“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.”
Josh nodded as he wrote everything down. “Do you think they could’ve been working with each other?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek as I thought about it, and then I lifted a finger from the cup and wagged it at the detectives. I furrowed my brow, remembering something I’d forgotten. Something I’d found when I last saw my mother alive.
“Actually, the last time I met with her—”
“Your mother?” Sam clarified, and I nodded.
“Yeah. She dropped her bag when she was leaving, and something fell out. It was a handwritten prescription for oxy. You know, like, torn from one of those pads doctors have. But it was in her handwriting.”
Sam leaned back in his chair, a look of interest blanketing his features. “Isn’t that interesting, considering that we found a prescription pad on her when her body was found?”
“She wouldn’t have carried that around,” I muttered, thinking out loud.
“No, I’m inclined to agree with you,” Josh replied, still scribbling.
“So, Levi Stratton,” Sam repeated, drumming his fingers against the table. “Anything else you can tell us about him before we bring him in?”
“Yeah. He’s her dead ex-boyfriend’s brother,” I said, bringing the cup of coffee to my lips.
I eyed the two detectives from over the brim as both pairs of eyes lit with intrigue. Josh scribbled onto his pad while Sam typed something into his phone, and all I could think to say, to break the silence, was, “You know, you guys really need to invest in some better coffee. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I drank better shit in prison.”
***
The detectives offered to give me a ride home, but I told them I’d get a cab and left the station with a couple of handshakes and the promise that Levi Stratton was finally going down.
Then, I called Harry and asked him, once again, for a ride.
He found me across the street from the high school, just as he’d found me all those months before. It was risky for me now to be sitting out in the open like this.
What if Levi saw me? What about Seth?
But, to put it simply, fuck them. They were the last things on my mind as I stared across at that sacred patch of dirt. The last place my best friend had been alive. The last place my mother had lain—well, apart from the morgue. I stared at it and the permanent tire tracks marring its surface, and I wondered what else it had seen. How many overdoses? How many drunken girls and guys? How many car accidents? The amount of memories it held, the things it knew, the things it had seen …
Fuck, if it could talk, what would it say right now? Jesus, fuck, this guy again?
Harry got out of his car and wandered over, wearing the uniform I knew well.
“You’re making this a habit now,” he commented, standing above me with his hands on his waist. “What’s going on?”
“My mom died,” I replied simply, only glancing at him for a moment before looking back at the spot across the street.
Harry blew out a deep breath, then groaned. “Ah, son …” His weary, old bones lowered to sit beside me, his arm wrapping around my hunched shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” I muttered quietly, rubbing a hand beneath my nose. “Me too.”
I didn’t make him linger with me for long. I rose to my feet after another few seconds passed, and I held out a hand to help him up. Then, I asked if he could take me home, and he didn’t say no. He never would.
We chatted along the way about everything but my mother. He asked me about Ray, and I told him I loved her. I asked him about Mrs. Henderson, and he told me she was expecting her third—and supposedly final—child. We talked about the upcoming fall and the holidays it held, and he asked if I wanted to do something with his family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I told him I’d love to, but I’d have to run it by the lady of the house.