Familiar Faces

Detective Xavier Perry bent over to check and re-check for the pulse on the young man that he had just shot, mistaking him for having a gun. Stunned to see only a cell phone in the right hand of a somewhat familiar face that he couldn't put a name to just yet. It was probably someone he had arrested before, he told himself. It was the shock and disbelief, the deep remorse of taking the life of an unarmed kid. A kid probably not even sixteen or seventeen. The kid with no pulse to be found.

He had called out for him to halt. He had chased three of the young men running from the scene of an armed house robbery. But this kid, up close, had earbuds in and the low hum of music could still be heard playing. Xavier's command for him to "STOP" must have caused him to turn around just quickly enough for him to catch the glimpse of a shiny metal from under the street light's path. All the officer of the last fourteen years could see in his mind on that late evening's shadowed memory, was "gun."

Xavier and his partner, Officer Chris Tompkins, had split paths when the suspects had parted in a different foot chase. Having had a rash of four home invasions in the middle of the night, they had been part of a team on stake out.

Now, a mass of "blue" surrounded him and his Captain was asking him for his gun. The coroner was going through the lifeless body for identification. A school photo from a local area high school tagged him now as one of their freshmen, fifteen year-old Zae Roberson. Soon they learned from the school's official the name of his parent to be notified. No priors.

News travels fast on the "streets" when one of their own has been "gunned down" by the police. Silent so often when giving information, but loud the other way around. Crowds gathered on the other side of the yellow ribbons that cordoned off the crime scene. All were anxious to know who was covered in the sheet that lay on the ground. Mothers whose child had not made it home, in the forefront.

That's when Xavier noticed her. Candace Roberson. She was still the beautiful girl he knew from his own high school years. Even now, his heart skipped a beat. His first love. The love that his parents disapproved of so deeply that they had moved him to another city so he could forget her.

Candace noticed him, too. And a silent old rage rose up in her throat. He had left without so much as a goodbye. But her attention was on the red sneakers sticking out from the sheet. And somehow she knew that the shoes she had bought for her son, she was now seeing. A blood curdling scream stopped all movement as she called out his name, "Zae!!!"

The "familiar" face was Xavier's son.