Who is Ichabod?

Detectives show up at a woman’s work place with a letter written about her roommate that says he has a gun and will shoot children in the school yard behind their house. The letter is signed Ichabod.

       I walked in the front door of the shop and noticed the men gathered in the far corner near the stair well by the snake cage. I went to my office by the front counter and out of the corner of my eye I saw the twelve-foot Burmese Python, named Monica, stretched out in the middle of the floor. I tried to appear calm as I walked along the outer edge of the counter and slipped into my office closing the door behind me.

     I didn’t usually close the door but the snake was almost never out of her cage, and when she was it was normally not anywhere near my office. I watched the activity out on the floor through the window and when most of the guys had moved away from in front of the counter I assumed the snake was back in its cage I opened the door. I tried to look nonchalant as I walked around to the coffee pot in the customer waiting area. I saw Monica was indeed back in her cage so I poured a cup of coffee and went back to my office leaving the door open.

     I began to enter sales slips from the previous day in the computer glancing up occasionally to see if there were any customers so I could call up a salesman I needed. After a while I heard voices and saw two men wearing suits at the counter, probably insurance salesmen looking for the owner. I got up and went to see what they wanted.

     “Good morning, that’s a really big snake.”  The tall, slim one with neatly combed dark hair remarked. The other man was heavy set, with messy brown hair. He stood back and watched.

     “Yes she is.” I said with a smile. “Can I help you?”

     “We’re looking for Michele, is that you?” The tall man asked.

     “Yes...”  I glanced at both of the men but clearly the slim man was running the show.

     “Is it alright if we go in your office?”

     “Sure, I guess so.” I looked around to make sure some of the guys were in the shop and I caught one of their eyes so I felt better about going into the office with these two strangers. I went to my desk and sat down. The heavy set man shut the door after he was in the room.

     The tall man handed me a business card and opened his jacket and showed me a badge. “I am Detective John Costanza and this is my partner, Frank Simmons.”  He handed me a piece of notebook paper. “Would you take a look at this?”

     It was a handwritten letter. I started reading. ‘To whom it may concern: This letter is to inform you there is a man living at 1850 West 24^th street who owns an UZI and lives behind a school.’ As soon as I read the address I recognized it was mine and I got a weird feeling in pit of my stomach. This letter was talking about my roommate! I stopped reading and I looked up at the man who handed me the letter. His eyes met mine and he nodded as if to encourage me to keep reading. ‘This man brags about having a vicious wolf dog and he claims he could shoot kids on the playground from his back yard. He drinks a lot and smokes pot.’

     When I finished reading the paper I looked at the men and then back to the paper. It felt surreal, like I was watching myself in a movie. “I don’t understand. Where did this come from?” What the hell was going on!

     “Do you know the man the letter is about?” Detective asked while intently staring at me.

     “Of course I do but you know that or you wouldn’t be here. It’s my roommate, Aaron, but this letter is bullshit!” I was going from confused to pissed off. I didn’t know what was going on but this felt like a set up.

     “Does he have an UZI?” Detective Costanza pushed on.

     “Yes he has one. He uses it to shoot beer cans and anyone who knows us can tell you our dog is so vicious that she will lick you to death. I have a photo of her here.” I pointed to the photo of Mocha that was on my desk.

     “She does look like she has wolf in her.” The man persevered in his line of questioning.

     “She does, but she sure isn’t vicious.” I was really mad by this point.

     “What do you think Aaron’s reaction to this will be?”

     “The same as mine, that it’s ridiculous. Why are you asking me that?” I was beginning to wonder how come they were talking to me in the first place since the letter was clearly about my roommate.

       The detective ignored my question and continued. “Has he ever talked about shooting anyone?”

       The first thing that went through my head was how Aaron liked to get drunk and talk out his a*s. I frequently have gotten pissed off at him about his getting drunk and making stupid comments. “Maybe, when he was drinking and being a dumbass. He isn’t a violent person but he is full of s**t sometimes. He only keeps guns to hunt deer with and to shoot at targets with his friends.”

     “This letter was sent to the school behind your house and they gave it to us. We have to follow up on things like this.”

     They seemed to understand that there wasn’t any threat. “Of course you do. I would expect you to as you have no way of knowing if what this this letter says is true or not. I have to believe you don’t think it is or you wouldn’t be here talking to me. By the way, why are you talking to me and not Aaron? My name isn’t in the letter.”

     “We wanted to make sure Aaron wasn’t going to do anything stupid when we approached him. Do either of you have any friends that you are having a disagreement with?”

     “No. Not that I can think of. Why?”

     “Because that’s usually the reason people send letters like this. They are mad and they are trying to get their friends in trouble.”

    “I have some friends that don’t like each other very much but none of them don’t like Aaron or I, at least not that I know of anyway.”

     “Do any of your friends have any nick names?”

     “One of our friends whose last name is Wallace goes by Wally. I have a friend who goes by Guido but neither one of those guys would write a letter like this.”

     “Can you think of anyone else with a nick name?”

     “We have a friend that used to be a bartender who used to be called Burrito Bob, but he hasn’t been called that name for a long time. Why?”

     “None of those names are the one…the name that was signed to the letter was Ichabod. Does that mean anything to you?”

     “No. I don’t know anyone who uses that for a nick name.” I was puzzled.

     “We are going to need to come to your house and see the guns.”

     “I have a lunch break at noon. I can meet you at the house then.”

     “That will be fine. We are going to go talk to Aaron right now. We wanted to see what you thought his reaction was going to be first. We’ll see you at noon.”

      They opened my office door and as soon as they left I immediately called Aaron to tell him what had just occurred. He worked right across the parking lot at the business next door so I knew there wasn’t going to be much time before the detectives got there. “Can I please speak to Aaron.”….“Hi. I just had a visit from two detectives. They have a letter someone sent to them saying that you threatened to shoot school kids and some other B.S. They should be there any minute. I just wanted to warn you so you won’t be shocked like I was.”

     “Okay, weird. I think I see them walking out to the shop right now. Thanks. Bye.”

      He sounded dumbfounded just like I was. When I thought about it I wasn’t that surprised the detectives knew where I worked because if they had gone to the house to check out the letter all they had to do was run our license plates to get the names of the people living there and when you put names into the state database it gives you their places of employment, the police had access that kind of information.  I figured they had probably been watching us for a day or so before they even came to talk to me. 

     Aaron smoked pot and over the many years we had been roommates we had a good number of fights about his not putting the bong and pot out of sight after he was done. This event happened quite a few years ago when pot wasn’t legal. I always told him to hide it when he left the house and not to leave everything out in the open or in his top drawer because that would be the first place anyone would look but he always ignored me. Now this could be a problem.

     So I took a break and rushed home, we only lived 5 minutes away.  I hid Aaron’s bong and took the pot he kept in his top drawer and hid it in a closet. I knew that wasn’t what the police were specifically going to be looking for but I figured it would be better if they didn’t find anything illegal in the house. I went back to work and called Aaron.

     “Well, how did it go?”

     “They showed me the letter and asked about the guns. They are coming at lunch to see them.”

     “I went home and hid all your pot and paraphernalia. Now you see why I don’t like you to leave that kind of stuff laying out?” 

     “Yeah yeah, good! I’ve got to go back to work!” He hung up and I knew he was pissed because I lectured him but I shouldn’t have had to go hide his stuff to keep us from getting in trouble. Whether I was mentioned in the letter or not I still lived there.

      When I pulled up in the driveway at noon Aaron and the detectives were already at the house. I walked in and Aaron was in the living room with Detective Costanza and talking to him about some of his guns while and the one was writing down serial numbers. I sat down on the couch and listened. Our not vicious wolf dog kept walking up and bugging them.

     “Can I get your permission to look around in the bedrooms? I won’t open any drawers or go through you stuff.” This came from the heavyset detective, who hadn’t said anything before. He looked at me since Aaron was still talking to the other detective about the guns.

      “Sure go ahead.”

       I went in my room ten minutes later to get something and I could see he had pulled open the top drawers of my dressers a few inches and hadn’t closed them. Just as I figured would happen so I was glad I drove home and hid Aaron’s pot. I realized it wasn’t much of a crime to have the pot but I didn’t see any reason for it to be a factor at all.

     “I found some more guns under one of the beds. Who do they belong to?” He was standing in the hall just outside Aaron’s bedroom.

      “Oh, I forgot I had those. A guy I work with had me keep them for him, they belong to his son-in-law and his daughter.  They were having a rough time and he was worried about the guns being at their house.” Aaron reacted calmly and they seemed to believe him. Only in Oregon I thought!

    “Alright, give me his name and Frank go get the serial numbers.” He looked at Aaron, “Anything else we should know about?”

     “No. Jack gave them to me six months ago and has never asked me about them since. I forgot about them.”

     “So back to the letter, you sure you can’t think of anyone you have any problems with?”     

      “We do have a couple of friends who have sort of a feud going on between the two of them, but it doesn’t involve either one of us. We are friends with both of them and didn’t take sides.” I did remember that our friends Bob and Steve had several confrontations over the last year.

     “Is it possible one of them is mad about you’re not taking sides and you just don’t know it?”

     “I guess so. They both are unstable. Bob is on Prozac and Steve has an anger problem but they sure haven’t acted like they are mad. They both come over and visit separately.” I was starting to remember more about their feud with each other. “Steve loaned Bob an old Beebe gun a few years ago and Bob gave it away because he had the impression that Steve didn’t ever want it back. Steve didn’t find that out until last year when his little brother committed suicide and Steve asked for the Beebe gun back because it had belonged to his brother and he wanted to keep it for sentimental reasons. Steve and Bob had a big fight over it and now Steve hates Bob because Bob had let a friend borrow it. The whole incident had gotten quite ridiculous but Aaron and I weren’t involved with any of that incident and as far as I know neither Steve nor Bob are mad at us. We still do things with both of them separately. Bob has done some fairly whacky things around us but has never threatened us. Maybe you should to talk to Bob and Steve but I really don’t think that either one of them would wish us anything bad. Steve can tell you about weird Bob has been acting ever since he started taking Prozac.”

    “Give me their names and how to get ahold of them.”

    “Bob works for the county in drug and alcohol counseling. Steve is living at his parent’s house and is unemployed. Let me look up their number’s in my phone book.” I went in the kitchen and wrote down both of their names and phone numbers and gave them to the detective.

     “We will talk to Bob and Steve. We don’t think Aaron is a threat. I’ll give you a call tomorrow and tell you what we find out from talking to your friends.”

      Aaron I both went back to work. During a break I called Steve when I got back to work to tell him that the police would be contacting him to talk about the wacky behavior Bob has been exhibiting since taking Prozac. We talked a while and he acted rather interested in the whole affair and said he might stop by later. I then called Bob to tell him that the detectives would be contacting him about the Beebe gun incident. When he answered the phone he was really upset. He said that the detectives had already been there and when they handed him the letter to read he freaked out because he thought the letter was going to be about him and then read the address. Steve had sent him a letter much like that after the BB gun incident only in that letter he threatened to send a letter to his boss telling him that Bob was a drug addict to try and get him fired. I got a very horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Through the years Steve had spent hours and hours at our house, we had been a good friend to him through all sorts of personal events, we had even given him a key to our house whenever we left town. I had always thought we were good friends but the similarities between the two letters were too close to be a coincidence. I called Aaron at work and told him about the conversation I had with Bob.

     I finished out the day at work and had previously made plans to go shopping with my sister after I got off work. Annette pulled into the driveway at the same time I pulled in. Aaron was already home and I noticed that Steve’s car was also in the driveway. I briefly filled Annette in on what had happened that day before we went into the house.

     Aaron was sitting on the couch and to the right of him Steve was sitting in the wood rocking chair that was between the couch and the television and he was drinking beer. Aaron was not drinking beer and the air in the room was so thick with tension you could cut it with a knife. Annette feigned ignorance of the whole situation and greeted Steve and sat on the couch next to Aaron. I went into my bedroom and changed from my work clothes into my “shopping clothes”. I visited a little and then Annette and I left. I was a bit worried about the situation but wasn’t sure what to do. Annette and I immediately went to El Torito’s to have a cocktail, it was always our first stop at the shopping mall before actually going shopping. We weren’t even done with our first drink when Aaron walked into the bar and sat down next to us, he also knew this was our first stop.

     “What the hell was going on at the house? It felt really weird.”  I asked as soon as he sat down.

     “Steve was waiting in the driveway with half of case of beer when I got home from work. When he went into the kitchen to put it in the refrigerator I got my gun and put in down the side of the couch and sat there next to it. I wasn’t sure what he was there for but I was pretty sure he sent that letter after you called about Bob’s visit with the detectives. You and Annette walked in right after that.”

     “Annette and I were talking and we are sure Steve is guilty, we could feel it.”

     “Yes I’m sure he is also, that’s why I got the gun out. I wasn’t sure what he came over for.”

     “So what did he say after we left?”

     “He didn’t say much of anything. I think he was waiting for me to say something but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he screwed with me. He must have gotten the hint that I didn’t want him there because he finished his beer and left. Then I drove here because I knew you would be here and if you weren’t I needed a drink anyway.”

     “I just can’t understand what the hell he did it for. We have been his only friends when he didn’t have anyone else.”

     “It sure surprised me as well.”

      The three of us drank and compared notes on not understanding why Steve had sent the letter to the school and went home. The next morning I called the detective to tell him that I knew who had sent the letter.

     “Yes we think it is Steve also. When we went to visit with Bob and showed him the letter he got very frightened and told us that Steve had sent him a very similar letter.”

     “Steve stopped by last night and I could tell he was guilty.”

     “As far as we are concerned our investigation into this matter is over. I advise you to let it go. We don’t want to be called back for retaliation.”

     “Don’t worry, he isn’t worth it.”

      As soon as I got off of the phone I called Steve, my mind was racing with all the questions I had as to how he could do this to people who have always been there for him.

     “Hi Steve.”

     “Hi, the police never called me.” He sounded disappointed.

     “They aren’t going to.”

     “How come?”

     “Because they think that you’re the one who sent the letter.”

     “What do you think?”

     “I think, and I can’t believe it after all of the things that we have done together, that it has to be you. It totally blows me away. Was it you?”

     “Yes, it was.”

     “Why, I don’t understand why you would do it?”

     “When I was in Junior High Aaron burnt me with a cigarette.”

     “Huh, you are kidding right?”

     “He has a good job and he doesn’t deserve it. I am a lot smarter and deserve to be working a lot more than he does.”

     “What in the world does that have to do with anything? I can’t believe you did that after all the things I have done for you. All he nights that you visited and told me about all of your problems, and then there were all of things we have done together through the years. The police told me that we were lucky, that if they had been a little more convinced the letter was true they might have broken down our front door and someone could have been shot.”

     “I didn’t mention your name.”

     “Aaron and I live in the same house and you didn’t think that the letter wasn’t going to affect me?”

     “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. Does this mean we aren’t friends anymore?”

     “What do you think? I can’t believe you can’t see how screwed up this was. Aaron has been a good friend to you. You are really whacked out. If you were upset about being burned with a cigarette as a kid, if it even happened since you are twice as big as he is, why did you keep coming around and going camping with him and hanging out at our house?”

     “There have been other things he’s done, like the time…”

     “I don’t even want to hear any more of your screwed up words. You need help but you aren’t going to get it from Aaron or I any more. I still can’t believe you did this. Goodbye forever.”

     That was the last time I ever talked with Steve, aka Ichabod. Soon after this he moved to Illinois and never came back to the town he grew up in.  I still am dumbfounded by how someone I thought I was that good of friends with could be that dysfunctional and I didn’t know it, it’s kind of scary.