Sight Lines

by Michelle DiCeglio

  “Detective Mills,” I said when I got to the receptionist’s desk.

  “Please, have a seat,” the elderly woman replied. “I’ll let Mrs. Carlton know you’re here.” She picked up the phone and pressed the intercom button. After a few moments, she spoke into the receiver and informed the principal that I was there. “Come with me,” the receptionist said. Her long gray hair was pulled into a bun, and her glasses hung low on the tip of her nose. She wore a peach blouse and white slacks. She looked thin and frail, but something told me she had a mean streak when it came to the students. I didn’t recognize her, but that’s probably because I got called into the principal’s office only once during my tenure here.

  She led me to the teachers’ lounge, which was adjacent to the principal’s office. Inside, a long wooden table sat in the center of the room with eight aluminum chairs on either side. Along the back wall, I saw a cheap laminate countertop and a small kitchen sink. A microwave sat on each side of the sink, with a coffeemaker on the far left corner of the counter. Its glass pot was no longer clear—and looked as beloved as the one at the station.

  A large woman with curly, jet black hair sat at the head of the table. Next to her was a very pale boy, no more than fifteen years old. He was looking down at the table, his greasy hair covering his eyes. He looked unusually thin—and not just because he was sitting next to such a large woman. He appeared almost sickly, as if he’d been starving for months. His cheekbones stuck out so far that the rest of his face looked concave, and his black T-shirt hung so loosely off his shoulders that it had to be at least two sizes too big.

  “Detective Mills,” the woman said as she stood up. “I’m Mrs. Carlton, the principal of Lyons High. Thank you for coming to see us.” She held out her right hand and we shook. “Please, have a seat.”

  “What seems to be going on?” I asked. It was obvious that Mrs. Carlton was not ready to give up control of the investigation of her school.

  “Ryan here has been involved with a few thefts,” she said as she looked sternly at the boy. “And that’s not something I tolerate.”

  “Perhaps I could speak to him one on one,” I offered.

  “Please do,” she said. “Here’s his backpack—along with the list of items students have reported missing from their lockers. Feel free to go through it.” She slid Ryan’s faded black backpack across the table toward me. “We called his foster parents, but they haven’t gotten back to us yet. I’ll be just outside if you need me.”

  “Thank you,” I said as she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  Next to the backpack was a legal pad with a handwritten list of items, ranging from a designer purse and an MP player to various articles of clothing and jewelry. Underneath the legal pad was a file with Ryan’s name on it.

  “Ryan Parker,” I read aloud. He didn’t look up at me. “Is this your backpack?” I asked. He remained silent. “This will go a lot faster if you talk to me.” He finally looked up and nodded. “Can I open it?” I asked.

  “Do what you want,” he snarled.

  I unzipped the backpack and saw five MP players, two pairs of shoes, three wallets and two clutch purses. In the front zipper compartment, I found handfuls of wadded bills. Smoothing out the money, I began to count it.

  “There’s over three hundred dollars here,” I said. “Do you have a job?” I had to ask all of the routine questions before outright accusing him of theft.

  “No,” he said and looked away from me.

  “So where did you get the money?” I asked.

  “How do you think?”

  As he spoke, I was able to get a look at his teeth. He had the same dark stains around his gum line that Tiffany Jones did. That, along with his general appearance and attitude, was all the evidence I needed to suspect he was once a Villager.

  “Were you working alone?” I asked. He continued to look away from me. “There’s enough here for me to bring you into the station for further questioning—”

  “So why don’t you just arrest me? Like you did T.J.?”

  “T.J.?” I asked. “You know her?”

  “She’s my mom.”

  Tiffany Jones, part of his self-made family. It wasn’t uncommon for the Villagers to refer to one another with familial titles. And someone as young as Ryan, who didn’t have a real family, was perfect prey for someone like T.J. to sink her claws into.

  “How old are you?” I asked. He looked away again. Flipping through his file, I glanced at the long list of schools and foster homes he’d been kicked out of starting in kindergarten. He was seventeen years old and in the ninth grade. In a year, he would no longer be part of the educational system—and would more than likely become part of the judicial system. “Any drugs on you?” I asked, expecting to receive the same silent treatment.

  Ryan aggressively stood from the table and flipped his pants pockets inside out. He lifted his shirt to the bottom of his rib cage and shook his baggy pants around the waistline. Next he opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out at me. “Want me to squat and cough?” he asked.

  There was no doubt he’d been in the judicial system already.

  There was a brief knock on the door followed by Mrs. Carlton walking in. “We just heard from his foster parents,” she said. “His father doesn’t get out of work until late, and his mother doesn’t have a car.” She sighed.

  “Are you pressing charges?” I asked.

  “No.” She sighed again. “We are expelling him though. And he has to leave the property immediately.”

  “Where do you live, Ryan? I can drive you home.” But I knew as soon as we got outside, he was just going to run.

  “The backpack stays here,” Mrs. Carlton informed him.

  Ryan rolled his eyes and walked away from the table. With no formal charges being brought against him, there wasn’t much I could do. It was a complete waste of my time to come out here.

  I considered calling for a patrol car to bring Ryan home, but that could take hours. Chauffeuring juvenile delinquents around town wasn’t very high on our priority list. He didn’t have any narcotics on him, so I couldn’t arrest him myself. But he was my problem now—at least until I was able to drop him off at home.

  The entire drive to his house was spent in total silence. He lived in the run-down part of town where most of the homes were abandoned from foreclosures and evictions. When I pulled into the gravel driveway at Ryan’s foster home, he got out of the car and slammed the door without uttering a word. Surprisingly, he didn’t run. I decided to get out of my car and walk him to the front door. If his foster mother saw that his behavior had caught the attention of the police department, then perhaps she would keep a better on eye on him.

  The gray paint on the porch steps had mostly peeled away, exposing the rotting wood underneath. The first step creaked under my weight. Standing off to the right side of the front porch, I knocked five times on the screen door. Ryan stood beside me, making no attempt to enter the house.

  From outside, I could hear the dialogue of what sounded like a staged reality show on the television. The blaring sound was so loud it could have easily muffled my knock.

  I looked at Ryan and knocked again. This time, I was greeted by a teenage girl holding a toddler in her arms.

  “Ryan!” she exclaimed. “What’d you do now?” She opened the screen door and let him in. He walked past her without answering her question. With scraggly brown hair grazing her shoulders, she shifted the chubby child in her arms. “You the police?” she asked.

  “I’m Detective Mills,” I answered. “Is your mother home?”

  “Foster…and no,” she answered. “But her brother is.”

  “Is he Ryan’s legal guardian?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll tell ’em you came by though. The school already called.” She was polite—but made it very clear she wasn’t interested in any lecture I might’ve been prepared to give. I assumed it was because she’d either already heard it or knew it
wouldn’t do any good.

  “Thank you,” I told her and walked back down the creaky steps.

  I peered down the end of driveway as I walked toward my car, and I saw a dark blue Jeep parked behind the house. I could only see the back end and the bumper. It was rusted along the wheel well, and the tires were caked in mud. Walking farther up the driveway, I saw an Indiana license plate bent at the corners. The letters and numbers on it were dull and faded. It would be almost impossible to make out the plate in a poorly lit area—especially in a poorly lit gas station. And an out-of-state plate wouldn’t have shown up in the search Bishop conducted in the Ohio database.

  Quickly but quietly, I walked up to the passenger side of the vehicle and peered inside. It was clean for the most part, except for a few shell casings in the ashtray. I could feel my heart start to race. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my phone. I dialed dispatch and requested Braxton and all available officers in the area.

  Then I stood by the Jeep and waited.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I met Braxton and four officers across the street from Ryan’s foster house, and I briefed Braxton on the situation. Police cars were in and out of this neighborhood all hours of the day, so none of the neighbors seemed to care yet that we were here.

  When I’d called dispatch from my cell phone, I didn’t really want to inform anyone of the details of exactly what I’d found over an unsecure line, so Braxton didn’t know what he was walking into or why I requested him specifically.

  As we walked across the road toward the front of the house, I told two of the officers to check all doors and windows around the house. I told the other two to secure the vehicle in the backyard. I added that they should be prepared to draw their weapons. That’s when Braxton’s curiosity was piqued.

  “Do you want to fill me in?” he asked as we stood by the porch steps. The screen door served as the only barrier between us and the people inside, but the volume of the television was still blaring and masked our conversation.

  “Out back,” I said, lowering my voice. “There’s a Jeep with shell casings in the ashtray. I didn’t search the vehicle, and I didn’t approach the people inside. I wanted backup here.”

  “That’s smart—no need to be the hero,” Braxton replied. I had a feeling he was talking more to himself than to me. He was a guy who tended to act before thinking. “Who lives here?” he asked.

  “I only saw three kids—two teenagers and a toddler. The foster parents aren’t home, but allegedly there’s a man inside,” I said. “An uncle.”

  “Let’s get moving. There could be eyes on us right now.” He looked toward the windows in the front of the house near where we were standing. He drew his gun and kept it at his side as he walked up the rickety staircase. He positioned himself on the hinge side of the door, out of sight from the people inside, and motioned for me to knock.

  Walking up the steps, I stood on the opposite side of the door from Braxton, making sure I was also out of sight. I knocked five times and identified myself.

  “Lyons P.D.,” I said. “Open the door.”

  Silence—except for the blaring television.

  “The house is surrounded—open the door,” Braxton said, raising his voice.

  Within a few seconds, the television was muted, and the same teenage girl answered the door with the fussy toddler on her hip.

  “I was about to put the baby down. What do you want?” She adjusted the toddler in her arms and looked me up and down. She seemed completely unfazed by the potentially hostile situation unfolding. Braxton remained on the other side of the door, his gun raised to the side of his face. He nodded for me to keep talking to the young girl.

  “Who’s the owner of that Jeep out back?” I asked her.

  “My uncle—you wanna talk to him or something?” She opened the door. A hard stench of stale cigarette smoke seeped outside, and she stepped onto the porch. She must have caught the sight of Braxton in her peripheral. “Whoa,” she said under her breath. “He’s home. He’s home,” she repeated, with distinct panic now evident in her voice.

  “Go. I’ll stay with them,” Braxton said, and I went inside the house. I overheard Braxton call for a few of the responding officers to follow me into the house.

  As I entered, I kept my gun raised and checked the corners of the living room. The curtains were drawn, and the only sources of light came from the television and what little sun could seep through front door’s dirty screen. It was an exceptionally hot day, and the suffocating humidity seemed to be trapped inside. As I made my way through the living room, I stepped over farm-animal puzzles and large-print picture books, presumably for the toddler to play with. I turned around and saw two officers enter the house behind me.

  “Lyons P.D.,” I said again, announcing our presence to anyone else who might be in the home.

  Suddenly, I heard a thunderous stomping coming down a flight of stairs. The stairs creaked and cracked as the rhythm picked up, become faster and faster, as if the person was running at full speed down the steps, two at a time. The officers and I aligned ourselves in a triangle formation and pointed our weapons in front of us.

  “Our weapons are drawn,” I added, hoping that if the person coming down the stairs had a gun, he or she would think twice about using it. Then I heard another set of footsteps coming down the stairs. But these sounded softer, slower. Ryan Parker, perhaps?

  Within a few seconds, Ryan and an older man, roughly in his early forties with blond stubble growing along the side of his balding head, emerged from the back of the house. Ryan was in the same baggy clothes he had worn when I brought him home, and the man standing next to him was dressed in stained cargo pants and a short-sleeved button-up work shirt. They walked into the living room calmly, and the man held his hands in the air.

  “Don’t shoot,” he said, keeping his hands raised. Ryan followed closely behind him. The man walked toward the beige recliner in the corner of the living room and stood next to it. Ryan stayed in the entryway of the living room near the hallway that led to the staircase.

  “Are you the owner of that dark blue Jeep outside?” I asked him, my weapon still drawn. One of the officers walked over to Ryan and led him back into the dining room. He told Ryan to sit at the table and not to move.

  “Yes,” the man answered. He seemed rather annoyed.

  “Your name, sir?” I placed my gun back in its holster.

  “Joel,” he said. “It ain’t a crime to work on your own car,” he added.

  I heard the screen door open behind me, and I turned to see who it was. Braxton walked into the living room and told the officer to put his weapon down.

  “Sir,” Braxton interjected. “Can I ask you your whereabouts on the weekend of June twenty-sixth?”

  “June twenty-sixth?” Joel repeated. “I was probably at work. Why?”

  “Probably? Or you were?”

  “I was,” he said, becoming noticeably more annoyed. “In Fort Wayne.”

  “Is there anyone who can verify this?” Braxton asked.

  “My boss,” Joel answered. “What’s this about?”

  “Do you clock in?” Braxton continued, ignoring all of Joel’s questions.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Call your boss and have him fax over a copy of your time card to this number.” Braxton took one of his business cards out of his wallet and handed it Joel. “The quicker we get it, the quicker we’ll get this resolved.”

  Joel obediently reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He dialed a series of numbers and raised the phone to his ear as the other end began to ring.

  “He hasn’t been searched yet,” I said quietly to Braxton when Joel began talking on the phone. “What’s going on?”

  “I spoke to his niece outside. She said he just got here a few days ago. He lives in Indiana.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I snapped. This was typical Braxton behavior. This guy didn’t fit Braxton’s Connecticut theory, so
he was quick to rule it out based on the word of a teenage girl. “He has shell casings in his car.”

  “And we’ll check those with ballistics, but we don’t have a warrant. We shouldn’t even be in here.”

  “There’s plenty of probable cause,” I argued.

  “He’s faxing it over now,” Joel said, interrupting our bickering.

  “Mills, call dispatch and check on it, will ya?” Braxton barked at me. “Sir, please stand up so I can search you. It’s just a precaution; you’re not under arrest.”

  I turned my back to Joel and gave Braxton a dirty look before he passed me. Walking outside, I called dispatch again and asked about an incoming fax. The teenage girl was in the backseat of one of the patrol cars. She was holding the toddler on her lap.

  Dispatch hadn’t received the fax yet, so I was placed on hold while they transferred me to the records department. Anything that was sent to the number Braxton had on his business card would go there. As I waited for confirmation of the time card, I could feel my hands start to shake as the anger built inside me. Braxton’s incessant need to take control of any situation was starting to wear thin. He was the type of person who would press the button on an elevator even though it was already lit. He just had to be in control of everything.

  But arguing with another officer in front of a potential suspect was something we were never supposed to do. It let the suspect know we didn’t see each other as equals and that he or she could play us against each other. Whatever good-cop/bad-cop vibe Braxton was going for wasn’t going to last for long—not if I had anything to say about it.

  “Okay, thank you very much,” I said into the phone after a few minutes of waiting on hold. I walked into the house and saw Braxton standing next to Joel. “We have his time card,” I announced. “He was working in Fort Wayne that weekend.” Then I walked back outside before Braxton had a chance to respond. If he wanted to take lead on this, then he could clean up the mess and handle the apologies. I was done for the day. Any reports I needed to file could wait until tomorrow.