Free Epiphany Jones by Michael Grothaus Page B

watch a pair of slender legs approach from the other side. The driver’s-side door opens and the car dips an inch closer to the ground.
    ‘This is Ross,’ the detective says from the driver’s seat.
    And the radio squawks, ‘What’s your status, detective?’
    ‘We’ve searched the suspect’s apartment. He’s not here, but we do have the painting. We’re going to need a forensics team down here right away. And could you have someone at HQ notify the museum?’
    ‘Roger that,’ squawk. ‘Forens is inbound now.’
    ‘Copy.’
    ‘Detective Ross,’ squawk, ‘Officer Rogello wants to know if you’ve received his email.’
    ‘Checking now,’ he says and then laughs. ‘Yeah, there’s a shocker. Tell Rogello I got it.’
    The car rocks as the detective shuffles back out. From peering underneath the car I see his feet shift on the asphalt. Then there’s a rustle of hands in coat pockets and a spent match drops to the street. The smell of a cigarette fills the night air.
    This is where I think, I can turn myself in. I can get off the ground and say, ‘Excuse me, I’m the guy you’re looking for.’ Then I can explain how I didn’t stab Roland in the eye; how I didn’t steal the painting – how it was all done by my imaginary friend who turned out to be a real live person after all. ‘I swear. My figment named Epiphany did this, Detective,’ I’ll say.
    ‘Hey Fred,’ someone shouts from a window. My window. ‘You aren’t going to believe this!’ It’s the second detective – the short one. ‘The boys we sent to his mom’s house, they show up and he’s been there. He attacked her with a dildo! His own mom! With a dildo!’
    ‘What the hell’s with this guy?’ Fred shouts back. From my vantage point underneath the car I see ash from Fred’s cigarette drift to the ground. It lands and floats, hot and orange, in a little black puddle before the water drowns it.
    ‘Wait, there’s more!’ the voice from my window shouts. ‘There’s more!’ the voice shouts again like he’s enjoying this. ‘Just got a call from Mortimer. Responded to some guy who tried to make a citizen’s arrest. Caught our boy trying to rape a girl up north.’
    ‘Quit shouting and come down here,’ Fred tells the voice from above.
    ‘You told me to wait with the painting. You come up here.’
    ‘Just lit one. Don’t want to contaminate the scene,’ Fred says. ‘How do we know the rape is our guy?’
    ‘The guy who tried to make the arrest,’ the voice from above shouts, ‘he got the perp’s wallet! The ID in it says “ Jerry Dresden ”! This address and all!’
    Fred takes a huge drag from his smoke.
    ‘Forensics on their way?’ the voice from above asks.
    I guess Fred nods, because he doesn’t say anything. ‘Any sign of the videotape?’ Fred asks next.
    Videotape?
    ‘Please,’ the voice shouts back, ‘he’s destroyed that by now. I would have.’
    But I don’t have any videotapes.
    Then the voice, it says, ‘Hey, do me a favour?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I got a USB thumb drive in the glove compartment; can you run it up here?’
    ‘What on earth for?’
    ‘You should see the amount of porn this guy has. He’s got hard drives full of the stuff!’ he shouts, and in spite my horrible predicament my sincerest wish at this moment is that all my neighbours are sleeping. ‘I wonder if his girlfriend knows about all this?’
    ‘Girlfriend, my ass,’ Fred laughs. ‘We just got an email from Rogello. That “girlfriend” who works at Auntie Anne’s? The people who work there have never heard of her or of Jerry Dresden.’
    Oh God.
    ‘Then Rogello checked with our boy’s boss at the museum and he said that most people there thinks he just makes up his girlfriends.’
    I want to die.
    ‘His boss says his co-workers have caught him in too many obvious lies about “her”,’ Fred continues. ‘It’s a running joke with them. Rogello checked it out with Dresden’s mom. She even told him the same