Gun Games (34 page)

“When she was arrested, she had crystal methamphetamine in her possession.”

Quiller said, “Darla has a substance abuse problem, which we are now aware of. As part of the plea bargain, I guarantee you she will go to rehab. All we want is for her to do community service within the confines of the church. We have a program in Africa. It will be perfect for someone as bright as she is.”

“You know that the D.A.’s office is responsible for okaying any plea bargains.”

“But you can make recommendations. That’s what I’m after. Besides, after you hear what happened, you’ll be comfortable with your decision. Darla can tell you many things that would be invaluable.”

Decker looked at the tape recorder on the desk. To Wynona he said, “This is working?”

“Yes. I’ve tested it several times.”

“Good.” Decker said, “If you want me involved, I’m here to listen.”

All eyes focused on the teen. She flipped her hair behind her ears and bit her lower lip. When she did finally speak, her voice was barely audible.

Chapter Thirty-five

“D
id Gabe ID . . . he did? . . . and he’s sure? . . . Great! Hold on, Lee.” Marge turned to Oliver. They were on their way to Bell and Wakefield after picking up the search warrants for Dylan Lashay, Kyle Kerkin, and Cameron Cole. “Gabe just IDed Kyle Kerkin, JJ Little, Darla Holbein, and Nate Asaroff.”

Oliver, who was behind the wheel, pumped his fist.

Marge said, “Let’s do this. Tell Willy to let both attorneys know that we just got positive IDs on their clients.”

As Marge listened on the phone, Oliver said, “What’s going on?”

Marge said, “Hold on, Lee, I’m putting you on speaker so Oliver can hear.” She punched a button and turned the cell volume on high.

Wang said, “I just got off the phone with Willy who’s with JJ Little. The kid is sticking to the robbery story, claiming he was the victim and Gabe was the aggressor. His attorney found out about the personal relationship between Gabe and the lieutenant and he’s claiming bias. So Willy is going through the procedure by the book. He’s setting up a six-shot photo array with Gabe as part of it.”

“Good idea for a couple of reasons,” Marge said. “Let’s let JJ pick Gabe out, especially since Yasmine couldn’t ID the kid. That way JJ can’t backtrack at some point and say he wasn’t even there.”

“That’s what we’re aiming to do. Put all the aggrieved parties at the scene of the crime and then let the evidence sort it out. Neither JJ nor his attorney knows that Gabe’s been shot. When they do find out, they may change their strategy.”

“Look, Lee, in order not to appear biased, I want someone to go down to the Deckers’ house and check out Gabe’s room. Get the Loo’s permission to search and invite JJ’s attorney to come along.”

“Okay, I’ll do that. What about the girl?”

“Do Gabe first. If he comes up clean, the girl probably won’t be necessary. She’s been through enough. I don’t want to traumatize her further.”

“Does Gabe use drugs?”

“I don’t have any idea, but at least we’ll be consistent. What about Nate Asaroff?”

“His attorney wants to deal.”

“Asaroff is underage?”

“Yes. And as far as I can tell, he was just there.”

“What did he have on him when we took him in?”

“A couple of ounces of pot, a couple of pills. He’s a good one to flip depending on what he has to tell us.”

“Who’s with Nate now?”

“Drew Messing.”

Marge said, “I’ll call Drew as soon as I get off with you.”

“What are you doing now?” Wang asked.

Oliver said, “We just pulled warrants on Lashay, Cole, and Kerkin. We’re on our way to Bell and Wakefield to check out their lockers.”

“Want me to help you out?” Wang asked.

Marge said, “I’d like you to meet us there. You can pick up the search warrant for Dylan Lashay’s house and start going through it.”

“No problem. What’s the school’s address?”

Marge gave it to him and hung up. Her next call was to the station house. Within a minute, Andrew Messing was on the line. Marge spoke. “Gabe Whitman just IDed Nate Asaroff. I heard his attorney wants a deal.”

“You heard correctly, Sergeant,” Messing drawled out. “The Loo put in a call to someone from the D.A.’s office to come down and speak to the parents. The kids are flipping faster than pancakes.”

“What does Asaroff’s attorney want?”

“All charges against him dropped in exchange for his story. He also pointed out that Nate is a minor. He’s two months shy of eighteen.”

“We could try him as an adult. As far as the charges, it depends on what he has to say and what the D.A. thinks. Call me back after you’ve got him on tape.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Marge disconnected the cell just as Oliver pulled into the visitors’ parking lot. He hunted around for a space. “Here we go.” He slid the car into a slot and shut off the motor. “I think Martin Punsche might be a little upset by our drop-in visit.”

“He may be miffed.”

“I wonder how he’ll spin this latest turn of events to B and W’s full-tuition-paying parents.”

A moment of silence, then Marge snapped her fingers. “I got it.”

“Tell me.”

“What the kids did wasn’t an attempted kidnapping at all.” She grinned. “It was a performance
art
project.”

“Perfect.” Oliver opened the car door. “Too bad Dylan didn’t have a camcorder. I’m sure lots of museums would have paid top dollar for the video.”

B
efore coming to Homicide, Decker had worked a number of detective details, specifically six years in Juvenile and Sex Crimes with Marge Dunn. He had interviewed scores of teenaged felons whose emotional state ran the gamut from cocky to scared witless. But in all those years, Decker had never seen a girl as repentant as Darla Holbein. She started the interview with the following statement.

“I deserve to burn in hell.”

Marie Holbein, Darla’s mother, was unmoved. “If you don’t get your act together, Darla, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Stop with the dramatics and tell the lieutenant what happened this morning.”

The girl mumbled something, and her father told her to speak up.

Darla wiped her eyes. “I just want to really say that I’m truly sorry. If the girl wants to see me and yell at me or hit me or . . . I am willing to do that. I would also be happy to do community service at the charity of her choice. And if she wants me to go to jail, I can do that, too. I’m not afraid of jail, because I can do penance in jail. I am afraid of God.”

“Amen,” Marie said.

“Amen,” echoed Dominick, her father.

“I take full responsibility for my wrongdoing.” Her tears were in full force now. “I am very grateful that Jesus has given me this chance to repent and to make things whole again. Our Lord died on the cross for our sins. I just want everyone to know that.”

Marie bit her lip as her eyes became wet. “Jesus will forgive you if you do true penance. So start by telling the detectives what happened.”

By now, both mother and daughter were crying silently. Darla said, “I slept over Cam’s house. We have a project in Government that we’ve been working on. It was due today. So that’s why I slept over her house.” She regarded Wynona and then Decker. “When we have a group assignment, we always work together, although I do most of the work. I’m not complaining, just telling you how it is.”

Wynona said, “Cameron is a good friend of yours?”

Darla looked at her mother. “We’ve known each other forever. We met as little kids in church. We went to all the socials together. She’s a lot of fun. She’s also gorgeous and attracts a lot of male attention.”

“Being too pretty is the work of the devil,” Marie said. “Look at the trouble it got her into.”

“She’s popular, yes, but it’s more than looks, Mama. She’s charismatic. Everyone gravitates to her. It can be fun to be her friend.”

She kneaded her hands.

“About six years ago, her parents quit the church.” She looked to her mother for confirmation. “About six years, right?”

“Yes. About.”

“First her parents quit going to church. Then a few months later, they separated. It was very hard on Cameron. Then her mom got a younger boyfriend, and her dad got a real young girlfriend. Her parents just like . . . freaked. Cameron said they started drinking a lot—right in front of her.”

“My daughter never told me,” Marie said. “Otherwise I would have called Social Services on them.”

Precisely why the girl didn’t tell you,
Decker thought. “So Cameron was around twelve when all this happened?”

“
Yes,” Darla said. “We were in seventh grade. At one point, they were all living in the house together—her parents and the boyfriend and the girlfriend. It was really hard on Cam. I think that’s when she started smoking pot. I told her to stop, that drugs were the work of the devil, but she didn’t listen. Pot was her refuge.”

Marie said, “You should have told us immediately. We could have helped her.”

Dominick said, “Even if the law wouldn’t intervene, the church could have helped.”

“I realize that now, Papa, but I was a little kid.”

“You still are a child,” Quiller pointed out. “If you tell the truth, I’m sure the law will take that into consideration.”

“I am telling the truth,” Darla said. “It is not only evil to lie, it’s too hard.” She wiped her eyes. “I figured the best thing I could do for Cameron was to be a friend and try to bring her back into the church.”

“Okay,” Decker said.

“The home situation lasted around a year and a half. Then right around eighth grade, Cam’s parents decided to get back together.”

Darla put her hand to her mouth.

“Something major happened, though. Cameron wouldn’t tell me, but I’m sure it had to do with her mother’s boyfriend. She went from hating him to liking him. They became real . . . close. You’d have to be an idiot not to know what was going on.”

The tears began to fall.

“She changed. Cameron had always been an okay student if she worked hard. But she stopped working. She’s smart but not smart enough to keep her grades up and do drugs at the same time. She started flirting with the smart boys to get help from them. That’s how it started with Dylan. Despite what you think of Dylan, he’s really smart.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Decker said.

“He was kind of a nerd when she met him. He was smitten with her. All through ninth grade, he’d follow her around like a puppy dog. She introduced him to sex and drugs. Then somewhere during tenth grade, things reversed. Dylan started, like, working out. He grew taller. He also became real buff.”

“Steroids?” Wynona asked.

“Yes. Steroids, too. Dylan became popular with guys as well as the girls. He started cultivating this bad-boy image. He attracted a loyal band of followers. Drugs were a real big part of it. Dylan had money. He bought drugs and started giving them away for free. Then later he started charging for them, not too much at first, just to cover his own expenses. He said he wasn’t making any money. Then later on, he started charging more money, especially for crystal meth.” She looked away. “Once you’re hooked on meth, it’s hard to turn back.”

Her eyes got wet.

“Cameron knew I didn’t have enough money to . . . get what I needed. She gave me some, but she said there were other ways I could earn the money.” She looked down. “So I did whatever she told me to do. I really needed the stuff.” Her lower lip curled under and her face broke down. “It was all very humiliating.”

She started to sob. Her mother put her hand on her head and leaned over and kissed her cheek. “God will love you if you truly repent.”

“I do, Mama, I do truly repent. I just need a little help.”

Quiller said, “You can see that the girl needs rehab, not jail.”

“Jesus loves us all, Darla, saints and sinners,” her father told her.

Wiping her eyes on her sleeves, Darla said, “Amen.”

“You must confess your sins.”

“I will, Papa, I promise I will.”

“If you sincerely repent, God will forgive you,” Marie reemphasized. “But part of atonement is admitting all your sins. You must tell the detectives what happened this morning.”

Amen to that,
Decker thought. He said, “We got up to the part where you slept over at Cameron’s house because you were working on a project together.”

Darla nodded and wiped her eyes. “Cameron was in a bad mood this morning. She met this boy . . .” She looked at Decker. “His name was Chris but then this morning, he said his name was Gabriel and that his father was like the real Mafia.” She looked to Decker for confirmation, but he didn’t respond.

“Go on,” Wynona said.

“Cameron really liked him. He was cute and tall . . . taller than Dylan. She liked that. Dylan’s well built, but he’s on the shorter side. But the true reason Cameron liked him was because he stood up to Dylan. He knew way more about guns than Dylan did. Dylan thinks he’s like an expert on guns.” She turned to Decker. “How does your foster son know so much about guns?”

“That’s none of your business, Darla,” her mother said. “Let’s get on with this so we can figure out your future.”

Darla sighed. “Anyway, she liked him, but didn’t do anything about it. Then one day she met him at a bus stop. She took that as an omen that something was meant to be. Whatever that means I don’t know, but that’s what she told me. She told me he was in a rock band and he was going to be famous one day. She had invited him to her house to get high, but he turned her down, saying that he had an important audition. It sounded like, you know, BS to me but I didn’t say anything.” She looked at Decker. “Is he in a rock band?”

Dominick said, “Darla, stop asking questions and just tell the detectives what happened.”

The girl blushed. “Anyway, he didn’t go to her house, but he asked for her phone number. She took his phone number, too. She expected him to call her, but he never did. She texted him, but it was the wrong number. Cam got real upset. She thought he was shining her on and she’s not used to that. Then . . . oh boy . . . she saw him with another girl—some ugly dumb brownie . . . that’s how Cam described her. She saw them kiss. They were clearly an item. It made her very mad . . . that he lied to her. More than that, that he liked a brownie over her. It was like instant hatred.”