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

it. Now I do. He killed my little boy to get back at me for what I’d done to him. I never imagined he could hurt me so bad.”
    Rewind.
    “He told me that if I ever left him, I would regret it.”
    Rewind.
    “. . . if I ever left him, I would regret it.”
    Rewind.
    “. . . I would regret it.”
    Andy clicked off the tape and leaned back in his chair. “Christ,” he said as he stared at the tape player. “Holy, holy Christ.” He ran his hand over the top of his head and tried to think. “Whew.” He stood and walked from the kitchen table to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “She emptied everything out of the house while he was out of the country?” He shook his head in disbelief and said to his dark and empty house, “I’ve heard of bitter ex-wives, but, man, she wins the gold medal.” Walking from the kitchen through his living room, he opened his beer and took a long drink as he passed on into his bedroom. On the nightstand, next to his bed, lay the picture of Gabe and Loraine. Andy sat down on the bed and picked it up.
    I’m not sure how long he sat there staring at the photograph he’d picked up in Gabe’s room, but eventually he wound up back at his kitchen table with his Big Chief pad. He flipped it open to the page with the word “why” printed across the top, and began writing. “Why would a woman accuse her son’s father of killing his own child?” he wrote on the first line, which was immediately followed by “Can anyone really hate another human being enough to make something like this up????????!” This was, Andy told me, the key question that would determine how far he would go in the investigation. The most incriminating evidence he’d found at this stage were Loraine’s words the night of Gabe’s death. All of the physical evidence turned on her accusation. Any woman who would empty out the house and move away while her husband was off on a mission trip seemed capable of about anything. But accusing her former husband of murder was more than anything. At the very least, John could end up locked away for a very, very long time. With the recent Supreme Court decision opening the door for executions, it was conceivable that John could receive the death penalty if he had, in fact, killed Gabe in cold blood. Loraine had to know this. He scrawled, “If she were just making this up, why would she take it this far?”
    Andy got up, grabbed the Big Chief pad, and moved to the living room. The cuckoo clock on his wall cuckooed three times. Plopping down on the couch, he let out a long yawn, then wrote, “Why would a father kill his only son?” Andy had read accounts of parents who killed children during bitter custody disputes. However, it is far more common for those who do to go ahead and kill themselves as well, rather than wait around to get caught. Or, if someone is driven to kill, it is more likely he would kill the ex-spouse who’s making his life a living hell. As his mind tried to wrap itself around these questions, Andy’s hand kept writing “why” over and over again. At the end of the page, he added two more sentences: “Why Gabe?” and “Why me?”
    He let out a long sigh, then headed to the fridge for one last beer before going to bed.
    Even though he fell asleep very quickly, Andy felt like he was still awake. It was like one of those nights when you cram for a test back in college. You study and study and study, and when you finally fall asleep, you feel like you are still studying. That’s how Andy’s night went. He kept hearing Loraine’s voice talking and talking and talking. The sound of her voice took him back to her apartment. He rolled over in her bed and there stood John, staring at him.
    The phone ringing broke into his dream. Andy slapped at the phone, unsure of where he was. “Hello,” he mumbled.
    “Officer Myers?”
    “Yeah. Who wants to know?”
    “It’s Jeanine Martin, the apartment manager at Madison Park. You asked me to call if I