Chapter One of Adam's Murder by Alyanna Poe

Chapter One: Identification
Recorded the Night of October 21st
I promise I didn’t murder him! 
That’s the first thing I told police when they came to tell me my brother was dead.
I meant it as a humorous break in a very tense situation.
The officers did not take it that way.
It was October 18th. The day was warm, so I had left the front windows open while reading Stephen King’s Christine. I wasn’t too scared by the car, but boy was she brutal. I could only dream of getting over on those that hurt me like that.
That was only three days ago, and life has changed drastically since. 
I saw the officers before they got to my door, and my heart sank.
The officer in front had a grey buzzcut, and every line in his face was pulled down into a deep grimace. The fellow behind him appeared to be a younger version of him, with less lines and wrinkles, but just as much sorrow.
It had been three weeks since Adam had gone missing. He was only a year older than me, and having been held back in the third grade, we ended up in the same classes up until we graduated. Despite our lives being forced together, we were never close. 
I knew he was dead. I knew before the officer softly rapped his fingers against our apartment door, so gently compared to when they would come to drop off Adam in his drunken stupor. 
I placed my bookmark onto the page and closed it, my heart in my stomach as I heard my mother’s footsteps coming from the back of the apartment. She turned the corner and asked why I hadn’t opened the door. 
I told her it was for her. She heard my voice waver and looked at me questioningly as she walked past. 
An instinct told me to open it first, to break the tension in the room. I pushed around her, flung open the door, and blurted, “I promise I didn’t murder him!” 
I really don’t know why I said it. I think if Adam would’ve been present, he would have blown a gasket laughing.
The officers looked at me bitterly, the older one glaring harshly. I gave a sheepish smile as he poked his head around me.
“Mrs. Drummer?” he asked. My mother nodded. He spoke softly, yet cold. “Your son, Adam, was found at Star Bend. An investigation has been put into place to find the person that killed him.”
My mother fell to her knees, her hands covering her face. I didn’t believe it. Before I heard it, I was sure Adam was dead. After I heard it, I was sure he would push past the officers and into the doorway at any second. He’d grin and ask, “What’s for dinner?” before plopping onto the couch.
Not minding my mother, the officer said, “We’re going to need someone to identify the body.”
The idea of seeing Adam dead made me sick, and a thought ran through my mind, something Adam had told me years prior:
“You ever catch me dead, you better burn my body and everything I own.”
It had been a very morbid thing to say, especially considering we were at our aunt’s funeral, and her husband had been only two seats away when Adam leaned over and whispered.
I suppose identifying the body would be the last time I would get to see him before we dump him somewhere they’ll put makeup on him and dress him up. Knowing my parents, they won’t let him burn.
With my mother in hysterics, I told the police we would be down shortly, closed the door, and helped her to the couch. 
Any minute and Adam would call me. I felt myself checking my phone every few minutes as Mom cried uncontrollably. 
I swept away the tears, clawing and pushing them away from my eyes. In no time I was huddled on the couch, curled within my mother’s grasp as we sobbed. Half an hour went by before I thought to call my dad. I had no voice left, so in haste I decided to text him. 
Adam was found dead.
Looking back on this, I should have called.
Dad didn’t respond, rather he busted through the front door not five minutes later and cradled us in his large arms. His face was as broken as ours.
I managed to let him know what the police said, and he dragged us off the couch, gently placing us into our minivan. 
The rain had moved in on such a vibrant day. It was more than metaphorical as water sloshed over the windshield wipers. 
I clutched my mother’s hand from the back seat, the only sounds in the car were our whimpers and the rain mercilessly beating against the roof.
My mind hurt as I thought about never seeing Adam again. A torrent of a sadness I never knew existed flooded my thoughts. It was incomprehensible.
My brother is dead.
I kept repeating it in my mind, but it wasn’t real. The statement held no meaning. It held no meaning because it wasn’t true.
I felt as if I couldn’t walk, falling out of the minivan’s door and into the wet parking lot of the coroner’s office. Through the lobby and down many fluorescent-lit, white-tiled hallways blurred through tears, we came into a room of metal lockers.
I cried out seeing the white sheet. My mother collapsed before the steel table. My father picked her up, keeping an arm around her.
The coroner looked at us with a glazed stare and gently folded the sheet back, just exposing Adam’s pale face. His eyes were wide open and staring at the ceiling. I followed his gaze up to the ceiling to see what he might see if he were capable, temporarily blinding myself with the fluorescent light.
My parents and I huddled around him, my mom touching his face. I gently placed a hand on his cheek, something I had never done when he was alive. It was cold, like lunch meat.
With no trace of harm on his face, and before I could stop the words, I turned to the coroner and asked, “How did he die?”
I’ve come to regret these four words.
As most stereotypical coroners appear, this man was grim, emotionless, and strikingly free of vitality, bearing resemblance to my deceased brother. Without a word, he whipped back the sheet. Thankfully, it only exposed Adam’s upper body, which had been ripped to shreds by what looked like tens, if not hundreds, of bullet wounds. His abdomen looked like hamburger meat, the muscle torn away to expose some of his organs. I swayed on my feet, my eyes glued onto the greyish, foul flesh as my mother hit the ground. With a flick of his wrist, the coroner covered Adam’s body.
Just three weeks ago, before Adam had gone missing, he had strutted out into the living room shirtless, pulling a comb through his entire two chest hairs. I had laughed at him then, taking for granted the moment and his genial attitude. 
A wave of nausea struck me, crawling from my toes, up through my body, until I threw up my breakfast in a splatter on the white linoleum. I looked up into the coroner’s dark eyes. He seemed annoyed, as if the splash on the floor was more of an inconvenience than my dead brother on the table. No sympathy lay in the sharp angles of his face. 
The night passed in agony as I lay in bed listening to my mother’s cries. At some point I think she either fell asleep or stifled her tears. I looked over at my clock, the green numbers reading one o’ eight, and slid out. The tears had dried on my skin, making my face feel rough and raw. My eyes hurt the worst. The space behind them continuously throbbing. I opened my door carefully. Adam’s door was open right across from mine, and I made eye contact with him. 
Well, a photo of him from last summer’s camping trip to Silver Fork. His bedside light was on, the bulb just bright enough to make it appear that he might be in there studying or writing, not that he had done either of those in years. I still wonder if it was my mom or dad that had ventured inside and turned it on. 
I quickly crept across the hallway and into his room, the smell of cologne smacking me. I hadn’t been in his room since before he’d gone missing. He was lying in bed when I came in. I asked if he had seen my purse. 
“What would I know about a purse?” he responded, not looking away from the crack in the ceiling above his bed. 
I rolled my eyes, catching sight of the handle under his bed. I bent down and scooped it up, saying, “Well, I guess the cat must have brought it in here.”
Adam took my things a lot, but he never stole from me. I always got the things back. Before I’d left the room that night, he grabbed my wrist, sitting up quickly. I looked back, catching a frightened look in his eyes. “Promise me you’ll do something good with your life, Abs?”
He never called me Abs. He only called me Babs or Gail Force Winds, a play on my name and the fact that as a child I had flatulence issues. In my hesitation, his grip on my wrist tightened. I nodded, speechless and wondering why every interaction with him alone had to be so cryptic. Around my parents and the rest of my family, he was the jester, commonly the butt of every joke, but around me he was dark, sometimes scary. Questions like this one came up often. 
He nodded and let go, laying back in the same position. To break the tension, I almost jabbed him in the ribs, but we weren’t those kind of siblings, were we?
Adam’s room felt empty. The house felt hollow. Pretty soon his bedroom would fill up with that musty smell of an unused place. 
I sat on the floor, curling my knees up to my chest. I didn’t understand why it had to be him. Isn’t the good one supposed to die so the bad one can have a second chance?
Well, Adam wasn’t bad, but he didn’t live for good either. Who could murder him like that?
I don’t care how many classes he skipped. How many gas stations he stole from. Or how many drugs he did. He was Adam, and his existence was for something, right?
He always helped Mrs. Reynolds across the street. He always picked up stray dogs. He would do anything for my parents and me. If there is a God, where is his sympathy? 
A piece of paper sat poking out from under Adam’s bed, tucked into the bedframe.
Had he hidden it there on purpose? Or had it simply been lost?
I felt wrong as I reached for it. It could have been no more than a doodle or maybe a girl’s phone number, but my stomach churned, nonetheless. It was in my fingers before I could pull my hand away, and I flipped it over.
In scrawl I didn’t recognize, it said,
“Smith’s Hard Stuff.”
Chills ran down my spine. That was the last place I knew Adam to be alive.
“I’ll be back shortly, my dudes. Going to Smith’s for some smokes.” I had glanced at him when he said it, happy to have him out of the house and in control of the remote for the first time that day.
My mom told him not to be long and that dinner would be done shortly. By the looks of Adam, food wasn’t the first thing on his mind. The lesions had opened up on his jawline again. I watched him dig and scratch at them while we watched TV, scraping at them like a dog scratching an itch.
His demeanor had changed halfway through watching TV. The ads started to irk him, and he bounced his leg up and down, impatiently. 
I knew Smith’s Hard Stuff well and had seen the man that stood outside that liquor store every night. I could see him through my bedroom window. Most nights I only knew him by the glow of his cigarette. Up until a few years ago, I had really believed that he was Adam’s friend. Now that I’m older, I know he’s Adam’s worst enemy. 
Was.
Was his worst enemy.
He was the first person I approached the morning after Adam didn’t come home. Never had I spoken a word to this man, only had I heard muffled, short sentences between him and my brother the few times I’d been around. 
I walked up to him fast and hot. I was heated for sure, asking—more like yelling— “Where is he?! Where is Adam?”
He looked shocked, his large eyes bugging out further from his slim, scraggily face. He said he didn’t know. He said he hadn’t seen Adam in two weeks. Two weeks? Adam couldn’t go a day without something to boost his mood. How could he have gone two weeks?
The note crinkled in my hand as my fists clenched. It was then that the fog cleared in my mind for the first time since I got the news Adam had gone missing. 
He found someone else. 
Yesterday, a.k.a. three days after Adam’s death, was the day he was to start rehab. It wouldn’t be the first time, but maybe this could have been the last time he would need it. 
Maybe he could have recovered.
I can’t get lost in the what ifs right now. Anyway.
I looked at the note again, finally recognizing it as Adam’s best friend’s handwriting. 
Joel. 
It was one in the morning, and I really didn’t want to get yelled at by Mom for going out so late. A sick thought ran through my mind. 
I don’t want to end up like Adam either.
I couldn’t tell if picking up the note was a good thing or not, but maybe it would lead to something.
Lead to what? Me looking for Adam’s murderer? 
I went to bed that night with that in my mind. I fell asleep, convincing myself that the police would do their job. That they would bring justice to Adam. 
By sunrise I was up and dressed, sitting on the edge of my bed. My poor little thumb nail had been bitten down to a nub as I waited to hear my parents shuffling around. I wasn’t the type to leave without a word, especially since Adam’s disappearance, and leaving a note would likely give my parents a heart attack, so I had to wait. 
In lieu of staring at the ceiling, I pulled out a fresh notebook and decided to start something. I want to write all the things I never could say to Adam, starting with this entry from this morning:
I don’t know if I should say hello or if that would be weird. I’ve never been the religious type, but I think you’re still lingering around, and maybe you’ll read this someday. 
I miss you. I miss waking up and hearing you already arguing with Mom and Dad. It was always about the dumbest shit, and you’d make up so quickly. I miss you coming into my room while I read just to sit beside me. It used to annoy me but now I see you were just trying to be a brother. I even miss the bad and scary stuff. Like sitting in the passenger seat while you drove 110 on the freeway, high out of your mind. I thought we were going to die, but at least it would have been together. 
Most of all I miss the idea that someday we might be close. That someday I would be an aunt and you would be an uncle, and we could pretend our childhood meant nothing and be a family. 
Now all of that is gone. Now I’ve got to navigate life alone. 
Tears have left some of the ink smudged, but I’ll leave this out on my desk, nonetheless. Maybe he’ll read it, maybe he won’t. I really don’t know how dying works.  
Having written that, I sat on my bed and stared out the window. People were already bustling around the liquor store despite the sun barely being above the horizon. At the first clink of a coffee cup, I was up and out of my room. I gave them a short version of my plan, well, my lie. I told them I was off to see Joel, to give him a photo I had found of both him and Adam. I told them I hoped it would soften the news. I didn’t mention the creepy note. My mother gave me a worried look but let me go.
Out in the hallway, I almost ran into my neighbor. We sheepishly smiled at each other but said nothing. I’m sure she’d heard it all from my mother already. 
I’m just realizing that I must have looked terrible. Ratty hair. Puffy, red eyes. Who could blame me though?
Down the stairs I went, the smell of cigarettes spoiling the fresh, morning air. Some of my neighbors would replace their esophagus with an eternally burning cigarette if they could. 
Joel lives two blocks away with a roommate I despise, and of course he was the one to open the door. 
A little background info on Chuck: he’s been obsessed with me since the eighth grade. Adam met Chuck on the kickball field and brought him home, only to have Chuck stand in my bedroom doorway and stare at me while Adam tried to convince him to go outside with him. Ever since then, Chuck has been one step behind me everywhere I go. 
Chuck lit up a little at seeing me, but I saw the dark circles under his eyes immediately. I think he noticed me peer around him because he said, “Joel and Adam aren’t here.”
I scoffed, almost smirking and said, “Well, no that’s because Adam is in the morgue.”
His face fell like a sack of potatoes off the back of a truck. He asked me to come in, and without anyone I knew there, I declined. 
“Adam’s dead?” he asked, like I hadn’t just said it. “I thought he was missing?” he asked, stepping out his door. I backed away because, well honestly, his presence irks me.
I said, “He was until he wasn’t, Chuck. Where can I find Joel?”
He paused, like really paused, so I had to ask again.
“Joel’s been gone for three days.”
Gone? I asked if he knew where he went, and when he said no, I turned my back and left. Chuck wouldn’t know any more than I did, but Joel’s mom might.

I stood on her doorstep and wondered why I was there. Joel was a good guy, his mom was even better, always being very hospitable to me and Adam. I hoped for the best and rang the doorbell. In that moment, I decided to give her the photo and break the news. 
She opened the door with tears in her eyes. Maria saw the look on my face and hugged me tightly. I hugged her back, thinking I could recognize this woman in any crowd. She stood at least a foot shorter than me, and had beautiful long, dark hair that contrasted against her brown skin. She would always be a beacon of comfort for me. 
She invited me inside. I took the invitation, grateful to get out of the cold. When we were sitting comfortably on her warm couch, she said, “Joel’s gone missing now, too.”
I nodded, taking her hand in mine. My face broke. I had been doing so well hiding the pain. Adam’s face, the pale, dead one I had seen the night before, flashed through my mind.
“Oh, Mama, Adam’s dead.”
Her eyes widened, and she sobbed, clutching at me with weak arms. Together we realized that Joel’s fate could very well be the same. We cried in each other’s arms much like I had with my parents.
I wondered who could so heinously murder a young man like Adam. Did they know he was afraid of spiders? And that he wouldn’t sleep all night if he saw one in the house? Did they know he loved pistachio ice cream and wouldn’t order anything if the ice cream shop didn’t have that flavor? What about his love of history? Did they know he dressed up as George Washington almost every Halloween until we were thirteen?
Surely, they didn’t know all of that as they sprayed him with lead, but I do. I remember it all. No matter how distant we were, no matter his addiction, no matter his confrontational personality, he’s still my brother and I still love him.
And I, Abigail Drummer, vow to find my brother’s killer. 

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