Maria’s phone rang and she reached for it.
Peyton stared out the windows of the precinct, watching the fog flow past. Why did it always seem like the criminal had all the rights? Why did cops have to play by a different set of rules than murderers and rapists?
She could hear Maria muttering into the phone, then she hung up.
“Cho and Simons are on their way into booking right now. They’ve got Robert Harding. They caught him trying to sneak back into his house.”
Peyton turned to Devan. “Are you going to tell me we can’t question him?”
“Did you get permission from his mother?”
“Yesterday,” said Marco.
“Then you can question him. I’ll observe, so they can’t say he didn’t have a court advocate, but I think I can make the case to try him as an adult. He’s older than Middleton, right?”
“Fifteen,” said Defino.
“Then we’re golden, but we really need a confession out of him. Especially since we don’t have any physical evidence.”
“Well, maybe I can help with that,” came Abe’s voice. He rounded the corner, coming from the back of the precinct. He had a file, which he held out to Peyton. “Doris Hall fought back...hard.”
“You ID’d her?”
“Of course I did, sweets.”
Peyton felt a wash of relief. “From her fingerprints?”
“Better yet. She had a pacemaker.” He touched the center of his chest. “I looked up the serial number on it.”
“Did you get DNA from her attacker?” asked Devan.
“Yep, under her fingernails. Her attacker will have some nasty scratches on him.”
Peyton opened the file and reviewed it.
“This is good, but we still need a confession and we still need Harding to put Middleton at the scene of the crime. That’s the only way I’ll ever be able to get near the other boy,” said Devan.
Peyton closed her eyes. She was so damn tired.
“What is it, Brooks?” asked Defino.
“They’re just kids. What the hell would make a kid do this to another person?”
“That’s what you have to find out, Peyton,” said Devan. “That’s what you need to get him to tell you.”
* * *
Peyton tried to ignore the crowd in the viewing room as she stared at Robert Harding. He was a big, raw-boned boy, a little over six feet with a bad case of acne. His mousy brown hair was mussed and he wore an oversized coat, jeans, and a pair of battered sneakers.
“He was trying to sneak back into his house,” said Cho to Defino. “Caught him climbing the fence.”
“No gun?”
“Nope.”
“He tell you anything?”
“Wouldn’t talk to us. The whole ride over here, the little bastard sat in the back seat sullen as shit. Sure swore up a blue streak when we nabbed him though. Simons accidentally elbowed him in the jaw when he was stuffing him in the car.”
Simons chuckled.
“We gotta play this very carefully or we’re gonna have all sorts of child advocates breathing down our necks,” said Devan, placing his hands on his hips. “I hate interviewing kids.”
Peyton glanced over at him.
“What kid blows out the back of a person’s skull?” said Rosa, leaning against the table, her arms cross over her chest. “That ain’t no kid.”
“The vic was a veteran. Gulf war,” said Tag, reviewing the file Abe had given them.
“Okay, how we gonna do this?” said Defino.
Peyton felt everyone’s eyes on her. She lowered her head, hugging her arms around herself.
“You gotta get him on your side, Peyton. You gotta get him to talk. We really need a confession,” urged Devan.
Peyton looked up at him. “I don’t think I’m the right one for this.”
“You’re the only one for this,” said Cho behind her.
Tag held out the file to her, but she didn’t take it.
Devan’s eyes lifted beyond her shoulder and he gave a jerk of his head in her direction. Peyton felt Marco’s hand curl around her arm as he drew her away from the window. He cupped his other hand around her elbow.
“You can do this. Just get him talking.”
She searched his blue eyes. Why did they always make her do this? Why did they always assume she was the only one who could interview a perp? Maybe Tag was just as good as she was at interrogation? Shouldn’t she have a chance to show her skill, especially with Rosa Alvarez here?
“There’s no one else better at this than you,” he said, tightening his hold.
She gave a slow nod. “I get chocolate after this.”
“You can have a whole damn chocolate feast, sweetheart.”
She smiled.
Devan passed Marco the file and he gave it to her. She laid her hand in the middle of his chest, then moved around him toward the door. She could feel their eyes following her, but she tried to block them from her mind. She had to concentrate on the boy killer.
Robert Harding looked up as she entered the room. She came to the table and set the file on its surface, then stood and stared him down.
He gave her a once over. “You a cop?”
“Yeah. Inspector Peyton Brooks.”
“What are you? Four feet tall?”
“A bit taller.”
“And you actually catch bad guys?”
“Yeah, quite a few.”
“You? You bring them down?”
“You mean physically?”
He nodded, stretching his legs out beneath the table.
Peyton took a seat in the chair perpendicular to his. “Yeah. I can take someone down if I have to.”
“I think I’m supposed to have a lawyer.”
“I can get you one if you want, but then we can’t talk. I can’t help you if I can’t talk to you, Robert.”
“My mother came here, didn’t she?”
Peyton placed her hand on the file. “She did.”
Robert made a scoffing noise.
“She was worried about you. She begged me to keep you safe.”
“Where is she?”
“We gave her a place to stay while we looked for you, but we can bring her in if you want to see her.”
He chewed his inner lip and stared at the table. “Don’t care.”
“Can we talk about Sunday night?”
“I’m not talking about that.”
“Can we talk about Jeremy?”
He glanced at her. “I’m not talking about that pussy either.”
Peyton drew a deep breath. This kid’s affect was wrong somehow. He was so disconnected. Peyton wasn’t sure how to break through to him. They must have taken a blood test in booking to see if he was on anything, but she wouldn’t have that information for hours.
She had to find a way past the block he was throwing up. She tried to think over everything she knew about him, then she remembered the blood stained t-shirt his mother had brought in yesterday. “Do you play video games, Robert?”
He glanced at her. “Yeah.”
“With Jeremy?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you like to play?”
He made a scoffing sound. “Like you’d know.”
Peyton shrugged. “You never know. I’ve been known to play a little G.T.A.”
He chuckled. “You? A cop?”
“I like the cars. What do you play?”
“Lots a stuff.”
She shifted in the chair, trying to present a relaxed demeanor. “One of the guys that works here collects action figures. He has them in his office...all in their original packaging. Must be worth thousands.”
“Bet.”
“You collect anything like that?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a few.”
Peyton nodded. “He goes to the conventions, you know?”
“Like Comic Con?”
“Yeah, where they dress in costumes? You ever go to one of those?”
He shift
ed toward her, just the slightest amount. “No. I’d like to go, but we can’t afford it.”
“He reads graphic novels too. You ever read those?”
“Yeah.” A fleeting smile passed over his features. “I like those.” He gave her a wry look. “You gonna tell me you read them?”
“I’ve read a few. I like the drawings.”
“Yeah. Which ones do you like?”
“The superhero ones are interesting. I never knew there was such a backstory to them.”
“A whole world.”
“Yeah. It’s fascinating. Sometimes, I can get really lost in them.”
“What superheroes do you like?” he asked, shifting a bit more.
“Storm. You know? From the X-men?” Peyton hoped to hell she’d remembered that right. What if her name was Tempest or Wind or Rain or something else?
“You like her? What do you like about her?”
“She was one of the first superheroes that looked like me, you know? She’s black and a woman. Besides, I really like her superpowers.”
“Yeah, but that’s fake. Superpowers make it too easy.”
Peyton knew she had to go carefully here. If she moved too fast, she’d lose him again. “What? You don’t like superheroes?”
“Not ones with superpowers.”
“Who do you like?”
“Batman. Batman’s cool.”
“Because he doesn’t have superpowers?”
“Right. He protects Gotham City with his intelligence.”
“And some righteous gadgets,” she said with a smile.
“Yeah. And a bad ass car.”
Peyton gave him a nod. “He does have a bad ass car.”
“And he doesn’t want the glory, you know? Those other guys, Superman and stuff, they go out expecting everyone to get all excited when they rescue someone, but they didn’t do anything. Not really. They were born with that stuff, the superpowers and stuff.”
“I see what you mean. Batman wasn’t born a hero. He made himself one by what he did.”
“Yeah. He goes out at night and he stops the crooks while everyone’s sleeping. They don’t even know he’s there.”
“Kind of like the Janitor,” said Peyton carefully.
Robert Harding went still. Then he leaned forward, resting his arm on the table. “Yeah, like the Janitor.”
“I’m working that case right now, Robert.”
“Really?”
“Yep. It’s hard though. A lot of people don’t think we should catch him.”
Robert shrugged. “They’re right. He’s protecting the City.”
“By killing child molesters?”
“And wife beaters, yeah.”
Peyton splayed her hand on the file. “Is that important to you, Robert? Protecting women from men who hurt them?”
He leaned back in his chair. “That’s what a hero does. He protects his women and children.”
Peyton nodded. Tread carefully, she warned herself. “Problem is, some people like the Janitor don’t really have a code like that. They live by rules they set up and they hurt people, people they shouldn’t hurt.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Peyton shifted in the chair and lifted her shirt, showing him the scars on her side where the Janitor had torn the bolts from the taser out of her body. Robert’s eyes moved from the scars to her face and back again.
“He attacked me when I went for a run, threw me in the back of a van with no windows or door handles. He drove me to a building and shut the van inside, leaving me to die.”
“Who did?”
“The Janitor, Robert. I would have died if my partner hadn’t found me in time.” She leaned closer to him. “See, there’s the problem with men like the Janitor. They may start off wanting to be heroes, but somewhere along the way, they just become the vigilantes. Do you know that word?”
Robert nodded, his gaze transfixed on her.
“Heroes are supposed to protect women and children, right, Robert?”
He nodded.
Peyton opened the file and slid the autopsy report toward him, pointing her finger at the box marked Gender. “The homeless guy in the BART station was a woman.”
He shook his head no, glancing down at the paper.
“A woman who served her country in Desert Storm. A veteran. A hero.”
His breath came faster and he stared at the spot where Peyton pointed.
“Tell me what happened, Robert. Tell me how you wound up on that BART platform Sunday night.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” he said, closing his eyes. “We were just going down there to patrol. That’s all it was.”
“But you took a gun?”
Robert’s eyes snapped open. “Jeremy was scared, said he was afraid we’d get mugged, so I told him I’d bring the rifle with me. I didn’t even know it was loaded.”
“So you and Jeremy went down on the platform at midnight?”
“It was 12:30 or so.” He lifted a hand and rubbed his eyes. “There was a lot of homeless down there. We just wanted to scare them off.”
“How?”
“I got in their faces and told them to step off. Most of them left. We thought we were protecting people by getting them to leave the station.”
“Doris Hall didn’t step off, did she?”
“Who?”
Peyton tapped the paper. “Doris Hall, the woman in the BART station.”
“I didn’t even know she was a woman. She dressed like a man. She had a dark shadow on her face. I thought it was a beard.”
“Homeless women dress like men to protect themselves. What happened when you told her to leave?”
“She told me to fuck myself and she shoved me.” Robert swallowed hard, tears forming along his lower eyelids. “She didn’t even care if I had a gun.”
“What did you do?”
He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “I chest bumped her. Next thing I know, we’re wrestling each other. It pissed me off, so I grabbed the gun.”
Peyton felt a chill shiver over her and she hugged her arms around herself.
“She must have seen it then because she tried to get away.” He gave a hitching sob. “I didn’t know it was loaded.”
“It went off?”
He stared at the file, but Peyton didn’t think he saw it. “We just wanted to scare them. That’s all. Make them leave people alone.”
“What did Jeremy do all of this time?”
“When the gun went off, he started screaming. Then he bolted upstairs, leaving me.”
“What did you do then?”
“I tried to see if he…” He caught himself and closed his eyes. “If she was still alive, but there was blood everywhere. It got all over me.”
“So you went home?”
He opened his eyes again, a tear racing down his cheek. “I stuffed the shirt in a paper bag and shoved it in the garbage can in my room. I was going to get rid of it the next day.”
Peyton leaned close to him. “Where is the gun, Robert?”
He lifted his eyes and met hers. “I took it to the pier and threw it in the bay.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
He gave Peyton a chilling smile. “My dad. The day he left us. He took me aside and told me I was the man of the house now. That I needed to protect my mom. He never even showed me how to use it.” His jaw clenched. “All this time I didn’t even think it was loaded.”
“How can that be? Your mom told me he used to take you hunting.”
Robert made a noise between a sob and a laugh. “Hunting? He’d take me to these sleazy motels and leave me in a room, while he went into the room next door.”
Peyton’s head lifted. “What do you mean?”
“He said he was playing tag, but I could hear them through the walls.”
Peyton covered his hand with her own.
Robert stared at it. “He told me I was the man of the house and to protect my mother. God, how I hate that b
astard.”
Peyton didn’t know what to say. The tragedy of this boy’s life felt overwhelming. No words would help, no justice would ever be served here. Robert Harding was a throwaway kid and he’d never even had a chance to be anything else. Soon he’d be a throwaway man, discarded by a society that didn’t know how to fix what it broke.
“I’m gonna get a pad of paper and a pen. I need you to write down everything you told me. Then I’m going to get you a lawyer, Robert.”
He gave her a soul-weary look, then stared down at the file. “It probably doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “Not now.”
Peyton tightened her hold on his hand. “It does matter. It matters to me.”
* * *
“Hot damn, she’s good,” said Rosa, watching Peyton through the two-way glass.
“San Francisco’s finest,” said Defino, smiling with pride.
Twisting on her heel, Rosa positioned herself before Marco. “I need to talk to you outside.”
Marco followed her from the viewing room.
She walked halfway down the hall, then turned to face him. “You’ve got to tell her to apply for the FBI.”
“What?”
“That talent deserves to be rewarded. She’s exactly what I’m looking for. Diverse, intelligent, gifted. You’ve got to tell her to apply. I’ll do my best to keep her in San Francisco, but if not, you could relocate with her. Most FBI agents have families, so it’s not impossible.”
“I already told her to apply. She won’t.”
“Because you didn’t make it sound convincing. If she thinks she might lose you, she’ll never try.”
“No, it’s because she doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree.”
“Then we’ll get her one.”
“What? You gonna order it from Amazon? What the hell are you talking about?”
Rosa waved him off. “We can work that out. We’ll get her a degree. Now you do your job. Be the supportive boyfriend and convince her to apply. If you hold her back, she’s just going to resent you. That woman was made for bigger things. She has a real chance to serve her country.” She poked Marco in the chest with her forefinger. “Whatever it takes, you need to convince her this is the right thing for her to do, this is the only choice she has for a future.”
Marco rubbed a hand across his forehead. He would never stop Peyton from doing whatever she wanted and he hadn’t been lying when he said he’d relocate with her, but did they have to make this decision right now? They’d only just begun their life together and Rosa Alvarez was wanting to send Peyton away from him.
Murder on Treasure Island (Peyton Brooks' Series Book 7) Page 25