My son and I are sitting in the dark, watching "The Ring" on DVD on Saturday night.
Suddenly we see a spotlight, sweeping across the front of the house. I get up to look, and I see a police cruiser with it's spotlight playing across the front of the house. I turn on the hall light and go outside to see what is the matter. The cruiser pulls into the driveway and a cop rolls down the window,
"does Jonathan McCune live here?"
I'm thinking, "what has he gotten himself into this time?"
"Yes", I reply
"Is he a member of a rock band?"
"Yes, he is."
"Does he has a brown cadillac?" (Jonathan doesn't have a car, period)
"Is there a problem, officer?"
"Well, yes. Last night there was a call that incurred quite a large expense"
I'm puzzled.
Then Jonathan comes out on the porch.
"Is that Jonathan?"
"Yes, I'm Jonathan", he replies with puzzled look on his face.
The cops are out of the car. One of them pulls me aside to talk to me alone.
The story: Last night we got a call at the Mall about a suspicious package.
We had to call in the bomb squad from Allegheny County (the Pittsburgh, PA county) and it took them 3 hours to open this case.
We had to empty out half of the mall.
The case had a logo written on it that said "Better Off Dead" with a Pennsylvania Keystone picture.
There was a note in the case that said "If you find this then you are Gay" (not really accurate)
There was a web address. We went to the web and saw the page for your son's band.
My son's band is named "Better Off Dead"
I'm thinking about what the cops probably were thinking...a suspicious case...could be a bomb...says "Better Of Dead" on it...
Jonathan is beginning to put 2 and 2 together.
"There was a case that had our band's name on it, that we threw away, but that is the only thing I know about it."
Turns out that Jonathan's friends picked him up after work at the Mall. The driver had a bunch of junk in his car, and one thing was an old brief case that was empty, except for a microphone stand base. And a note that said, "If you find this, call this number" with a phone number; and on the reverse side it said "You are gay".
Well, they didn't just put it in the garbage, like a in a dumpster...they tried to throw it away in a garbage can near one of the mall door entrances. Since it didn't fit in the can, they just left it beside the can, and left to go home.
But then someone later took the case, ran into the arcade just inside the mall entrance, and left the case there, yelling something, ran out of the mall and jumped into a brown cadillac.
The cops ask Jonathan to go to the station to talk to them. He's questioned for a couple of hours.
The cops want someone to pay this bill. They want the band to admit that they set up some kind of publicity stunt. They try to coerce the band into signing a confession admitting to such. They read Jonathan his meranda rights and ask him to write a report of his story. He cooperates, because he asked if he doesn't and doesn't give up his rights, if he'd be arrested. They tell him, yes, they'd probably arrest him.
Fortunately they believe Jonathan's story. But they want to pin this on the kid who originally put the case next to the garbage can. Fortunately they have two girls as witnesses who testify that they just left the case next to the garbage and then left.
