Saving Rain(105)

I nodded.

“If you need me, I will leave work, okay? Just call, and I'll be here.”

I nodded again.

She pressed her lips to my back and whispered, “I'm so sorry.”

Then, she bid the detectives farewell and left the house with her son trailing reluctantly behind her.

When the door closed behind them and I knew we were alone, I asked, “How?”

“We believe it was an overdose,” Detective Sam replied, his voice rough. “I'm sorry, Soldier.”

I ignored his sympathies, tamped down my emotions, and spun from the sink to cross my arms over my chest. “Where did you find her?”

He hesitated. His eyes fell to the pad of paper, and his throat moved with his slow, hard swallow. “That's not—”

“Where?”

Detective Miller straightened his back and eyed me with curiosity as he answered, “Just outside the high school.”

I lifted my chin slowly, standing tall, as a whole new sense of awareness and terror steamrolled over where I stood. Detective Sam met my glare with the same understanding, one Detective Miller seemed oblivious to. Memories of a night that still haunted my nightmares rushed back. That patch of cold dirt on the side of the road, just in front of the high school I’d dropped out of. Billy’s lifeless body. The tears on my face, drying fast in the cold night air, and Levi’s grin as an officer drove me away.

I would bet anything that my mother’s body had been found on that very same patch of dirt.

I would bet anything that she had been put there.

“It wasn’t an accident,” I stated bluntly.

Detective Sam shook his head, following my train of thought. “No. I don’t believe it was.”

Detective Miller cocked his head, eyeing me coolly, and I bet he thought he was real hot shit with that badge hanging from his belt.

“You wanna come with us down to the station?” he asked, tipping his head back as he spoke.

“Am I a suspect?”

He pursed his lips, studying me through suspicious eyes, then asked, “Should you be?”

“What do you think?” I challenged, not caring for a second that this man was in a higher position of authority than I, a convicted felon, ever would be.

Detective Miller’s glare was as cold and steely as that badge. But a moment later, he shook his head. “I think you’re a little kid in a big man’s body, who just found out his mom was murdered, and you wanna help us figure out who might be responsible.”

That was all it took for me to push away from the counter and grab my phone from the table before following the two detectives out the door and to their car.

***

Stepping into a room they usually used for interrogation, Sam—who had insisted I call them both by their first names—brought a paper cup of the shittiest coffee I had ever had in my life. It wasn’t unlike the coffee he’d given me a lifetime ago, but somehow, this time, it tasted worse.

Maybe because, this time, I wasn’t cuffed to a bench, waiting to be locked up.

Or maybe it was that, this time, I really was on the side of the good guys.

When we’d first gotten to the station, he had asked if I wanted to formally identify my mother’s body even though it wasn’t necessary. Her fingerprints had already been processed, not to mention the ID they’d conveniently found in her pocket. But Sam thought I might like to see her for closure or something like that.

But I declined.

“Thanks for the offer, man, but I think I can live without that experience,” I’d said, and he’d replied with a melancholy chuckle.

Now, we sat in the cold, sterile room, three cups of shitty coffee between us. Sam looked at me from across the table with his friendly puppy-dog eyes while Josh—Detective Miller—wore the face of someone ready to kick some serious ass.

I was quickly finding that my initial assessment of him being a dick had been wrong. The guy was tough, but he just wanted to do his job … and do it well. In fact, I found I liked him quite a bit.

“Soldier, I understand your mom might not have been the greatest person, but … she was still your mother, and I’m sorry. This has to be difficult,” Sam said, offering his condolences for the third time since he’d come to my door that morning.

“Honestly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” I replied with a shrug.

Man, was that ever the truth … and I was using it to keep my emotions from running away with what I had left of my composure.

“So, can you tell us anything about the people your mom knew? Anybody she was enemies with?” Josh asked, tapping the end of his pen against the pad of paper in front of him.

I turned the cup slowly in my hands and nodded my head, not quite meeting his stony eyes. “There’s one guy you wanna look at. Levi Stratton,” I said, the image of my mother fucking him on her couch vivid in my mind.

“Levi Stratton?” Josh repeated, readying his pen.

“Yeah. He sells drugs around town—or at least, he did. I can’t honestly tell you what he does now. But back in the day, he and I sort of, uh … competed with each other for business.”

Sam narrowed his eyes, leaning further against the table. “He sold drugs to kids too?”

I nodded. “That was a big part of his clientele, yeah, although he probably found business elsewhere too. Anyway, uh, when I was released, I first went to my mom’s place and found her with Levi. They were, uh … together.”