Gun Games

by Faye Kellerman

  “Do Gabe first. If he comes up clean, the girl probably won’t be necessary. She’s been through enough. I don’t want to traumatize her further.”

  “Does Gabe use drugs?”

  “I don’t have any idea, but at least we’ll be consistent. What about Nate Asaroff?”

  “His attorney wants to deal.”

  “Asaroff is underage?”

  “Yes. And as far as I can tell, he was just there.”

  “What did he have on him when we took him in?”

  “A couple of ounces of pot, a couple of pills. He’s a good one to flip depending on what he has to tell us.”

  “Who’s with Nate now?”

  “Drew Messing.”

  Marge said, “I’ll call Drew as soon as I get off with you.”

  “What are you doing now?” Wang asked.

  Oliver said, “We just pulled warrants on Lashay, Cole, and Kerkin. We’re on our way to Bell and Wakefield to check out their lockers.”

  “Want me to help you out?” Wang asked.

  Marge said, “I’d like you to meet us there. You can pick up the search warrant for Dylan Lashay’s house and start going through it.”

  “No problem. What’s the school’s address?”

  Marge gave it to him and hung up. Her next call was to the station house. Within a minute, Andrew Messing was on the line. Marge spoke. “Gabe Whitman just IDed Nate Asaroff. I heard his attorney wants a deal.”

  “You heard correctly, Sergeant,” Messing drawled out. “The Loo put in a call to someone from the D.A.’s office to come down and speak to the parents. The kids are flipping faster than pancakes.”

  “What does Asaroff’s attorney want?”

  “All charges against him dropped in exchange for his story. He also pointed out that Nate is a minor. He’s two months shy of eighteen.”

  “We could try him as an adult. As far as the charges, it depends on what he has to say and what the D.A. thinks. Call me back after you’ve got him on tape.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Marge disconnected the cell just as Oliver pulled into the visitors’ parking lot. He hunted around for a space. “Here we go.” He slid the car into a slot and shut off the motor. “I think Martin Punsche might be a little upset by our drop-in visit.”

  “He may be miffed.”

  “I wonder how he’ll spin this latest turn of events to B and W’s full-tuition-paying parents.”

  A moment of silence, then Marge snapped her fingers. “I got it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What the kids did wasn’t an attempted kidnapping at all.” She grinned. “It was a performance art project.”

  “Perfect.” Oliver opened the car door. “Too bad Dylan didn’t have a camcorder. I’m sure lots of museums would have paid top dollar for the video.”

  Before coming to Homicide, Decker had worked a number of detective details, specifically six years in Juvenile and Sex Crimes with Marge Dunn. He had interviewed scores of teenaged felons whose emotional state ran the gamut from cocky to scared witless. But in all those years, Decker had never seen a girl as repentant as Darla Holbein. She started the interview with the following statement.

  “I deserve to burn in hell.”

  Marie Holbein, Darla’s mother, was unmoved. “If you don’t get your act together, Darla, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Stop with the dramatics and tell the lieutenant what happened this morning.”

  The girl mumbled something, and her father told her to speak up.

  Darla wiped her eyes. “I just want to really say that I’m truly sorry. If the girl wants to see me and yell at me or hit me or . . . I am willing to do that. I would also be happy to do community service at the charity of her choice. And if she wants me to go to jail, I can do that, too. I’m not afraid of jail, because I can do penance in jail. I am afraid of God.”

  “Amen,” Marie said.

  “Amen,” echoed Dominick, her father.

  “I take full responsibility for my wrongdoing.” Her tears were in full force now. “I am very grateful that Jesus has given me this chance to repent and to make things whole again. Our Lord died on the cross for our sins. I just want everyone to know that.”

  Marie bit her lip as her eyes became wet. “Jesus will forgive you if you do true penance. So start by telling the detectives what happened.”

  By now, both mother and daughter were crying silently. Darla said, “I slept over Cam’s house. We have a project in Government that we’ve been working on. It was due today. So that’s why I slept over her house.” She regarded Wynona and then Decker. “When we have a group assignment, we always work together, although I do most of the work. I’m not complaining, just telling you how it is.”

  Wynona said, “Cameron is a good friend of yours?”

  Darla looked at her mother. “We’ve known each other forever. We met as little kids in church. We went to all the socials together. She’s a lot of fun. She’s also gorgeous and attracts a lot of male attention.”

  “Being too pretty is the work of the devil,” Marie said. “Look at the trouble it got her into.”

  “She’s popular, yes, but it’s more than looks, Mama. She’s charismatic. Everyone gravitates to her. It can be fun to be her friend.”

  She kneaded her hands.

  “About six years ago, her parents quit the church.” She looked to her mother for confirmation. “About six years, right?”

  “Yes. About.”

  “First her parents quit going to church. Then a few months later, they separated. It was very hard on Cameron. Then her mom got a younger boyfriend, and her dad got a real young girlfriend. Her parents just like . . . freaked. Cameron said they started drinking a lot—right in front of her.”

  “My daughter never told me,” Marie said. “Otherwise I would have called Social Services on them.”

  Precisely why the girl didn’t tell you, Decker thought. “So Cameron was around twelve when all this happened?”

  “Yes,” Darla said. “We were in seventh grade. At one point, they were all living in the house together—her parents and the boyfriend and the girlfriend. It was really hard on Cam. I think that’s when she started smoking pot. I told her to stop, that drugs were the work of the devil, but she didn’t listen. Pot was her refuge.”

  Marie said, “You should have told us immediately. We could have helped her.”

  Dominick said, “Even if the law wouldn’t intervene, the church could have helped.”

  “I realize that now, Papa, but I was a little kid.”

  “You still are a child,” Quiller pointed out. “If you tell the truth, I’m sure the law will take that into consideration.”

  “I am telling the truth,” Darla said. “It is not only evil to lie, it’s too hard.” She wiped her eyes. “I figured the best thing I could do for Cameron was to be a friend and try to bring her back into the church.”

  “Okay,” Decker said.

  “The home situation lasted around a year and a half. Then right around eighth grade, Cam’s parents decided to get back together.”

  Darla put her hand to her mouth.

  “Something major happened, though. Cameron wouldn’t tell me, but I’m sure it had to do with her mother’s boyfriend. She went from hating him to liking him. They became real . . . close. You’d have to be an idiot not to know what was going on.”

  The tears began to fall.

  “She changed. Cameron had always been an okay student if she worked hard. But she stopped working. She’s smart but not smart enough to keep her grades up and do drugs at the same time. She started flirting with the smart boys to get help from them. That’s how it started with Dylan. Despite what you think of Dylan, he’s really smart.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Decker said.

  “He was kind of a nerd when she met him. He was smitten with her. All through ninth grade, he’d follow her around like a puppy dog. She introduced him to sex and drugs. Then somewhere during tenth grade, thi
ngs reversed. Dylan started, like, working out. He grew taller. He also became real buff.”

  “Steroids?” Wynona asked.

  “Yes. Steroids, too. Dylan became popular with guys as well as the girls. He started cultivating this bad-boy image. He attracted a loyal band of followers. Drugs were a real big part of it. Dylan had money. He bought drugs and started giving them away for free. Then later he started charging for them, not too much at first, just to cover his own expenses. He said he wasn’t making any money. Then later on, he started charging more money, especially for crystal meth.” She looked away. “Once you’re hooked on meth, it’s hard to turn back.”

  Her eyes got wet.

  “Cameron knew I didn’t have enough money to . . . get what I needed. She gave me some, but she said there were other ways I could earn the money.” She looked down. “So I did whatever she told me to do. I really needed the stuff.” Her lower lip curled under and her face broke down. “It was all very humiliating.”

  She started to sob. Her mother put her hand on her head and leaned over and kissed her cheek. “God will love you if you truly repent.”

  “I do, Mama, I do truly repent. I just need a little help.”

  Quiller said, “You can see that the girl needs rehab, not jail.”

  “Jesus loves us all, Darla, saints and sinners,” her father told her.

  Wiping her eyes on her sleeves, Darla said, “Amen.”

  “You must confess your sins.”

  “I will, Papa, I promise I will.”

  “If you sincerely repent, God will forgive you,” Marie reemphasized. “But part of atonement is admitting all your sins. You must tell the detectives what happened this morning.”

  Amen to that, Decker thought. He said, “We got up to the part where you slept over at Cameron’s house because you were working on a project together.”

  Darla nodded and wiped her eyes. “Cameron was in a bad mood this morning. She met this boy . . .” She looked at Decker. “His name was Chris but then this morning, he said his name was Gabriel and that his father was like the real Mafia.” She looked to Decker for confirmation, but he didn’t respond.

  “Go on,” Wynona said.

  “Cameron really liked him. He was cute and tall . . . taller than Dylan. She liked that. Dylan’s well built, but he’s on the shorter side. But the true reason Cameron liked him was because he stood up to Dylan. He knew way more about guns than Dylan did. Dylan thinks he’s like an expert on guns.” She turned to Decker. “How does your foster son know so much about guns?”

  “That’s none of your business, Darla,” her mother said. “Let’s get on with this so we can figure out your future.”

  Darla sighed. “Anyway, she liked him, but didn’t do anything about it. Then one day she met him at a bus stop. She took that as an omen that something was meant to be. Whatever that means I don’t know, but that’s what she told me. She told me he was in a rock band and he was going to be famous one day. She had invited him to her house to get high, but he turned her down, saying that he had an important audition. It sounded like, you know, BS to me but I didn’t say anything.” She looked at Decker. “Is he in a rock band?”

  Dominick said, “Darla, stop asking questions and just tell the detectives what happened.”

  The girl blushed. “Anyway, he didn’t go to her house, but he asked for her phone number. She took his phone number, too. She expected him to call her, but he never did. She texted him, but it was the wrong number. Cam got real upset. She thought he was shining her on and she’s not used to that. Then . . . oh boy . . . she saw him with another girl—some ugly dumb brownie . . . that’s how Cam described her. She saw them kiss. They were clearly an item. It made her very mad . . . that he lied to her. More than that, that he liked a brownie over her. It was like instant hatred.”

  Wynona nodded, encouraging her to go on.

  “I kept telling her to forget about it. That he was an obvious idiot, but Cam wouldn’t let go. Then she got this ‘brilliant’ idea. She told Dylan that Chris had raped her and she wanted him to avenge her honor or something stupid like that. Now Dylan’s a lot of things, but he isn’t an idiot. He didn’t believe her. He kinda laughed her off. But she kept at him. He raped me, he raped me, he raped me. Then one day . . . I was there . . . he turned to her and said . . .” She regarded her mother and father. “You might want to cover your ears.”

  Marie said, “Darla, we know bad words. We just choose not to use them. Go on already.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Dylan said to Cameron, ‘What is it, bitch? You fucked him and want me to be all jealous.’ And then he waved his hands in the air and oooohhh and laughed. Like he didn’t care at all. And maybe he didn’t.

  “So Cam said, ‘Yeah, I fucked him and he’s a hell of a lot bigger than you are.’ ” She turned to Decker. “That’s what made Dylan mad. So she got him to do what she wanted. The gang decided to crowd the girl. You know, just to scare her. So Cam called Dylan up this morning and said today was the day. I don’t know why she picked today, but she did. Probably ’cause she was in a bad mood.”

  The tears returned.

  “So we all met early in front of the place where Cam saw Chris with the girl. And we saw her coming to the front door. She pulled out her phone. And before she could make a call, Dylan came up from behind and put a gun to her back. Cam grabbed the phone and threw it in the bushes. Then we surrounded her and said stupid things.”

  “What kind of stupid things?” Wynona asked.

  Darla’s voice was choked with sobs. “It was all a big joke just to scare her. We were going to let her go.”

  “What kind of stupid things?”

  “Dylan told her that he was going to . . . you know.” Silence. “That he was going to take her and like . . .” She looked away. “That he was gonna like . . . and then Cam said that it was like . . . something like . . . a gangbang—”

  Her mother gasped.

  “He wasn’t really gonna do it,” Darla insisted. “The whole thing was just to scare her.”

  Wynona said, “To scare her with a gun?”

  “It wasn’t loaded!” Darla insisted.

  “Did he threaten to shoot her?”

  “I don’t remember what was said.” More tears. “Cameron and Dylan were telling her all sorts of stuff. And it was Dylan’s idea to bring out the gun. He loves guns.”

  “And you thought it was okay to threaten her with a gun?” Wynona said.

  “No, it’s not okay. It’s terrible!” She started crying. “I was terrible. But I knew that the gun wasn’t loaded, so I wasn’t really, like, scared for her.”

  “It wasn’t loaded?”

  “I found out later it was loaded when Chris fired the gun. But I swear I didn’t know about it until that moment. I would have never . . . you know . . .” She looked at her parents. “I swear I didn’t know.”

  “But you saw Dylan take out a gun.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he do with it?”

  “Put it on her back to scare her. But I swear I didn’t know it was loaded.”

  “Okay,” Wynona said. “So you crowded the girl and Dylan put a gun on her back. Then what happened.”

  “We started walking.”

  “Where were you going?”

  Darla said, “To Cameron’s house. Her parents leave for work early in the morning.”

  “What were you planning on doing to the girl at Cameron’s house?”

  “Just scare her a little.”

  “How?”

  “Just . . . you know . . .”

  “No, I don’t know. Tell me.”

  “Just talking trash to her.”

  “About gang raping her?”

  “No one was really going to hurt her. I would have never been a part of that.”

  Wynona said, “So you’re crowding the girl, Dylan has a gun at her back, and all of you are on your way to Cameron’s house.”

  She nodded.r />
  “Okay. So . . . what happened next?”

  Darla paused. “It happened so fast. We get to Greendale Park . . . then Chris appears outta nowhere . . .” The tears reappeared. “Chris and Dylan start talking . . . and Cam says to Dylan that Chris raped her.”

  “And you know that’s a lie.”

  “Yeah, of course it’s a lie.”

  “Go on.”

  “So Chris told Dylan that he never touched her. And he and Dylan are going back and forth . . . and all these accusations are flying . . . and then the gun goes off and . . . the next thing I know is Chris is pointing a gun at my face, threatening to shoot all of us. Let me tell you something honestly. Chris was way more scary than Dylan ’cause he actually fired the gun. I was petrified.” She looked at Wynona and then her lawyer. “The only one who fired a gun was Chris.”

  “And you’re sure about that.”

  “Positive!”

  “And that’s when you realized that Dylan’s gun was loaded?”

  “Exactly.”

  Wynona said, “Darla, do you know that if something happens and the gun discharges and someone gets hurt, you’re responsible for the shooting even if you thought the gun wasn’t loaded.”

  Darla nodded solemnly. “No one got hurt.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m positive. Like I said, the only one who fired the gun was Chris. And none of us were hurt so . . .”

  Wynona said, “Chris’s name is actually Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel . . . Chris . . . whatever.”

  Wynona looked at Decker who nodded. She said, “Do you know that Gabriel is in the hospital?”

  Darla’s mother became white. “What’s wrong?”

  “He was shot—”

  “No!” Darla sputtered out. Her mother gasped. Her father turned ashen. “But that’s impossible. When he left, he was fine!”

  Quiller put up his hands to silence her. “How serious?”

  Wynona said, “It’s a gunshot wound.”

  “Is it possible that the boy shot himself?”

  Decker said, “Highly improbable. From the gunshot residue on the wound, he was shot from a distance of about two and a half feet.”

  “It can’t be!” Darla was trembling. “It’s impossible.”