Killer Dad

“Hey, Mike,” Dave shouted up the stairs, “you want to go to the park and hit a few balls with your old man?”

“Maybe tomorrow, Pop. I was just about to go over to Jeff’s to hang out. I haven’t seen him since I moved to Los Angeles.”

Dave was disappointed, but he understood. Mike and Jeff had been best friends since the fifth grade when Mike coached them both in Little League. Now Mike was back home on vacation from his first semester on a full-ride baseball scholarship to UCLA while Jeff was working part-time and going to junior college. They were more like brothers than friends.

When Mike’s mom had died in a car wreck his freshman year of high school, it was Jeff who had been there for him. Dave, who had been driving the car that fateful night, had been too wrapped up in self-recrimination and grief to be of any use to his son. Mike had told him that it was like both his parents had died, but his mom went to heaven while his dad haunted their house as a ghost. That had been the wake-up call that had brought him back to life. In the ensuing years, they had become closer than ever.

While shagging flies in the park would help bring back memories of a time when baseball was all about fun for Mike, as opposed to the grueling workout schedule that he now faced in college, Dave knew that he also needed to connect with his old friend. They would have plenty of time over the next few days to settle back into a comfortable routine with one another.

Dave settled down with a beer to watch the A’s play and dozed off. He was startled awake at 2am by his phone. He barely recognized Jeff’s voice. It was thick and slurring, but there was no mistaking the words: “I killed him. Mike is dead.” Dave ran to his car, leaving the front door unlocked. He ran every light, screeched into the driveway and ran up the steps two at a time to reach Jeff’s garage apartment.

Once inside, he saw his precious boy laying on the ground in a pool of blood, a jagged hole in his chest between the C and L of his college sweatshirt. Jeff knelt, rocking back and forth, still gripping a large kitchen knife.

“Give me the motherfucking knife! Now!” Jeff complied and welcomed the fatal blow he was sure would follow, but Dave had other plans. He put on Jeff’s blood-soaked shirt and ordered him to take a shower. Mike was gone. His life was over, but Dave was damned if he was going to lose another young man to a predetermined path through the prison-industrial complex to an early death. He confessed to the police that he murdered his son in a fit of rage because he thought he was doing drugs. He still saves young lives in San Quentin today.