بخش 03 - فصل 21

21

Hodges parks his Prius fifty feet or so down from the high school’s main entrance. He’s on a yellow curb, but he has an old POLICE CALL card in his glove compartment, which he saves for just such parking problems. He places it on the dashboard. When the bell rings, he gets out of the car and leans against the hood with his arms folded, watching the bank of doors. Engraved about the entrance is the school’s motto: EDUCATION IS THE LAMP OF LIFE. Hodges has his phone in one hand, ready to either make or receive a call, depending on who comes out or doesn’t.

The wait isn’t long, because Pete Hodges is among the first group of students to burst into the June day and come hurrying down the wide granite steps. Most of the kids are with friends. The Saubers boy is alone. Not the only one flying solo, of course, but there’s a set look to his face, as if he’s living in the future instead of the here and now. Hodges’s eyes are as good as they ever were, and he thinks that could be the face of a soldier going into battle.

Or maybe he’s just worried about finals.

Instead of heading toward the yellow buses parked beside the school on the left, he turns right, toward where Hodges is parked. Hodges ambles to meet him, speed-dialing Holly as he goes. ‘I’ve got him. Tell Jerome.’ He cuts the call without waiting for her to answer.

The boy angles to go around Hodges on the street side. Hodges steps in front of him. ‘Hey, Pete, got a minute?’

The kid’s eyes snap front and center. He’s good-looking, but his face is too thin and his forehead is spotted with acne. His lips are pressed so tightly together that his mouth is almost gone. ‘Who are you?’ he asks. Not Yes sir or Can I help you. Just Who are you. The voice as tight-wired as the face.

‘My name is Bill Hodges. I’d like to talk to you.’

Kids are passing them, chattering, elbowing, laughing, shooting the shit, adjusting backpacks. A few glance at Pete and the man with the thinning white hair, but none show any interest. They have places to go and things to do.

‘About what?’

‘In my car would be better. So we can have some privacy.’ He points at the Prius.

The boy repeats, ‘About what?’ He doesn’t move.

‘Here’s the deal, Pete. Your sister Tina is friends with Barbara Robinson. I’ve known the Robinson family for years, and Barb persuaded Tina to come and talk to me. She’s very worried about you.’

‘Why?’

‘If you’re asking why Barb suggested me, it’s because I used to be a police detective.’

Alarm flashes in the boy’s eyes.

‘If you’re asking why Tina’s worried, that’s something we’d really be better off not discussing on the street.’

Just like that the look of alarm is gone and the boy’s face is expressionless again. It’s the face of a good poker player. Hodges has questioned suspects who are able to wipe their faces like that, and they are usually the ones who are toughest to crack. If they crack at all.

‘I don’t know what Tina said to you, but she’s got nothing to worry about.’

‘If what she told me is true, she might.’ Hodges gives Pete his best smile. ‘Come on, Pete. I’m not going to kidnap you. Swear to God.’

Pete nods reluctantly. When they reach the Prius, the kid stops dead. He’s reading the yellow card on the dashboard. ‘Used to be a police detective, or still are?’

‘Used to be,’ Hodges says. ‘That card … call it a souvenir. Comes in handy sometimes. I’ve been off the force and collecting my pension for five years. Please get in so we can talk. I’m here as a friend. If we stand out here much longer, I’m going to melt.’

‘And if I don’t?’

Hodges shrugs. ‘Then you’re off.’

‘Okay, but only for a minute,’ Pete says. ‘I have to walk home today so I can stop at the drugstore for my father. He takes this stuff, Vioxx. Because he got hurt a few years ago.’

Hodges nods. ‘I know. City Center. That was my case.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

Pete opens the passenger door and gets into the Prius. He doesn’t seem nervous about being in a strange man’s car. Careful and cautious, but not nervous. Hodges, who has done roughly ten thousand suspect and witness interviews over the years, is pretty sure the boy has come to a decision, although he can’t tell if it’s to spill what’s on his mind or keep it to himself. Either way, it won’t take long to find out.

He goes around and gets in behind the wheel. Pete is okay with that, but when Hodges starts the engine, he tenses up and grabs the doorhandle.

‘Relax. I only want the air-conditioning. It’s damn hot, in case you didn’t notice. Especially for so early in the year. Probably global warm—’

‘Let’s get this over with so I can pick up my dad’s scrip and go home. What did my sister tell you? You know she’s only thirteen, right? I love her to death, but Mom calls her Tina the Drama Queen-a.’ And then, as if this explains everything, ‘She and her friend Ellen never miss Pretty Little Liars.’

Okay, so the initial decision is not to talk. Not all that surprising. The job now is to change his mind.

‘Tell me about the cash that came in the mail, Pete.’

No tensing up; no uh-oh look flashing across the kid’s face. He knew that was it, Hodges thinks. He knew as soon as his sister’s name came up. He might even have had advance warning. Tina could have had a change of heart and texted him.

‘You mean the mystery money,’ Pete says. ‘That’s what we call it.’

‘Yeah. That’s what I mean.’

‘It started coming four years ago, give or take. I was about the age Tina is now. There’d be an envelope addressed to my dad every month or so. Never any letter with it, just the money.’

‘Five hundred dollars.’

‘Once or twice it might have been a little less or a little more, I guess. I wasn’t always there when it came, and after the first couple of times, Mom and Dad didn’t talk about it very much.’

‘Like talking about it might jinx it?’

‘Yeah, like that. And at some point, Teens got the idea I was the one sending it. Like as if. Back then I didn’t even get an allowance.’

‘If you didn’t do it, who did?’

‘I don’t know.’

It seems he will stop there, but then he goes on. Hodges listens peacefully, hoping Pete will say too much. The boy is obviously intelligent, but sometimes even the intelligent ones say too much. If you let them.

‘You know how every Christmas they have stories on the news about some guy giving out hundred-dollar bills in Walmart or wherever?’

‘Sure.’

‘I think it was that type of deal. Some rich guy decided to play Secret Santa with one of the people who got hurt that day at City Center, and he picked my dad’s name out of a hat.’ He turns to face Hodges for the first time since they got in the car, eyes wide and earnest and totally untrustworthy. ‘For all I know, he’s sending money to some of the others, too. Probably the ones who got hurt the worst, and couldn’t work.’

Hodges thinks, That’s good, kiddo. It actually makes a degree of sense.

‘Giving out a thousand dollars to ten or twenty random shoppers at Christmas is one thing. Giving well over twenty grand to one family over four years is something else. If you add in other families, you’d be talking about a small fortune.’

‘He could be a hedge fund dude,’ Pete says. ‘You know, one of those guys who got rich while everyone else was getting poor and felt guilty about it.’

He’s not looking at Hodges anymore, now he’s looking straight out of the windshield. There’s an aroma coming off him, or so it seems to Hodges; not sweat but fatalism. Again he thinks of soldiers preparing to go into battle, knowing the chances are at least fifty-fifty that they’ll be killed or wounded.

‘Listen to me, Pete. I don’t care about the money.’

‘I didn’t send it!’

Hodges pushes on. It’s the thing he was always best at. ‘It was a windfall, and you used it to help your folks out of a tough spot. That’s not a bad thing, it’s an admirable thing.’

‘Lots of people might not think so,’ Pete says. ‘If it was true, that is.’

‘You’re wrong about that. Most people would think so. And I’ll tell you something you can take as a hundred percent dead-red certainty, because it’s based on forty years of experience as a cop. No prosecutor in this city, no prosecutor in the whole country, would try bringing charges against a kid who found some money and used it to help his family after his dad first lost his job and then got his legs crushed by a lunatic. The press would crucify a man or woman who tried to prosecute that shit.’

Pete is silent, but his throat is working, as if he’s holding back a sob. He wants to tell, but something is holding him back. Not the money, but related to the money. Has to be. Hodges is curious about where the cash in those monthly envelopes came from – anyone would be – but he’s far more curious about what’s going on with this kid now.

‘You sent them the money—’

‘For the last time, I didn’t!’

‘—and that went smooth as silk, but then you got into some kind of jackpot. Tell me what it is, Pete. let me help you fix it. Let me help you make it right.’

For a moment the boy trembles on the brink of revelation. Then his eyes shift to his left. Hodges follows them and sees the card he put on the dashboard. It’s yellow, the color of caution. The color of danger. POLICE CALL. He wishes to Christ he’d left it in the glove compartment and parked a hundred yards farther down the street. Jesus Christ, he walks every day. A hundred yards would have been easy.

‘There’s nothing wrong,’ Pete says. He now speaks as mechanically as the computer-generated voice that comes out of Hodges’s dashboard GPS, but there’s a pulse beating in his temples and his hands are clasped tightly in his lap and there’s sweat on his face in spite of the air-conditioning. ‘I didn’t send the money. I have to get my dad’s pills.’

‘Pete, listen. Even if I was still a cop, this conversation would be inadmissible in court. You’re a minor, and there’s no responsible adult present to counsel you. In addition I never gave you the words – the Miranda warning—’

Hodges sees the boy’s face slam shut like a bank vault door. All it took was two words: Miranda warning.

‘I appreciate your concern,’ Pete says in that same polite robot voice. He opens the car door. ‘But there’s nothing wrong. Really.’

‘There is, though,’ Hodges says. He takes one of his cards from his breast pocket and holds it out. ‘Take this. Call me if you change your mind. Whatever it is, I can hel—’

The door closes. Hodges watches Pete Saubers walk swiftly away, puts the card back in his pocket, and thinks, Fuck me, I blew it. Six years ago, maybe even two, I would have had him.

But blaming his age is too easy. A deeper part of him, more analytical and less emotional, knows he was never really close. Thinking he might have been was an illusion. Pete has geared himself up for battle so completely that he’s psychologically incapable of standing down.

The kid reaches City Drug, takes his father’s prescription out of his back pocket, and goes inside. Hodges speed-dials Jerome.

‘Bill! How did it go?’

‘Not so good. You know City Drug?’

‘Sure.’

‘He’s getting a scrip filled there. Haul ass around the block as fast as you can. He told me he’s going home, and maybe he is, but if he’s not, I want to know where he does go. Do you think you can tail him? He knows my car. He won’t know yours.’

‘No prob. I’m on my way.’

Less than three minutes later Jerome is coming around the corner. He nips into a space just vacated by a mom picking up a couple of kids that look way too shrimpy to be in high school. Hodges pulls out, gives Jerome a wave, and heads for Holly’s position on Garner Street, punching in her number as he goes. They can wait for Jerome’s report together.