Read Online The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips by Stephen Baldwin, Mark Tabb - Free Book Online Page A

the whole damn drawer would have busted apart.”
    “What?! Are you telling me that John Phillips pulled this drawer out and used it to crack open his son’s skull?” A rush of anger swept over Andy.
    “I’m just saying it’s possible. That’s all,” Duncan replied. “Don’t go jumping to any conclusions. We’ve got to keep a clear head and go where the evidence takes us, not force it in a direction it doesn’t want to go. Bottom line here, Andy: the mother said the guy killed the boy. The evidence says the drawer delivered the fatal blow, which makes the dad’s story a very plausible explanation. All I’m trying to do is figure out if there is any way the woman’s charges could be true. And with the way the fingerprints line up on the back of the drawer, I would have to say, yes, it is possible that our guy used a dresser drawer to kill the boy. If it weren’t, this whole investigation would now be over and the cause of death would most definitely be accidental. That doesn’t mean the dad killed the boy. I’m only saying it’s an interesting coincidence that the drawer with the dad’s fingerprints all over it is the same drawer that cracked this kid’s head open.
    “And then there’s this,” Mike Duncan said as he pulled out another set of photographs. These were of Gabe’s abdomen and back. “A few were snapped at the scene before the body was moved.” Duncan slid three others closer to Andy. “These with the rulers in the shot, Warner took them during the autopsy. The bruises on his abdomen and chest appear to be several days old. The ones on his back,” he said as he fished out a couple of other photographs, “are from the night the boy died. They may have been made by the fall out of bed, if that’s how he died.”
    “And if not?” Andy asked.
    “Then someone had been beating the crap out of this little guy on a regular basis,” Duncan said. “We also found some fresh scratches on the backs of his hands, like he’d put up a fight against something.” Mike Duncan must have seen Andy’s face flush red, like he was about to pop his cork, because he immediately said, “Now settle down. That doesn’t mean the dad was the one abusing the boy.”
    “Like hell it doesn’t.”
    “Think about it, Andy,” Duncan said. “The kid was on the top bunk. The ceilings are pretty low in that dump of an apartment complex and they all have that blown-on, popcorn-looking texturing. You ever hit your hand against that crap? It can do some damage. And what do kids do when they have a bad dream? They roll around and fight the demons attacking them in the night. There’s a pretty good chance the kid scratched his hands on the ceiling.”
    “If he fell out of bed while having a nightmare,” Andy said.
    “Exactly.”
    “And if he didn’t?”
    “You tell me,” Duncan replied.
    Andy paused and let that soak in for a moment. Duncan started putting the photographs away when Andy said, “You know the guy has already cleaned out the apartment, don’t you? Scrubbed it clean from top to bottom and moved out.”
    “What?!” Duncan shook his head. “Holy crap. And right about the time I’m ready to give this guy the benefit of the doubt . . . Man, that’s quick. The kid’s been dead, what, three whole days?”
    “Four,” Andy said.
    “You clean out a place that fast, it sure looks like you have something to hide.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know,” Andy said.
    The rest of Andy’s shift went by without any major incidents. He made a few traffic stops, and was called out to a possible fire. The fire turned out to be nothing more than smoke wafting through a window from a neighbor burning trash. He cited the neighbor for burning after dark, and watched as the fire department dumped a few gallons of water into the trash barrel to douse the flames. Throughout his shift Andy kept an eye out for John Phillips, but he couldn’t go off searching for him. For that matter, he didn’t even know