‘I’ll be thirteen next March.’
Twelve, Darby thought. Someone had tied a twelve-year-old boy down to a kitchen chair seated across from his mother.
‘What happened to your arm?’
‘I strained a muscle or something, and the doctor gave me this sling,’ John said. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘You can ask me anything you want.’
‘The person who shot your father, did they catch him?’
‘Yes, they did. He’s in jail.’
The boy looked at the gun clipped to her belt. ‘Are you a cop?’
‘I’m a special investigator for the Criminal Services Unit. I help victims of violent crimes. Can you tell me about the people who taped you down to the kitchen chair?’
‘How’d you –’ His lips clamped shut.
‘The skin along your wrists and your cheeks,’ Darby said. ‘Those are marks left from duct tape.’
He turned his head to the window. He blinked several times, his eyes growing wet.
Darby placed a hand on his knee. The boy shuddered.
‘I’m here to help. You can trust me.’
He didn’t answer. From outside the room came a steady beep-beep-beep from some piece of machinery and the murmured voices of Pine and the patrolman. The talking stopped. Darby wondered if they were standing near the door, trying to listen.
‘But how do I know?’
‘Know what?’
‘That I can trust you,’ he said.
‘You asked for my father.’
‘And you said he’s dead.’
‘I’m his daughter.’
‘So you say.’
Darby reached into her pocket. She removed the creased photo from her wallet and placed it on his lap.
‘This is a picture of my father,’ she said.
He picked up the photo of her father dressed in his patrolman’s uniform. A gap-toothed six-year-old girl with emerald-green eyes and long auburn pigtails sat on his lap.
‘Is this you?’
Darby nodded. ‘Do you recognize him?’
‘I’ve never met your father.’ He handed the picture back to her. ‘For all I know this photo is a fake.’
‘See this laminated card hanging around my neck? The picture matches the one on my licence. Here, look.’
He did.
‘I’m Thomas McCormick’s daughter.’ She said the words softly; she didn’t want this to be a confrontation. ‘You can trust me. But if you want me to help, you have to be honest with me.’
He said nothing.
‘What’s your father’s name?’
‘I don’t know,’ John said. ‘I never met him.’
‘Do you have a stepfather?’
‘My mom never got married.’
‘Do you have any other siblings?’
‘No.’
‘What about aunts, uncles or cousins?’
‘My mom… It was just me and her.’
His lips clamped shut again, then his eyes. His chest heaved in the air and he started to tremble.
‘It’s okay.’ Darby took his hand. ‘It’s okay.’
‘My mom…’ He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘She said that if something happened to her, if I ever got into trouble or was scared, I had to call Thomas McCormick. She said he’s the only police officer to trust. She told me not to talk to anyone else, under any circumstances.’
He started bawling.
‘My mom’s dead and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.’
10
Darby grabbed a box of tissues from the nightstand. John Hallcox did not take the tissues but he took her hand and held it while he sobbed.
Drops of rain flecked the window. She wondered if the Wonder Twins had found anything inside the woods. It was easier to look out of the window and think about Randy and Mark searching the muddy ground for evidence, to think about the ransacked house with all of its blood and broken glass, than it was to watch the twelve-year-old boy’s face.
A memory came to her: squeezing her father’s big and callused hand. It was the size of a baseball mitt. He lay in a hospital bed similar to this one, hooked up to tubes and monitors, and she had dug her fingernails into his skin, drawing blood, knowing he would wake up before the doctor removed him from life support.
‘I’m sorry, John. I’m truly sorry for what you’re going through.’
At last the awful crying ended. He grabbed several tissues and wiped his face.
She placed the digital recorder on the bed. ‘When you’re ready to talk, and with your permission, I’d like to tape this conversation. That way I can listen to you and not take notes. Is that okay?’
John nodded.
‘I’ll help you through this. Sometimes I may have to interrupt you with a question or I may ask you to clarify something. I need to make sure I have all the facts straight in my head. If you don’t understand something, ask, okay?’
He cleared his throat. ‘Okay.’
The boy clearly didn’t know where to start.
Gently, she said, ‘Tell me about the people who came inside your house.’
‘There were two of them. Two men. I was on the sofa watching TV when I heard the door open. I thought it was my mom coming home so I didn’t get up.’
‘You were home alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where was your mom?’
‘She said she had to go to a couple of job interviews and do some errands and wouldn’t be back until late. She told me to stay inside the house until she got home.’
‘Why? Was your mom worried about something?’
‘She was always worried. No matter where we lived, she was always telling me to make sure the apartment was locked up. She’d always make sure the windows were locked before she went to bed. Every day when I came home from school, she’d call to ask if everything was okay. I thought… My mom didn’t make a lot of money and we never lived in the best neighbourhoods. When we were in Los Angeles, our apartment got broken into and she freaked out. Two weeks later we were living in Asbury Park. That’s in New Jersey.’
‘Did you move around a lot?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘I think it has something to do with her parents,’ John said. ‘They were murdered before I was born. She never got into specifics or anything. The only thing she told me was that the people who did it were never caught. I think she was scared they might come for her or something.’ He swallowed and then took in a sharp breath. ‘And they did. They found us and killed her.’
‘You said “they”. There was more than one person?’
‘You mean inside my house?’
‘We’ll get to that. I want to know about the people who murdered your grandparents.’
‘I don’t know names or anything. My mom just said people came into her parents’ house one night and shot them to death while they were sleeping. My mom said she wasn’t there – I don’t know where she was. She told me these people were never caught.’
‘What are the names of your grandparents?’
‘I don’t know. My mom never talked about them. I don’t even know where they lived. I asked her – I was, you know, curious about what had happened – but she wouldn’t go into any details. I think that’s what made her paranoid about using computers.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She never went on the internet to order anything. She couldn’t, anyway, ’cause she didn’t have a credit card – she always paid cash for everything. She thought people could spy on you if you were on the internet.’
‘Was she worried these men who murdered your grandparents would somehow find her?’
‘I guess. I mean, that’s what I thought.’
‘Do you know how old your mother was when her parents died?’