Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Jamal tilts his head. “Kentucky. That’s quite a ways from here. How’d you end up in San Francisco?”
Jett shifts again, bending his leg so his ankle rests on his opposite knee. “Hopped a bus, man. I didn’t know where it was going. Rode it until I ran out of money.”
“That’s pretty brave.”
Jett laughs, but then the laugh dies quickly, and his expression morphs into confusion, as though he knows the statement was a joke but doesn’t understand it. He runs a hand through his greasy, overly long white-blond hair, and then his hand flutters in the air for a moment as if he’s not sure what to do with it. “You got another smoke?”
Jamal nods to someone off camera, and when Jett is shown again, he has a lit cigarette in his hand, and a portion of it has been smoked. Obviously, the scene has been edited to move forward slightly.
“Why’d you leave Kentucky, Jett?”
“Because there wasn’t shit to do there.”
“So, boredom?”
Jett shrugs. “Boredom. Disgust. I was sick of that shithole.”
“So home wasn’t great.”
“Wasn’t great.” Jett lets out a sound that’s sort of a laugh but mostly a snort as his face twists. “You might say that.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“Home? Shit, man, I don’t even know what that means. Home was a backwoods slice of hell. I got out of there the minute I could.”
“Did you have both your mom and dad at home?”
Jett takes a drag of the cigarette and then snuffs it out even though—again—it’s only half-smoked. He shakes his head as the smoke fills the air in front of him. “I was raised by my grandparents.”
“Mom’s or dad’s parents?”
“Mom’s.”
“Where were your mom and dad?”
“My mom took off when I was a baby and then died of an overdose when I was . . . I don’t even remember when. Maybe ten or twelve? I never knew my dad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What were your grandparents like?”
Jett lowers his leg and puts both feet on the floor and then bounces his knees, a jerky, uncoordinated movement. “My grandma was mostly a shell. My grandpa was the devil himself.”
“There was some abuse?”
“Some abuse.” Jett makes that strangled chuffing sound again. “Yeah, there was some abuse.”
“Physical or sexual?”
Jett’s eyes shift, and his knees bounce again before he reaches for the cigarette, seems to remember he’s already stubbed it out, and drops his hand. He sits back on the couch. “Physical. He beat the shit out of me whenever he felt like it, which was just about every day of the week. He beat my grandma, and if we weren’t enough, he’d find a dog to beat too.”
“I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
Jett’s gaze meets Jamal’s, and he looks vaguely confused. “So, yeah, I got out of there as soon as I could.”
“And you ended up here. How far did you make it in school?”
“I graduated high school.”
Jamal looks slightly surprised. “You did? That’s great.”
“Yeah, I liked school. It was a place to get away, you know? Get away from home.”
“Did you have friends?”
Jett shrugs. “People I got high with.”
Jamal nods as Jett fidgets. “What’s your drug, Jett?”
“Meth. Heroine. Whatever.” The knees start up again.
“So both stimulants and opioids. Do you prefer one?”
“Depends.” Jett doesn’t elaborate.
“Any diagnoses?”
Jett pauses. “Yeah, uh, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, can’t really remember them all. Long names.”
“Do you take prescription medication along with the street drugs?”
“Sometimes. When I remember to make it over to the free clinic.”
“When you remember. And how do you pay for the street drugs?”
Jett glances off camera and then back at Jamal. “Illegal shit.”
“Have you been arrested?”
Jett brings his hands to his knees and stills them. “Nah, haven’t caught a case yet. No arrest record so far. Lucky me.” He laughs at that, but again, the laugh dies quickly.
CHAPTER SIX
Ambrose had never been inside a medical examiner’s office before. Right off the bat, he hated the smell of the place, and he also hated the cold. He had to admire people who spent all day with the dead in a frigid, stark room that smelled like formaldehyde and decay in an effort to bring those souls justice. Or at least answers.
Or maybe they deserved some amount of general skepticism, considering they could tolerate a work environment like this without going mad.
Whatever the case, many of the people who ended up here had families who’d do far less for them than the doctors at this lab. A tragedy that the first time some of these individuals were taken care of was after they’d ceased breathing.
“Just as suspected,” said the medical examiner, Clyde Gates, whom he’d met a few minutes ago and insisted Ambrose call him Clyde. “The homemade hallucinogens are the same as the ones found at the previous scenes. A mixture of ecstasy, dextromethorphan, psilocybin, and food coloring. However, these ones have the fun addition of a light LSD coating.”