Admission by Travis Thrasher

Author:Travis Thrasher [Thrasher, Travis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-57567-458-2
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2006-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FIVE

March 1994

“WANT COFFEE?”

“Only if you put some Kahlua in it.”

That was an attempt at being funny, but Sergeant Cooper’s face remained stiff as a corpse. Jake looked across the metal table and watched the sergeant shuffle through some papers. He looked like a military man, with lips that hadn’t smiled since he had arrived an hour earlier. They sat in a small, cold, colorless room that might as well have been a holding cell. It was the afternoon after the fight, or what should have more accurately been called the beating. After making notes from Jake’s account, the sergeant began asking a few questions.

“So you don’t know this Chad Hoving?”

Jake shook his head. “He plays basketball and baseball. That’s all I know.”

“Isn’t Providence a small college?”

“I still don’t know everyone.”

“You don’t play sports?”

“I played soccer my first year. Sat on the bench 99 percent of the time.”

“Who threw most of the punches?”

“It’s sorta hard to tell. Both of them did their share. And they weren’t just throwing punches. I think they did some kicking too.”

“And you didn’t provoke Brian at all?”

The sergeant looked as though he didn’t like Jake, didn’t believe a word he was saying.

“I told you—we’ve had our share of encounters. The last was at a party. It was nothing.”

“What’s ‘nothing?’”

“Nothing. No blows. I jammed a cigarette in his face.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Were you drunk at the time they came over?”

Jake thought for a moment. “I’d been out drinking. But no, I was fine.”

“Drugs?”

“No thanks.”

“You weren’t on anything?”

“No. But I think they might’ve been.”

This continued for a while, with the sergeant asking him specific questions about when they came over, what exactly transpired.

“Did they ever come into your apartment?”

“I don’t know if they ever stepped foot into the apartment. It was more like I was grabbed out of the entryway.”

The endless questions hurt his already pounding head, and he wished the police officer would go away.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Jake had been driven home around ten and had slept until noon. Alec and Franklin came over with lunch—Brown’s chicken, a lot of it. Around two-thirty, he’d gotten a call that the Summit police had picked up Brian Erwin and Chad Hoving at their dorm room on campus. Jake thought of the commotion the scene had surely made. Now he had to come down to the station, make a statement, and identify Brian and Chad.

“And none of your friends saw them?”

Jake shook his head.

“Where was your roommate, the one with you?”

“Our one roommate, David Kirby, went home this weekend. Probably a good thing too. Bruce was at a friend’s apartment. And Carnie—Paul—was out buying more beer. I think he might have been the first one to get to me. I’m not sure. I was out of it.”

“Out of it?”

“That’s what happens when you get your face pounded in.”

“How many times did they hit you?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said.

“Think.”

“Twenty, thirty times each? I’m not sure. Like I said, I know I got kicked too. My back’s got a big welt that looks like it came from a boot or something.

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