own questions before he’d consider answering any of mine.
“I was.”
“Hey, were you the guy in the backyard?”
I nodded.
“At first, I thought you musta been the one that did it, the way the cops surrounded you. Then I saw how one of them helped you and the rest of them just stood there. Didn’t look like they was arresting you or nothing.”
“You saw all that?”
“Watched from my kitchen, out the back window. One of them walked you out like there was something wrong with you. All them dead bodies make you start shaking?”
I shook my head and smiled again. “Nope. But that’s when the people I work with caught me shaking.”
Latrell laughed. “I guess that’s how come you on vacation and don’t have any FBI ID.”
“You’re right about that.”
“So what you doing outside my house?”
“I was looking for this dog, for Ruby. I got worried that she didn’t have anyone to take care of her. Looks like I was wrong.”
“Couldn’t leave her on the street. Them Dobermans and rottweilers eat her for breakfast if they get half a chance.”
“Well, you did the right thing, taking her in.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, looking at me, then at the dog.
“You want her?”
I did. Not only because Kate had told me to get a dog, at least until Friday, and not because I was living alone in a house too big and empty for one person. I pictured Keyshon playing with the dog. Then I imagined Kevin playing with a dog we never had. Ruby linked those images, softened them for me. Still, I couldn’t take the dog from Latrell.
“She’s yours. You’re taking care of her.”
“Only ‘cause no one else would. I keep a neat house. That is not a neat dog. Wasn’t raised right. Not her fault. You take her.”
He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, both looking like they’d just been pressed. I noticed his yard for the first time. Even in the dark, I could see that it was neatly mowed, the grass next to the sidewalk and steps cleanly edged. A row of close-cropped shrubs ran beneath the front windows, concrete?owerpots filled and blooming atop the stairs leading to his door.
“You keep a nice-looking place. You own or rent?”
Latrell stood a couple of inches taller. “It’s mine.”
“Good for you. How long have you owned it?”
“A while.”
“You’re pretty young to have been able to buy a house.”
“My momma left me some money.”
I studied his empty face. If there were another story hidden beneath it, someone else would have to dig it up.
“Any idea who owns Marcellus’s house?”
He shook his head. “Not my business.”
Ruby jumped up, bracing herself against my leg again.
“You’re sure you don’t want to keep her?” I asked him.
“I didn’t want nothing to happen to her, but I can’t have a dog messing up my house. You don’t take her, I got to do something with her.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
“Sure enough I’ll let you buy the dog food I got for her. Wait here.”
He went inside, returning a moment later with a bag of Science Diet and a dish with separate bowls for food and water.
“I don’t have a leash,” Latrell said, handing me the supplies.
“Thanks. Will this cover it?” I handed him two twenties.
He folded the bills between his fingers.
“Close enough,” he said with a grin. “You saving me money. That dog eats, too,” he said, turning back toward his house.
I called to him. “You know, I’m sure you’ve been over this with other agents, but I’d like to ask you a few questions about the other night.”
He stopped, looking back at me. “How come? They took your ID. What you got to do with it now?”
I shrugged. “Hard to stop being what I am.”
He nodded, arms at his side, relaxed. “I got that. What you want to know?”
“I’ll make it easy. Give me the short version. What you saw, what you heard.”
“It’s like I told them other agents. I was asleep until I heard the sirens. Then I come downstairs into the kitchen, looked out my back window. Everything was over by then, I guess. All I seen was you and then the rest of them come get you. That’s all.”
I rubbed my chin, thinking about what he said. This was how memories were shaped. The witness didn’t see or doesn’t remember. The cop prods the witness’s memory with a suggestion that blossoms into a fact. If the witness is a suspect, the memories can become a trap.
“There may have been a couple of other people in the backyard or close by, maybe standing near that big tree where you saw me-a woman and a man. The man may have been running away just when I came out of Marcellus’s back door.”
“I didn’t see anyone like that. I only saw you. And that was after.”
“The man may have been the killer or he may have seen what happened. You sure you didn’t see anybody running away?”
Latrell didn’t hesitate, shaking his head. “Didn’t see nobody running away. You ask the other people live around here?”
If Latrell were the killer, he would have jumped on the?eeing man, letting us chase a ghost, unless he thought I was trying to catch him with a lie about a witness that didn’t exist. His unforced answer said he was either innocent or brilliant.
“I’m sure the other agents did. Somebody always sees something. You know a woman named Oleta Phillips?”
“I know who she is and I seen her around, but I don’t know her to talk to her.”
“You see her that night?”
He shook his head again. “Like I told you, I didn’t see nobody besides you and the rest of the police and FBI. They already come talk to me. You can ask them.”
“No need. That’s what they told me before I went on leave. It’s just that sometimes people remember things later on that they don’t remember the first time they are asked. The mind is funny like that. Happens to me, too. You think of anything else, you call the FBI. Ask for Ammara Iverson.”
I handed him one of my business cards, jotting down Ammara’s name.
“I’ll do that,” he said. “You take care of that dog.”
“Don’t worry. Hey, you know, I saw you on television, on the news.”
“Is that right?” Latrell asked, smiling.
“Yeah. You said something that really hit home with me.”
“I did?”
“The reporter asked you for your reaction to the shootings and you said that’s what happens when no one takes care of a little boy.”
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “What’s that to you?”
“It’s my whole life. I made that mistake with my son and I lost him.”
He nodded, his face softening, his soft voice almost a whisper. “Then you know it’s true,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-one
Latrell watched the FBI agent drive away, glad to be shed of the dog. He felt responsible for having orphaned the mutt and meant it when he told the agent that he wanted to protect the dog from the bigger, stronger predators in the neighborhood. The dog, smaller and weaker, wasn’t to blame for having been abandoned. Nonetheless, he didn’t like cleaning up after the dog, which had left her messes all over his house. If the agent hadn’t taken the dog, he would have gotten rid of her, one way or the other.
He wasn’t certain what to make of the man who said he was FBI except he wasn’t working because he shook too much except there he was on Latrell’s street looking for that dog and oh, by the way, he says do you mind if I ask you some questions like did he see a woman out back of Marcellus’s house and did he know Oleta Phillips. Only reason Latrell believed he was FBI was because of seeing him come out of Marcellus’s back door that night and the way everyone treated him when he seized up.
The other agents hadn’t asked him about a man running away or a woman. The woman was Oleta. He knew that but he didn’t know who the man was, if there was a man. He wouldn’t be tricked into remembering something, that was for sure.