three of them. Apparantly all three of them had run away together. The bully had written a note to his parents, saying that he was sick of his life here and that the three of them were running away together.

And so somehow I convinced myself that the three kids had run away the day before my meth trip and that I had hallucinated the experience in the boiler room because their names were fresh on my brain.

So several months went by, and I hardly heard about the three missing children. My brain seemed to be clearing up too, and I was having an easier time concentrating at school.... as though the brain damage was slowly healing itself. And of course, I never touched meth or alcohol.

But then one day, a middle aged woman was seen wandering around the school, talking to certain kids. One day she entered my class and called my name. She asked me if I knew each of the three kids that were missing. I said yes, of course, everyone had been talking about them, even after I had gotten back from treatment.

Then the woman asked, "Have you ever heard of Pedro Zamora?"

Now, Pedro Zamora was a well known kid in school, merely because of his name, and the movie Napoleon Dynamite, as Pedro not only had the same name as the character in the movie, but also looked and talked very much like the Pedro in the movie.

And it suddenly hit me... I flashed back to immediately after the incident in the boiler room, while I had been blacked out.

Pedro Zamora had seen me crawling out from behind the bushes where the secret entrance to the boiler room lay.

"No," I said, almost instincually. "I don't know him."

The woman looked surprised. "I thought everyone knew him... he always wore the "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt--like from the movie, Napoleon dynamite... have you seen that movie?"

"Yeah, I've seen it... I might know who you're talking about... I didn't know his name was Pedro Zamora though..." I laughed. "That's funny."

"Were you near the east wall of the main building on that day--the day the three kids ran away? I was hoping maybe you had seen something, or maybe they had talked to you about where they were going, or anything?"

I paused. "No," I said. "I didn't talk to them at all. I never really hung out with any of them."

"Okay," said the lady. "That's fine. It's just that Pedro said that he saw you near there, right after seeing the other three nearby. Okay, you can go back to class now. Thank you for answering my questions."

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Well," she said... "You should ask your parents when you get home. We sent a flier out to all the parents about this... it would probably be better if they told you about it. Don't worry, you're not in any trouble."

"Okay," I replied, and got up and left.

That night, I went straight home and turned on the local news. Within ten minutes I found what I was looking for.

Two bodies had been found buried near a riverbed, just a couple miles out of town. They belonged to the geek and the girlfriend. The bully was still missing.

My heart immediately began to race, as the rational side of my brain tried to come to terms with the horror that what I had witnessed had not been a meth induced hallucination, but simple, horrifying, reality.

I felt sick... I felt as though my whole world was collapsing...

All I could do was lie down and try to sleep... but of course, I couldn't sleep, and instead just lay in my bed in tortured shock, and felt the butterflies in my stomach, slowly, slowly building into a roaring pain.

But still I kept quiet.

The days crept by. The investigator lady came back to the school every day to interview more students.

I began to wish that I had just told the story at the beginning, when I first woke up in the hospital, I should have told them everything that I had hallucinated... if I had told them back then, they wouldn't have suspected me of anything... but now... now... after all this time... why did I not say anything? How could I have been so stupid as to just jump to the conclusion that it had been a hallucination, but still not be able to tell anyone about it? Why would I have been scared to talk about a hallucination if I really had believed it was a hallucination?

There was no way they would believe me after all this time.

So I lived with the pain for nearly two weeks, a constant, nearly overwhelming ache in my belly... but then, the investigator stopped coming to the school. A day went by... then another day... and finally, the pain in my stomach began to subside, just a little.

Still, I stayed at home nearly every night, fearing to venture outside in case someone noticed my extreme level of anxiety.

Then, on a calm, warm, Thursday evening, my mom came to my room, and said, "I forgot that your father asked us to come to the country club and eat an early dinner with him when they're taking a break from their golf tournament."

"He's playing in a golf tournament?" I asked.

"Well of course," replied my mom. "He's been talking about it for weeks. He thinks it's gonna help land him a promotion somehow--don't ask me how--but apparently the big-wigs from his company are gonna be there and he really wants us to make an appearance."

"I don't feel like going out," I said.

"What?" said my mom. "You love the food at that country club..."

"I know... I'm just not very hungry."

"Are you depressed?" she asked.

"No," I said, and paused. "Well, yes," I replied, realizing I couldn't hide my feelings completely. "I'm just bored with my life," I said.

My mom paused. "Well, I'm sorry honey... but maybe if you got out, had some good food at the country club, maybe watch your dad play a couple holes... you know, root him on... then maybe, if you want to, we can come back and talk about what's wrong, and see if there isn't anything your father and I can do to help."

I grunted. "I'm just in a funk," I said. "That's all."

"Okay... well, this is really important to your father..."

"Okay, okay," I said. "You're right. I should get up and do something. No sense wallowing here."

"Good attitude," she said.

The golf game, however, did not break until nearly an hour after the scheduled time. My dad called my mom on her cell phone and apologized for not being able to meet us, and told us to go ahead and eat and he'd meet up with us when they were done with the first round, so that we could meet some of his co-workers.

"He sounds like he's having fun" said my mom as she hung up the phone.

And suddenly I started to feel almost okay. I ate a full meal for the first time since the investigator had first come to my school.

But then, as my mom was paying the check, the news came on a television screen in the bar room nearby. It showed the scene at the river, the police digging and searching, and they showed the faces of the geek and the girfriend, and an ominous female voice asked, "Who murdered these two innocent children?" And a huge question mark filled the screen.

And my heart sank again. The butterflies and raging guilt came roaring back. And suddenly I was overwhelmed with emotion, and all I wanted was to put my head on the table and scream and cry.

So I stood up and left the building. Behind the building lay an area of tall grass, interspersed with small trees and bushes. Beyond that, a short stream, and beyond that, the green fields of the golf course. I began wandering in the grass, blanking my mind, thinking of almost nothing, but still feeling that aching in my stomach and heart.

It felt like only a short time before my mom came out and found me standing against the tree. "What are you doing?" she asked. "I thought you went to the bathroom so I sat and waited for you. What are you doing out here?"

"I just needed some fresh air... to be near nature..."

"You really are depressed..." she said, and she looked at me sadly, making me feel like crying even more... and all I could do was wish that I could tell her the truth.

And then I saw my dad at the front entrance to the restaurant. He noticed us a moment later, and began a full run toward us. "Haha!" he yelled when he reached us. "You two will not believe this," he exclaimed. "I am having the greatest game of my life... literally the greatest game of my life. I am three points ahead of my all-time best. It's only halfway through the game, but I just can't seem to miss. This is incredible." He kissed my mom.

"The president of the company is in the group right behind me, and he's asking me for advice. There's no way he's gonna forget me now."

I don't think I had ever seen my dad jumping and giggling in such a way, and for a moment, it helped me forget about the fear. My dad talked about a couple of his birdies and near-misses for a couple minutes, then looked over his shoulder and cringed momentarily. "That's the president," he said.

The man stood by the door for a moment with a couple other men I did not recognize, then he turned to walk toward us. "Is this your sandbagging husband?" he asked my mom with a laugh. He shook her hand. "When are you leaving the company to go pro?"

"Seriously I'm just having an amazing game. If you want to play a round with me some other time I can show you how I normally play... which is actually pretty lousy."

"I might take you up on that. I could use some more pointers. I don't think I'm gonna be behind you any more for the second round." The president shook my hand.

"This is my son."

He introduced himself, and I said a polite hello, but I wasn't really listening to his name, as I noticed a police officer pull into the parking lot and park. I watched the cop absent-mindedly after my initial panic had subsided, and finally turned back to watch my dad trying to build a career opportunity by alternately giving pointers on how to improve his golf game, and making jokes about how poor his really was.

And I could see that rare gleam in my father's eyes, where I knew he was bubbling with excitement underneath and struggling to contain it. And for a moment it seems like I forgot about my problems altogether...

Until the other police began to arrive. Two cars poured in from each of the three parking lot entrances. The first police car pulled out of it's space and approached us as the others pulled up to stop in various positions near our group. Everyone stopped talking to look at the officers.

They exited their cars in unison, eight of them in total, and immediately drew their guns and held them pointing at the ground just in front of their feet, and began marching toward us.

"Step away from the boy," said the leading officer, motioning at me.

My parents and the corporate big-wigs did as they were told almost immediately, and as soon as they did, the first three officers raised their guns and pointed them directly at me.

"Let me see your hands!"

So I raised my hands to show my open palms.

"Lie on the ground, face down," they shouted. "Put your hands on your head."

I remember vividly the guns pointed at me, but even so, I looked over at my dad and the president, standing silently and utterly motionless, mouths agape and eyes wide with confusion. Their faces are what I remember most about that day.

So I lied on the ground as they had demanded. The officers surrounded me. "You are under arrest for the murder..."

And the whole time that they were searching me and putting me into the back seat of the squad car, my father remained motionless, staring, in cold confusion.

They sat me down almost immediately in a square room with one of those big mirrors so you know a bunch of people are watching you. Their presence is even more intimidating when you cannot see them. I was handcuffed to a sturdy wood chair.

"Where'd you hide the bully's body?" the first officer asked abruptly.

"I didn't kill them," I replied.

"Look, kid," the officer passed a photo across the table. I looked and it took me a second to focus and see the bloody t-shirt in the photograph, immediately recognizing it as my own.

"Remember this? This was the shirt you were wearing on that fateful night. You didn't think we'd save it, did you?"

"What is this?" I asked.

"The doctor assumed the blood on the shirt was your blood from when you hit your head, but considering the disappearance of your three classmates, we decided to test it anyway. It has some of your blood, but it also has a large quantity of the geeks blood, the girlfriends blood as well as the bully's blood. We know you were wearing that shirt that day."

"Furthermore," continued the second officer, "a couple of your school-mates recall hearing three booms coming from the basement--like muffled gunshots, and Pedro Zamora says that he saw you climb out of the secret boiler-room entrance that you so cleverly hid from the teachers, then you had a conversation with him, and told him that the red stains on your shirt were paint stains from a fight you had in art class."

"But I didn't do it," I replied with tears in my eyes.

"We've got a confession statement here," the first officer said, passing a sheet across the table.

"We went into the boiler room and found traces of blood from all three of your victims... You've been a suspect for a long time now, son, and now that we have the bodies, we are confident that we have enough evidence to put you away. More than likely you will be tried as an adult. You might never see the light of day."

"The girlfriend was an accident," I sobbed.

"You accidentally killed her?" he asked. "So the other two were on purpose? Now, that sounds more plausible..."

"No!" I cried, "the geek killed her by accident when he picked up the gun. He was gonna kill himself and the bully tried to stop him and they accidentally shot the girl."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," said the officer. "They accidentally shot a bullet directly into her heart?"

"Yes!" I shouted.

"Okay, then what happened?"

"The geek got the gun away from the bully and shot himself in the forehead."

"Okay, then what?"

"I don't know," I replied, "I blacked out because I had taken alot of meth that day. That's why I was down there, because I was so high I didn't know what was going on."

"And you murdered three innocent children because of that meth."

"No!"
"So what happened to the bully, then?"

"I don't know. He must have run away somewhere."

"It's been six months and he hasn't turned up anywhere," replied the officer. "A thirteen year-old can't hide that effectively--and besides, why would he if he didn't do the killing. You said yourself he was trying to stop the geek from killing himself."

"I don't know. He must have panicked just like I did."

"You know perfectly well that innocent people have nothing to worry about from the law."

"Yes we do," I replied. "I'm innocent and I'm terrified."

"Yeah, you and O.J." laughed the officer.

"Look kid, I know you think you're pretty damn clever for coming up with this story, and we must admit you are pretty damn clever for getting those bodies out of the school and down to the river without anyone seeing, but this just isn't going to fly. You're a twelve year old little kid who got too high on crank and made a horrible, horrible mistake that cost three innocent children their lives. We can see through your stories like crystal. We're offering you a deal here, kid. You did a terrible thing, and this is going to weigh on your soul for the rest of your life, but you don't need to be a terrible person if you don't want to... we're offering you a deal here... admit what you did, and you'll be tried as a juvenile."

"But I didn't do it!" I cried, as I shivvered and strained against my handcuffs.

But I managed to keep up the argument for another half hour, until finally the officer became fed up and screamed in my face: "Do you know that we are going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law here? You will be tried as an adult. Do you know what that means? At least two counts, if not three counts, of murder in the first degree. You'll be facing twenty-five to life. Think about that, kid. Your life is over right now. You'll never get to run around in the trees, never get to kiss a woman, never get to go to DisneyLand, or the water slides, never get to have a normal life, never get to fall in love. Never."

He paused.

"But if you admit what you did and sign the confession and help us find the bully's body, then you will probably be tried as a juvenile and you will probably be out on your eighteenth birthday."

"You're not even going to consider what I have to say?" I sobbed.

The officer shook his head. "No," he replied. "We're not going to consider your story. Neither will the newspapers, neither will the judge nor the jury, nor the parents and families of those three innocent children whose lives you stole, and neither will the community." He motioned at the pen and paper. "You know what's best, here, son. Give yourself some relief. Give the grieving families some relief. Just sign the paper and don't throw your life away."

So I leaned forward, with tears staining the page, and signed the confession.