He slouched a little farther down in his chair. “Where’s my sister?” he asked.
“She’s with your grandmother. Having lunch. We ordered in some subs,” Tabitha Christos said. “Would you like one?”
“No.” He wasn’t going to bother being polite with these guys.
“You’ve gone through a pretty tough time,” Tabitha said.
“Yeah.”
“Detective Drake and I are really sorry about your mum.”
He glanced at the detective. There seemed to be some sympathy softening his gaze, but his eyes were still watchful.
Nick had to stay on his guard.
Why did he have to be so wiped?
“Could I have some coffee?” His abruptness seemed to startle Tabitha Christos. “With lots of milk and sugar. Please.” The detective got to his feet and left the room.
Tabitha turned toward him. Her blouse strained against the swell of her breasts. It wasn’t like she was being sleazy, Nick thought, wondering why he felt the need to defend her—she just had really full breasts. Really full. He’d learned from Steph just how delicious and tantalizing and painful it felt to curve his palms over that fullness.
He dropped his eyes back down to the safety of the table. The dark swirls that formed the plywood pattern reminded him of chocolate. As he studied the swirls he realized some of them were stains from coffee mugs.
“So, you just finished grade nine, Nick?” Tabitha leaned back in her seat as if to remove her breasts from his gaze.
He nodded, refusing to let his gaze stray. So far, so good.
“Did you have a good year?”
He shrugged and looked away. He never had a good year. But this year was the worst one so far. Then he realized there was an upside to his plan: he wouldn’t have to go to school again. He smiled to himself.
Tabitha took it as an invitation to make conversation. “What’s your favorite subject?”
“Phys ed.”
“Ah, you like sports?”
He nodded.
“I played basketball. How ’bout you?”
The detective opened the door, carrying three plain coffee cups. Obviously police issue. The coffee would probably suck, but Nick didn’t care. He took the cup from the detective with a mumbled thanks and sipped it. It did suck. “Hockey.”
The youth worker glanced at the detective. “Did you play, Ethan?”
The detective took a gulp of his brew and suppressed a shudder. “Yeah. But I was better at soccer. The ball is bigger. Harder to miss.” He took another gulp and smacked his lips. “Geez, I missed this stuff.”
“No wonder you’ve got an ulcer,” Tabitha said with a wry look.
Nick watched the exchange, sipping the disgusting coffee. It was all an act. A little joking to warm him up.
He drank some more of the coffee. He needed to be alert. Ready for the question he was sure the detective would slide in when he thought Nick was lulled into security. Wasn’t that how they always did it on Law & Order?
“Do you play rep hockey?” Tabitha asked.
“No. I played for my school team.” Until he was kicked off. That part he wasn’t sharing. Even though it happened six months ago, it still hurt. Or at least the memory hurt. Because he was deadened now. Deadened to all pain.
He shut the image of his mother’s staring eyes out of his mind.
“What position?”
He shifted in his chair. “Let’s cut the small talk.” That was a pretty good line. He could handle these guys. “I have other things to do.”
“Okay, Nick,” the detective said, his eyes taking on that gleam that made Nick’s back stiffen. “We don’t want to keep you here longer than necessary.” Was that a warning in his voice? “We need to talk about a few things.”
“Like?”
The atmosphere had taken on an edge. It’s face-off time, buddy.
Tabitha threw a warning glance at the detective. Time for the cute chick to take over, Nick thought. “Nick, we’re trying to figure out what happened last night.”
Over my dead body.
Or should I say, my father’s.
Then you can figure it out all you like.
But not before then.
He stared at the thick sludge at the bottom of his coffee cup. What did they use to make this shit? That polluted water all the Halifaxians—or whatever the fuck they call themselves—complain about?
He took a deep breath. He knew he was getting all defensive. He needed to calm down. Buy himself some time. “Can I have some more coffee?” He stared straight at the detective. Go get it, coffee boy.
“We ran out,” the detective said. “I’m glad you like it, though. Obviously haven’t lost my touch. Maybe next time you come in.”
Nick was so busy figuring out if the detective was threatening him that he almost missed the look Tabitha gave the detective.
“Nick, tell us about your trip to Halifax.”
“It sucked.”
“Did you all drive here?”
They knew the answer to that. He stared at them.
“Your mother drove and your sister came with you, right?” Tabitha asked, her voice patient. The tone reminded him of his reading tutor. And it irritated the shit out of him.
He wasn’t in school anymore.
And wouldn’t be going back, either. Not after he took care of things.
He shrugged.
“Nick, if you could answer the questions, we’ll all get out of here a lot faster,” Tabitha said. Her brown eyes were earnest, kind.
He mumbled, “Fine.” The sooner this was over with, the sooner he could finalize his plan.
“How was your mother on the drive?”
“Fine.”
“But she was recuperating from something?” The specificness of the question made Nick dart a look at Ethan’s notepad. Something was written on it. And underlined. Sometimes he could read upside down better than right side up, so he tried to study the words without them seeing him, but the detective inched the notepad away and covered it with his hand.
What had Lucy told them?
Now he felt like the sucker with the blindfold in blind man’s bluff. He’d always hated that game. Always hated not knowing who was out there. Around him. Taunting him.
“Yeah. Some medical procedure.”
“Do you know what it was?”
“No.” Although he suspected what his mother had done. And he didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to know.
“So when you arrived at Dr. Feldman’s house, did you unload the car, check out the new place, have a barbecue?”
Why were they asking him this shit? Lucy would have already told them. He crossed his arms. “No.”
“What did you do when you arrived at the house?” Tabitha’s gaze challenged him. Come on, be a man. You can do better than this sulky shit. You are better than this, her eyes seemed to tell him.
Maybe he once had been. But not anymore. Last night had changed all that.
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Okay. What did your mother and sister do?”
He exhaled heavily. He wasn’t going to lie. About this part, at least. The fewer things to trip him up, the better.
“They started unloading the car. My dad showed up.”
“And?”
“He got mad at me. Like he always does.”
“Why does he get mad at you, Nick?” Tabitha asked, her voice soft. Too soft. It was really pissing him off. He wasn’t a kid anymore.
“Because I’m not a chip off the old blockhead.”
“You look a lot like him.”
“But I’m not him, okay! I’m. Not. Like. My. Father.” He fought to control his temper. That would haunt him to the rest of his days. Looking in the mirror and seeing his father’s face. The bastard.
“What’s your father like?”
“He’s full of shit.”
The detective seemed to nod to himself. He jotted something on the notepad.
“Why don’t y
ou get along with your dad, Nick?”
Nick crossed his arms. “Because I’m not smart enough for him. I’m always making mistakes.”
“You mean mistakes at school?”
“Yeah.” Those were just the tip of the iceberg, but they didn’t need to know about the rest. Getting caught for cheating. Getting kicked off the team. Taking money out of his father’s account. They didn’t need to know about that stuff.
“But he couldn’t have been mad at you about school this time, Nick. School’s been out for a month.”
“He wanted me to go sailing with him. I didn’t want to go.”
“Why didn’t you want to go?” There was a forced casualness to the question that put Nick on edge. What did they know?
What had his little sister told them?
She wouldn’t have said anything on purpose. But she was too trusting. They could’ve weaseled something out of her before she knew what was what.
He held Tabitha’s gaze. “I wanted to go to a camp, instead.”
The detective wrote something on his notepad. Shit. Lucy had told them something.
“Did you tell your father that?”
“My mum did.” He shifted in his chair. “He got really mad.”
“What did he do?”
“He blamed it on her. They had a fight. Then he drove off.”
“Did you see him again last night?”
His breath stopped in his throat. He felt his palms prick with sweat. Then he realized he had the perfect answer. “Yeah. At my grandmother’s. He came to her house this morning.”
He rubbed his palms lightly over his shorts. He was still in control of this.
“Okay, Nick, we need to ask you about what happened yesterday after your father left. What did you do?”
“I unpacked my stuff. Then I set up my laptop and downloaded some photos.” He remembered his sullenness about not going out for supper. They’d just arrived and she’d gone to her room. Some way to start a vacation, he’d thought. He glanced down at his hands. “Then I was hanging out in my room. Syncing my iPhone and stuff.”
“Did you go to sleep?”
“No.”
“Did you talk to your mother at all that night?”
He swallowed. He had heard his mother leave her room to say good-night to Lucy. He had heard her footsteps hesitate outside his room. She wanted to talk to him. He’d sensed her need through the door. But he’d done nothing. “No.”
“Was your room next to your mother’s?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go to sleep after that?”
“No.”
“So you were awake the whole time?”
“Yes.”
The detective and the babe exchanged glances. “Did you hear or see anything before your mother’s fall?”
He stared at his fingers. “I heard a thump.”
Ethan glanced at his notes. “From outside?”
“No. Inside her room.”
“And where were you?”
“In my room. On my iPhone,” he added.
“What time was this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It was after midnight.”
“How big a thump was it? Was it like someone jumping to their feet, or someone falling off a bed?”
“I guess it was like someone bumping into something.”
The detective wrote that down.
“Then what happened?”
“I thought my mother was going to the bathroom.” He couldn’t admit he thought his mother was coming to talk to him and he’d held his breath in the dark, praying she wouldn’t. Because he’d give anything to have acted differently.
“Did you hear a toilet flush or the taps run?” the detective asked.
“No. Then I heard the sliding door open.”
“How many minutes later?”
“One, maybe two.” Nick shrugged. The detective’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t liked the casualness of the gesture.
“You could hear it from your room? Weren’t your earbuds plugged in?”
“I wasn’t listening to any music then.”
“Why did you think you could hear the door slide open? Was it squeaky?”
“No. It sounded like it hit the stop at the end of the runners really hard. Sort of like it bounced against something.”
“Then what happened?”
Nick breathed in deeply. This was the crucial time. They were closing in for the kill.
24
Saturday, 12:34 p.m.
“I heard my mother moan,” Nick said.
“Why did she do that?” The detective’s eyes did not leave Nick’s face.
Sweat pricked the back of his neck. “I don’t know.”
“What did you do?”
“I jumped off my bed and ran to the door in my bedroom.”
“The sliding door?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened when you got to the deck?”
Nick looked away. “I tripped.”
“You tripped?” The detective stared at him. As if he was trying to figure out if he was lying or not.
Nick met his gaze. “Yeah. There was this pot by the end of the door and I didn’t see it, it was dark and I ran right into it…”
When he raised his head, he’d seen a man ten feet away. His back was to Nick. He had a stocking over his head.
Nick’s hands clenched. Then he realized he’d made fists. He unlocked his fingers, smoothing them over his shorts.
“Did you fall?” Tabitha asked, her eyes sym pathetic.
“Yeah.”
“Did you hurt yourself?” The detective did a quick once-over of Nick’s exposed skin. Checking for proof of his fall.
“Nah.”
The sweat on the back of Nick’s neck turned icy. He knew what the detective was after—he’d seen enough CSI. They were hoping he’d cut himself and left some DNA somewhere.
“Okay, Nick, I want you to pretend that your eyes are like a video camera. Tell us what the video saw after you fell on the deck.”
Nick had stared, frozen with shock.
The man had his back to Nick. But he could see something white fluttering from the man’s arm. It looked like a sheet. The man raised his arm. He held a small club. It was black, heavy.
He smashed his arm down. Nick heard a whimper. His heart stopped at the sound. It was his mother. What he’d thought was a white sheet was his mother’s nightgown.
And the man who’d struck his mother with a club was his father. Nick recognized his shoulders. A stocking covered his father’s head, but he could see his telltale blond hair crushed against his skull.
Nick swallowed. “I looked up. I heard a noise at the railing.”
“What kind of noise?” the detective asked.
“Like someone climbing over the rail.”
“Climbing over the rail?” The detective’s eyes narrowed.
Nick nodded.
His father lifted his mother over the rail as though he was dumping a sack of potatoes.
“No!” Nick tried to shout but his voice had been paralyzed with horror. He lunged toward his father. Toward his mother.
“Are you sure, Nick?” Tabitha asked.
“Yeah.”
“And what did the video capture?” the detective asked.
“My mother. She had her leg over the rail. About to jump.”
“Jump or fall?”
“Jump.”
Then his father dropped her.
He saw the white floating beyond the black wrought-iron rail. Then his mother’s long smooth legs…her feet…her pale pink polished toes…
His father spun on his heel and ran through the sliding door back into his mother’s bedroom.
Nick closed his eyes. I’m sorry, Mum. It’s only for a few days. Then the real truth will come out. He exhaled heavily.
“So the video filmed your mother jumping over the rail?”
“Let’s just cut the video shit, okay?” It cut too close to hom
e. The scene replayed itself in his head endlessly. He couldn’t get it to stop. And the coffee that son-of-a-bitch detective had made him roiled in his stomach, churning his anger. “I saw my mother jump over the fucking balcony.” He glared at the detective. “Make sure you write that down on your fucking notepad.” He jumped to his feet. “I’m done.” He stalked toward the door.
The detective pushed back his chair and blocked his path. “Just a sec, Nick.”
“Nick,” Tabitha said. “I know how hard this is.”
You have no fucking idea. Telling the cops that his mother had killed herself had almost killed him. But it was the only thing he could think of to get the cops off his father’s trail. He needed to keep them away from his father until Nick was done with him.
I’ll make you pay, Dad.
I’ll make you pay for this.
“Nick, please sit down.”
“I’m done,” Nick said again. He wasn’t going to let this guy tell him what to do.
“Nick, we are trying to solve the questions around your mother’s death. We need your help.” Tabitha’s eyes searched his. “Can you help us, please?”
He stared at her, his brain flying. He didn’t want to answer any more questions; he was scared they’d trap him. But it was obvious they weren’t going to let him be.
He lowered himself to the chair. “How much longer?”
“We just need to make sure you understand what you told us.”
“I know what I said.”
“You told us your mother jumped over the rail.”
“Yes.”
“Was she awake?”
That question startled him. Weren’t most people awake when they killed themselves?
Then he answered his own question. Not if they took pills…
And his mother had sleeping pills.
He hadn’t thought of it, but maybe it would be even better if it seemed she was strung out on pills…but could they figure out she hadn’t been?
He pressed his palms into his shorts. He didn’t know what to say. Should he say she was awake? Or asleep?
He felt their eyes on him.
He knew it was important he got it right.
His heart hammered.
No. Don’t psych yourself out.
It was just like writing a test. When he thought too hard about the answer it made him clumsy.
He always got the answer wrong.
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