“Our audience is growin’, boss-man.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Another week and we’ll have a big enough fan base to take this show on the road.”
Cowboy and I sat in the living room, couldn’t be bothered sitting out on the porch being pestered by reporters and the righteous. Ray made us coffee and then disappeared upstairs with his sister. She was brighter today but shooing away Frank Gibbons hadn’t solved the main problem and I thought she’d looked more drawn than when we first met in the hospital. Low murmurs floated from the sitting room down the stairwell.
“Anything exciting happen last night?” I asked.
“Naw.”
“Good.”
Cowboy shrugged. “That’s as may be, but it shore is borin’. After the excitement of the other day, I kinda ’spected a mite more.”
My turn to shrug. “My guess is that the gang down there could maybe muster up a full backbone between them, but no-one wants to make the first move.”
“I’d rather that than havin’ to lie in my bunk and listen to ’em sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ at three in the ay em.”
Nothing to say to that. I shrugged again and sipped.
“What’s the skinny on this kid, boss-man? He do what those folk say?”
“It sure looks like he did,” I said, “but I’ll be damned if I can find any hard facts to prove it.”
“That never stopped folks believin’ whatever they want to.”
“True. I’m trying to make some progress and I’ve got a lead to pull on today, but I need your help.” I outlined the phonecalls I wanted Cowboy to make, discounting the other six kids who weren’t at school at the time of the shooting.
Yes, I was assuming that each of them would have innocent explanations for their absences but, in the case that they didn’t, Cowboy could handle it. I had a date with a lying teenage girl.
“Good idea. Gimme sumpin to do. Here I’d bin startin’ to think ’bout shootin’ someone jes’ to break the monotony.”
Sometimes the scariest part about Cowboy was my inability to tell if he was joking.
“You think Mimi can come up?” I said instead of trying to read his mind.
“Losin’ faith in me, boss-man?”
“We can handle it for the moment, but if the crowd gets much bigger, we’re gonna want to be watching all the flanks, especially while I’m out talking to people.”
“Well, right there’s your problem. Too much talking, not enough action. You ask me, you’d get a lot further with someone’s toe wedged ‘tween a pair o’ bolt-cutters.”
“Christ, Cowboy. Did you have posters of Genghis Kahn on your wall while you were growing up?”
“Naw. Babe Ruth.”
“Really?”
“Swear to god.”
I stood. “Let’s get Mimi up here in the next couple of days. Maybe she can bring your bat and glove with her.”
“Har de har har. I’ll call and get her movin’. Whatcha gonna do now?”
“Gonna question one of the students and see why she’s lying about what she saw on the day.”
“Got your bolt-cutters?”
“Of course not.”
“Wimp.”
Imani Laweles was taller than I expected from her pictures. She was also corn-rowed, bangled, with acne-scarred cheeks, and filled out her double denim outfit in a way that belied her sixteen years. But she was quietly spoken, polite enough—she called me sir—and lacked the sneering attitude I expected of a typical teenager.
She was also nervous as hell.
We were all seated in the sunroom of the family home. Outside I could see the flagstones and terrace from the newspaper shoot, stepping down to a good-sized lawn bordered by tall hedges.
Imani was centered on the floral couch between her foster-parents, Donald and Martha Beckett. Donald leaned forward, ready to come off the couch at me at the slightest provocation, and Martha thumbed her rosary beads like there was no tomorrow. They were both too preoccupied with me to notice their foster-daughter’s constant foot-twitching and finger twisting.
“My daughter has been through this with the police, Mr Rafferty. I don’t see what good it will do.” I imagined the phrase basso profundo was created just for him.
“Harassment, that’s what it is,” Martha interjected.
I raised my eyes to the crucifix on the wall behind the couch and fished my pipe out of my pocket as I weighed the options for my next line.
“I’ll ask you kindly not to pollute my home with that foul stench,” Donald said.
I thought about making something of it, then remembered why I was here—I can get distracted—and put my pipe away. I started softly.
“I’m clarifying a few details from some of the kid’s statements. Just making sure everything adds up.”
“What’s to add up? Those two dead boys and that one still in the hospital wreaked unspeakable acts on my girl and the rest of her school. When he wakes up, he’ll pay for what he did.”
Goddamn, if he could get the projection right, he’d do a hell of a version of Ol’ Man River.
“Lordy,” Martha said and crossed herself.
While they were making their pronouncements, they both missed the blink and shudder Imani gave at the phrase ‘my girl’. She twisted her fingers harder, turned one foot on its side and placed the other on top.
“My daughter hasn’t slept right since that day. Terrible nightmares.”
“Terrible,” parroted Martha.
I blew out a breath and tried to relax. “I only have few questions.” They squinted at me. “If you’ll let me get through them, then you’ll have me out of your house, I’ll be able to smoke, and we’ll all be a lot happier, I promise.”
Martha declined to respond and started double-timing the rosary beads. Donald put his elbows on his knees, got one fist nestled in his other hand and tilted a nod at me. “Okay,” he rumbled.
I chinned him a nod and leaned back in my chair. Opened up the space a little. Imani took the moment to tuck a Conversed foot up underneath her other leg and crossed her arms. Looked at her lap.
“Imani,” I said, letting her name hang in the air until she looked up at me. “You were at school on the day of the shooting, right?”
“Mr Raff—” he tried. I threw him a look that said, ‘We’ve been through this, remember?’ He chose to rub his fist and glare at me instead.
“Imani?”
Looked like she was trying to figure out how the question might be a trap but couldn’t quite get there.
“Umm, yeah. I was.” Glanced down and nodded to herself.
“Imani?” Donald rumbled.
“Sorry,” she said. “Yes, sir. I was.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s great. You’re doing fine.” That earned me a shy smile. “And you escaped without injury?”
“Yes, sir.” She grimaced for a second before finding the shy smile again.
I forced myself to stay relaxed.
It was harder than it sounds.
“How long have you been at Columbus High?”
She glanced at Donald then. He was too busy steel-eying me to catch the gesture.
“Almost a year now.”
“You like going to school?”
“Yes sir.” Pause. “I’m working hard. There’s been a lot of time when I didn’t go to school when I was younger …” A glance to the side. “So I wasn’t sure if I would like it so much, but I do. Well, I did, until the other day.”
“Yeah. But it’s got to be tough sometimes. I remember being a teenager and wanting to be anywhere other than in school. You must want to cut class sometime.”
I didn’t think Imani would admit to being out of class, not in front of her foster parents, but I threw it out there just to see her reaction.
Before we got to that point, Donald decided to join in. “There’s two rules to living in my house, Mr Rafferty. No drugs and perfect school attendance. Imani knows this. Right, child?”
�
��Yes, sir.”
Okay, so that explained why she was cagy about not being in class on the day of the shooting, but it didn’t answer the questions of exactly where she was.
Or why.
“Did you know any of the kids who were killed? Rebecca Gibbons, for example.”
“Who?”
“The kids with the guns? You knew them?”
“No sir, not at all.”
Probing exactly who she did and didn’t know might be interesting, but there was another destination I had in mind. “It must have been scary to be in the middle of everything that was happening that day.”
It wasn’t a question, but Imani didn’t seem to notice the technicality.
“Umm … yes it was, sir. It was really scary. I wasn’t sure if I would make it back here. Back home.”
Martha beamed but kept her thumbs working hard on the rosary beads.
“Can you tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“Just describe what you saw.”
“Well …” She got started and, as I expected, gave me the exact same story that I, and everyone else in Dallas, had read in the papers. But I wasn’t interested in what she had to say, I wanted to watch her say it.
Once she began, she transformed from the agitated teenager I introduced myself to, to a smooth, composed orator.
I’d been lied to. A lot. She wasn’t the best I’d seen but she was pretty damn good.
And unless you were watching hard enough to notice the slight foot tap and the constant eye flicks to the high left, you’d never know that she was making the whole thing up. Given how many times she must have told this story already, I wasn’t surprised at how good she was.
“What about Bradley Wright?” I said, interrupting her in the middle of a particularly touching line about being led to safety and knowing that she would be re-united with her family.
“Umm … what? I mean, I’m sorry, sir?”
“Bradley Wright. The boy indicted to stand trial on murder charges.”
The swallow she gave must have sounded like an explosion to her, but Mom and Dad were so busy watching me that they didn’t notice.
“What about him?”
“How do you know him?”
“Umm, I don’t really know him. I maybe saw him in the playground once or twice, but that’s it.”
“You saw him in the playground during the shooting?”
“Whaat? No. No. I didn’t see him at all that day. I was in my classroom with everyone else. No, I meant I had seen him around the school. Before the day of the …”
“Okay,” I said.
We all waited a few seconds. When they started shooting me questioning looks, I decided it was now or never.
“Imani, why are you lying to me?”
“Whaaa—” Imani started, before being drowned out by another “Lordy!” from Martha and Donald’s “How dare you!” He was on his feet and stabbing a fat finger in my direction. I stayed on my butt, hoping that I could avoid getting spun off on a tangent. Or into a fist fight. We were about even in height but I bet he had forty pounds on me and I didn’t want to have to pistol whip him in front of his family.
Bad form, thinking like that. Probably get me hurt one day.
“Imani, you know something else about what happened don’t you?” I asked.
“No, no, no. I don’t know nothin ….”
“That’s enough, Mr Rafferty.”
I could barely hear Imani around Donald’s bulk as he advanced, and as he got right up close, I stood in case he decided he wanted to take a swing at me.
I kept trying. “What is it, Imani? What happened on the day that you haven’t told anyone about?”
Donald backed me up to the door into the living room. “Get out of my house now, Mr Rafferty. Before I call the police.” I hesitated a step, tried to bluff him, and he called over his shoulder. “Honey. Call 911. Tell them we have an intruder in our house and he’s threatening our teenage daughter.”
“Lordy!”
I patted the air. “Okay. Okay. I’m going.”
He slammed the heavy door behind me, probably watched me through the peephole as I headed across the street to the car.
Sat on the hood and treated myself to a pipe. I was confident the attendance registers were correct, that Imani wasn’t in school on the day, and her whole story was a smokescreen.
Why?
Just to lie to her parents about her school attendance? Maybe, but it didn’t seem right. And the way she reacted to my question about Bradley and seeing him in the rec-area during the shooting, that was definitely a thread that needed unraveling.
By the time I finished my pipe and was heading home, I was pretty certain that not only did Imani know that Bradley was involved, she was protecting him. I didn’t yet know from what or why, but I would.
Only a matter of time now.
Chapter 23
I didn’t come up with any brilliant ideas about Imani’s involvement in the shooting for the rest of the weekend, and there wasn’t anything exciting waiting for me at the office, so on Monday morning I rolled up to the cop shop. I thought it could be prudent to talk to someone who should know her a damn sight better than I did.
It wouldn’t go well, but how was I to know?
Ed wasn’t in his office—probably a good thing, given our last conversation—so I headed around the corner, and stuck my head into the Homicide report writing room.
Ricco was sitting next to a tiny desk near the window, looking over the shoulder of a fuzzy-cheeked officer banging away on a typewriter old enough to have seen Oswald’s arrest details.
I made it all the way across the room before Ricco noticed me. He rolled his eyes in return, held up a finger. I nodded and walked to the coffee machine to wait for him.
Eight minutes later, he peacocked his way down the corridor, holding a mug that looked like it needed a forensics assessment, and re-filled it.
We both sipped and grimaced.
“Damn, this coffee is shit, Rafferty,” Ricco said.
I shrugged. He was right.
“What’s up?” Ricco said.
“Imani Laweles. What do you figure her for?”
“Who? Columbus High’s Little Miss Popular?”
“Yeah, that’s her. You interviewed her on the day. What’s your impression?”
Ricco squinted at me, checked a wristwatch underneath a purple shirt sleeve. I assumed that he had a lemon suit coat that matched his pants strung over a chair somewhere.
“Why?” he asked. “What you got?”
“I asked you first. Seriously,” I said, when I saw Ricco’s look, “I’ll tell you, but I’d rather hear your thoughts without you knowing what I’m looking for.”
“That’s fair.” He nodded. “Uh, she was one of the kids rescued by the cops soon as the shooters were dead. Obviously, we didn’t know about the Wright kid at that point.”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, she was shit-scared, lucky to be alive, and … shit, I don’t know, Rafferty. You gotta give me something.”
“Not yet. What did she say happened?”
Ricco ran me through her story. Another carbon copy of everything that had been reported over the past three weeks.
“And you believe her?” I asked.
“Any reason I shouldn’t?” He grinned then dropped the smile. “Tell the truth, something about her did bug me, but I couldn’t figure out what. So I did a little digging.”
“And?”
“She’s in the system.”
“Do tell.”
“Yup. Juvie stuff. Some shoplifting, and a coupla possession charges. Got the details from Houston PD.”
“Go on.”
“They all came from when she was living on the streets down there, after runnin’ away from home. Prob’ly saved her life, though.”
“Bad home life.”
“Majorly fucked-up. Stepdad—no-one knows what happened to her real father—weightlifter and
steroid junkie, ran around as an enforcer for one of the local crime mobs.”
“The Mob?”
“Fuck, no. Nothing that organized. Just a bunch of local mouth-breathers running stolen car parts, drugs—speed and angel dust mainly—and a string of the scuzziest whorehouses in the city. These guys made the Dallas DeathStars look white-collar.
“Anyway, step-daddy liked to bring his work home with him. Usually he’d just wale away on Momma. Presumably the kids, too. ‘Cept this particular night, he came home jacked up on some shit and butchered all five of them. When the cops finally busted down the door a day later, he was sitting in the kitchen with five heads lined up by size on the floor in front of him.”
“Holy shit.”
“Uh huh. She’d been there, Imani would have been the sixth. Nothin’ surer.”
“How’d she get to Dallas?”
“After her last possession bust, Social Work got involved. Helped get her clean, that’s what it looks like, got her into a shelter. Spent eighteen months there before the family she’s with now decided to foster her.”
“Lucky for her.”
“You know how rare it is for a fifteen-year old to get fostered? Like winning the fucking lottery. The sorta luck I don’t got, I’ll tell you that. Add to that the family wanted to take her and she’s the luckiest girl in the country. She don’t wanna be fucking that up.”
“I guess so. Dad seems a little intense.”
“Oh shit, Rafferty. You haven’t been rattling that hornet’s nest, have you?” Ricco obviously didn’t believe my head shake. “Why you gotta go and make our jobs harder? Why?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Her foster father is the Chief’s brother-in-law.”
“Chief who?”
“Chief of Police, numb-nuts. Whatever you do, just leave that one alone.”
“Okay, okay. Calm down. Back to the girl. All you’ve given me so far are the facts.” Ricco nodded. “What’s your gut tell you?”
“Nuh huh. You gotta spill. What’re you looking for?”
Wright & Wrong Page 17
