Idyll Threats (27 page)

“I'll take Luke,” I said to Finnegan.

He said, “You don't want Chris? I figured, since you had such a hard-on for him—”

“I want to give him someone new. See how he behaves. Be careful. He's clever.”

He scratched his chest. “Guess he'll be too smart for the likes of me, then.” He leaned harder on his accent. With any luck, Chris would buy Finnegan's dumb act.

Mrs. Johnson and Luke refused a lawyer when I suggested one. “You understand what
pro bono
means?” I said.

She harrumphed and adjusted the purse on her lap. “You get what you pay for,” she said. “Luke's dad had pro bono lawyers. Look what that got us.”

“From what I heard, it kept him out of jail after he knifed a guy.” I
watched Luke. His knee jiggled under the table. Up and down, cocaine-user fast.

“We paid for
that
lawyer.” Under her breath she said, “Still paying for it.”

“So, you going to ask me questions or what?” Luke said. He had a hard time keeping still. Why not counter that with relaxation? I took a deep breath. And regretted it. Good lord, the funk in here was terrific. We needed another interview room. A proper one not used by men as their gym.

“So, where were you two earlier?” I asked.

“Apartment hunting,” Mrs. Johnson said. “The bank's going to foreclose. So you can imagine how delighted I was to find two cop cars in my yard after I'd spent three hours looking at crappy apartments.”

“Idyll doesn't have crappy apartments,” I said.

“We weren't looking here. Can't afford it. We were in Hartford.” She pulled out a cigarette and lit it. I didn't complain. It might improve the room's scent.

“So who shot Cecilia North?” I asked Luke.

His knee stopped jiggling. “Didn't do it,” he said.

“So it was Chris?” That would be music to my ears.

“Chris?” Mrs. Johnson said. “Warren? The little rich boy?” She coughed. “You pull him in here, too?”

“Sure did. He's in the other room. He has a lawyer.”

“Of course he does.” She looked around. “Ash tray?”

I fetched it from the windowsill. The window was set high in the wall, above everyone's head but mine. “Here.” I set it on the table. It clanked. Luke flinched.

“Didn't do it,” he said, unprompted.

“We know you had the gun. We have footprints from the crime scene. We're going to bring all your shoes inside, and then the techs will match them. You'll be found guilty of murder. On the bright side, you won't have to move to a crappy apartment in Hartford.”

He got sullen. Pouty lips. Crossed arms.

“So when's moving day?” I asked Mrs. Johnson.

She looked away from Luke's muddied sneakers and said, “Next month. We have to be out by the fifteenth.”

Luke's scowl deepened.

“You have any idea what your sentence will be like?” I asked him.

He straightened and kicked one foot out. “A year or two in juvie.” He smirked.

Ah-ha. He hadn't denied the crime. And he banked on a soft sentence.

“Connecticut's been known to try minors as adults. Would you like me to list some examples?”

“Maybe we should get a lawyer.” Mrs. Johnson stubbed out her cigarette with short jabs.

“Sure,” Luke said. “But a real one.” He emphasized the last two words.

“But, honey—” Her voice cracked. She faced foreclosure, was paying for her long-gone husband's lawyer, and her son needed expensive counsel.

“Don't worry,” he said. “We can afford it.”

“How?” she asked.

Yes, how?

“Call him,” he said. “The guy who got dad off.” His voice was steady.

“I want to call a lawyer,” she said to me.

I took her outside to the phone.

Twenty minutes into the wait for their lawyer, Mrs. Johnson asked that the room's door be left open. She complained that the smell was overwhelming. “We can't have the door open,” I said. Too much risk she or Luke would overhear something. I dispatched Billy to find me a solution. He returned with a plug-in air freshener. Now the room smelled like body odor and vanilla.

Finnegan emerged from the interview room, a broad smile on his face. When the door closed, his smile dropped. “Chris is a bright little shit. How's yours?”

I told him Luke had denied killing our victim and demanded a lawyer.

“Any word from Wright?” he asked.

“Not yet. The Warrens' house is big. Gonna take a while to search, and I imagine they're gonna put up a fuss.”

My prediction was proven true in less than ten minutes. At 8:30 p.m., Mr. and Mrs. Warren came to the station. Mrs. Warren wore pearls she twisted back and forth. Mr. Warren had one of those
Star Trek
earpiece devices so he could make telephone calls without using his hands. They demanded to know where their son was and why they were the victims of a vicious prank. Why we were treating them like criminals, rooting through their valuables?

“It's no prank,” I said. “Your son's been arrested. He's with his lawyer.”

“We want to see him.”

I had no objection. Finnegan and I were regrouping. I didn't want to talk to either boy again until the house searches were complete. While the Warrens reunited, we made a list of what we'd learned thus far.

1. Chris insisted that he'd left Luke with the gun at the golf course. He'd thought better of firing a weapon and had returned to Kevin Wilkes's house.
   
2. Luke wasn't talking and wanted a lawyer.
   

It wasn't much. But we knew our suspects' defense plans. Both involved denial.

Wright returned at 10:00 p.m. “Guess what I found?” he said. “Timberland boots. Size eight and a half. At Luke's house, in the pantry, under a box of trash bags. And a pair of eleven and a half Air Jordan sneakers found in the Warrens' entryway. Chris didn't even bother to hide them.”

Finnegan brought Wright up to speed. He said that Chris claimed he'd been at the golf course, but that he'd left before Luke shot Cecilia.

“Chris says Luke admitted he shot our vic?” Wright asked.

“No,” Finnegan said, “But he's implied it. He's smart. Full of ‘maybes' and ‘it's possibles.'”

“You turn up anything else?” I asked Wright.

“We've got Chris's laptop,” he said. “Might be something there.”

“He has his own laptop?” I pointed to the old Selectric IIs we used.

“The kid has everything, far as I can tell. Oh, and he had these stashed in a drawer.” He pointed to a group of baggies. Each held a package of Pop Rocks.

“Most of them are untouched,” I said. “Don't test those. She'd eaten some of the candy, remember? Crystals on her hand.”

“Right,” he said.

“Why did he buy them?” Finnegan asked. “Is he just trying to make the techs' lives hell?”

“Trophy?” Wright asked.

“Don't know,” I said. “Don't care.” Not true. I suspected Chris bought the Pop Rocks as a reminder of what he'd done. What he'd gotten away with. Until now. But I wasn't going to get hung up on it. Because thinking about it made me want to march into the interview room and rough up both boys in front of their mothers. “Where's Luke's lawyer?” I asked. “I can't have another run at him until he shows.”

Luke's lawyer, Mr. Benjamin Walsh, showed up at 10:45 p.m. On the attorney scale, he was somewhere in the middle. His clothing? No suit from London, but no Men's Wearhouse two-for-one special either. He wore wire-frame glasses that made him look older. I pegged him at thirty-five. He was shown into the room where the battle between air freshener and body odor continued.

We drank coffee and pinned what we knew on the board. Finnegan told the Warrens to stop alibiing their son. We'd already confirmed they were at a fundraising event until 1:30 a.m. two towns away the night of the murder. And Chris hadn't slept at their house that night. He was at Kevin Wilkes's house. They finally stopped after their attorney told them they weren't helping him.

At 11:55 p.m., Mrs. Warren left the interview room. She looked bad. She asked one of the men if she could bring her son a blanket from home. He told her no, gently. Instead of arguing, she hiccupped softly, pressed her knuckles to her mouth, and hurried outside.

At two minutes past midnight, Mr. Walsh, Luke's lawyer, requested that I come in to hear a short statement by his client. Brows rose around the pen. “This might be it, boys,” I said.

Billy said, “Go get him, Chief.” His hair was cowlicked and his uniform rumpled. All in all, he looked like the rest of us, but better rested. Wright extinguished his cigarette. “Good luck,” he said. Finnegan said he was going to put Revere on speed dial so that when we broke the case, he could call him right away. And gloat.

“You'll have to call his home number,” Billy said.

Finnegan tapped his phone. “No problem,” he said.

I brought two water cups into the room. Decided to let them fight over who got the beverages. The lawyer declined. Mrs. Johnson took quick, shallow sips from hers. Luke drained his in one go. “Want more?” I asked.

His knee was still. His hands clasped together, on top of the table. “No, thank you.” This was a transformation. Was the lawyer responsible? Mr. Walsh sat a foot from his client.

“I have something to say,” Luke said. His mother gripped her cup, and water rose over the rim, splashing her. She didn't notice. He said, “I shot her. I killed her. Chris wasn't there.” His voice was monotone, with no inflection at all.

It was a confession. At last. There was just one problem. It was a lie. His tone, his posture. He hadn't done it alone. Years of experience, intuition, and my funny vertebrae all argued that he was stringing me along.

“Was anyone else with you?” I asked.

“No.”

“You're sure?”

His eyes flicked to meet mine. He swallowed. Looked at his lawyer, who nodded a fraction. “Yes. I was alone.”

“You weren't. I have evidence that you weren't.” Not that Mrs. Ashworth had seen the boys shoot Cecilia. But he didn't know that. There were other things he didn't know I knew. Like what he'd been doing before the shooting.

“Chris was with me, at first,” he said. “We were going to shoot the gun at targets we'd brought. But Chris got worried the Wilkeses would notice he'd left their house. So he went back to Kevin's. I was the only one there when she showed up.”

I played along. Asked him questions. Where had he been, what had he been doing? Where had she approached from? Did she see him?

He'd been standing, reloading the gun. She came from the eighth hole. Yes, she saw him. She yelled at him. He got scared and shot her.

“Four times,” I said.

His fingers unclasped. He tapped them on the table, as if playing piano. “Yes, four times.”

“Why?”

Mrs. Johnson took a shuddering breath and wiped a fuzzy tissue under her eyes. The lawyer remained mute. I revised my opinion. This guy was worse than pro bono. Luke looked down. Saw what his hands were up to and clasped them together. “I don't know. I panicked, I guess.”

“You guess? You guess?” My voice rose with each word. “You murder a young woman, toss the gun, and pretend it never happened. And when you tell me all about your amazing crime, all you can do is guess as to why you did it? No. Sorry, Luke. Try again.”

“I was afraid she'd tell on me.” His hands came apart. That had a ring of truth to it.

“Why?”

“Because she saw me…with the gun. And I was afraid she'd call the cops.”

His mother grabbed another tissue from her bag. It fell apart in her hands.

“You two are going to let him do this?” I said, to Mr. Walsh and Mrs. Johnson. “Confess to a murder?”

“What do you want from us!” she yelled. “He's telling you what you want!”

I planted my hands on the table. “No, he isn't. What I want is the truth.” I slammed a hand against the table. It rocked to one side.

The lawyer spoke up. “Chief Lynch, you may choose to disbelieve my client, but he'd like to make a formal statement.”

I stepped back. “Fine. I'll send someone in to take it.”

“You won't do it?” Mr. Walsh asked. He leaned forward in his chair.

“I have better things to do than listen to lies. Since he's fifteen, he'll need to be transferred to a juvenile facility. But it's nearly one a.m. They probably won't take him until morning.” I walked to the door.

“My client is fourteen,” he said.

“What?” I spun around.

Luke looked down.

“You told me you were fifteen. The night I picked you up for trespassing.” He was in the same grade as Tiffany and Kevin. Jesus, had he skipped a grade? Talk about buying into someone's dumb act. I'd bought front-row tickets.

He raised his head and met my stare. “I'm gonna be fifteen in a few weeks.”

“When?”

“November seventeenth.”

“November seventeenth is almost two months away.”

He ducked his head.

“You lied,” I said. “Why am I surprised?” I left without another word.

In the pen, Wright looked up, his expression hopeful. “He confessed,” I said. Billy let out a war whoop and put his hand up, expecting me to slap his palm. I didn't.

“He's lying. Story has more holes than a wheel of Swiss. Oh, and it turns out he's fourteen.”

“Shit,” Wright said. “Fourteen is a tough sell.”

“Will you take his statement? His lawyer is insisting. Then see that he gets a cell as far from Chris Warren as possible. We'll have to call Juvenile. See when they'll take them.”

“You're keeping Chris?” Billy said. I didn't like the way he said his name. As if he deserved better treatment.

“We have evidence he was involved. I'm not letting him go. God
knows where he'd fly off to if given the chance. His parents have money and resources.”

Finnegan arrived with three large pizzas. “Mine has macaroni and cheese,” he said. Wright groaned. Once again, Finnegan had found a way to keep a whole pie to himself.