Outside the police station, two middle-aged blonde women gave Jacob a dirty look. “You know,” said one woman, who was old enough to be his grandmother, “you really shouldn’t smoke. It’s terrible for your body.”
Jacob didn’t drive. He had, at one point, but it wasn’t a priority at this point. Tossing his cigarette onto the ground at the womens’ feet, he scowled. “Did I ask?”
He couldn’t be forced to participate in questioning. Jacob had been arrested before, and wasn’t afraid of it happening again. Zeb suggested he go, if only to ensure he wasn’t looked at as a suspect. It didn’t matter. He was familiar with the station, and its officers were familiar with him. This meant nothing. Jacob had no reason to kill his father, besides finding a thrill in it. The most thrilling part of anything was getting away with it. Jacob wasn’t the most moral man, but he wasn’t a killer.
“Let’s get this over with, then.”
He wasn’t familiar with the two officers who’d brought him in for questioning. Like any cops, they were corrupt and took advantage of their position. This wasn’t intimidating to Jacob. He’d learned to look out for himself and be wary of others - this was the only way to get around in life.
He sat back in his chair, feet planted firmly on the floor in front of him. Authority figures weren’t intimidating. His father hadn’t been, either.
Just cooperate, said Zeb, before dropping Jacob off at the station. You weren’t even there that night. They can’t get you for anything.
When the nearest officer looked at Jacob, he returned the man’s intensity, not to be intimidated. “Where were you on the night of February 28?”
Jacob hadn’t spoken to his father in years. Truthfully, he barely remembered his last conversation with the asshole. He hadn’t returned to Prince Edward Island since leaving. He had no plans to return ever, really. “Do you really think Orion was worth enough to me to travel all the way back just to kill him? I have better things to do with my time.”
If it was any of Orion’s children, Jacob would have put money on River. He’d wanted Orion dead for years, and he was unpredictable.
“Jacob.” The second officer looked at him as though he was joking - but Jacob didn’t joke. “When was the last time you spoke to your father? You moved out at the age of seventeen. Have you seen your father since then?”
Jacob had a date later, with a woman he’d met online. First dates rarely went anywhere, and no one really caught Jacob’s interest. It was pointless, really, dating. Jacob didn’t have the time, or the interest, or the commitment to be interested in somebody else. Still, it passed time, and it kept Jacob’s social skills sharp.
He sat back in his chair. “Like I said, I have better things to do than spend time with some old asshole.”
Why are you always so angry?
Hannah had asked him this once. She was a child when he left, and still vulnerable to the ideas of others. He hated leaving her behind, but aside from Hannah, there was nothing preventing him from leaving. For some, it was easy to turn a blind eye to injustice and cruelty. Orion traumatized all of his children in different ways, and always believed he was doing it for the greater good.
You’ll understand someday, Hannah. People are callous and selfish, and no one believes you when you talk about it.
When Jacob was eighteen, he spent six months in jail for battery. It wasn’t the worst experience of his life. In many ways, jail was much more of a home than his actual home had ever been - he had to admit he’d sort of liked it there. Prison was different, and Jacob was different too. Four years ago, he was arrested for filming and distributing a film of a couple having sex in a restaurant bathroom stall. The way Jacob saw it, if you were in a public place, you shouldn’t expect complete privacy. The way the judge saw it, this was a crime worth three years in prison.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Jacob, you’ve got a record,” said one of the officers, as if Jacob wasn’t aware of his past, “You realize things aren’t looking good for you right now.”
The trick to getting what you wanted was to be apathetic. If someone believed they could get under your skin, you became controllable. Likewise, if you didn’t care, it was pathetically hard for anyone to take advantage of you. Jacob had learned ways to find other people’s weak spots - and he was good at it. “Arrest me, then. I ain’t scared of prison.” They couldn’t. Nobody had proof. Everybody knew no crime was complete without proof.
“Watch this video I took,” said Jacob to Zeb, after returning home from the restaurant. It hadn’t been anywhere fancy, but he’d been bored. They’d been living together for eight months, in the same apartment they were in now, and Jacob was twenty years old.
“Let me see,” said Zeb, smoking a cigarette on the balcony. His hair wasn’t quite so long, back then. “Damn. You better make sure nobody finds this. You could get in a lot of trouble.” Zeb had never cared about the video. He’d gotten off on it just as Jacob had. Though Zeb had never been arrested, he’d never really had much more morality than Jacob.
It was easy to distribute recordings. Jacob had uploaded it to the Internet for others to download, and he’d gotten away with it until somebody tipped off the police. At the time, he wasn’t aware how easy it was to trace an IP address, and he’d been proud of himself for going unnoticed for so long. When he got out of prison, he was driven home by the police, and put on probation.
“I couldn’t have killed Orion even if I wanted to,” he’d said to Zeb that morning, before coming in for questioning. “I’m on probation.”
Zeb never took him seriously. “Please. You’re not afraid to go to prison.”
He left the police station feeling frustrated and asocial, and eager to get home. Jacob often wondered what he was doing with his life: he’d accomplished little, and spent most of his time getting into trouble or starting fights. Eve blamed Jacob’s temper on self-hatred and guilt - but this was stupid, and Eve thought she was a genius.
In the car, Zeb listened to loud metal music and tapped on his phone. “Chanel keeps messaging me. Apparently she’s planning on filing for child support.”
When Zeb and Chanel met, Jacob had been in prison. He’d never met the girl beyond Zeb’s brief interactions with her, and had never seen their daughter. “Didn’t you give up custody when it was born?”
“Yeah.” Zeb snorted, tossing a cigarette out his window and onto the ground. “She’s losing it. She knew it was me or the kid.” In the three years since Armani’s birth, Zeb had never referred to her as his daughter, but this hadn’t stopped Chanel from demanding child support payments. Jacob’s ex wife had wanted children, and he’d refused vehemently. Children were a pain in the ass, and a waste of money.
It was sunny, and everything was coming to life again. Jacob remembered his last encounter with Orion: it had been six years ago, on the night he and Zeb left the farm. It had always felt strange to call Orion his father. A man could make children and become just as much a father as a passerby on the street.
As Jacob gathered up his bags to leave, Eve tugged on his arm. “Will you come back to visit?”
She’d seemed to admire him, when she was younger. Jacob suspected she still did. “Sure, I’ll come visit.” He’d pulled his sister’s hand from his sleeve, leering at his father, “when this asshole drops dead.”
Jacob was never an angry child. Orion, who stood by the sliding door, frowned. He’d tried to punish Jacob, once. The first and last time Jacob was beaten by his father, he was thirteen. “I certainly don’t plan on dropping dead any time soon, Jacob.” He treated Jacob differently than the others. He was less harsh, less disrespectful. From a very young age, Jacob learned how to make others fear him.
He’d stepped over Adam, who was sitting against the screen door and playing with one of the very few toys he was allowed to own. “That’s okay,” he smiled, letting his eyes linger on Orion a moment too long. “I know where you live.”
Most of the time, Jacob was bluffing. He said a lot of things he didn’t mean, but he spoke in a way that was certain and decisive, because if you seemed confident enough, most people would believe anything you said. He’d learned this from his father, years ago, and taught it to Zeb.