Following the Yellow Tape

“Spread your legs and arms wide”, the officer stood behind me as I stared at the cream colored wall. There were scratches that took off the rugged paint job and random numbers etched in, scattered about with no correlation. I’d get bored if I was in here too.

I felt the small hairs on my body stand and goosebumps covered but I wasn’t nervous and I didn’t get a weird feeling. The officer’s breathing is not the most shallow and quiet in the world, as he pats me down and cups places that would feel nice in other circumstances, and continues to breathe down my neck.

I’m not sure if police stations are supposed to be this quiet, enough to hear the officers partner sigh from across the building after walking down three corridors, but this one is and I couldn’t help but let out a sigh as well.

“What?” The mouth-breather was in my waistband now, untucking it and tucking his fingers in, gliding around my body. I wasn’t sure why he was asking, I knew he couldn’t care less what I was thinking nor wanted to say because he had his job to do and I don’t blame him.

Maybe he needed something to humor him, his partner didn’t seem to be much company.

“It’s dead in here, I’m surprised”, I looked around and traced the scratches with my eyes. Some were pretty deep, there had to be a lot of passion behind those.

“Yeah, it is. You’re here now so not as dead as before”, He sighed, bending down with a groan as he felt up my ankles. I wasn’t sure if he was being lighthearted or mocking me. Either way, it’s a conversation.

“If you miss it being dead, I can just go now if you’d like”, I shrugged my shoulders as to say that I didn’t mind if he did, although we both knew I was joking. Still, I found myself hoping he caught it, a slight chuckle would give me a bit of confidence.

He stood back up with a groan from searching my ankles and sighed again, followed by one small, breathy chuckle. I could only hope it wasn’t a sarcastic one, as he was still breathing down my neck and I was trying to count to 20 using the numbers that showed a naked grey wall.

“Yeah, I wish”

The corridor floors had three lines of tape, each of the three a different color that led to different turns and rooms. It was a lot of tape to put down, I would have hated to be the person to spend their whole day on the grainy, grey cement floor, making straight lines for grown adults to follow into their fugitive future.

The officer told me to follow the yellow one, it seemed to be going down a longer corridor than the others. No one should be intrigued in these moments, but I can’t lie and say I wasn’t. With my shoes in hand, I found myself walking a quicker pace than the uniformed man behind me, and he didn’t seem to mind much.

Every room I passed seemed to be empty and quiet, emptier and quieter as they should be and I felt a bit uneasy about that.

“Right here”, the officer said, “the door on the left”.

I walked in to see his partner there, reading some papers on a desk. There were two chairs and the three of us.

As I stood in the doorway, awaiting the next instruction, I glanced at the officer who felt me up. The silver tag on his broad chest read that he was Officer Halaway.

Officer Halaway has a lousy looking partner and a lazy looking face, but he did chuckle earlier.

“Go ahead and take a seat”, As Halaway said this, the second officer looked up from his papers. His tag called him “Officer Peroti”.

I sat in the metal seat, the freezing bars of the back support made me slightly flinch, as I attempted to get too comfortable too quick.

Officer Peroti seemed to not care about our situation at hand, or his partner, unfortunately. He hadn’t uttered anything as simple as a “thank you” to Halaway, or said anything as small as “here’s the report, go ahead and read it”, or read whatever those papers were about.

The table was a cold metal too, I found out when I lied my arms on it, my palms facedown and the skin on my forearms becoming whiter with the cold.

This room was grey, no scratching or numbers, just grey paint and a grey metal table, along with two grey metal chairs and a buzzing from the light hanging above us.

After a minute, Officer Peroti decided to finally take a look at me. His eyes were dark, hardened, and seemed to be unchallenged by any other. I think he knew it too.

He looked back down at the papers scattered in front of us and sighed, the same one I heard earlier from three corridors down.

“What’s your name?”, I told him and I made sure to say ‘sir’ afterward. He didn’t seem the type to want to be treated normally.

“Date of birth?”, I told him as he finished scrawling down my name. Upside down, his writing seemed pretty neat. Halaway stood near him, on the side of the table following the scribbles from the pen as he looked to me for answers when I was asked. This seemed like a ‘good cop, bad cop’ thing going on, except the good cop wasn’t in on the strategy.

He asked other questions about where I worked and my social security, which I was told to remember when I was a teenager, for whatever reason.

After the questions, Officer Peroti was silent for a moment, as he lie the black pen down rather harshly, bringing the metal table to a quick scream. I raised my eyebrows at Halaway and he raised them too.

“So what were you doing in that neighborhood at almost three in the morning?” Peroti questions with his hands locked together, shoulders forward, and eyes narrowed into mine.

“I was walking around”, I felt myself sitting straighter and blinking less.

“At three in the morning?”

“Yes sir”

“Why were you walking?” There was no point in lying really, because he was asking questions he probably already had answers to. Also because I’m not in the best position to be lying.

“I can’t sleep at night and walking is something to do. I learned my lesson though: don’t walk at night wearing only dark clothes, even if that’s what you feel most secure in”, I stated, raising my eyebrows and dipping my head, in the way to say ‘we both know I fucked up but let me joke about it a little, please’.

Peroti didn’t want to joke. He continued to stare me down and I couldn’t help but to glance at Halaway, which I thought showed a sign of the smallest smile ever, shared at the floor. It made me smile.

“This is funny?”

“No sir, I was just thinking. This isn’t funny at all” But now the talk about this miscommunication made me smile even harder.

“It seems to be like it is to you, so let me ask: was it funny when you were scaring the neighborhood families while you were walking around their yards tonight? In all your black clothes and at the time it was, just because you couldn’t sleep?” He sat up straighter now, his voice sounded like he knew what I would say next, which wasn’t a miracle to guess.

“No sir” Halaway found much interest in the cement floor, his boots began to tap around a small ant lightly, still listening to the ‘conversation’ I was having with his partner.

“So what were you doing?” I wondered why he wasn’t questioning the bag I was carrying when they pulled over to me, flashing their heavy-duty flashlights at my dark clothes, as I, unsuccessfully, attempted to blend into the small bush under the window of a small-scale, unkept, white house.

I didn’t know how to answer for a moment, unsure if I should bring the bag up myself or answer the questions in the manner I believed he was going to follow: either question everything instead of the bag, seeing if I’ll bring it up myself or simply ask questions until he asks about it later. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be doing the latter, since he was trained to do this sort of thing I guess- analyzing me.

If I’m honest now, there won’t be much to hold me against besides what I say.

“I had something to drop off, I had work earlier in the day and couldn’t. Then when I was finally able to at three in the morning, I got lost” That was some of the truth, still truth nonetheless.

Peroti’s dark eyebrows furrowed together, as he wrote some chicken scratch on the papers in front of him, “Dropping something off? What were you dropping off? And to whom?”

That was a question for both him and I, but I didn’t say it.

“My friend, he needed it”. I know they opened the bag when they found me, that’s what they have to do. I didn’t say what it was, he knew what was in there and so did Halaway, but here I am being questioned, seeing if I’m confident enough in myself to be honest, or scared enough to lie and give myself false confidence that I can fool them. I know I can’t. Anyone who thinks they can in this situation would be an even bigger fool than me.

“What was it?”

“Money”

“How much?”

“Oh” I widened my eyes, “I couldn’t tell you. Not because I don’t want to but I genuinely do not know”

“You don’t know?”

Chicken scratch.

“So is it yours?” Now this question was going to do the damage he needed it to do. Halaway knew it too as he became more focused about where he actually was, rather than the ant on the floor he was blocking its path with. The ant was carrying a crumb and running around, panicking and it managed to finally slip through when those words left Peroti’s lips.

I lied my back against the cold metal bars again, “No, it’s not”

“Its not...” Peroti repeated as he wrote on his paper and Halaway followed along with the pen, not saying a word as he unknowingly took upon the good cop role.

I know they couldn’t have found the book, he would have asked if there was anything else in the bag, with a look in his eyes that say “I dare you to say no”.

They shouldn’t have found it, as soon as I saw the red and blue lights reflecting off the houses around the corner, I threw it as hard as I could up the road and into some bushes. The frisbee toss I attempted definitely made it fly.

I’d rather get caught with $20,000 that made it unknowingly on my back doorstep the previous night than with the little black book that told them what I had to do with it.

I almost took it, the money. I would have fled to another state or country, go on vacation and never come back or something, say I went missing and live life out. I should have fled and went missing with that cash.

Now, I’m wondering if I should either lawyer up or find the little black book after this and burn it.

I’m also wondering if they wouldn’t mind guarding me for a while, the book was pretty clear on some consequences if something like this were to happen to me.