Forty Leap by Ivan Turner Read Free Book Online Page A

felt was
cheated. Denied those final moments, I had been robbed of any
reconciliation with the past and the opportunity to say the very
important things that needed to be said. It was ridiculous, really.
People die suddenly all the time and their loved ones are robbed of
those same opportunities. It is a fact of life that death is the
perfect sniper. In truth, what was stolen was, in fact, priceless,
but it was not stolen from me. Imagine my mother on her death bed,
her two eldest sons and grandchildren standing around her. The air
is heavy with the moisture of tears. Wyatt is whispering to my
mother that it will all be ok, but she knows that she is dying. She
may have hours or she may have minutes. It doesn’t matter. All that
she can ask is, “Where is Mathew? Where is my son?”
    I can’t say whether or not my brothers had
bothered to try and explain my situation to her. I don’t know what
they said or how they said it. The truth would have sounded a
hollow excuse. Had I taken the time to talk to her beforehand, she
may have understood. She may have decided the timing too convenient
and died with hate for me in her heart. But she would have had that
choice. The way it was, all she could have had was bewilderment, a
bewilderment that I forced upon her. In recent years, our
conversations had fallen to the trivial and I had not even thought
to try and explain my situation to her. This woman who had
comforted me as a child, held my hand while I lay sick out of fear
or illness throughout my adolescent years, I had deemed incapable
of processing the circumstances. And, as a result, she had been
robbed of a basic comfort at the time of her death. And it was I
who had robbed it from her.
    So I did not feel guilty, but I did feel
angry. I felt ashamed. It was a mistake I could never take back.
And a mistake I could never forget.
    Standing there in the cold wind and snow,
tears freezing on my cheeks, I wept openly because I knew that the
wounds inflicted during life scarred badly.
    The trip back to my apartment in Manhattan
was long and lonely. I had brought a paperback with me, but
couldn’t find the reserves with which I might concentrate on it.
Once back home, I climbed the three flights of stairs to my
apartment, rather than use the elevator, and found I had two
visitors.
    Both were men and both were police officers,
but both were dressed in suits and long coats. Both were already
inside the apartment.
    The senior of the two men was a squat black
man with graying hair crowning the back of his head. He presented
me with a smile and a badge and introduced himself as Detective
Remy Winslow. I placed him in his upper forties. He was probably
eligible to retire, but seemed to very much like his work.
    The younger man was more reserved, regarding
me with instant suspicion. His expression remained passive as he
showed me his badge. Though he said nothing by way of introduction,
he held the badge out long enough for me to read his name. Warren
Li. Detective Li was much taller than his companion with an
unusually large frame for an Asian. His face was square without the
hint of five o’clock shadow. I disliked him immediately without,
oddly enough, the sense of being intimidated.
    I was annoyed at their appearance and even
moreso by the fact that they had chosen to enter my apartment
uninvited. This anger, which seemed more and more to be taking hold
of me, prompted a challenge. “Do you have a warrant?”
    Winslow’s expression was one of confusion
while his partner seemed to grow irritated by the question. It was
Winslow who responded. “We’re not here to arrest you, Mr.
Cristian.”
    “You haven’t the right be in my apartment
either.”
    Winslow looked around as if only just
noticing his surroundings, but Li was unwilling to put on a show.
He responded this time. “The law grants certain latitude in cases
of terrorist activities.” I noticed that he did not use the word latitude as a way of sugar coating another