Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [13]
On the evening of Saturday October 12, Felix took his sons to a horror film, The Ring, and afterward, he spent a second night in the Miner Road guesthouse. At the crack of dawn the next morning, Felix drove Adam back to UCLA and Gabe went along for the ride.
Felix and Gabe stayed to watch the Sunday afternoon Oakland Raiders football game on TV before beginning the four-hundred-mile drive back to Orinda sometime after 3 PM. During the trip, Gabriel sensed his dad was worried about his mother’s repeated threats, but these concerns were not strong enough to entice Felix to find alternate accommodations. Distracting each other with idle talk about sports, they decided to attend the Giants’ playoff game the following night.
It was almost 8 PM on Monday, October 14, and still, there had been no word from his dad. As Gabriel climbed the steps to the guesthouse, the darkness enveloped him. There were three entrances to the cottage, but he was hesitant to go in, scared of what he might find. The door he tried—the one everyone used—was locked, and he didn’t check the other doors. Besides, there were too many light switches and he could never figure out which switch worked which light. He returned to the main house and went back upstairs to his room where he stayed for about an hour, trying to figure out what to do; he was beginning to think that he would need the police if his dad didn’t turn up in the next hour.
It was exactly 9 PM when Gabriel dialed 911 to get the number of the Orinda police department’s nonemergency line. Even though his gut told him something was wrong, he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by calling authorities if there was nothing to report. He would try to locate the officer who had come to the house several days earlier to see if he’d heard anything. Perhaps his dad had been in a car crash, he thought.
“Nine-one-one,” said the female dispatcher who answered the call.
“Hi, can I get the nonemergency number for the police department?”
“What is it that you’re reporting?”
“Um, I just need to talk to an officer there,” Gabe said.
“Okay, about what, sir,” the dispatcher asked.
“Do I need to tell you?”
“Yes, you do. You called me on 911. We don’t give out numbers on 911. It’s for emergencies only, and I can maybe help you on this line depending on what you need to report.”
“Fine, I’ll just call the police department,” Gabe said.
“Okay, thank you.”
Grabbing a flashlight, the teen went back downstairs with the phone number for the Orinda police department tucked in his dark-colored shorts. On his way out the door, his mother stopped him.
“Why did you call the police?” she asked.
“I didn’t call the police!” Gabriel snapped, and continued outside to the upper carport where his mom kept her car. The house had two driveways; Susan preferred the one at the top of the property that was reached by a neighboring street, while Eli and Felix used the lower one that was accessible from Miner Road. Gabe wanted to check Susan’s Volvo wagon for any traces of his father. A grisly thought had crossed his mind: maybe his mother had used the car to transport his dad’s dead body somewhere. But upon inspection, the car yielded nothing out of the ordinary.
“What are you doing?” his mother yelled out to him.
“Nothing,” he called back. Gabriel was barefoot and shirtless as he walked down the steps to the cottage in an attempt to hide from his mother. With the main door locked, he went to another door that faced the house, entering through the galley kitchen and proceeding down the narrow darkened hallway to the balcony area that overlooked the living room. Shining his flashlight into the blackened space, he saw his father lying on the ground with blood covering his near naked body.
The sight was too much for the fifteen-year-old boy, who quickly left the cottage and shut the door behind him.
Gabriel’s heart raced as he returned