Truth and Lies (17 page)

Detective Jones's gaze was steady. “So you remember that you got to your job on time that day,” he said. “But you don't remember that you weren't with your friend Sal and you don't remember where you actually were. You see the problem here, don't you, Mike?”

I had to fight off another panic attack. Detective Jones wasn't understanding me. And because he wasn't understanding, he was making it look like I was hiding something.

“What I mean,” I said, “is that I know it's not true that I was late for work because I was never late for work,” I said. “Mr. Kiros's wife was late all the time. She
was supposed to relieve me at six, but she never showed up on time.” I looked at Riel for confirmation. “But I was never late,” I said.

Detective London was shaking his head. “So you're saying Mr. Kiros is lying, is that it, Mike?”

I nodded. He had to be.

“Why would he do that, Mike?”

“He doesn't like me.”

Detective London rolled his eyes. “What we have here, Mike, is that your friend Sal says you weren't with him that day,” he said. “Your former boss says you showed up late for work that day. And Catherine Phillips says she saw you and Robbie Ducharme together outside the music room right after school—when you weren't with your friend Sal and you weren't at work and you say you can't remember where you were. You want to know what else she says, Mike?”

What
else?
What else could she possibly have said? I hadn't been outside the music room with Robbie Ducharme a week ago Monday. So what else could she have told the cops?

“She says she saw Robbie pass you in the hall. She says you went out of your way to bump into him. Does that sound about right, Mike? She says Robbie backed away immediately. She says it looked like he was afraid of you, on account of what happened the first time. Is that right, Mike? Was he afraid of you? Did he have a good reason to be? Because Catherine says you threatened him. She says
she
was afraid you were going to hurt him again.”

“
What?
” That wasn't possible. “I didn't threaten Robbie. Why would I do that?”

“Because you were still mad at him,” Detective London said, like I was some kind of idiot, like he had to spell it out for me in a loud voice. “You're the kind of guy who loses his temper, right, Mike? The kind of guy who uses his fists when he's angry.”

“Okay,” Rhona Katz said. This time she stood up and didn't sit down again. “That's it. Unless you have something definite that ties my client to the incident in the park, we're out of here.”

“Come on, Mike,” Detective Jones said. He peered into my eyes and wouldn't stop. He looked like he felt sorry for me. “Why don't you just tell us what happened? Get it over with. You'll feel better. Everybody feels better when they've made a clean breast of it. What happened? Did you just happen to run into Robbie in the park? Did he say something about your Uncle Billy again? Is that what happened?”

“Come on, Mike,” Rhona Katz said. She touched my arm.

I was amazed that my legs were strong enough to hold me. I pushed back my chair with trembling hands and followed her to the door. Riel was right behind me.

I don't remember how I got from the interview room to the sidewalk next to Riel's car. But there I was, standing on the sidewalk while Rhona Katz said, “We need to talk.” There I was, watching Riel make an appointment with her for the next morning and then watching Rhona
Katz step out into the street to flag a cab while Riel circled to the driver's side of his car and unlocked the door.

I got in and buckled my seatbelt.

“I didn't do it,” I said. “I never threatened Robbie Ducharme outside the music room. And I didn't see him in the park. Except for that time I shoved him, I never touched him.”

Riel sat still, his hands gripping the steering wheel, his eyes focused forward. He sat like that for a while before slipping a key into the car's ignition. Before he started the car, he looked hard at me and said, “Somebody sure isn't telling the truth.”

I didn't have the courage to ask Riel who he thought that somebody was.

For the first time that I could remember, Riel didn't cook supper. Instead he ordered in pizza. As far as I could tell, it wasn't organic.

We sat at the table in the kitchen, Riel opposite me, the open pizza box between us. Riel worked his way through a piece, chewing on it as enthusiastically as if it were a piece of cardboard. He washed down each mouthful with a gulp of beer straight from the bottle. I was usually good for half a large pizza, but not tonight. I nibbled at the one slice on my plate.

Riel drained the last of the beer from the bottle in front of him. “Remember I told you I knew the
Ducharme family?” he said. They were the first words he had spoken since we'd sat down.

I nodded. He'd mentioned it right after Robbie was killed.

“We all did,” he said.

We? All?

“Mr. Ducharme used to have a restaurant,” he said. “Downtown, near police headquarters.”

Cops, he meant. All the downtown cops knew the Ducharme family. All the homicide cops.

“They ran it together, Mr. and Mrs. Ducharme. Robbie used to hang around after school. This was when he was little. Mr. Ducharme closed the restaurant after his wife died. He owns a sandwich place now, near his house. The idea was, he could be right there for Robbie all the time.”

I felt like telling him, no offense, but the last thing I'm interested in right now is Robbie and his family. If things had been different, maybe I would have come right out and said so.

“You know what happened to her?” Riel said. It was what Ms. Stephenson would call a rhetorical question, one where an answer isn't expected. How could I possibly know, except that Riel had just said she died?

“March break,” Riel said. “When Robbie was ten. His mother took him to Disney World down in Florida. His father couldn't get away from work, so it was just the two of them.” He reached for his beer and raised it to his lips before realizing that the bottle was empty.

“You want me to get you another one?” I said.

Riel shook his head. “So Robbie and his mother are down in Florida,” he said. “And one night, instead of staying at Disney World, they decided to go exploring. Mr. Ducharme said his wife used to love to do that—get off the beaten path, you know.”

I wondered why he was telling me about Robbie Ducharme's mother.

“While they were out exploring in Florida, Robbie's mother was mugged. It started out as a mugging, anyway. She'd sent Robbie into a store to get ice cream. She was waiting outside. And a guy with a gun comes up to her, tells her, give me your money. At least, that's what the police down there figure he must have said, because someone across the street saw her open her purse and take something out and hand it to the guy. The person across the street, he didn't see Mrs. Ducharme struggle or say anything to provoke the guy. But the guy shoots her anyway.”

Jeez.

“That's when Robbie comes out of the store,” Riel said. “So now the guy points his gun at Robbie.” He looked down at the empty beer bottle again. “I bet Mr. Ducharme told the story a dozen times, like he just had to keep saying it, like he couldn't believe it.” He looked back up at me. “Someone must have called the cops because all of a sudden they're there and they're yelling at the guy to drop his gun. But the guy doesn't. The cops have to shoot him. They find out later that he was
seriously high. Too much stuff in his system, he's not thinking straight. And Robbie, he was just standing there. A little kid—ten years old. Up until then he hasn't said anything, hasn't cried. Nothing. Until the cops shoot the guy. Then he starts to cry.” He got up, put his empty beer bottle back in the case, and poured himself a glass of water. He drank half of it before sitting down again. “The cop down there told me at first he thought maybe Robbie must have been hurt. Then he figured Robbie was in shock, like maybe he couldn't take in what had happened to his mother.”

He looked across the table at me, as if he were waiting for me to say something. But what could you say after a story like that? All I could think of was what Robbie had said to me about Billy:
Who you cry over says everything
.

“Robbie was in therapy after that,” Riel said. “I don't know if it explains everything about him, but, if you ask me, it explains a lot.”

“I wish someone had told me,” I said.

“Told you all about Robbie's life, you mean? Some kid you hardly knew, were never interested in?”

“Maybe I would have reacted differently.”

“Sure,” Riel said. “And maybe if somebody had told Robbie more about you, he wouldn't have said what he said. Only it doesn't work that way. Everybody has their own reasons for doing things—good or bad—and most of the time the rest of us don't know what they are. That's why it generally pays to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt.”

Which I hadn't done in Robbie's case. I stared down at the half-eaten piece of pizza on my plate. I was still staring at it when I said, “So, what am I supposed to do now?”

“There's nothing you can do,” Riel said. “Jonesy's a good cop. He knows how to keep an open mind until he has all the facts. He'll keep dogging it.” He reached out, flipped the pizza box shut, then carried his plate to the sink and dropped what remained of his slice into the garbage.

“Am I grounded?” I said.

“Is that all you're going to eat?” Riel said.

I nodded. Riel took my plate. “No, you're not grounded,” he said. “But it might be a good idea for you to stay put for a while.”

I watched Riel clean up. It was hard to tell what he was really saying sometimes. I wasn't officially grounded, but I should probably stay put. Did that mean I
had
to stay in?

“I need to take a walk or something,” I said. “You know, get some air.”

Riel was wiping down the table with a damp cloth. He stopped what he was doing and peered hard at me. “If you go, you're going to come back, right?” he said.

The question threw me. “Yeah,” I said. “Where else—” I saw some of the tension go out of Riel's body. He wasn't worried about what I might do when I went out. He was worried about whether I would come back. It made me feel a little better. “Yeah,” I said. “I'm going to come back.”

“You know your curfew, Mike,” he said, more relaxed now, sounding more like his regular self.

“Yeah.”

I wondered if Riel would have let me leave the house if he'd known where I was planning to go. Probably not. So I was glad the subject hadn't come up. The last thing I wanted to do was lie to him again. He deserved better than that.

It was quiet on Jen's street. The sun had been down for at least half an hour. The streetlights had been on for longer than that. But it wasn't so late that people had pulled their curtains and drawn their drapes. As I walked down the sidewalk, I had a good view into most of the houses that lined the street. You could always see into houses early in the evening when it was dark outside and people had all their lights on inside. When I got to Jen's house I could see right into her living room and, beyond that, into the dining room. A man was standing between the two rooms—Jen's dad. He seemed to be talking to someone. Then I saw a willowy figure glide across the room in a long fluid movement. Jen. Moving like a ballerina. She wrapped her arms around her father's neck and went up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. Then Mr. Hayes disappeared from view. The porch light went on. I ducked behind the hedge that marked the front border of the property and peeked through it.
Mr. Hayes came out of the house and walked to the car that was parked in the driveway. I retreated a little further and crouched between the side of the hedge and a tree on a neighboring property until Mr. Hayes's BMW backed down the driveway and took off up the street.