“Well, there was one reason. I had to tie up the kid.”
Crowder sat perfectly still and stared unblinkingly at Derek. He eyed him until Derek dropped his gaze, eyed him while Derek admired the floor, and when Derek looked back up he was still being stared in the face by Crowder.
The man cleared his throat and when he spoke, his voice was dead calm. “What did you just say?”
“I said I had to tie up the kid so I could get away, and between the thing with the parents and then almost getting my ass beat by a thirteen-year-old and tying her up and worrying about escaping, I guess getting the money and jewelry just slipped my mind.”
“It slipped your mind.”
Derek nodded.
“While you were tying up the kid.”
Nodded again.
“So you could make your getaway.”
“Well, yes. I couldn’t very well leave her running around or she would have called the cops the second I was out the door.”
Crowder cleared his throat a second time and finally dragged his gaze away from Derek’s face, a development for which Derek was more grateful than he would ever have imagined possible.
Then the man started thrumming his fingers on the desk like he’d done before and Derek cringed inwardly, and maybe even outwardly a little.
“So what you’re telling me,” Crowder finally said, “is you murdered two people in the course of committing a home invasion, and you left an eyewitness alive?”
“She-she’s just a kid. I couldn’t…I mean, she’s just a kid.”
“Just a kid.”
“She’s probably not even a teenager yet.”
“Right. Because kids are blind.”
Derek blinked. “What? What are you talking about?”
Crowder shook his head in disgust. “I assume she saw you?”
“Of course she saw me. She came out of nowhere and when she saw her parents lying dead on the floor she came at me just like her father had. You asked before if the wife was the one that gave me this?” He reached up and trailed the tips of his fingers over the swollen lump on the side of his face. “It was the kid.”
He took a deep breath and said, “So, yes, I had to tie her up so I could get away. I’m sorry about the empty backpack but I guess I panicked. All I could think of was how badly I needed to get back here so you could tell me what to do.”
“You guess you panicked.”
Derek shrugged. “Well, yeah.”
“You panicked, and instead of eliminating the only witness to a double homicide and then getting me my money, which was the sole reason you were even inside the house to begin with, instead of doing what any idiot would have known to do, instead of doing those things you left alive the person who could ID you and send you to the electric chair and then ran out of the house empty-handed, like a dog with its tail between its legs.”
“I couldn’t kill a kid. She was completely innocent, how could I kill her?” Derek literally could not believe what Crowder was suggesting. Sure, the man was a criminal, but to suggest shooting a child with absolutely no provocation? He couldn’t fathom anyone doing that.
“Of course,” Crowder said. “She’s just a kid. I understand.”
Derek swallowed heavily.
Crowder continued, still speaking in a tone of exaggerated calm. “Did you remember to take the gun with you when you left the house?”
“Sure.” He decided to skip the part about almost walking away without it. “I have it in my waistband, right at the small of my back.”
“Good. Let me take a look at it, would you?”
Derek reached behind his back and under his shirt, and Crowder said, “Nice and easy, now, we don’t want anyone else getting shot.”
He handed it over and Crowder ejected the magazine. Then he glanced disinterestedly at the unloaded weapon before pressing a button on his phone.
Instantly the door opened behind Derek and one of the goons who’d kicked his ass this morning entered the room. “You rang?” the goon said.
Crowder tossed him the weapon and the man caught it with one beefy paw. “Lose this,” Crowder said, “and make sure it’s never found.”
The goon nodded once and backed out of the room. When he’d closed the door, Crowder shrugged and said, “The serial number’s been scratched off the gun and it was stolen to begin with, so it’s not like anyone could ever trace it. They certainly could never tie it to me, but you can’t be too careful, right?”
“Right.” Derek nodded and felt a sense of relief begin flooding his body. This was the sort of guidance he needed. Getting rid of the gun was something he would never have thought to do on his own. He would have thought he should keep it for protection, but that would be stupidity of the highest order, he now realized. If he were caught with the gun, the police could match it to the bullets fired in the McHugh home and use that match to send him straight to death row.
There was an uncomfortable silence, during which Crowder’s eyes bored into and seemingly through Derek. He seemed to be sizing Derek up somehow, like a cat eyeing a mouse. It was a withering stare, and it went on and on, and Crowder just sat behind his desk and looked at Derek, and Derek just stood in front of the desk getting more and more uncomfortable.
The relief he’d felt a moment ago evaporated, and a feeling of impending doom rushed in to take its place. Derek began to feel hot and ill, and he wasn’t sure whether that was thanks to his still-worsening dopesickness or Crowder’s fucking death stare.
The tension continued to mount and, and when Derek couldn’t take the awful silence anymore he said, “So…we’re safe now, right?”
“We?” Crowder said sardonically.
“Well, you know,
