He pushed me away from Teddy and then turned on Vin, who was smart enough to back away without being told. Riel examined Teddy.
“You okay?” he said.
Teddy just shrugged. Sara D. ran up to him and put her arm around his waist and asked him if he was hurt. Within a couple of seconds, the rest of Teddy’s friends were crowded around him. I felt myself tense up. There were eight or nine of them, and I started to imagine what would have happened if they had showed up before Riel.
“You want to press charges?” Riel said to Teddy.
I stared at him. Whose side was he on?
Teddy laughed at the question. “So what if I do?” he said. “You’re a cop. You expect me to believe you’d play it straight, you’d let your own kid go down for assaulting me?”
“If that’s what happened,” Riel said.
Teddy shook his head. “Right,” he said.
He turned and walked away. Sara D. was still holding onto him like she thought maybe he’d fall down if she didn’t. Bailey took a long, hard look at me before he turned away, too. Annie slipped her hand into his, but he pulled away from her. The rest of them fell into step behind Bailey.
Riel turned to me. “What were you thinking?” he said. “You already hit that boy once and nearly broke his nose.”
That surprised me. I hadn’t told him what had happened at school, but obviously Mr. Gianneris had. But Riel hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe he’d decided to do what Mr. Gianneris had done—give me a break. Until now.
“It was my fault,” Vin said.
Riel looked him over with obvious distaste. He didn’t like Vin. He had never liked him.
“Teddy said something that made me mad, and I hit him,” Vin said. “He got me pinned down. Mike was just trying to get him off me. The whole thing was my fault.”
Riel looked at him for another few moments, his eyes sharp, his mouth a thin, angry line, clamped shut maybe so that he wouldn’t say something he might regret.
“I was looking for you,” Riel said to me. “Sal’s father isn’t feeling well, so I’m going to take him home and stay with him until someone else can get home. I think you’d better come with me.” He turned and looked pointedly at Vin.
“I guess I should take off,” Vin said. “See you around, Mike.”
“Yeah. See you.”
“I’m going inside to get Sal’s father,” Riel said. “Meet me at the car. You got it, Mike?”
“You heard what Vin said, right?” I said. “I was just trying—”
“Go,” Riel said.
Jeez.
I stalked past him toward the church parking lot. Vin fell into step beside me. He had to know Riel wouldn’t like that. I sure did. But he did it anyway, and I didn’t try to stop him.
“We could just take off,” I said to him when we were out of earshot of Riel.
“He told you to wait for him, Mike,” Vin said.
“We could go downtown, maybe shoot some pool.”
“Come on, Mike. If you do something like that, you’re going to piss off Riel. You don’t want to do that.”
“Says who?”
Vin shook his head. “You’ve got a nice place to live. I heard you’re doing okay in school.”
“Who told you that?”
“Sal.”
“You and Sal talked about me?”
“We used to be friends,” Vin said. “All three of us. I wanted to know how you were doing, so I asked and, yeah, we talked about you.”
“If you wanted to know how I was doing, you could have asked me.”
“I guess. But you were pretty mad at me the last time I saw you. Besides, I didn’t want to call your place. What if Riel answered? He doesn’t like me, and you know it. But he’s a good guy, Mike. Since you’ve been living with him, you’ve been doing okay. You’ve got a nice girlfriend. So far the biggest trouble you’ve been in is strictly small-time. You don’t want to mess that up, do you?”
Truthfully, the way I was feeling, I didn’t care.
“Sal wouldn’t want you to mess it up,” Vin said. “Not even on his account. So do yourself a favor. Wait at the car like Riel told you.”
“Someone killed him, Vin.”
“I know.”
“What if it was Teddy? Isn’t that why you hit him?”
“I hit him because he made it sound like Sal wasn’t my friend, like I should be glad he’s dead. But Teddy, stick someone with a knife?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. If it was Teddy, the cops will figure it out. Come on, Mike. Do the right thing.”
“Like you just did?” I said.
“Yeah, well, nobody’s perfect, huh?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Riel came out of the church again a few minutes later and started in with a lecture: What had gotten into me? Why was I going out of my way to get into trouble? He understood how I felt—he really did—it was terrible what had happened to Sal, he was such a good kid, he always worked hard, he never gave anyone a hard time, he was a real role model, the kind of person I should aspire to be.
“I’m not saying you’re a bad kid, Mike. You’re not. But it’s times like these that really show a person’s character. A man who can handle himself well when things are bad is a man who can always handle himself. You hear what I’m saying, Mike?”
Yeah, I heard. But: “Vin told you the truth. I didn’t start it.”
“Maybe,” Riel said. What did he mean: Maybe? Was he doubting me? “But from where I was standing, it looked like you were planning to finish it. What were you even doing with Vin, anyway?”
“He’s my friend,” I said.
“I thought that was over. I thought you two had gone your separate ways.”
I could have tried to explain it to him: Sal and I went back a long way. But Vin and I went back even further. We had played trucks in the sandbox together. We’d horsed around together. I had known Vin ten times longer than I had known Riel. I had known both of them longer than I had known Riel. And now Sal was gone, and if I felt like being with Vin, that was nobody’s business but mine. So what if he had messed up? He was trying to get back on track. He was going to school. He was on probation. He knew if he messed up again, he’d be in big trouble, so he wasn’t doing anything that he wasn’t supposed to be doing—well, except maybe when someone like Teddy got under his skin. But so what? Teddy got what he deserved. The main thing about Vin was that I could talk to him without always having to explain myself.
I could have tried to tell Riel that. But I didn’t think he would get it. All he saw when he looked at Vin was a guy who had done a lot of really stupid stuff and had even gotten himself locked up for it. Riel was a cop. To him, Vin was a criminal. So what was the point of talking about it? I’d only be wasting my breath.
“Well?” Riel said.
“Well what? I thought we were taking Sal’s dad home.”
Riel stared at me for a moment. “We are,” he said.
“How come you have to stay with him?”
“His only child was just murdered, Mike. He’s already sick, and this could make things worse. Sal’s mom is worried about him. She’s afraid to leave him alone right now.”
I was going to ask what she was afraid of. But then I got it. I felt sorry for Sal’s mom. If there was some way things could have been worse for her, I sure didn’t see it.
Sal’s aunt came out of the church with Sal’s dad, and together they walked over to Riel’s car. Sal’s dad didn’t look at either Riel or me. He seemed to be in a different world. His face was blank, his skin was pale, and the suit he was wearing hung on him like it was a couple of sizes too big. Riel opened the front passenger door for him, and he got in without saying a word. Sal’s aunt said that she appreciated what Riel was doing. She said that she and Maria—Sal’s mom—would get home as soon as they could, but so many people had turned up at the funeral and Maria didn’t want to leave before everyone else did. Riel told her it was no problem. He said they should take as much time as they nee
ded and that they shouldn’t worry about it. Then he nodded at me and we got into the car.
Sal’s father didn’t say a single word the whole way home, and Riel didn’t push him. He pulled up in front of the building where Sal’s parents lived, and we all got out of the car again. Sal’s father took out some keys and unlocked the main door. He climbed silently up to the top floor of the three-story building and walked down the hall to the back. But he didn’t open the door. He just stood there with the keys in his hands. Then, just like that, he started to sob.
Riel said something to him in quiet Spanish. He took the keys from Sal’s dad, handed them to me, and nodded at the door. I had to try three different keys before I found the one that unlocked the apartment. As soon as I opened the door, I knew something was wrong.
The living room had been trashed. All the cushions were off the sofas. There were magazines and newspapers everywhere. Sal’s aunt had a desk in one corner of the dining room. All the drawers were open, and it looked like every scrap of paper in them had been thrown onto the floor. Riel took one look at the mess and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Sal’s father went into the apartment and looked around like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His face was wet from crying, but his eyes were wide now as he saw what had happened.
“Bring Sal’s dad back out here into the hall,” Riel said. “Don’t let him touch anything.” Then he started talking into his phone. He was talking to the cops.
I stepped inside to get Sal’s dad, like Riel had said. But he wasn’t in the living room anymore. He had gone down the hallway that led to the bedrooms. I found him in Sal’s room, which looked like a tornado had ripped through it. There was paper everywhere. The drawers to his dresser and his desk had been ripped out, everything in them dumped out onto the floor, and the drawers thrown against the wall. His pillows had been slashed. So had his mattress. His desk lamp had been broken. There was a little book—an address book—lying open on the floor. It looked like most of the pages had been ripped out. Maybe Sal had done that. Maybe someone else had. But Sal’s father didn’t seem to notice any of that. He was kneeling down in the middle of Sal’s room, and he was picking up a picture. There was broken glass on the floor from a couple of broken picture frames, and Sal’s dad must have cut his hand on a piece of it because I saw blood on his hand. He picked up the picture—both pieces of it.
“Mr. San Miguel,” I said. “We should go back outside. John is calling the police.”
Sal’s dad kept staring at the picture. I reached out and pulled it gently out of his hands. It was a picture of Sal in his McDonald’s uniform. He was with a bunch of his coworkers. The ones on either side of him—both women—had their arms around him, and almost everyone in the picture was smiling. Someone had ripped the picture in half diagonally. No wonder his father was so upset.
“We have to leave things the way they are,” I said. I put the two halves of the picture back onto the floor and tugged on Sal’s dad’s arm, but he wouldn’t move. He bent down again and picked up the picture. Then Riel appeared.
“Mike, I told you—” he said. Then he stopped. He glanced at the torn picture Sal’s dad was holding. He said something in Spanish to Sal’s dad. He didn’t try to take the picture out of his hands. He put his hand on Sal’s dad’s shoulder and guided him out of the room and out of the apartment.
“Take him down to the car and stay with him,” Riel said. He handed me his keys.
“What about that picture?” I said.
“If whoever did this was wearing gloves, it doesn’t matter. If they weren’t—” He looked around. “—there’ll be other prints. Let him keep the picture for now.”
I led Sal’s dad downstairs and unlocked the car. He got in the front passenger seat. I got in behind the wheel.
“I’m really sorry this happened,” I said. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I felt I had to say something.
A few minutes later, a police car turned up and two uniformed cops went inside. They were in there for a while. Then a taxi pulled up, and Susan and Sal’s mom got out. They came over to the car, and I got out.
“John’s inside,” I said.
“I know,” Susan said. “He called me and asked me to bring Maria home. He wants her to check if anything valuable is missing.”
Sal’s mother opened the passenger door and said something to Sal’s dad. He didn’t answer. She closed the door again and went into the apartment building. She was in there a long time. While she was gone, a Forensic Ident truck drove up and some more cops went inside. It seemed like forever before Riel and Sal’s mom came out again. Riel opened one of the rear doors, and Sal’s mom got in. I climbed out from behind the steering wheel.
“We’re taking Sal’s parents to our place for a while,” Riel said to me.
“Why would anyone break into Sal’s apartment?” I said. I was so angry that I was shaking. “Do you think it was the person who killed Sal?” But no, as soon as I said that, I knew I was wrong. Teddy and the rest of them had been at the funeral. They’d been there the whole time.
“It’s possible,” Riel said. “I put in a call to Dave. Or maybe it was someone who saw the notice in the newspaper. It happens sometimes—someone sees a death notice in the paper. They see when the funeral is going to be and they figure that no one will be home—it’s the perfect time for a break-in.”
“Did they take a lot of stuff?”
“Some jewelry. Approximately one hundred dollars in cash. Sal’s computer.”
“His laptop?” I said. Sal had bought it second hand. It only cost him a couple of hundred dollars, but, still, he had put in a lot of hours over the summer so he could afford it.
Riel nodded grimly.
“Thieves like that, they’re worse than vultures. They prey on people when they’re at their most vulnerable. If you ask me, that makes them the lowest of the low. Get in the car, Mike.”
I climbed in back beside Susan.
The drive from Sal’s aunt’s apartment to Riel’s house didn’t take long, but it felt like forever. The only person who said anything was Riel, and it was all in Spanish. I think he was explaining to Sal’s parents what the police were doing because the only word I recognized was policia, and he said it a couple of times. When we finally got to the house, Sal’s mom had to touch Sal’s dad’s arm before he realized that the car had stopped. He was still holding the ripped picture. He’d been staring at it all the way to the house.
We all went inside, and Susan made tea for everyone. I didn’t know what to say, but Susan and Riel managed to keep a conversation going with Sal’s mom. She started to cry a couple of times, but that didn’t seem to make them uncomfortable. Susan got a box of tissues from the kitchen and put it on the table near Sal’s mom. I guess they figured crying was normal under the circumstances, and I guess they were right.
Eventually the phone rang and Riel answered it. When he finished the call, he said, “I can take you home now if you’d like.” Sal’s mom hugged Susan. On the way out, Sal’s dad handed me the ripped photograph. I didn’t know if he wanted me to look at it or say something about it or what. But it turned out he was giving it to me. Maybe it was too hard for him to look at. Maybe he didn’t want it anymore because it was ruined, so maybe he wanted me to throw it out. I looked at it. Sal was smiling out at the camera. When I went upstairs to go get changed for work, I took the picture with me and put it in the top drawer of my desk. Maybe it was ripped, but it was still Sal, and I didn’t have any recent pictures of him.
The next morning when I got up, Riel was waiting for me in the kitchen. He handed me the newspaper, which was open to a page with a picture of—guess who?—me on it. The caption underneath the picture said my name and that I was the best friend of Toronto’s “latest victim of youth crime.” The article that went with the picture quoted me as saying that the killer probably went to my school.
“That’s why you have to be careful about talking to reporters,” Riel said. “Somethi
ng like that just gets people all worked up.”
“I said probably,” I said. “But I bet I’m right. I bet it is someone from my school. I bet it’s Teddy.”
“Just steer clear of reporters, Mike,” Riel said. “When we know something for sure, we’ll talk to them.”
“When we know something?” I said, and, yeah, I guess it came off sounding sarcastic, because Riel gave me a sharp look.
“It’s not my case, Mike,” Riel said. “It’s not even my area anymore.”
Right.
Going to school after the funeral was even worse than going to school the day after Sal had died. That day, people had been in shock. People had been crying. People had been talking about Sal. They’d said nice things about him. But when I walked into school on Tuesday morning, after the funeral, everything was back to normal. Nobody was talking about Sal. Nobody was crying over him. It was like he had never existed. And then an announcement came over the PA system: we were going to have a special assembly. What made it special was that the cops were there—a couple of uniforms and two plainclothes guys. One of them was Dave Jones. Ms. Rather, the principal, introduced him and told us that we should pay close attention to what he was going to say. She said it was a terrible thing to lose a student and a member of our school community—that’s what she called it, a community—and that everyone should do everything they could to cooperate with the police so that they could find whoever had done this awful thing.
Then Dave Jones stepped up to the microphone. For a couple of minutes he didn’t say a word. He just looked out at all of the faces that were looking back at him. Maybe he was clocking us, checking out who met his gaze and who turned away or bowed their head. Maybe not. Finally he said, “You all know what happened last Thursday at lunchtime. You all know that at approximately 12:30 p.m., Salvatore San Miguel was stabbed in the chest and that he died of his wounds. The incident happened approximately half a block east of the school. I know that many of you were out on the street when it happened. I know that some of you saw Sal. That’s why I’m here today—to ask for your help.”
#5 Dead Silence (Mike & Riel Mysteries) Page 7
