“Anything, guys. This is serious.”
“Spit it out,” said Al Nussbaum.
Lance said, “I dunno, but maybe they live close by.”
“Why do you say that?” said Sue Kramer.
“Because I seen ’em leaving and walking out to the parking lot and keep going onto the street. No one picked ’em up in a car, y’know?”
“Leaving at which exit?”
“The one that goes out to the parking lot.”
Al Nussbaum said, “Three exits go out to the parking lot, Lance.”
“The one near the garbage,” said Lance.
Fernie Reyes glanced at his partner and left.
No body in the Dumpsters out back near the eastern exit.
Five more hours of neighborhood canvass finally ID’d the two boys. Both of them lived in a low-income housing project set like a scar across the scrubby park that paralleled the rear of the mall. Two hundred shoddily built, federally financed one-bedroom units distributed among a quartet of three-story buildings, ringed by chain-link fencing in which dozens of holes had been cut. A scruffy, prisonlike place well known by uniforms who patrolled the area- 415 City, they called it, after the penal code for disturbing the peace.
The manager of Building 4 watched the video for a second and pointed to the smaller boy. “Troy Turner. You guys been out here before on him. Last week, matter of fact.”
“Really,” said Sue Kramer.
“Yeah. He smacked his mother with a dinner plate, busted up the side of her face.” The manager massaged his own unshaved cheek. “Before that, he was scaring some of the little kids.”
“Scaring them how?”
“Grabbing and shoving, waving a knife. You guys shoulda locked him up. So what’d he do?”
“Who’s the bigger one?” said Reyes.
“ Randolph Duchay. Kind of a retard but he doesn’t cause problems. He done something, it’s probably ’causea Troy.”
“How old are they?” said Fernie Reyes.
“Lemme see,” said the manager. “ Troy ’s twelve I think, maybe the other one’s thirteen.”
CHAPTER 3
The detectives found the boys in the park.
There they were, sitting in the dark on some swings, smoking, the lighted ends of their cigarettes orange fireflies. Sue Kramer could smell the beer from yards away. As she and Reyes approached, Rand Duchay tossed his can of Bud onto the grass, but the smaller one, Troy Turner, didn’t even try to hide it.
Taking a deep swig as she came face-to-face with him. Staring right back at her with the coldest fuck-you eyes she’d seen in a long time.
Ignore the eyes and he was a surprisingly small, frail-looking kid with pipe-stem arms and a pale triangular face under a mop of untrimmed dirty-blond hair. He’d shaved his head clean at the sides, which made the top-growth look even bigger. The manager had said he was twelve; he could’ve passed for younger.
Randolph Duchay was good-sized and broad-shouldered, with wavy, short brown hair and a puffy, thick-lipped face plagued by wet-looking zits. His arms had already started to pop veins and show some definition. Him, Sue would’ve placed at fifteen or sixteen.
Big and
She moved right in on him, pointed a finger in his face. “Where’s Kristal Malley?”
Randolph Duchay shook his head. Started to cry.
“Where is she?” she demanded.
The kid’s shoulders rose and fell. He slammed his eyes shut and began rocking.
She hauled him to his feet. Fernie was doing the same to Troy Turner, asking the same question.
Turner tolerated being frisked with passivity. His face was as blank as a sidewalk.
Sue put pressure on Duchay’s arm. The kid’s biceps were rock hard; if he resisted he’d be a challenge. Her gun was on her hip, holstered, out of reach. “Where the hell
“ Rand,” said Troy Turner. “He ain’t no Randy.”
“Where’s Kristal, Rand?”
No response. She squeezed harder, dug her nails in. Duchay squawked and pointed to the left. Past the swings and across the play area to a pair of cinder-block public lavatories.
“She’s in the bathroom?” said Fernie Reyes.
Rand Duchay shook his head.
“Where
Duchay pointed in the same direction.
But he was looking somewhere else. To the right of the lavs. South side of the cinder block, where a corner of dark metal stuck out.
Park Dumpsters. Oh, Lord.
She cuffed Duchay and put him in the back of the Crown Victoria. Ran over to look. By the time she got back, Troy was cuffed, too. Sitting next to his bud, still unruffled.
Fernie waited outside the car. When he saw her he raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
Sue shook her head.
He called the coroner.
The boys had made no attempt to conceal. Kristal’s body lay atop five days’ worth of park refuse, fully clothed but with one shoe off. The white sock underneath was grimy at the toe. The child’s neck was broken like that of a cast-off doll. Delicate neck like that, Sue figured- hoped- she had died instantaneously. Several days later the coroner verified her guess: several broken cervical vertebrae, a ruptured windpipe, concomitant cranial bleeding. The body also bore two dozen bruises and internal injuries that could have proved fatal. No evidence of sexual assault.
“Does it really matter?” said the pathologist who’d done the post. A usually tough guy named Banerjee. When he reported to Sue and Fernie he looked defeated and old.
Placed in a holding cell at the station, Rand-not-Randy Duchay hunched, immobile and silent. He had stopped crying and his eyes were glassy and trancelike. His cell stank. Sue had smelled that feral reek plenty of times. Fear, guilt, hormones, whatever.
Troy Turner’s cell smelled faintly of beer. The cans the detectives had found indicated each boy had downed three Buds. With Troy ’s body weight, not an insignificant amount, but there was nothing spacey about him. Dry- eyed, calm. He spent the ride to the station glancing out the window of the unmarked as it passed through dark Valley streets. As if this were a field trip.
When Sue asked him if there was anything he wanted to say, he gave a strange little grunting noise.
A grumpy old man’s sound- annoyed. Like they’d messed up his plans.
“What’s that, Troy?”
