Chapter 19
“Mending Wounds”

When I woke that Saturday morning, I had a splitting headache.  All the drinks had obviously had the desired effect the night before.  Part of me wasn’t expecting to wake in my condo, but part of me was happy to be in my own place.  I mean, I’d continued to pay for it even though I hadn’t been there.

The reason why I’d come to Tuscaloosa was more than just to hang out with my friends that were still here.  I had two crucial appointments that day.  The time for the first was creeping up quickly on me.  I pulled myself from the sofa and walked into the kitchen.  There, in one of the cabinets, I found some Aleve and quickly popped three as I filled a cup with water.

I showered and put on a pair of pants that were baggy around my skinny waist.  I held them up as I looked for a belt.  When I finally found one, I realized that it didn’t match the shoes that I was going to wear.  I looked down in the corner as I stood in the closet. Uncovered, in plain view, were the shoes that I’d been wearing the night of the attack.  The white Pumas were still stained with blood, blood that was red and crusty after months of just sitting in the closet.

I tied the belt around my waist and looked for another pair of shoes.  I’d brought a pair of Nikes with me, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to wear those as I walked into the police station to meet with Detective Barr for the first time.

When I was ready, after having pulled on a red polo and a pair of boots that I had in my closet, I left Catherine there to continue sleeping peacefully.  After writing a note and grabbing a binder from my suitcase, I walked out the door, locking it before walking toward my car.

It was nothing for me to find the police station.  It sat right on Queen City Boulevard, just across from the city’s board of education offices.  As I pulled up, I noticed the grandeur of it all.  It was a massive, three story building with a lot of windows.  The lobby seemed to extend up all three floors, connecting the building and giving it a somewhat modern feel.

As I walked in, I remembered the floors.  I remember the way they felt weird to my feet as I shuffled across them the morning of the attack.  Standing there now, it was as if I were reliving everything, but in a much more certain, calm way.

In the lobby, there was a phone with no buttons.  I picked it up and almost instantly a receptionist answered, asking my reason for being there.  I explained that I had an appointment with Detective Barr.  She told me to wait where I was and that Detective Barr would be right with me.

I walked around the lobby for a few minutes.  On every wall, there were pictures of police chiefs, past and present.  There was a memorial to officers that had fallen in the line of duty.  My heart went out to them and to their families.

“Ryan,” a voice called from behind as I contemplated their sacrifice for my own safety.

“Detective Barr?” I asked as I looked into the eyes of the strikingly handsome man.

“Nice to meet you,” he said as we shook hands.

“Likewise,” I said.

“So, if you’ll come with me...” he said as we turned and walked toward a set of elevators in the main part of the lobby.  He walked a little bit faster than me at first, however, giving me an opportunity to size him up.  He was muscular with dark hair.  His ass was as nice as Brand’s, which was saying something.

We took the elevator to the top floor of the building, and after traversing through the confusing system of hallways, we ended up in his office.  On the desk were three things—a picture of another attractive man, a folder with my name on it, and a copy of the Code of Alabama, a book that regulated levels of crime and a set of very vague sentencing guidelines.

We shot the shit for a moment.  He asked about me, my family, where I was from, and all that.  It’s not like he was flirting with me, but rather that he was trying to get to know who I was.  It was as if he were sizing me up, both as a person and a victim of a heinous crime.

“So,” Detective Barr finally said after a moment, setting the book to the side and opening the folder that bore my name, “Tell me what you remember about that night.”  He looked up at me.

I told him everything that my mind would let me repeat.  I talked about getting out of Brian’s car.  I talked about seeing his truck.  I talked about there being something in his hand.  I told him about being stuck once and falling to the ground and then being struck again before the world around me went black.  I discussed the fear surrounding the fact that I felt like, between the blows, my life was about to end.  I told him about how I couldn’t remember at first what happened, and so I told everyone that I’d just fallen.

“Okay,” he acknowledged, calmly and with a great deal of sincerity in his voice.  “Now that you can remember, would you like me to read his statement?”

“Please,” I answered without thinking.

He pulled out a sheet of paper and read to me Kyle’s words verbatim.  There were questions, questions which he answered.  I don’t believe he was telling the entire truth, and from Detective Barr’s tone, I don’t believe that he found Kyle’s answers credible either.

I listened to the words.  I was half expecting my blood to start boiling at any minute, but I stayed surprisingly calm.  Detective Barr read statements from other people interviewed... Kyle’s friends.  He read a statement made under oath from Jay, the guy who worked the door at the bar, stating that he’d overheard this guy talking with jocularity about beating a guy in his parking lot.  Jay said that he honestly didn’t think about it, as he didn’t know at that point that he knew the person that had suffered at this man’s hand.

There was also a statement from Gina, the guy’s girlfriend, in which she said that she’d been with him the whole night and that he’d never gone anywhere or beat up anyone.  That was, in my opinion, the nail in the coffin for his ‘self-defense’ defense.  If she were lying to the police, it would stand to reason that he was, too.  Logic would have then dictated that all the other statements were given in an attempt to obstruct justice—my justice.

“I want to meet him,” I said, looking away from the detective, through the large window in his office.

“You want to meet him?”

“Yeah.  I want a chance to talk to him.  I want to watch him lie to me; I want to see if there’s any remorse in his mind from what he’s done.”

“Okay.  That makes sense.  I can arrange to meet with both of you in a couple of weeks, if that’s alright.”

“Detective...  I would appreciate if you could help arrange it, but I want to talk to him myself,” I answered as I looked him directly in the eye.  “There are some things that I want… need …to say to him.  I need him to see what he’s done without a mediator in the room.”

“I’m not sure he would agree to that, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“If you have to, you can be in one of those rooms behind one-way glass if you want, but I need to see him for myself.  I need to see the louse that did this to me,” I expressed, completely void of emotion and completely and totally resolute in my explanation.

“That would work, I guess,” Detective Barr stated.

“Tell him that I want to resolve things without court, and that if he doesn’t agree, I’ll press charges against him,” I stated, my mind working on the ruse to get him there in the first place.

“Sounds like a plan,” Detective Barr said as he picked up a cordless phone from another desk that was perpendicular to him.  He dialed a number and held the phone to his head.  “Kyle Rodgers, please.”  There was a second or so of silence.  “Thank you.”  He looked at me and smiled.  The room was so silent at that point that I could hear two things, my heart pounding in my chest and his voice as he picked up the phone.  “Kyle?  This is Detective Barr from the Tuscaloosa Police Department.”

“Hi,” Kyle said.  “Let me go outside.”

“Okay,” Detective Barr said as the sound of a creaky door came through the phone.

“So, what’s up?” he asked.

“I’ve just had a meeting with Ryan.  He expressed a desire to settle all of this outside of court, but on conditions.”

“Okay?”

“He wants to meet with you, here at the Police Department, two weeks from now.”

“The weekend of the Ole Miss game?” I heard him ask through the phone.

Detective Barr checked a football schedule on the opposite wall and answered, “Yes.  That would be the weekend.”

“Okay.  I was planning on being in town anyway for the game.  What time?”

“2:30.”

“Kickoff is at 2:35.  Could we do it before or after the game?”

I shook my head.  I wasn’t going to make his life any easier than it had to be.

“Well...  Ryan said that was the only time that he could meet.  He said that he’s got other things going on the rest of the day.”

“All right, I guess,” Kyle stated in the background.  “I’ll have to tell my Mom and Dad that I won’t be able to go with them, and they’ll have to give my ticket to someone else.”

“Whatever works for you and them with that,” Detective Barr stated.

“Okay,” he said.  “Is there anything else?”

“Not right now.  I’ll let you know if there is.”

“Thanks,” Kyle stated before hanging up the phone on the detective.

“I’m going to assume that he’s just emotional about the whole thing,” Detective Barr said as he put the phone back on its base.

I sat there for a second, contemplating what would be happening in two weeks.  Would I finally have the answers that I wanted and needed?  Would I finally be able to put this behind me?  All of it was so uncertain.

The detective and I talked for a little while longer.  We discussed what I would be doing in the room, where it would be, how the furniture would be arranged.  I went into planning mode, and nothing would stop this moment from being perfect.  Perfect, that is, from my perspective.

The detective escorted me back downstairs, offering me a firm and supportive handshake just before I left walked from the glass doors at the front of the building.  I wondered as I walked to my black BMW if he thought I was crazy, but it was only a fleeting thought.

I climbed into the BMW and pulled away from the building.  This wasn’t the end of my day by any means.  I still had to go by the University and face Dr. Lekkas’s wrath for not having made progress on the thesis like I should have.  To sweeten the moment, though, I stopped by Taco Casa on 15^th Street to pick up some of her favorite, Messe (pronounced ‘messy’) Nachos, before going back up Hargrove Road toward the University. 

I meandered down streets I’d not crossed in some time.  I made my way to the University, to the place where I’d been for the past two years.  In front of Morgan Hall, I parked the car and walked up, with the binder that I’d brought and the nachos in hand.

I walked into the building, my nerves far worse than they’d been as I entered the Police Department building.  On the first floor, the door to the main office in the English department was wide open.  I walked inside and saw Dr. Lekkas on the phone, speaking animatedly to someone in Greek.  She noticed me and held up one finger, noting that she’d be with me in a second.

I admired her from afar as I watched her carry on the conversation that she was having.  Her hair was curly and black, and her nose made me instantly think Mediterranean.  Despite her heritage, though, she was raised in Puerto Rico.  That single thing was what we’d needed to make a connection during my first semester in the program.  That’s why I wanted her as my thesis director; I seemed to trust her because of the commonalities of our heritage.

“Ryan!” she called after hanging up the phone.  I nervously walked into her office.  “Are you buttering me up for something?” she asked as she saw and smelled the nachos.

“Would you be upset if I said yes?” I asked as I set them in front of her.

“Not in the least,” she responded as she stood, took the nachos and the thesis and laid them onto her desk.  She was only a few inches shorter than me, which was something else we shared with each other.  We were both tall.  She looked at me, sizing me up, having not seen me in almost six months.  “I’m glad to see that you’re doing better,” she said as she stood on her tip toes and wrapped her arms around my neck.  We stood there for a moment.  She was more than a professor to me: she was a friend.

“Thank you,” I said as tears started flowing from my face.

“¿Por qué lloras?” she asked as she pushed herself away and returned to stand flatly on her feet.

“No sé,” I answered.

She rubbed my arms as she told me that it would be okay, that all would work out, that things were going to be grand soon enough.  “Cuba libre, right?” she asked as she walked over to a little place on the shelf, pulled out some books, and grabbed a small bottle of Don Q Limón rum that she’d obviously brought back from Puerto Rico.

“Yeah,” I answered.

She took two plastic glasses from her desk and poured a little bit of rum into the bottom of them.  She then took a Coke from one of those vinyl lunch boxes that keeps things cold.  She evenly poured cola into the glasses, letting the motion of the canned drink mix the two things together.  She handed me one of the glasses, which I nervously took into my hands.  I took a couple of sips as we sat there.

“So,” she said as she looked at me.  “Want a nacho?”

“No thanks, Dr. Lekkas.”

“Suit yourself, then,” she said as she removed the plastic top and took a couple of chips, with gooey, nasty cheese, sour cream, meat of unidentified origin, and some green onions into her mouth.  “So, how is the thesis coming?” she asked, looking at the green binder in which I’d printed all the chapters that I’d completed to that point.

“A couple of weeks ago, I decided to completely redo the plan and the story itself.  Before that, I’d finished through chapter 4 or 5, but since I started it over, I’ve gotten through seventeen of the planned twenty-two chapters.”

“Really?” she asked in disbelief.  She picked up the binder and started thumbing through the tabs that divided each chapter.  “Wow!  How long have you been working on it?”

“Today would be day 14,” I answered.

“So, that’s a little over a chapter a day,” Dr. Lekkas said as she stuffed another chip into her mouth and looked over the first couple of pages of each chapter.  “You’re gonna be able to defend it in December, then?”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” I expressed.  “I need to wait a couple of weeks before I write the last few chapters.  Some things are going on that will be important for the book, since it is semi-autobiographical.”

“Okay...  What’s happening?” she asked.

“I’m meeting him,” I said, looking her directly in the eye as I took a sip of the drink she’d prepared for us.

The look on her face was a mixture of both fear and surprise.  “Him... him?”

“Yeah.  The detective just arranged it a little while ago.”

“This is big,” she said.

“Yeah.  That’s why I need to wait a couple of weeks before I write the other chapters.  Jen and her girlfriend, Donna, have been helping me edit and such.  I hope that in two weeks, I can sit down, write the final chapters, and get it all ready for binding.”

“You’ve got your couple of weeks then,” she said.

“Dr. Lekkas...  I’m so sorry about just leaving y’all with my shit at the end of last semester.”

“Ryan, I appreciate that you said that, and I accept your apology,” she said as I looked down, into the drink.

“I want this thesis to be perfect, to help make up for everything.”

“I’m sure that it will be good.  Is this my copy of it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I responded to her question.  “I’ll email the other chapters as I get them finished.”

“Works for me,” she said as she shut the book back.  “I’m going to start reading it tonight and then finish it as you do.”

“Thank you for everything, Dr. Lekkas.”

“Basta!” she said, letting me know that I could stop apologizing for actions for which I’d already received absolution.

We sat there talking until she’d finished the nachos.  Once she was full, I excused myself.  Together, the two of us walked back through the main office to the doorway.  After another hug, I walked out of the room and out of the building itself.

As I was pulling away, I realized just how good I had it.  My life was getting better, moment by moment, bit by bit.  There wasn’t a magic lever that could be flipped at a whim which would make my life better or worse.  It was a process... a process that I hoped would be greatly accelerated as I finished the thesis and did what most victims of assault, I would imagine, wish they could do: meet the person that had put them through hell for so long. 

To be continued...