The kid glanced at me, little more than a sliding skim that settled longest, I noticed, on the blood which had dried on my shirt and on my skin. I resisted the impulse to scratch at it.
But I’d caught something in his eyes. Something knowing. Something that made me suspect he wasn’t as horrorstruck by what he’d seen as he was making out.
“Why was a cop trying to kill you, Trey?” I asked now, more brutal, trying to shake it loose. “What have you done?”
“I ain’t done nothing!” The words had burst free before he had the chance to stop them. Too fast, perhaps? The way the guiltiest kid in the class will issue an instant denial before he’s even been accused of the crime. “I ain’t done nothing,” he repeated, quieter this time.
“You must have done something for those two cops to have picked you up at the Galleria,” I said. “It was only the day before yesterday. What happened?”
Of course, I’d heard the official version of events from Gerri Raybourn’s second-in-command, Jim Whitmarsh. He’d filled me in later, on the day I’d first arrived, although it was only after he’d begun speaking that I’d worked out that the Galleria was the name of the local shopping centre – a place so mammoth it made Meadowhall in Sheffield look like the corner Spar.
Trey had been caught near a store that sold computer accessories with a considerable amount of unpaid-for merchandise stashed in his school bag. The store manager had been all for pressing charges until Whitmarsh and Sean had been down there.
It was Sean, I’d gathered, who had politely pointed out the name of the company Trey’s father worked for. It might not have been up to Microsoft standards, but it still had enough clout in that field to dampen the guy’s enthusiasm for a prosecution. Particularly when Sean had hinted that the company might possibly be needing a rake of new hardware in the near future. By the time they’d left, he’d told me, the manager was falling over himself to be helpful.
Now, I waited for Trey’s side of the story. It took him a while to get it straight in his head before he tried it out on me.
“They set me up,” he muttered.
I ducked my head to catch the words, unsure for a moment that I’d heard him right. I couldn’t believe he’d actually come out with that one as a viable excuse, but I put a lot of effort into keeping my voice neutral. “Who set you up?”
Again, that sideways flick of the eyes from beneath his lashes, to check how this was going down. “That cop and my dad,” he said at last. “He didn’t want me to go up to Daytona for Spring Break, so he set it up just so’s he could ground me.”
I actually felt my mouth fall open, had to consciously issue the instructions to my jaw to close it. Don’t jump, I told myself. Think it through before you rip his head off.
It was certainly true that after the shoplifting incident Keith had, in no uncertain terms, forbidden his son to go to Daytona Beach for the annual Spring Break weekend coming up.
This was, I gathered by Trey’s reaction at the time, a major catastrophe. He’d sunk past being upset and had moved almost into grief-stricken at the prospect of missing out. In the end I had to brave Lonnie’s condescending attitude and check with him what the story was.
“It’s the first major school vacation since Christmas,” he’d told me. “The kids kinda go a little wild, let their hair down, y’know?”
“So what happens at Daytona Beach that’s so special?”
“Lots of partying, lots of drink, maybe a little drugs,” he’d said, flashing me the kind of perfect smile Trey would be able to muster in a few years’ time if he kept up with those braces. “The kids with the cool cars go down there and hang out, do some cruising on the beach. There’s a big car stereo competition they all go to. It’s a cool time, y’know?”
“So, missing out on it is a big deal?”
“Oh yeah,” he’d said. “It’s a big deal all right. Trey is not gonna forgive him easy for this one.”
Now, as I took in the thin set line of the boy’s mouth, I would have to say I agreed with Lonnie that Trey hadn’t forgiven his father. To the point where he was prepared to spin me this ludicrous story to explain what had just happened.
“Don’t you think,” I said, allowing a trace of acid to leak through my voice, “that there were easier ways of your dad stopping you going to Spring Break if he didn’t want you to, other than organising an elaborate setup with a couple of local cops?”
The sudden thought occurred to me that what if Oakley man wasn’t a cop at all? What if his fat sergeant hadn’t been a cop either? What if this whole thing had been a set-up right from the start? Where did that leave us?
“You don’t believe me,” Trey said, flushed and defensive. “No one ever does! I’m just a kid, right? I don’t know nothing, right? Well how the fuck do you explain what that cop did then, huh?” His voice had risen sharply, the note cracking. “How do you explain that?” And he waved his hand towards the bloodstains on my arms and clothing.
I didn’t answer straight away because, the truth was, I didn’t have one to give him.
***
I deliberately exited I-95 a junction early, turning left towards the sea. I’d quickly discovered that most of the city layouts were dead easy to navigate. If you made a mistake there was no need to do a U-turn when everything was laid out on a grid pattern. Two wrongs may not make a right, but in the States three lefts generally do.
I was searching for something specific. Somewhere I could leave Trey in reasonable safety. It went against all my instincts not to have him with me, where I could protect him, but for what I needed to do now it was just too risky to take him along. I’d just have to pray I’d been good enough for them not to follow me from the park this far. For both our sakes . . .
It wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for. A little independent diner with few cars in the parking area. It was only after we’d actually stopped that Trey seemed to notice where we were.
He eyed me with disgust. “You wanna eat?”
“No,” I said. “Look Trey, I’ll level with you.” Which was more than he was doing with me, I reckoned, but one of us had to make the first move. “No-one’s answering the phones at the house. I need to go back and check what’s happened there and I don’t want to take you with me while I do that.”
“I can handle it,” he shot back, touchy. “I’m not a baby.”
I shook my head. “I don’t doubt it,” I lied, “but that’s not the reason.” I paused while I gathered my thoughts. Treating him like a kid wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Besides, I’d already proved how bad I was at handling kids. I was going to have to pick another strategy.
“OK, let’s look at what’s happened today,” I said. “Someone’s made an attempt on you. A pretty serious attempt, yes?” Trey’s face froze up at that, as though he was trying to keep some emotion from skating across the surface, but he nodded at least.
I tried a reassuring smile, not sure if this was the best approach, but at the moment it was the only one I’d got. “OK, so far we don’t know if this attempt extends to Keith or not,” I went on, using his father’s name to detach the whole thing, make it into an academic exercise, depersonalise it. “If I take you back to the house now, I could be delivering you into a trap, you understand? I need you to sit tight here and if it all looks OK, I’ll come back and get you.”
For a few moments Trey said nothing, staring at part of the dashboard and biting his lip. I almost thought that the events of the day had finally caught up with him, that they were finally beginning to sink in.
“If you’re the main target,” I added, aiming to appeal to his ego, “we’d be giving them exactly what they want.”