Idyll Threats

by Stephanie Gayle

  “You have a gun?” Matthew said, eyeing Kevin. “Cool. Can I see it?”

  “Matthew! Go practice!” she shouted.

  He took a step backward, tripped, and fell. His small, pointed face got white. “It’s okay,” I said. I helped him up. “Want to see my gun?” He nodded. “Let’s everyone step inside.”

  Mrs. Wilkes led us inside to the living room. There was a piano and another clarinet and two guitars. Also records. Lots and lots of vinyl near a stereo that resembled one I’d had back in the seventies. The furniture looked like an afterthought. Nothing matched, and it was arranged not for comfort but to allow space for the music. I sat on the rose-print sofa and patted the cushion beside me. Matthew hopped up onto it. His legs dangled a foot above the floor. Wright, Kevin, and Mrs. Wilkes stood near the piano.

  I jerked my head at Wright. He picked up my cue and said, “Kevin, we’ll need you to come to the station with your mom.”

  “What? No! I didn’t do anything. I gave the gun to Luke.”

  “Luke Johnson?” Wright asked. He pulled out a notepad.

  I unholstered my weapon. “This is my gun,” I told Matthew. “Its safety is on, which means it can’t be fired. You never take the safety off a gun unless you plan to use it.” The boy’s small hand reached out. I withdrew my firearm. “No touching,” I said.

  “Luke Johnson,” Wright said. “Why did you give him the gun?”

  “Yes, why?” his mother shouted. “And where did you get a gun?”

  Kevin looked from his mother to Wright. And decided to answer the person not yelling at him. “We were supposed to go target shooting,” he told Wright.

  “Target shooting?” Mrs. Wilkes’s cry made Matthew turn. But the lure of my gun soon recalled his attention.

  “This gun is always locked in a safe when I’m not carrying it. Do you know why?” I asked Matthew.

  “We were supposed to go shooting together, but I felt sick, so Luke and Chris went,” Kevin said.

  “So bad guys can’t get it?” Matthew said.

  “Chris Warren?” Wright asked. He looked at me. Gave me a slight nod. Score one for the chief.

  Matthew tugged my shirt. “What?” I said.

  “Do you lock your gun to keep it away from bad guys?” he asked.

  “Yes. And to prevent accidents.”

  Kevin said, “Yeah. Chris slept over that night. He snuck out and met Luke. I’d given Luke the gun because I knew my folks would flip if they found it.”

  Mrs. Wilkes held up her hand. “Whoa. I think maybe, maybe I should call my husband. We might need a lawyer. I don’t think—” She glanced at Kevin and chewed her lower lip.

  Wright flipped his notepad closed. “Of course. You can call your husband. Consult a lawyer. That’s absolutely your right. But honestly, ma’am, it’s just going to slow things down. Kevin will have to make a statement. He can do it now, with you beside him, at the station. Or you can call a lawyer and buy a day or two. When news of this will have spread through town.” He paused. Let that sink in. “It’s up to you.”

  Nicely played, Wright.

  She looked at her son and then glanced outside. “Okay. I want to call my husband, though. Let him know where we’re going and tell him to meet us there.”

  “Sure thing,” Wright said. “I just have one more question.” He waited for her to protest. She crossed her arms but remained silent. “So Luke had the gun, and Chris went to meet him. Which night was this?” he asked Kevin.

  “August ninth.” His voice was low.

  I holstered my gun. “We’re going to need that statement. Mrs. Wilkes, could you please call Matthew’s parents?” I asked.

  “I want to go to the police station,” Matthew said.

  “The ninth?” she repeated. Her face got pale. “But wasn’t that…? Oh my God. The dead girl.” She covered her mouth and crouched. As if she might be sick.

  “Can I see the other cops’ guns too?” Matthew asked.

  “Mrs. Wilkes?” Wright asked. He held his hand out. She made a small sound and waved him away. After a few moments, she stood and steadied herself against the piano. Looked at us and said, “I’ll call Matthew’s mother now. Have him picked up.”

  “Darn!” said Matthew.

  The Warren house reminded me of Elmore Fenworth’s. It had the same well-groomed, historic look. But Elmore’s house didn’t have a pool or a three-door garage. Chris answered the door, a half-eaten cupcake in hand. Chocolate with white frosting. There were rainbow sprinkles on top. He leaned against a marble-topped table in the foyer. “Hi, Chief Lynch. Can I help you?” He was so natural, so friendly. Award-worthy.

  “I need you to come to the police station.” I waved an arm toward my car.

  “Why? Is this about the candy wrapper I found near the golf course?”

  “No,” I said. “Would you come with me, please?”

  He lifted the cupcake to his mouth. Took a large bite and chewed. I waited. He swallowed. I said, “Now.”

  “You can’t take me without my parents being present.”

  “I can.” And I suspected he knew that.

  He squinted at my car, which needed a wash. “I think I’d rather stay home.” He looked over his shoulder. “I’m in the middle of watching The Usual Suspects.”

  “Come on.” I reached forward but didn’t touch him. Who knew how hard I’d grip? He might bruise easy.

  “It’s a real cliff-hanger.” He finished the cupcake.

  “Verbal Kint is Keyser Söze,” I said.

  He dropped the cupcake liner onto the floor. “That’s plain rude,” he said, “spoiling the ending.” He closed the door behind him. Stayed on the front step. “My parents will be worried when they come home and I’m not here.” He smiled. “They do funny things when they worry. Call people they know. Like the mayor.”

  From what I’d learned, his parents were rarely home. Too busy working or socializing to spend time with their son. “You can call them from the station,” I said. As for his threats, they meant less than nothing. The mayor wouldn’t back a killer. No matter who his parents were or how much money they donated to town causes.

  He sat in the back. I didn’t cuff him. He was a minor. Even if Connecticut saw fit to try him as an adult, for now I had to treat him like a baby.

  “You haven’t told me what this is about,” he said.

  I closed the door. Started the car. Checked the rearview. He stared out the window, at his family’s lovely house. He didn’t look worried.

  “I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. Would you like me to read you your rights?”

  A smile spread across his face, and he turned slowly, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror. “Oh, why not?” he said. “I bet you’ve been practicing.”

  He was protected from my fist by a panel of Plexiglas. And by years of training. Don’t fight, Thomas. Violence creates problems. It doesn’t solve them. But how I longed to connect my right hand’s knuckles with the bridge of his nose. To hear the crunch, to feel the bone collapse beneath my anger.

  But I couldn’t. So I recited Miranda at him while I drove us to the station. Every time I glanced in the rearview mirror, that self-satisfied smile was on his face.

  1735 HOURS

  The station smelled of burnt coffee. Everyone talked, smoked, and paced. Finnegan was out, getting us warrants. Wright helped Kevin Wilkes review his statement while his parents huddled near him. Christopher Warren sat alone in the interview room, awaiting his family’s lawyer. We couldn’t find Luke Johnson. Or his mother.

  Finnegan stomped into the pen, smelling of wood smoke, and said, “We’ve got warrants for both boys’ homes. However, the judge was less than delighted by our pick of suspects.”

  “No one likes kids as killers,” I said. “Disturbs the natural order.” I massaged my hands. They were sore. I’d been clenching them so as not to punch Chris Warren.

  “I still can’t believe you got it right,” he said, “on nothing more than a look at
his sneakers and a hunch.” He was impressed, at last.

  Wright led Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes to the hall. Each parent kept one hand on Kevin’s shoulders. “Is there anything else?” Mrs. Wilkes asked, equal amounts hope and fear in her voice.

  “No, not now. Thank you,” Wright said. He walked them outside to their car. They were on the good guys’ team now, and we needed to coddle them. In the coming months, we might need Kevin to testify against his friends in court. Of course, if he resisted, we’d threaten him with an accessory-to-murder charge. Being on the good guys’ team isn’t all fun.

  When Wright returned, I put him in charge of both search teams. “Take all their boots and sneakers,” I said.

  “Will do.” He set off quickly, then stopped and returned to me. “You made a good call,” he said. “Sorry I doubted you.” He met my eyes, steady, and I knew he meant more than doubting my pick of suspects. I also knew apologies didn’t come easy to Wright.

  “Thanks.” I tipped an imaginary hat. “Now go get me some evidence.”

  He saluted and hurried out the door.

  “What about me?” Finnegan asked.

  “You’re on interviews.”

  “Poor Revere,” he said. “He’s missing it all.” He didn’t sound sorry.

  Thirty minutes later, Christopher Warren’s attorney arrived. She was a tall woman who looked like she took her coffee black and her clients wealthy. Her first words were, “I’m Melissa Simon, Christopher Warren’s attorney. Where is he? And why aren’t his parents with him?”

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Thomas Lynch, Chief of Police. Your client is in an interview room. His parents aren’t home. He’s sixteen years of age, so they don’t need to be here.”

  “When did he turn sixteen?” she asked.

  “Three months ago. Given the rates you charge, I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

  She didn’t respond. Just tightened her grip on her briefcase.

  Forty-five minutes later, Luke Johnson and his mother arrived, both pale and slump-shouldered. His mother held Luke’s hand and leaned toward his ear. Finnegan showed them into the second interview room, the room we used as an informal gym. We’d moved the weights and bench into the equipment space and set up a spare table and some folding chairs.

  “I’ll take Luke,” I said to Finnegan.

  He said, “You don’t want Chris? I figured, since you had such a hard-on for him—”

  “I want to give him someone new. See how he behaves. Be careful. He’s clever.”

  He scratched his chest. “Guess he’ll be too smart for the likes of me, then.” He leaned harder on his accent. With any luck, Chris would buy Finnegan’s dumb act.

  Mrs. Johnson and Luke refused a lawyer when I suggested one. “You understand what pro bono means?” I said.

  She harrumphed and adjusted the purse on her lap. “You get what you pay for,” she said. “Luke’s dad had pro bono lawyers. Look what that got us.”

  “From what I heard, it kept him out of jail after he knifed a guy.” I watched Luke. His knee jiggled under the table. Up and down, cocaine-user fast.

  “We paid for that lawyer.” Under her breath she said, “Still paying for it.”

  “So, you going to ask me questions or what?” Luke said. He had a hard time keeping still. Why not counter that with relaxation? I took a deep breath. And regretted it. Good lord, the funk in here was terrific. We needed another interview room. A proper one not used by men as their gym.

  “So, where were you two earlier?” I asked.

  “Apartment hunting,” Mrs. Johnson said. “The bank’s going to foreclose. So you can imagine how delighted I was to find two cop cars in my yard after I’d spent three hours looking at crappy apartments.”

  “Idyll doesn’t have crappy apartments,” I said.

  “We weren’t looking here. Can’t afford it. We were in Hartford.” She pulled out a cigarette and lit it. I didn’t complain. It might improve the room’s scent.

  “So who shot Cecilia North?” I asked Luke.

  His knee stopped jiggling. “Didn’t do it,” he said.

  “So it was Chris?” That would be music to my ears.

  “Chris?” Mrs. Johnson said. “Warren? The little rich boy?” She coughed. “You pull him in here, too?”

  “Sure did. He’s in the other room. He has a lawyer.”

  “Of course he does.” She looked around. “Ash tray?”

  I fetched it from the windowsill. The window was set high in the wall, above everyone’s head but mine. “Here.” I set it on the table. It clanked. Luke flinched.

  “Didn’t do it,” he said, unprompted.

  “We know you had the gun. We have footprints from the crime scene. We’re going to bring all your shoes inside, and then the techs will match them. You’ll be found guilty of murder. On the bright side, you won’t have to move to a crappy apartment in Hartford.”

  He got sullen. Pouty lips. Crossed arms.

  “So when’s moving day?” I asked Mrs. Johnson.

  She looked away from Luke’s muddied sneakers and said, “Next month. We have to be out by the fifteenth.”

  Luke’s scowl deepened.

  “You have any idea what your sentence will be like?” I asked him.

  He straightened and kicked one foot out. “A year or two in juvie.” He smirked.

  Ah-ha. He hadn’t denied the crime. And he banked on a soft sentence.

  “Connecticut’s been known to try minors as adults. Would you like me to list some examples?”

  “Maybe we should get a lawyer.” Mrs. Johnson stubbed out her cigarette with short jabs.

  “Sure,” Luke said. “But a real one.” He emphasized the last two words.

  “But, honey—” Her voice cracked. She faced foreclosure, was paying for her long-gone husband’s lawyer, and her son needed expensive counsel.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We can afford it.”

  “How?” she asked.

  Yes, how?

  “Call him,” he said. “The guy who got dad off.” His voice was steady.

  “I want to call a lawyer,” she said to me.

  I took her outside to the phone.

  Twenty minutes into the wait for their lawyer, Mrs. Johnson asked that the room’s door be left open. She complained that the smell was overwhelming. “We can’t have the door open,” I said. Too much risk she or Luke would overhear something. I dispatched Billy to find me a solution. He returned with a plug-in air freshener. Now the room smelled like body odor and vanilla.

  Finnegan emerged from the interview room, a broad smile on his face. When the door closed, his smile dropped. “Chris is a bright little shit. How’s yours?”

  I told him Luke had denied killing our victim and demanded a lawyer.

  “Any word from Wright?” he asked.

  “Not yet. The Warrens’ house is big. Gonna take a while to search, and I imagine they’re gonna put up a fuss.”

  My prediction was proven true in less than ten minutes. At 8:30 p.m., Mr. and Mrs. Warren came to the station. Mrs. Warren wore pearls she twisted back and forth. Mr. Warren had one of those Star Trek earpiece devices so he could make telephone calls without using his hands. They demanded to know where their son was and why they were the victims of a vicious prank. Why we were treating them like criminals, rooting through their valuables?

  “It’s no prank,” I said. “Your son’s been arrested. He’s with his lawyer.”

  “We want to see him.”

  I had no objection. Finnegan and I were regrouping. I didn’t want to talk to either boy again until the house searches were complete. While the Warrens reunited, we made a list of what we’d learned thus far.

  Chris insisted that he’d left Luke with the gun at the golf course. He’d thought better of firing a weapon and had returned to Kevin Wilkes’s house.

  Luke wasn’t talking and wanted a lawyer.

  It wasn’t much. But we knew our suspects’ defense plans. Both involved denia
l.

  Wright returned at 10:00 p.m. “Guess what I found?” he said. “Timberland boots. Size eight and a half. At Luke’s house, in the pantry, under a box of trash bags. And a pair of eleven and a half Air Jordan sneakers found in the Warrens’ entryway. Chris didn’t even bother to hide them.”

  Finnegan brought Wright up to speed. He said that Chris claimed he’d been at the golf course, but that he’d left before Luke shot Cecilia.

  “Chris says Luke admitted he shot our vic?” Wright asked.

  “No,” Finnegan said, “But he’s implied it. He’s smart. Full of ‘maybes’ and ‘it’s possibles.’”

  “You turn up anything else?” I asked Wright.

  “We’ve got Chris’s laptop,” he said. “Might be something there.”

  “He has his own laptop?” I pointed to the old Selectric IIs we used.

  “The kid has everything, far as I can tell. Oh, and he had these stashed in a drawer.” He pointed to a group of baggies. Each held a package of Pop Rocks.

  “Most of them are untouched,” I said. “Don’t test those. She’d eaten some of the candy, remember? Crystals on her hand.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Why did he buy them?” Finnegan asked. “Is he just trying to make the techs’ lives hell?”

  “Trophy?” Wright asked.

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Don’t care.” Not true. I suspected Chris bought the Pop Rocks as a reminder of what he’d done. What he’d gotten away with. Until now. But I wasn’t going to get hung up on it. Because thinking about it made me want to march into the interview room and rough up both boys in front of their mothers. “Where’s Luke’s lawyer?” I asked. “I can’t have another run at him until he shows.”

  Luke’s lawyer, Mr. Benjamin Walsh, showed up at 10:45 p.m. On the attorney scale, he was somewhere in the middle. His clothing? No suit from London, but no Men’s Wearhouse two-for-one special either. He wore wire-frame glasses that made him look older. I pegged him at thirty-five. He was shown into the room where the battle between air freshener and body odor continued.

  We drank coffee and pinned what we knew on the board. Finnegan told the Warrens to stop alibiing their son. We’d already confirmed they were at a fundraising event until 1:30 a.m. two towns away the night of the murder. And Chris hadn’t slept at their house that night. He was at Kevin Wilkes’s house. They finally stopped after their attorney told them they weren’t helping him.