A Deadly Business (A Mia Quinn Mystery)

by Lis Wiehl

  “We already talked to Tamsin’s husband yesterday. He said that even if they were under the age of sixteen, he wanted them charged as adults. He was fairly vehement about it.”

  “Be sure to keep me in the loop,” Frank said.

  When Mia called Charlie, he kept interrupting the conversation with yawns, not bothering to hide that he had been asleep. He agreed to pick her up at her office. Then Mia called and requested the arrest records for Dylan Dunford and Jackson Buckle. And, after a moment’s hesitation, for Manny Flores.

  By now she was wide-awake. She got dressed and left a note on the kitchen counter asking Gabe to walk Brooke to preschool—and to be certain to set the house alarm.

  An hour later Mia climbed into Charlie’s car carrying the file on the shopping cart case. She had printed out the boys’ records, but she hadn’t had time to do more than skim them.

  “I got you a coffee.” Charlie pointed at a sixteen-ounce paper cup nestled in a holder. “Nonfat latte.” With his other hand he hoisted what had to be at least a thirty-two ouncer to his lips. He seemed to be steering the car with his knees.

  “Thanks.” Mia picked it up gratefully, trying not to pay attention to whether Charlie was actually staying in his lane or how close the other cars seemed.

  Charlie took another sip of his coffee and then wedged it back between his thighs. “So what information did you come up with for those boys?”

  “I just got the records for all three.” She opened up the file folder. “So let’s start with the one who has the least amount of paperwork.” It was sad to think that such young kids had already amassed records. “That would be Dylan.”

  “Wait a minute.” Charlie glanced over. “Don’t you mean Manny?”

  “No. His file is actually a little thicker than Dylan’s. Oh, and speaking of Manny, his psychiatrist just told me that he still wasn’t up to being questioned.”

  Mia picked up Dylan’s records. Once they turned eighteen, all three kids’ records would be sealed, unavailable to anyone but law enforcement or the courts. In some cases, it was even possible to petition to have them expunged, wiped away as if they had never been. Juveniles, the thinking went, shouldn’t have the records of their youthful mistakes follow them into adulthood. The law recognized that an adolescent was not as capable of making the same reasoned decisions as an adult. That children deserved a fresh start.

  Unless they were tried as adults. In which case the law regarded them as adults from start to finish. Including housing them in prisons with adult offenders who were often twice their size and three times their age.

  “Dylan has had only a couple of contacts with law enforcement. He was caught shoplifting.” Mia assumed it had been something he could sell on the street. She ran her finger down the lines of type. “From, uh”—her heart broke a little as she kept reading—“from a Safeway.”

  “You mean he stole food?” Charlie signaled for the exit. “Like steaks and seafood?”

  “Like frozen burritos,” Mia said, still reading. “He told the officer who took him into custody that he was hungry. The charges were ultimately dropped and the family was referred to social services. A few months later he was picked up on a playground with a forty-ounce can of beer. He said it was a present for his fourteenth birthday from his stepdad. The stepdad—who was actually the mom’s boyfriend—was charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor. A few months later Dylan accepted a plea bargain on a breaking and entering charge—it looks like he didn’t actually steal anything—and ended up spending two months in a therapeutic foster home.”

  Mia turned the page. “As for Manny, when he was in sixth grade he was caught with a joint and let off with a warning.” Looking at the birth date on the top of the page, she did the math. “He hadn’t even turned twelve yet.”

  “They start young around here.” Charlie had to raise his voice to be heard over a car in the next lane. The two boys in the car—and they were boys, not even out of their teens—were playing rap music so loud that Mia could feel the bass vibrating her ribs. Charlie turned and gave them a look. Even though she didn’t think he looked all that much like a cop, with his hair that had to be within a millimeter of the maximum length the Seattle PD allowed, they glanced at each other nervously. At the very next corner they peeled off.

  Mia looked back down at the records. “There’s more. In seventh grade Manny asked to use a neighbor’s bathroom. She said yes, but then she caught him with his hand in her purse. The charges were dropped in exchange for his receiving counseling.”

  “Maybe the counseling actually worked,” Charlie said. “He tried to be one of the good guys. Too bad he didn’t succeed.”

  “I hope we can talk to him soon. Manny’s key. He can clearly link the other two to what happened, but more importantly he can tell us what they said to each other right before they dropped it.”

  She turned to the next record, which was Jackson’s. It was also the thickest. She flipped through page after page, trying to hit the high points. “Jackson’s been charged with minor in possession. Both alcohol and weed, multiple times. Caught in a neighbor’s apartment stealing jewelry. Broke into another guy’s house and stole liquor and video games.” Her eyes skimmed over the entries. “Shoplifting, loitering, even littering. He’s had to attend anger management classes, an outpatient mental health program, and he’s even been required to go to school.” She tsk-tsked. “You’ve got to wonder about the family dynamics if the judge thinks going to school isn’t a given for a kid. What kind of parent lets a kid treat school as an optional activity?”

  “Just because you watch them walk out the door doesn’t mean they’re attending school,” Charlie pointed out. “In middle school I used to take off as soon as I was out of sight of my house. Luckily I got serious a couple of years later.”

  They were driving past block after block of cheap apartments with views of each other or five-lane freeways rather than the Space Needle or Puget Sound. Fast-food litter clogged the gutters, and any stretch of wall bore a spray-painted graffiti tag. In her nightmares, the ones in which the house slipped out of her grasp, Mia was forced to move to a neighborhood like this one.

  At the end of one block, she saw two boys smoking. School was about to start, but they seemed in no hurry to be anyplace, even though they didn’t look any older than Gabe. She wasn’t even certain that what they were smoking were cigarettes.

  If she got behind on the mortgage, what would happen to her kids? Since Scott died, Gabe had been teetering between bad and good, between acting like a child and trying to be a man. If she tore him away from his roots, would he join those boys on the corner? Brooke loved her preschool, but its emphasis on art and education and individual attention didn’t come cheap. It was hard to believe anything like that even existed here.

  A woman was pushing a baby in a stroller down the street. The child looked no more than eighteen months old, but it was gnawing on a corn dog. The young mother leaned down and offered the kid a sip from her huge cola. In Mia’s neighborhood, with its stately homes and families with nannies and private tutors, such behavior would get her reported to children’s services. Here it fit right in with the pawn shops and used-car lots.

  Mia tore her gaze away from the vista of her possible future.

  CHAPTER 26

  At South High, Charlie parked the car in a visitor’s spot. As he walked with Mia down the main hall of the school to the office, he heard conversations in English, Russian, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, and a few languages he didn’t recognize.

  Mia looked like what she was, a nicely dressed mom. Even though his rumpled black overcoat hid the holster on his hip, Charlie stood out. Half the kids regarded him warily, and a few people pointed and whispered. Did they know why he was here? The names of the kids who had been taken into custody couldn’t be released by the media, but gossip didn’t need TV to spread.

  The school’s office was a hive of activity, with phones ringing, students signing in and out, and tea
chers checking mail slots. They finally managed to catch the attention of one of the ladies answering phones behind the counter, who then directed them to the office of the vice principal, Peggy Alderson.

  A middle-aged woman rose from her seat behind the desk. She wore a navy-blue suit, and her shoulder-length hair was blond slowly going gray.

  Charlie introduced them, and the other woman held out her hand.

  “Call me Peggy.” Her hands were small, and as if to make up for them, her grip was strong enough that he had to hide his wince. It was one thing that Wade’s handshake had caused him to flinch, but a petite older woman’s? Maybe he needed to start hitting the gym again.

  “Please, sit down,” she said.

  Aside from the chair behind her desk, there was only one free chair. Two more chairs, a small round table, the tops of two bookcases, and Peggy’s desk were all covered with stacks and stacks of paper: loose, bound, rubber-banded, teetering. So much for the paperless office. She scooped up a pile from one of the chairs, turned in a circle looking for a place to put it, and finally set the stack on the floor before returning to her desk.

  Charlie took the chair she had just cleared. The window behind her desk overlooked a city bus stop, but what caught his eye was the round hole in the middle of the pane. It was about an inch across and cracks radiated out from it. Made by a .45, if he was any judge.

  “I appreciate your being willing to give up your office so we can interview these students’ teachers.” Mia opened a notebook. “Why don’t you tell us a little about the school and whatever you know about the boys before we talk to the first teacher?”

  “We have our challenges here.” Peggy steepled her fingers and then pulled them apart to lift her hands, palms up. “Around ninety percent of our kids qualify for free or reduced lunch. We have lots of immigrants, or kids who are seventh-generation poverty. A lot of single-parent households. It’s particularly hard for the boys. Many of them have no male role models. I’m always trying to hire male teachers, but forget it. Especially male teachers of color.”

  Charlie glanced over at Mia as they both nodded. They heard the subtext. These boys might have done something terrible, but Charlie and Mia needed to look at the whole picture.

  “Other Seattle schools have parents who work at Microsoft or Boeing.” Peggy’s mouth twisted. “They can fund-raise to fill in the gaps from what they get from the city. Here we’re nothing but gaps, and the kids are lucky if they have one parent with a job, even if it’s just pushing a broom at night. There’s a lot of social poverty too. Homes where the TV is on all the time but there’s not a single book. Where the parents are in and out of jail and the kids are cared for by a succession of aunties and really tired grandmothers. Where lots of people you look up to sell drugs or their bodies or at least plasma. Where there’s no expectation you’ll finish high school, let alone go to college.”

  Yeah, yeah. Charlie got it. These kids were poor, they had no role models, they deserved a break. He cut to the chase. “How well do you know these boys? Jackson Buckle and Dylan Dunford?”

  “Jackson’s fairly bright, at least I suspect he is, despite his grades. Bright enough that he doesn’t always get caught. Dylan is a little more”—Peggy hesitated—“borderline. He’s struggling. He may be a candidate for a more intensive program.”

  “What does that mean?” Mia asked.

  “Dylan may have a learning disability that’s been previously undiagnosed. Washington mandates that all children with a disability have an IEP—individualized education program—so they have the opportunity to learn the EALRs—essential academic learning requirements—which enable them to meet the GLEs—grade-level expectations—for reading, writing, and science, as well as the PEs—performance expectations—for math.”

  Charlie snorted. And he thought he worked in a bureaucracy. The endless acronyms made his head hurt. “What does all that even mean?”

  “In a nutshell, special education. Perhaps if he were in a smaller classroom, maybe with an aide, Dylan might flourish.”

  “Are Jackson and Dylan friends?” Mia asked.

  “That could be too strong a word. But I have seen them together. That’s about all I can tell you. Those two and Manny.”

  “Flores?” Charlie shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. “They’re all friends?”

  “They’re part of the same loose group of boys.” Peggy held her hand up and tilted it back and forth. “As I said, neither the best nor the worst.”

  Charlie thought about the three boys’ records. “Have you ever had to discipline them here at school?”

  “Dylan stole a teacher’s purse last year. We found it in his locker, but everything was still there. He said he had no idea how it got there. I had my suspicions.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Which means?” Charlie prompted.

  “Things have gone missing around Jackson too, but somehow they never turn up in his possession. At least not that we can find.”

  “So you think Jackson took the purse and hid it in Dylan’s locker?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Peggy said. “It’s just that it seemed out of character for Dylan—and it was Jackson’s teacher.”

  “How about Manny?” Mia asked.

  “I suspended Manny three days last month for throwing a trash can at another kid. He said he was being picked on.” She shrugged. “He may well have been right.”

  The first teacher they talked to, Stacy Michaels, wore skinny jeans, a hoodie, and red Nikes. She didn’t look much older than the students.

  “This is my second year with Teach for America,” she said with a sigh. “I came in here all starry-eyed, thinking I was going to save the world. Frankly, I was an idiot. I can’t even save myself, let alone these kids.”

  Charlie nodded. A verbal response seemed unnecessary. The floodgates were already open.

  “They’re not the least bit grateful. They talk back. They’re disrespectful. Don’t they think I know what they’re doing, texting under their desks? Nobody just smiles down at an empty lap. And you don’t even want to know what they get up to in the bathrooms. They run wild. The only thing this job is doing is helping me pay off my student loans. I don’t dare turn my back on them. I lock my purse in my desk, and even then I don’t bring any credit cards to work anymore. Last year one of the kids managed to slip my Nordstrom card out of my wallet and charge $630 worth of stuff before I’d even sat down to dinner that night.”

  “Okay.” Mia drew the word out. “What can you tell me about Dylan and Jackson?”

  “Don’t forget Manny. None of those kids are angels. All three of them skip school. Dylan stole another teacher’s purse last year, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen Jackson out on that sidewalk”—she pointed—“smoking a cigarette. Sometimes he’ll be flashing something around, like a CD, and you just know he stole it. And there’re times the way he looks at me just makes me shiver. His eyes are so cold. Even Manny, the one they’re calling a hero? I know for a fact that he assaulted another child this year.”

  “Do you think either Dylan or Jackson is capable of understanding that his actions have consequences?” Mia said.

  “To be honest,” Stacy said darkly, “I wouldn’t put anything past either of them. And I think they know exactly what they’re doing.”

  Gloria MacDonald looked like she was in her late forties, but Charlie had to recalibrate her age when she said she had been teaching for thirty-nine years. She had coffee-colored skin and wore her black hair in a bob. The bangs set off her large, deep-set eyes.

  “What can you tell me about Jackson and Dylan?” Mia asked. “I understand you’re teaching both of them.”

  “Honey, I’ve taught everybody.” Gloria flapped one hand. “I even taught Jackson’s mom. And it’s not because I’ve been in this school for a long time, although I have. It’s because the two are only fifteen years apart.” She raised one eyebrow and gave her head a little shake. “If Jackson applied himself, he
could graduate high school. Even college. But I’m afraid he’s not applying himself to the right things.”

  “What about Dylan?”

  She shook her head. “That boy’s got nine brothers and sisters, and there’s not enough love, food, or space in that family for half that number.”

  Charlie exchanged a look with Mia. He couldn’t imagine raising one child, let alone ten of them. With that many siblings, Dylan must basically be raising himself.

  “He’s not a bad kid. I had him to my house for dinner a few weeks ago. I think he came back for fourths.” Gloria smiled at the memory. “He played with my little grandchildren. Now would I have done that if I thought he was a danger to others?” She leaned forward, her face fierce. “Look, his IQ tests out at eighty-five. Couple that with the fact that he’s a juvenile and you’ve got no case. I’ve been around the block more times than I care to count, but I really can’t see him doing this. Deliberately dropping a shopping cart on that poor lady? I find it hard to believe.”

  “We have him on video,” Mia said.

  “I heard that. But Dylan’s suggestible.”

  “Are you saying you think it was Jackson’s idea?”

  She pursed her lips. “All I’m saying is whenever something bad happens, I always check to see where Jackson is.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Lost in thought, Mia walked with Charlie through the school’s parking lot and back to his car. It had all seemed so clear yesterday, when she was standing at Tamsin’s bedside, vowing to punish those responsible for such unthinkable violence.

  But the pictures the teachers and the vice principal had painted of the boys were more nuanced. Dylan was troubled. Jackson was trouble. Even Manny was something of a question mark. Dylan and Jackson might both be fifteen, they might both have helped heave the shopping cart over the wall, but it was clear Mia would have to weigh the fates of the two boys separately. Was one a vulnerable boy and the other a thug? Or were they both victims of their own circumstances?