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“I’ll tell you everything I know. But it would be helpful to meet in person.”
“Where? Hamilton police station?”
“Uh, if you could, I’d rather meet at the Greenbury station. Your brother died in our jurisdiction, so we’re running the investigation. I don’t want to intrude on Hamilton’s space. If it’s too far for you to travel, I’ll come to you.”
“I almost never go to Greenbury. It would take me like a half hour to get there.”
“Like I said, I can come to you.”
“No, I’d rather meet at a police station, no offense. I don’t know who you are.”
“I think that’s prudent of you. When can you come down?”
“Not now. It’s two o’clock. I’m still at work. I suppose I can make it around seven.”
“That would be fine.” He gave her the address of the station house and his cell number. “I’ll see you around seven. Please call if there’s any change of plans. And thank you very much.”
She spoke before he could hang up. “Where is my brother now?”
“He’s still at the morgue.”
“And if you got my number from my mother, she must know, right?”
“She does.”
“Ah, Jesus! This is just horrible … just terrible.”
“It is terrible. I’m very sorry.”
“Did he suffer?”
“No,” Decker told her.
Not a lie, not the truth. He didn’t know one way or the other, and since he didn’t know, there was no reason to cause her any further misery.
CHAPTER 5 (#u821569d5-299d-5eb0-b818-90f997b5f7d2)
DASH HARDEN SAT in the chair. His manner said defiance while his face said fear. He was used to vandalizing—a nonconfrontational crime—and now, he was face-to-face with the enemy. He was eighteen and stood about five eleven, his body slowly turning into a man’s, with the wiry arms giving way to actual muscle. Light brown hair and a face spangled with freckles and acne. His hair was cut short, his features more bulldog than eagle. He kept insisting he had been home all night. Since Decker didn’t have any proof that Dash had vandalized, he told Lennie Baccus that he’d be stretching the truth a little. Her job was to listen and take notes, especially the nonverbal reactions, because the interview was being recorded. Concentrating on things like the kid’s posture, his fidgetiness, what he did with his hands, eye contact with Decker, eyes looking up or looking down or away. While words were easier to understand superficially, gestures almost always told the truth.
“Dash, it’s the third time those mailboxes have been overturned,” Decker said. “We installed a closed-circuit TV camera after the second time.” That part was true. “You and your friends were caught on tape.”
Shaking leg. “I wasn’t there.”
Decker had yet to tell the kid about Brady Neil. He and Dash had been at it for twenty minutes, so it was time to turn up the heat. “Do you really think I’d go through all this trouble to interview you here if it was just about a couple of broken mailboxes? Well, more than a couple of broken mailboxes. Anyway, that’s not what I’m after.”
Harden continued to squirm. “I wasn’t there.”
“Yes, you were.”
Sweat on his forehead. “I swear I wasn’t.”
“You were there.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I saw you on CCTV.”
A long pause. “It wasn’t me.”
“Okay, it wasn’t you.”
The kid’s face brightened. “I can go?”
“No, you can’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Because I saw you on tape, and what I saw matters more than what you say.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Dash, your buddies and you have been vandalizing mailboxes, walls, street signs, and buildings in Greenbury for a long time. Then you run back to Hamilton, where you think you’re safe. Not this time. Just tell the truth and you’re done here.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Yes, you were.” Decker poured the kid a drink of water. “Son, the first one of your gang to tell the truth gets the most leniency, because you’re all going to be charged. I know that you know about the dead body. That means I bump up the charges from destruction of property—federal property—to murder—”
The kid jumped out of his seat. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I believe you, Dash.” The kid was quiet. “Come on. Sit back down.”
The kid cooperated.
“Tell me what you know about it.”
More sweat on his pimply forehead. “Sir, I don’t know anything about a dead body.”
Decker looked at Lennie and gave her a slight eye roll. “Dash, I think you’re a good kid. You’re the first one who came in to talk to us. And that’s why you’ll get leniency if you start telling me what really happened. If you don’t talk, you’ll force my hand. Then I go over to the next interview room, where my colleague is making the same offer to Chris Gingold.”
“I don’t need an offer.” He bounced his leg up and down. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Okay, you didn’t do anything. Tell me what you know.”
“I know my rights. I can ask for a lawyer.”
“I haven’t charged you with anything. But if I do charge you and you get a lawyer, he or she is going to tell you the same thing. Start talking. It’s your best chance. Otherwise all of you will be charged with murder. You were on the tape; you were all there.”
“If there really is a tape, then you’d know that we had nothing to do with it.”
Decker’s thoughts whirled around for a split second. “How would I know that?”
A long pause. “That’s all I got to say.”
Decker sighed. “I’m a good guy, Dash, so I’m going to be honest with you. And it’s just between you and me.”
The kid was silent.
“There are gaps in the tape. We can see you swinging at the mailboxes, but we didn’t get a clear picture of what happened to the body.”
“Then you have no evidence against me.”
“We have circumstantial evidence. We have you boys swinging at anything upright, and with a track record like yours, it’ll carry weight. It doesn’t take a whole lot of smarts to infer what else you did with those baseball bats.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.” His voice cracked.
“I believe you, son. But you’re not giving me much to work with.”
The wheels were turning in his peabrain. “What happens to me if I tell you that we saw the body and then we all got spooked and took off?”
“Is that the truth?”
Harden nodded.
“You need to answer yes or no for the tape. Did you see the body while you were on Canterbury Lane while you and your friends were vandalizing mailboxes?”
The kid nodded again.
“Dash, you need to answer yes or no.”
“Yes. Okay … okay.” He exhaled, sighed, exhaled again. “We were … you know.”
“I do know, but you need to tell me for the tape.”
“Having a little fun.”
“What do you mean by having a little fun, Dash?”
“Okay … okay. We were just, you know …”
“Dash, let’s get this moving. Just say what you were doing, okay?”
“Whopping down mailboxes. I mean, it’s no big deal. It’s not like we were busting headlights or something.”
Decker had had calls about busted head- and taillights. Be easy to goad him into talking about that, but right now, all he cared about was Brady Neil. “Go on.”
“Life is so fucking boring! My mom smokes pot all the time, my stepdad drinks, and whenever they get mad or drunk or stoned, which is all the time, I’m the fucking punching bag. And don’t tell me to go to Social Services. I’ve smoked that doobie. It’s useless. I got no choice but to live at home. I get a bed, food, and heat in the winter. I’m working toward a car. Once I get a set of wheels, I’m never coming back.”
“You won’t have a job if the courts find out what you’ve been doing.”
“Meaning I’m fucked no matter what.”
“Not necessarily, Dash. If you promise to stop whacking the mailboxes, you can walk out of here. But, first, you have to tell me about the dead body.”
Harden looked down. “I saw it first—at the corner house with the woods in back.” His eyes got a faraway look. “Scared the shit out of me. I came back and told the bros and we all went over to look. Then we heard something and took off.”
“Heard what?”
“I dunno. It sounded like it was coming from the woods. We just took off.”
“What time was this?”
“Around three.”
“Three in the morning? As in today?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you identify the body?” No answer at first. “Dash, do you know who the dead—”
“Yeah, Brady Neil.”
“You knew that the body was Brady Neil?”
“Not at first. When I got there, the body was lying facedown. Riley turned him over.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“To see who it was. To see if he was alive. He wasn’t. That’s when I saw it was Brady. His head was … caved in.” A long pause. “We took off.”
“How’d you know Brady?”
“Just from hanging around.”
“Did Brady sell you drugs?”
“No.”
“His mom says he had cash. What do you know about that?”
The kid averted his eyes. “Nothing.”
“What do you know, Dash? It’s all going to come out anyway. I might as well hear it from you first.”
“I don’t know anything!”
Decker didn’t speak. He exchanged glances with Lennie. She had been calm throughout the interview and had been taking a lot of notes. If Brady Neil wasn’t a dealer or a poker champ or hadn’t made a lucky bet on the horses, there was only one other way where a kid could get easy cash.
Decker said, “By any chance, did Brady pay you for stolen property?”
