William Kosman Fiction

  It Hurts to Say Goodbye  Chapter Twenty-Seven  - El Siegel  I had a dream the other night.  I can’t remember all the details. I only remember it was mostly separate scenes, with flashes of people and colors and feelings, things that weren’t a simple, clear story.  I had a feeling I knew the dream, I’d been here before. I remember I could travel back in time. I held Faith in my arms, my hands caressing her body, then my fingers touching her black hair and her soft cheeks. But something was wrong. She felt cold.  The dream was short. Faith knew I had returned to the past to see her. I had moved from the here and now to the before and then, and then I could return. But something was wrong. I took her face between my palms and tried to bring her close to me.  She pushed back, and her dark eyes looked blank, the sparkle gone, and I could see her tears. Her red lips moved. She said to stop. It wasn’t right. She told me we had to end it.  I came t...

It Hurts to Say Goodbye  Chapter Twenty-Six  “Being a cop is all I know, all I have,” Lieutenant Doug Boswell said. His voice was strident and forceful, yet respectful. In his Spartan office on the fourth floor of The Roundhouse, Police Captain Louis Schaeffer watched Boswell from behind his desk.  Perspiration was seeping over Boswell’s forehead and down spine. He continued: “I always been a cop, and I’d like to stay one, always. But I know I screwed it up. It’s my fault.”  “Let’s not be totally negative,” Schaeffer’s voice was calm and – with his close-clipped beard and horn-rimmed glasses – his appearance was professorial. “It’s true, you made some serious mistakes, we gotta admit it, really serious mistakes, and you waited years to come to terms with it. But let’s see how things work out.”  “You think . . . ?” Boswell leaned forward over his superior’s desk and looked desperately hopeful. “I’m just trying to consider the evidence,” Schaeffer said, “My team w...

  It Hurts to Say Goodbye   Chapter Twenty-Five Official Event Record; 7/8/21, by Sgt. J. Waters Location: Interrogation Room # 14, 750 Race Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106-1509, police headquarters, aka The Roundhouse   Additional:  Interior – Standard ceiling lighting, 2 standard tables, 6 office chairs, 2 standing lamps, 1 video monitor on rolling stand  Exterior – Observation Module, attached, sound protection, one-way mirror, video and audio recording  Personnel: In Room – Accused, L. Stanhope (Wearing orange prisoner’s overalls); Sgt. E. Buckley (Det.-in-Chg.); Asst. DA, C. Fernandez; R. Holmes, Def. Counsel  In Module – R. DiNardo, CP; L. Schaeffer, Capt.; R. Johnson, Media Relations  Running: 10:07 am E. Buckley: Okay, I think we can start. Now that the accused has been accompanied here. I want to thank everyone for attending this session. First of all, let’s get a few official things out of the way. Mr. Stanhope, can you please...

  It Hurts to Say Goodbye  Chapter Twenty-Four   - El Siegel  It was a gloomy day. Gray clouds hung over the city, and even though it was already mid-morning, everything seemed to be covered in vague shadows, what you’d expect with the shifting toward night. And the air felt wet, and that meant we were in a real Philly summer, a time when the heat and the moisture could steal your energy and kill your enthusiasm.  But not me: I felt okay. It seemed a few things could be working out. Yes, there were things I didn’t know, and maybe I’d never know them. But I just didn’t feel the uneasiness and doubt that had hung over me for so long.  The day started early, actually too early because I actually woke up to the ringing of the phone. It was one of the police detectives, Buckley, the one I thought was the smarter of the two, and listening to him explain the reason for his call, his voice sounded different; there was just hint of authority, maybe a tentative ...

  It Hurts to Say Goodbye  Chapter Twenty-Three “I guess we gotta take it,” Lieutenant Doug Boswell said. “It’s always like this. Just when you don’t want it, it happens. Your friend, the Siegel guy, that was him on the phone. Thinks he broke the whole case wide open. Still, no matter what, we got no choice. We gotta follow up.”  “Jesus, man, you’re lookin’ all broke up about it,” said Sergeant Eddie Buckley. “If Siegel really has something, that’s what we want. Ya know, we wanna solve this thing. We been waitin’, we been working for this.” “Sure, you’re right, couldn’t be more right.” Boswell’s eyes went blank, just an empty gaze as he leaned on the desk in front of him. “Thing is, it’s a matter of timing, always a matter of timing. And this time, bad timing.”  The two detectives were at the 6th District station house, at the very desk in one of the side rooms that had become their workplace. It was late in the afternoon, and the station was starting to look and sou...

  It Hurts to Say Goodbye  Chapter Twenty-Two – El Siegel  There were so many things happening around me, so many things that concerned me or touched me – another body found in Fairmount Park, the big demonstration at the police headquarters and the police raid up near Allegheny against the some drug cartel, death of its leader and the arrests of its members.  It was strange. I felt jittery and fidgety. And I didn’t feel involved. It was like everything was distant, and I was detached.  All the things that were going on, I knew about them through the local news on television and the stories in The Inquirer. But I really didn’t know what was going on with me. I was bouncing around, it was crazy, I kept changing my mind from one minute to the next.  One minute, I felt I couldn’t give up, that I had to do something, try to find out what really happened to Faith, who murdered her, because I knew the detectives didn’t have an idea who did, and I doubted they wer...