“Come on, Mike. The guy doesn’t look like more than—what—thirty-five? Guys don’t retire from the cops that young. They leave because they can’t cut it. Or because they get pushed out.”
“Like you’re an expert all of a sudden,” I said.
“Ask him,” Billy said. “Next time you two are rescuing old ladies, ask him.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that we hadn’t succeeded in rescuing Mrs. Jhun.
Billy went back out on the porch. A little while later he left with Dan and Lew, which was fine by me.
I took my backpack outside and pulled out my history book. I even opened it to the right page. But I couldn’t make myself focus long enough to read the pages Riel had assigned.
Around nine o’clock a car pulled up in front of the house. I recognized it right away, only now I wasn’t sure I was glad to see it. Riel got out and came up the walk toward me.
“Your uncle home?” he asked.
I shook my head. A look crossed Riel’s face. He seemed annoyed.
“Mind if I sit down?” he said.
There were three folding chairs all in a row where Billy and Dan and Lew had been sitting. I was in one of them now. Riel took another one and set it down so that it was opposite mine, not next to it.
“Mrs. Jhun’s niece called me this evening,” he said. “The funeral is on Wednesday.” He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. I read what was written on it, the name of a Korean church in the neighborhood. “Eleven o’clock,” he said. “Get Billy to write you a note so you can get off school.”
I nodded.
Riel leaned forward so his arms were resting on his knees. He looked so hard at me that I felt myself squirming and started putting my books away to cover myself.
“Problem, Mike?” he asked.
I shook my head again.
“You don’t look too happy.”
“It’s nothing.”
He studied me a moment longer.
“What do you know about the robbery at the Jhuns’ restaurant?”
“Mr. Jhun got killed. Money was stolen.”
“I know a guy who was working robbery when it happened,” Riel said. “The place wasn’t broken into. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“The Jhuns lived on top of the restaurant. Mrs. Jhun told the police that the restaurant closed just after midnight. She and Mr. Jhun locked up the place and went upstairs. She says he woke up in the middle of the night—he told her he had heard something downstairs. He went downstairs, and within half a minute, two minutes at the most, Mrs. Jhun said she heard him call out. By the time she got downstairs, he was bleeding to death near the cash register. The back door was open, but it hadn’t been forced.”
“You mean, Mr. Jhun let the guy in?”
Riel shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The way the place is set up, just behind the counter near the cash register, there’s a door that leads to the stairs. The stairs lead to the second-floor apartment. The cash register is about twenty-five feet from the front door, which was locked tight, from the inside, and, I don’t know, maybe sixty-five feet from the back door that leads into the alley.”
It was a lot of details.
“Mr. Jhun went downstairs and cried out almost at once. The theory is, he didn’t have enough time to go to the back door, open it, let someone in, then struggle with that person and end up back at the cash register before Mrs. Jhun got there. She says she ran for the stairs as soon as she heard him cry out. She didn’t even think about her own safety. And as soon as she saw what had happened, she called 911.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Mr. Jhun locked up the place. Front door, back door. Mrs. Jhun was there. She saw him do it. She tried the doors. She told the police she always tried the locks, ever since she found out how much money he was keeping around the place. But there was no sign of forced entry, and Mr. Jhun couldn’t have let the intruder in—at least, that’s what the robbery guys think. There wasn’t enough time.”
“What are you saying? Whoever did it had a key to the place?”
He looked deep into my eyes.
“Did you know that your mother had a key?”
“What?” What was he saying? “You’re saying my mother had something to do with this?”
“I’m just asking a question, Mike.”
Sure he was. He was just asking a question that was getting my mother all messed up in something I knew she couldn’t have done.
“Who said she had a key?”
“She did. Did you know about it?”
I felt the same way I had felt when I woke up in Billy’s car the other night, dizzy and sick to my stomach and afraid to open my eyes because, if I did, everything would start to spin.
“She made a statement, Mike. She signed it. I saw it.”
I stood up fast, sending the stupid folding chair skittering out behind me.
The only movement Riel made was to tilt his head a little so that he could look at me.
“The Jhuns lived right above the restaurant. Mr. Jhun wanted a safe place to keep his set of spare keys, so he entrusted it to your mother. She did bookkeeping for him, right?” I nodded. “So he trusted her. At least, that’s what your mother said. Mrs. Jhun told the police the same thing. She had keys to the place.”
“And you think she—”
“The reason she made a statement to the police, Mike, was that Mrs. Jhun told the cops about the spare keys and they asked your mother to account for them.”
“You mean, Mrs. Jhun thought Mom—”
Riel shook his head. “Not according to what she told the police. I think she trusted your mother, Mike. She was just answering questions, that’s all. You know, how many keys were there to this lock? Where are they? Who had access to them?”
Who had access to them …
“They talked to your mom, too. They asked her whether she still had the keys the Jhuns had given her. And she said yes, and produced them. And they asked her the same questions they asked Mrs. Jhun.”
He looked at me for maybe a minute. It was creepy how he could do that, be perfectly still, just look at you and make you think, man, here it comes.
“What she told them was, there’s just me and my son, and he’s eleven years old.”
I couldn’t move.
“Your mother was well-liked by just about everybody. She impressed the detectives who were investigating the case. She answered questions directly. She produced the keys. Why wouldn’t anyone believe her? Did you know about it, Mike?”
I shook my head. I knew that she did work for Mr. Jhun. I knew that she kept some papers and things—she never said what things—in the box in one of her dresser drawers, under her sweaters. I knew because I had seen her put the box there. But I didn’t know what was in it until after she died, when Billy went through it. I had never opened it or even touched it when Mom was alive because if I had and my mother had found out, she would have been disappointed in me. Not mad at me. But disappointed that I hadn’t respected her privacy. And Mom’s disappointment was a hundred times worse than her anger.
“The thing is, Mike, I’ve been wondering.”
Here it comes.
“Do you have any idea where Billy was that night?”
I couldn’t move.
“The cops never looked at him,” Riel said. “Never had reason to. Your mother never mentioned him. He wasn’t living in the house. He didn’t hang around the restaurant, so Mrs. Jhun never mentioned him. And, far as I’ve been able to figure, nobody asked you about the robbery, am I right?”
I nodded.
“Because who would think an eleven-year-old would have a fix on a robbery-turned-murder.” He leaned forward and straightened the chair I had knocked over. “Sit down, Mike.”
I stayed where I was. Riel didn’t press the point.
“I’d never have thought of it myself if you hadn’t told me what your mom said to Billy,” he s
aid.
My stomach churned so hard I was sure I was going to be sick. All I had wanted to know was who had been driving the car that had killed my mom, and all Riel had done was turn Billy into a suspect in a completely different crime.
“Billy was here that night,” I said.
Riel didn’t look surprised. Maybe that was because he wasn’t, or maybe it was because he was so good about hiding what he was thinking.
“It was a long time ago, Mike. You sure about that?”
“He slept in my room. I remember when I woke up that morning, Mom was all upset because of what had happened to Mr. Jhun.” I sure remembered her being upset. “I remember Billy was there. He read me stories before bed. He always did when he stayed over.”
“You’re sure?”
I said I was.
“Did Billy stay over often?”
I shook my head. Around that time, he hardly ever came to the house. And whenever he did show up, he and Mom almost always got into a fight, like the time after that when Billy bought me that Xbox and Mom made him take it back. But I wasn’t going to tell Riel that.
“And anyway,” I said, “what does the robbery have to do with anything? My mother wasn’t at the restaurant that night. She didn’t know anything about that.”
Riel sighed. He ran a hand through his hair.
“Maybe nothing,” he said. He sighed again. “I have another piece of information.”
I didn’t think I wanted to hear anymore.
“I talked to another guy I know in robbery. Auto theft.”
I remembered he had told me there was a good possibility that the car that killed my mother had been stolen.
“Some cars, when they get stolen, they’re shipped across the country or even out of the country for sale. These days, it’s amazing how far a car stolen in North America can get. The other thing that happens is they get chopped—you know, taken apart—and the parts are sold instead of the whole vehicle. It can be pretty lucrative. So this guy I know in robbery, he tells me that maybe that’s why we weren’t able to recover the Impala that was involved in the accident. He says it’s possible it could have been chopped and sold for parts, maybe as soon as the day after the accident.”
“So that’s the end of that?” I said.
He shrugged, and left me wondering why he had even bothered to tell me.
“I could ask my friend in robbery to look around some more. See if he knows anybody who knows anything—you know, anything they have on chop shops that might have been operating in the area at the time, anyone with any record relating to disposing of stolen cars. There’s still lots of ways to go at it. There just isn’t any more I can tell you right now.”
Yeah, there was.
“Why’d you quit the cops?”
Finally, the impossible-to-read expression slipped from his face.
“That’s a long story,” he said quietly.
“Billy says it’s because you’re a coward.” It was mean, and I only said it because I was mad at him. Because he had asked all those questions that made it seem like somehow my mom had something to do with what had happened to Mr. Jhun. And because now he was telling me that the main evidence in the case was never going to be found. The car that had killed my mother had either been sold half a world away or chopped into parts. Either way, it was gone, gone, gone.
Maybe I was mad, but Riel wasn’t. I guess I expected him to yell at me—how dare I say such a thing? For sure I had expected him to deny it. He didn’t.
“I guess that’s an opinion,” he said. “I was supposed to be backing up my partner. Something went wrong. I didn’t want that to happen again.” He stood up slowly. “I really am sorry I couldn’t bring you any good news, Mike.”
I watched him go down the walk and climb into his car. I felt bad about what I had said, but once you’ve said something, you can’t take it back. It lies out there like a big, ripe old piece of garbage, stinking up the neighborhood.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I was sprawled on the couch watching Conan O’Brien when Billy came in. He smelled like cigarettes, which meant he had probably been at his favorite sports bar. He stood in the entrance to the living room. I knew he was watching me, not expecting me to say hello. I ignored him.
“Hey, kid,” he said, “don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“Since when do you care?”
“Whoa!” Billy grinned. He was standing in the doorway between the living room and the front hall. “What flew up your nose and bit you?”
“Riel was here,” I said.
“I warned you about that guy.” He shook his finger at me, like a not-very-serious kindergarten teacher scolding a mischievous little kid, except there was an edge to his voice and his beery eyes got a little sharper.
“He said stuff about Mom. And he was asking about you, Billy.”
“Yeah?” He came into the living room and gave my legs a kick so I’d make room for him on the couch. “What was he asking about?”
“He wanted to know where you were the night Mr. Jhun was killed.”
“Why’d he want to know that?” he said. Man, did he look mad. “And, anyway, I was here.”
“I know. I told him that.”
“Good boy, Mikey.” He peered at me. “Is there something else?”
I hesitated. “The way he was talking, I think he thinks Mom had something to do with what happened at the restaurant. Or that you did. She had keys to the place. Did you know that?”
“Keys to what place?”
“To the Jhuns’ place. Did you know about that, Billy?”
He shook his head.
“Riel says she had keys. He said it like he was blaming her for what happened.” But maybe that wasn’t fair. He’d also said that she had answered all the questions. He’d said she was well-liked. He had made it seem like the police had believed her. But then he had said, “Why shouldn’t they?” What did that mean?
“Don’t be an idiot, Mike,” Billy said. “Nancy was always a good girl. She would never do anything wrong. You should go to bed.”
I didn’t move. The whole time I’d been sitting here, I’d been wondering about what Riel had said: I could ask my friend to look into it more. Did that mean he was going to do it, or did I have to ask him to? Did he care all on his own, or would he only agree to care, well, sort of, if I kept pushing it?
“There’s something else, Billy.”
I had to talk this one out with someone. I had to get a read on it.
Billy waited.
“Mom’s case isn’t closed. He said, if they’re not solved, they’re not closed. He thinks maybe there’s a way to find out who killed Mom. To find out what happened to the car, anyway. He says maybe that could get them somewhere.”
“Jeez, Mike!” Billy shook his head. “It’s been four years. We’ve been through this already.”
“But he’s pretty sure that the car that hit her was stolen. He says either it was shipped out of town or it was cut up for parts, probably the very next day. He said one minute you have a brand-new Impala, the next minute all you have is a bunch of parts that get sold and a car that never gets found because even though the cops put out a description of it, the car thieves aren’t going to come forward. But he knows guys, you know, from the auto squad.”
“Go to bed, Mike,” Billy said. He said it nicely. Later, when I was lying in bed, I thought I heard the front door open and then close again and a lock turn in the key. It was two in the morning. Where was Billy going?
I was glad I didn’t have history the next day, because I don’t think I could have faced Riel. Not after what he had said. Not after what I had said. I kept my head down and tried to at least look like I was doing my work. On my way home, when I got close to Mr. Scorza’s store, I crossed the street so that he wouldn’t see me and I wouldn’t see him. I felt like I was hiding from everyone, like I had turned into the world’s biggest coward.
When I got home, Billy was standing at the kitchen sink. For
a guy who had told me to get some sleep, he didn’t look like he’d even come close to taking his own advice.
“Hey, Billy,” I said. I prayed there was some peanut butter left and maybe a couple of slices of bread. I didn’t even care how old they were. I was starving.
“I gotta talk to you, Mikey.”
“You gotta shave, Billy. Have you seen yourself lately?”
“I want you to talk to this guy Riel,” Billy said. “I want you to get him to back off, stop him asking any more questions. Tell him you decided you don’t want to know. Tell him it’s bringing up too many bad memories.”
What? Was he crazy?
“No way. Besides, I don’t even want to talk to him right now.” I didn’t want him to back off, either.
“Guys like him, Mikey, when they start asking questions, especially if they’re asking cops, they can stir up a lot of trouble.”
“Trouble for whoever killed Mom,” I said.
“Maybe trouble for other people, too,” Billy said. His whole body was tense. One hand was clenched around the neck of a beer bottle. The other was picking at the label.
“What’s the matter with you, Billy?”
“Jeez, Mike, why do you have to be so stubborn? You’re just like Nancy. You get an idea in your head and you don’t let it rest. Now look what you’ve gone and done.”
What? What had I gone and done?
“Don’t you care what happened?” I asked. But the truth mostly was, no, he didn’t. All Billy ever cared about was Billy. “She was my mother, and if I want to know what happened, I have a right.”
“What’d you have to go poking a stick into that cage for?” he said.
“You’re drunk, Billy.” I decided right then to ignore him. Let him ramble on. Let him say whatever he wanted, I wasn’t going to listen. All I wanted was to get past him, make a sandwich and get out of the kitchen.
Billy grabbed me. “I mean it. You got to make him stop.”
His hand bit into my forearm. Big mistake. I wasn’t in the mood for this. And just because Billy was older, that didn’t mean he was bigger or tougher. In fact, my dad must have been way taller than his because, minus the heels on his boots, the top of Billy’s head only came to the top of my nose. Plus he had been drinking. Plus he sat around too much with his loser friends, so he wasn’t in great shape. I grabbed the thumb that was digging into my forearm and wrenched it back until Billy howled.
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