Case Closed

CASE CLOSED

“Back in my day, when a person tried to kill another person, the police hunted that person down, arrested their ass, and threw them in jail!” 

“Mr. Byrne, that’s what we’re trying to do.  But we need you to tell us everything that happened."

“Bullshit!” said Byrne, slapping his hands flat on the table.  The handcuff chains rattled and clanked.  “If that was what you were doing, I wouldn’t be sitting here trussed up like a common criminal.”

There were three people in the police interview room:  Mac Byrne, a fireplug of a man in his sixties, who was handcuffed to the metal table.  On the other side of the table was the detective who had spoken, Terry Waits, a Black woman in her mid-thirties.  Beside her was her partner, Lance Ito, an Asian man, also in his mid-thirties.  Both were detectives, but Ito had only come to the detective bureau two years previous.  Waits had been there for eight years, making her the senior detective.  

“Mr. Byrne, we need you to help us to understand what happened.”  She looked up at the camera in the corner.  “Just to let you know we’re working in good faith, we’re going to take the handcuffs off.”

“Don’t patronize me, Detective,” warned Byrne.

Taking his handcuff key out, Ito stood beside Byrne and unlocked the cuffs.  Byrne rubbed his wrists, and sat back in the chair, folding his arms across his chest.  He looked directly at Detective Waits.  

She held his gaze, staring back.  

A standoff. 

The only person who appeared uncomfortable with the standoff was Ito, who kept looking from Waits to Byrne and back.

Ito spoke up. “Okay Mr. Byrne, why don’t you tell us, in your own words, what exactly happened.”  

Crickets.

He was hoping to get this interview completed sometime within his natural life.  He knew how stubborn Waits could be.  Mac Byrne seemed to be of the same ilk.

Both Byrne and Waits held their gaze, saying nothing.  Ito sighed.

“So, Mr. Byrne, why did you push Mr. Jenkins?” he said.

Silence. Staring.

“Okay,” said Ito, standing. “We’re done here.  You can go into a cell until you feel like talking to us.”  He walked behind Byrne.  “Stand up, put your hands behind your back.”

“Okay!  Fine!” said Byrne.  “He breathed on me.”  He looked from Ito to Waits.

Waits squinted at Byrne.  “He breathed on you?”

“Yes.”

“So you assaulted him?”

“No, I pushed him away from me in self-defence.”

“Do you care to elaborate, Mr. Byrne?”

“No.  Not really.”

He crossed his arms over his chest again.

“Mr. Byrne, we need to hear your version of the events that happened today, prior to your arrest.”

“Why don’t you ask the asshole who tried to kill me?”

*****

“Yes, I breathed on him,” said Phil Jenkins, a forty-something man who sat shirtless, but masked, in another police interview room.

“How exactly did you breathe on him?” asked Waits.

“I walked up and breathed in his face.”

“Why?”

“He told me to put on a mask, and I told him I had a constitutional right to freedom of choice, and I chose not to wear a mask.”

“But you’re wearing a mask right now,” noted Ito.

“I chose to wear a mask now.”

“Yeah, and the fact that you would be put in an isolation cell until you did, didn’t have anything to do with your choice, did it?” asked Ito.

“I plead the fifth.”

*****

“Mr. Byrne, we just spoke to Mr. Jenkins.  He said he breathed on you because you told him to put on a mask,” said Waits.

“I did tell him to put on a mask,” replied Byrne.

“Would you care to tell us the circumstances surrounding your request?”

Byrne sighed.  “I guess.”

*****

There were about fifteen people standing in line outside the bank.  It was a pretty nice day, so Mac Byrne didn’t mind standing in line.  It was fall, and the cold weather was on the way, but today was lovely and he was enjoying the mild temperatures and sunshine while he could.  

The line was moving pretty quickly.  Mac knew that because of the pandemic the bank only let in three customers at a time.  He figured he could have used the ATM, but he needed to exchange some Euros for dollars, so he needed to speak to a teller.  

Mac looked around.  Everyone in line was staring at their phones.  He felt sorry for them.  They were missing this truly beautiful fall day — probably one of the last this year — being so caught up in their screens.  Mac didn’t have anything against technology, but he just didn’t use it all the time.  He was by no means a Luddite — he had a laptop, a tablet, and the newest phone.  But he wasn’t on social media other than a few YouTube subscriptions.  Most of his friends were at least on Facebook, sometimes Instagram, Twitter, and a few even on TikTok.  They constantly chided him about his reluctance to “stay current.”

Stay current my fat ass, he thought.  

Mac’s sister, Liza, couldn’t eat a meal without sneaking a peek at her phone to see what all her “friends” had posted on FB.  Mac didn’t need all the drama — what with click bait, fake news, political lies and shenanigans, scams.  It wasn’t worth it.  So Mac didn’t.

Em had used Facebook and Twitter, but not obsessively, like Liza.  Thinking about Em brought a smile to Mac’s face.  

“SHEEP!  YOU’RE ALL SHEEP!”

Mac startled to the present.  Behind him he saw a shirtless man shouting at the crowd lined up outside the bank.  Most people just looked up, and returned to their devices.  Most were masked, the man was not.

“Sheep!  Following the deep state!  COVID isn’t real!  It’s a hoax so that they can inject you with tracking devices!”

The man was walking along the line to the bank, waving his arms, shouting.  Mac shook his head.  He had no time for anti-vaxxers.  They were misinformed and dangerous.  In his sixty-five years he had never seen such reckless, and, well, stupid, behaviour from people —  all kinds of people — educated, uneducated, mainstream, fringe.  It seemed that it didn’t matter what background anti-vaxxers came from, the only thing they all had in common was the determined notion that the COVID-19 vaccine was a hoax.  Regardless of the science.  Regardless of the fact that so many millions of people had been vaccinated without side effects.  It made no sense to Mac.  How could a person risk their own life, and the lives of those around them, and, at the very least, not wear a mask?  Mac shook his head.

“The vaccines make you magnetic!  They will make you infertile!  You will become a slave to the deep state!”

The shirtless man was walking up and down the line.  Mac made the mistake of looking at him, so he stopped, pointing his finger towards Mac.  

“You!  You have the mark of the Beast!  You have been marked by Bill Gates!”

Mac turned away.

The man jabbed Mac’s shoulder.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!” 

Mac ignored him, refusing to make eye contact again. 

  He jabbed Mac’s shoulder again.

Mac turned to face him.  ‘I’m not talking to you.  Put a mask on!”

“Face mask!  I don’t need a face mask!  COVID-19 is a hoax!”

The man sucked in a big breath, leaned in and blew it in Mac’s face.

That was too much for Mac.

“Get the fuck away from me!” 

He raised both his arms and pushed the man away from him.  The man tripped over the curb, and whacked his head on the pavement when he stumbled backwards.  He lay there, not moving.  No one in the crowd said anything, they just stared.  Mac pulled out his phone, and called 9-1-1.

*****

“So, Mr. Byrne, you pushed Mr. Jenkins when he breathed in your face?” asked Waits.

“That’s correct.”

“Why didn’t you just walk away?”

“Really?  This asshat gets into my face, literally, so that he can put his anti-vax germs all over my face, and I’m supposed to walk away?  I felt threatened, and he encroached on my personal space, so I pushed him away.  Without malice.  I just wanted him away from me.  I feared for my safety, and my health.”

“You admit that you pushed Mr. Jenkins.”

“Yes.” Byrne leaned forward jabbing his finger into the table in front of him, “And I would do it again.  There was no way for me to know whether or not that jackass had COVID.  I did know for a fact that he hadn’t had a vaccine.  He threatened my life by breathing on me.”

Byrne sat back again, crossing his arms.

*****

Waits and Ito looked up from the monitor.  They had just watched the CCTV video from the exterior cameras from the bank that had recorded the incident between Byrne and Jenkins.  

“Byrne told the truth,” said Ito.  “Jenkins assaulted him -- three times.”

“Yeah, he did,” agreed Waits.  “Byrne’s also the person who called 9-1-1.  Why call if he wanted to hurt Jenkins?”

She picked up a file with the witness statements, scanning them.  Every statement corroborated Byrne’s statement.

“Oh, damn,” said Waits, handing a witness statement to Ito.  “One of the tellers at the bank knows Mac Byrne personally.  She says here that he and his wife were ER docs, and that she died last year.  Of COVID.”

*****

When the pandemic started, Mac and Em both worked at Mercy Hospital, splitting their time between the ER and the COVID ward.  This was early days, when the science wasn’t clear, and the virus was cutting a swath through North America.  Both were specialists — Mac was a virologist, and Em was an epidemiologist; and both were in high demand.  Their days were long, eighteen or twenty hours at a time.  Sometimes they slept at the hospital because they were too tired to drive home.  Being specialists in contagious diseases, both always wore their PPE — double gloved, double masked, face shield.  They knew what could happen. Em had even purchased one of the self-contained breathing apparatus that fit over her entire head.  Mac teased her that she looked like an astronaut.  

“Ha! Ha!” said Em.  “At least I’m a safe astronaut.  We can’t be too careful.  We don’t know what this virus can do.”

Mac agreed whole-heartedly.  Besides, Em was immune compromised.  She’d contracted Hepatitis C when they had been working with Doctors Without Borders during the 2000s.  Em had never exhibited any symptoms, and had only found out through routine testing that all health personnel regularly go through.  But, even though she was asymptomatic, she was still immunocompromised.  So, they both took their safety precautions against the virus very seriously.

Day after day the unrelenting tide of COVID patients continued.  They were both exhausted, and Mac assumed, heading for burn-out.  They were battered daily — increasing cases, not enough PPE, the ER and COVID wards both full to overflowing.  

And the death. 

One night, after a particularly gruelling shift, Em looked over at Mac, tears in her eyes,  “It takes a little bit of my soul every time someone dies alone, without their family at their side.”  

Mac knew the feeling.  Some days there would be five or six COVID deaths at the hospital, each person alone, each family unable to support their loved one in their final moments.

But by the summer of 2020 there was a glimmer of hope — the numbers started to fall.  There had been parades and celebrations thanking the medical staff for the invaluable work they performed.  Mac appreciated the gestures, but people were still dying.  There was hope of a vaccine on the horizon, but that was still months away.  But it was still hope — more hope than they had had since the beginning of the pandemic.

Then in August, Em developed a bit of a cough.  

“It’s probably just from the air conditioner.  I get a summer cold every year.”  

That was true.  But Mac didn’t want to take any chances, so they agreed to go into work early the next day so Em could take a COVID test.

By the next morning, though, they were both fairly certain it was more than a summer cold.  Em still had the cough, but now she had a fever, headache, and her chest felt constricted, making it difficult for her to breathe.

They admitted her immediately, and within six hours she was on a ventilator. 

Her last words to Mac, just before they intubated her, were.  “I love you, Mac.  I’ll give you a big kiss when I’m better.”  

He squeezed her hand.  “I love you too,” and kissed her forehead through his mask.

But she never got better, and she died three days later — but not alone.  Mac was at her side.

 *****

A uniformed officer walked into the video room, and handed Waits another folder.  “Lab test results are in on Jenkins.  You’re not going to like it.”

Waits opened the file and read the single page.

“Shit.” 

She turned on her heel and walked back into the interview room where Mac Byrne was waiting.

“Mr. Byrne — or should I say Dr. Byrne?” Byrne nodded his head slightly in recognition.  “I cannot give you the details, but you need to have a COVID test immediately.”

Mac shook his head.  “That asshole!  What did you say his name was?  Jenkins?  He tested positive, didn’t he?”

“I can’t tell you that Dr. Byrne.  But I can strongly suggest that you get a test and that you quarantine until you get your test results back.”

“So, does that mean that I’m not being charged?  That I’m free to go?”

“Yes.  We saw the CCTV footage, and Jenkins was obviously the aggressor.  He will be charged with assault, possibly attempted murder.  We’ll have to let you know what charges the prosecutor files.  We’ll be in touch.”  She stopped and looked at him.  “But get a test.  Right now.”

*****

After five days of isolation — being fully vaccinated his quarantine was shorter — Mac Byrne made his way back to the police station to speak with Detectives Waits and Ito.  He had been told that they had been in quarantine as well, but would be at the station today.

He found them on the second floor of the station, in the detectives’ room.  Waits and Ito led Mac to the conference room, so that they could speak in private.  Once they had settled into the conference room, Mac spoke first.

“It’s been almost a week, and I still haven’t heard from the prosecutor.  What’s the status of my case?”

Waits and Ito looked at each other.

“There isn’t going to be a trial,” said Waits.

Mac was stunned.  

“What the hell does that mean?  The prosecutor’s not going forward with the case?”

“That’s right.  There isn’t going to be a trial.”

“Damn it!  I wanted to make an example of that bastard!  For all I know, he knew he had COVID and wanted to intentionally infect me.  He can’t get away with that!  That’s bullshit!”

Waits waited until Mac finished his tirade.  “Dr. Byrne, Mr. Jenkins died of COVID.  He developed severe symptoms that same night, was rushed to the hospital, and was put on a respirator.  He died the next day.”

“Delta variant?” asked Mac, stunned.

“I believe so,” said Waits.

“Damn,” said Mac.  “Nobody should die like that.”

*****

Waits and Ito sat across from each other, their desks nose-to-nose.

“Is this virus ever going to end?” asked Ito.

“I don’t think so.  Not until everyone takes it seriously,” said Waits, putting Mac Byrne’s and Phil Jenkins’s files in the out-box to be filed as case closed.