Hazardous Guessing

“Well, if I had to hazard a guess…” Bobby let his sentence trail off without finishing. He’d heard his mom use that phrase and it sounded so smart. Hazzard a guess. Bobby wasn’t smart, but he was good at guessing. He figured that sooner or later he’d guess what it was these two men wanted him to say.  

“Don’t guess, Bobby. Tell us what really happened,” Farbester said slowly. “Something relating to her head.”

Bobby figured the question was important since the detective asked it so often and spoke so clearly and slowly. “Her head?” he asked.

“Her head,” Farbester repeated while the other cop motioned to the back of his own head with his index finger cocked just behind the right ear. Bobby couldn’t remember the other cop’s name, but he stunk of aftershave. He looked at the clock. Five hours. Five hours he’d been in this room with these men, and it still reeked of shitty aftershave.

“Bobby!” Farbester shouted. “Focus! Her head. What happened to her head?”

“I don’t know. I hit her?”   

Farbester looked disappointed and the other cop too. The stinky one cocked his finger behind his ear again, mimicking a gun and whispering “Pk-choo.”

“I shot her!” Bobby exclaimed. “I shot her in the head.”

“That’s good,” Farbester said. “Now, where exactly on her head did you shoot her?”

Bobby looked from one cop to the other. “Right here?” he asked, pointing to a spot just behind his right ear, the same spot where what's-his-name kept pointing his own finger gun.

Farbester leaned back in his chair. Bobby exhaled. He’d finally got it right.  

“Thank you, Bobby. You’ve been very helpful to us today. We’ll just get this all written down so that you can sign it.” Farbester stood. The other cop, too. “Do you want a soda or anything?”

“Nah,” Bobby said, looking at the clock again. “But can you tell me how much longer this is going to take? I have to hand my history homework in by five o’clock.”

The smelly one smiled. “Don’t you worry about that just now.”

 

“Oh my god, Bobby!  How could you be so stupid!” His mother shouted in the small room where they’d led him the next morning. He was glad to see her after a scary night behind bars, sleeping on a hard bench. They’d taken his shoes away and he scuffed his socked feet on the floor. She was probably mad about all the holes, too. 

“Tell me you didn’t kill that woman!” His mom paced the floor behind him while his court appointed lawyer sat at the table doodling. The guy looked like Howdy Doody of the old television show. He wasn’t even writing any real words.

“I didn’t kill her, Mom. I swear, I didn’t!”

“Then why would you say you did?  And how did you know where she was shot?”

“I guessed?” Bobby let the statement hang like a question.

“You guessed?  Why would you guess about a thing like that?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, miserably. “It’s how I do all my homework.”  The teenager had been proud of this last point, earning mostly just-below-average marks in school by guessing at answers and always picking the letter C in multiple choice tests. His mom had also been proud, grinning and hanging his report cards up on the fridge where his dad might see them if he ever came home.

The judge was impressed with his just-below-average marks, too. Two weeks later, he ruled the defendant ‘computant.’  Bobby didn’t know what that word meant, but it seemed like his own lawyer argued he was too stupid to know what was going on. He didn’t like the sound of that, so he was happy the judge disagreed.  

Mom wasn’t; she was furious. She asked Howdy Doody, “What’s going to happen to him now?”

“Well, if I had to hazard a guess,” the lawyer said, “He’s fucked.”

*This story is fictional but heavily influence by the Netflix documentary, Making a Murderer and the 1986 trial of Helmuth Buxbaum..