SEAN LOOKED ACROSS his desk at Brendan Harris. The kid looked confused and tired and scared, just the way Sean wanted him. He'd sent two troopers over to pick him up at his house and bring him back down here, and then he'd let Brendan sit on the other side of his desk while he scrolled down his computer screen and studied all the data he'd amassed on the kid's father, taking his time about it, ignoring Brendan, letting him sit there and fidget.
He looked back at the screen now, tapped the scroll-down key with his pencil simply for effect, and said, "Tell me about your father, Brendan."
"What?"
"Your father. Raymond senior. You remember him?"
"Barely. I was, like, six when he bailed on us."
"So you don't remember the guy."
Brendan shrugged. "I remember little things. He used to come in the house singing when he was drunk. He took me to Canobie Lake Park once and bought me cotton candy and I ate half of it and puked all over the teacup ride. He wasn't around a lot, I remember that. Why?"
Sean's eyes were back on the screen. "What else you remember?"
"I dunno. He smelled like Schlitz and Dentyne. He..."
Sean could hear a smile in Brendan's voice and he looked up, caught it sliding softly across his face. "He what, Brendan?"
Brendan shifted in his chair, his gaze fixed on something that wasn't in the squad room, wasn't even in the current time zone. "He used to carry all this change, you know? It weighed down his pockets, and he made noise when he walked. When I was a kid, I'd sit in the living room at the front of the house. It was a different place than where we live now. It was nice. And I'd sit there around five o'clock and keep my eyes closed until I heard him and his coins coming up the street. Then I'd bolt out of the house to see him, and if I could guess how much he had in one pocket-if I was even close, you know?-he'd give it to me." Brendan's smile widened and he shook his head. "The man had a lot of change."
"What about a gun?" Sean said. "Your father have a gun?"
The smile froze and Brendan's eyes narrowed at Sean like he didn't understand the language. "What?"
"Did your father have a gun?"
"No."
Sean nodded and said. "You seem pretty sure for someone who was only six when he left."
Connolly entered the squad room carrying a cardboard box. He walked over to Sean and placed the box on Whitey's desk.
"What is it?" Sean said.
"A bunch of stuff," Connolly said, peering inside. "CSS reports, ballistics, fingerprint analysis, the 911 tape, a bunch of stuff."
"You already said that. What's up on the fingerprints?"
"No matches to anyone in the computer."
"You ran it through the national database?"
Connolly said, "And Interpol. Zip. There's one real flawless latent we pulled off the door. It's a thumb. If it's the doer, he's short."
"Short," Sean said.
"Yup. Short. Could be anyone's, though. We pulled six clean ones, not a match on any of 'em."
"You listen to the 911?"
"No. Should I?"
"Connolly, you should familiarize yourself with everything and anything that has to do with the case, man."
Connolly nodded. "You gonna listen to it?"
Sean said, "That's what we got you for." He turned back to Brendan Harris. "About your father's gun."
Brendan said, "My father didn't have a gun."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Oh," Sean said, "then I guess we were misinformed. By the way, Brendan, you talk to your father much?"
Brendan shook his head. "Never. He said he was going out for a drink, and he took off, left my mother and me behind, and her pregnant, too."
Sean nodded as if he could feel his pain. "But your mother never filed a missing persons report."
"That's 'cause he wasn't missing," Brendan said, some fight coming into his eyes. "He told my mother he didn't love her. He told her she was always harping on him. Two days later, he leaves."
"She never tried to find him? Nothing like that?"
"No. He sends money, so fuck it."
Sean took his pencil away from the keyboard and laid it flat on his desk. He looked at Brendan Harris, trying to read the kid, getting nothing back but a whiff of depression and residual anger.
"He sends money?"
Brendan nodded. "Once a month like clockwork."
"From where?"
"Huh?"
"The envelopes the money comes in. Where are they sent from?"
"New York."
"Always?"
"Yeah."
"Is it cash?"
"Yeah. Five hundred a month mostly. More at Christmas."
Sean said, "Does he ever write a note?"
"No."
"So how do you know it's him?"
"Who else would send us money every month? He's guilty. My ma says he was always that way-he'd do shitty things, think that just because he felt bad about them it absolved him. You know?"
Sean said, "I want to see one of the envelopes the money came in."
"My mother throws 'em away."
Sean said, "Shit," and swiveled the computer screen out of his line of vision. Everything about the case was bugging him-Dave Boyle as a suspect, Jimmy Marcus's being the father of the victim, the victim herself having been killed with her boyfriend's father's gun. And then he thought of something else that bugged him, though not in any way pertinent to the case.
"Brendan," he said, "if your father abandoned the family while your mother was pregnant, why'd she name the baby after him?"
Brendan's gaze drifted off into the squad room. "My mom ain't entirely there. You know? She tries and all, but..."
"Okay..."
"She says she named him Ray to remind herself."
"Of what?"
"Men." He shrugged. "How if you give 'em half a chance, they'll fuck you over just to prove they can."
"But when your brother turned out mute, how'd that make her feel?"
"Pissed," Brendan said, and a tiny smile played on his lips. "Kinda proved her point, though. Least in her mind." He touched the paperclip tray on the edge of Sean's desk, and the tiny smile vanished.
"Why you asking me if my father had a gun?"
Sean was suddenly tired of games and being polite and cautious. "You know why, kid."
"No," Brendan said. "I don't."
Sean leaned across the desk, barely resisting an inexplicable desire to keep going, to lunge at Brendan Harris and squeeze his throat in his hand. "The gun that killed your girlfriend, Brendan, was the same gun your father used in a robbery eighteen years ago. You want to tell me about that?"
"My father didn't have a gun," he said, but Sean could see something beginning to go to work in the kid's brain.
"No? Bullshit." He slapped the desk hard enough to jerk the kid in his chair. "You say you loved Katie Marcus? Let me tell you what I love, Brendan. I love my clearance rate. I love my ability to put down cases in seventy-two hours. Now you are fucking lying to me."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are, kid. You know your father was a thief?"
"He was a subway-"
"He was a fucking thief. He worked with Jimmy Marcus. Who was also a fucking thief. And now Jimmy's daughter is killed with your father's gun?"
"My father didn't have a gun."
"Fuck you!" Sean bellowed, and Connolly shot up in his chair, looked over at them. "You want to bullshit someone, kid? Bullshit your cell."
Sean took his keys from his belt and tossed them over his head at Connolly.
"Lock this maggot up."
Brendan stood. "I didn't do anything."
Sean watched Connolly step up behind the kid, tensing on the balls of his feet.
"You got no alibi, Brendan, and you had a prior relationship with the victim, and she was shot with your father's gun. Until I got better, I'll take you. Have a rest, think about the statements you just made to me."
"You can't lock me up." Brendan looked behind him at Connolly. "You can't."
Connolly looked back at Sean, wide-eyed, because the kid was right. Technically, they couldn't lock him up unless they charged him. And they had nothing to charge him with, really. It was against the law in this state to charge anyone with suspicion.
But Brendan didn't know any of that, and Sean gave Connolly a look that said: Welcome to Homicide, new boy.
Sean said, "You don't tell me something right now, kid, I'm doing it."
Brendan opened his mouth, and Sean saw a dark knowledge pass through him like an electric eel. Then his mouth closed, and he shook his head.
"Suspicion of capital murder," Sean said to Connolly. "Jail his ass."