Tombstone In The Living Room

I've been in a lot of living rooms in this lifetime of mine.
However, I can say without question, I never walked into one that had a tombstone in the middle of it. Right next to the big screen TV.

It was a full sized headstone, like one just plunked out of the graveyard.
There were plastic flowers and ivy strung around it.
Above the tombstone hung a cross with a black Jesus nailed to it.

There was a table next to the tombstone that held pictures of a handsome young man and  the rememberance written about him from his funeral, framed.
There was also a black nativity scene.
Always... somewhere... when the young die tragically, there is a makeshift alter I study, then photograph.
I looked at the date of on the tombstone. He died at the age of 27. That was 2 years ago.

It was a very strange environment. All the shades were drawn. Someone was sleeping on the floor.

I turned my focus to the young man to start my interview and spoke softly
"Who's that" I asked, pointed to the person snoozing on the living room floor.
"My cousin" he said,  "It's okay, she sleeps through anything."

And so we began.
He told me the story about the incident I was investigating.
I took copious notes. 
I asked all the questions, studied all his responses.
Slowly...steadily... a smile here... a nod there...
I established the rapport necessary to begin the harder work... the deeper dig.

P.I's... at least the good ones... have a way of convincing people to unlock the suppressed psychological vaults that protect their past indiscretions, injuries or medical conditions.

I have had  people confess some amazing things to me, including murder, simply by leaning into them, lowering my voice and asking one question while staring them straight in the eyes with a half smile, "Any dead bodies buried in your back yard I ought to know about?"

The response is always fascinating.

So this guy, the one I was interviewing in the living room with the tombstone in it, was dressed well, had great glasses, tasteful bling. Reminded me of a young JZ.
I ask him "the" question.

"I was bad kid," he replied  "had juvie records and one adult ones. Assaults, theft, a drug case. But I never murdered anyone" he replied. "Alot people tried to murder me after I ripped them off. I got stabbed a lot."
"How much is a lot?" I  asked.
"More times than I could even count, most of them are in my back. Wanna see?"

"You bet," I said.
He lifted his shirt and though his skin was quite dark... the scars were darker and clearly visible... and some of them were  long, large raised white keloids.
I start counting stab wounds. I stopped at 17.

"Can I photograph these?"I asked.
"Go for it" he said.
As I took the pictures, he told me not to miss the five stab wounds on his front side.
"And" he added as he turned so my light was better, "there's a bullet wound on my left calf."
He lifted his powder blue Addidas pants and showed me where the bullet went in and how the surgeons took it out.
I asked how old he is now.
He said 25.

"Some life you've had. And you're still a kid." I said. He laughed.
"Don't think i was ever a kid, really."

"It was hell on earth really," he said, "Dark stuff. I never knew knew my dad, my mom worked two jobs and granny helped where she could.  This is granny's house.  I just in two years ago when my big brother was killed. He pointed to the tombstone in the living room.

"How'd he die?" I asked.
"Shot in the face with a shotgun," he said.
"I had to I.D. him," he continued,  "It was bad. Ugly."
I was stunned... because I have seen shotgun  shots do to a head and I can not fathom a brother seeing his brother that way.  I shared his silence while he looked  at the tombstone with that "stare of a thousand miles" I have seen a thousand times.

Just then, a hunched over old toothless woman who looked about 200  and was probably closer to 80, shuffled into the living room with a mop and dustpan.

"Can I get you some coffeee?" she asked.

"No thanks" I said, "but it's so thoughtful of you to offer."
And I meant it.
But by force of habit or my own paranoid reasons, I just don't drink from strange cups in strange places.

I turned back to my subject.

"Did they ever catch the guy who killed your brother?" I asked.
"Oh yeah,"he answered back. "Got 30 years to life. He's in Walla Walla."
"What's the killer's name?" I asked, "I'd like to look him up?"
He told me. That and more.
Not just  his brother's name,  but how close they were had. how the gang was their family.
He talked about how, after his brother was killed, he wanted out of gang-banging life.
So he got himself beat out and somehow lived through it.
Now, he was  a new man, he said.

I told him I was proud of him. That as an outsider looking in, I could tell all the bulbs were lit in his head.  I showed him the stab wounds on his back in my camera. He said he'd never seen them like that before.

I said each wound was a lesson learned, and on the streets of life, he was in grad school having survived what he did. I gave him my best pep talk, thanked him for his time and closed the interview.

I walked quickly to my car, put the case file in my briefcase and programmed my GPS for the next stop of the day.

It is only now, when I stop and write about specific moments and real people in time and space here in this strange cyberspace, that I realize how bad some of us have it and how silently they suffer.

Private Investigators are the eyes and ears of the attorney. And by nature, people only want you to know what they want you to know, to see what they want you to see. Reality is simply our own version of perception.

There were no masks on this case.  No buries stories here. The tombstone was right there.
In the living room.
The reality was not hidden, it was as exposed as a raw nerve.

There comes a point when people with nothing left to hide, hide nothing.
This was one of those points.