“I don’t know,” says Braedon. “Probably kids being kids. They act tough but they’re not scary.”
Clay says in his best Irish accent, “Not like the lads of Ireland, aye, sonny Jim?”
Braedon laughs. His brogue blows away Clay’s. “No, Da. The hard lads of Ireland are proper brutal, yeah?”
Clay and Braedon laugh their way into Sue and Carol’s driveway. It’s the same house where Clay sometimes spent the night or even a week while his mother was going through the worst of it. It hasn’t changed much. It’s a hundred-year-old saltbox two-story with white clapboard siding, a white picket fence, and a flower garden bordering the house. Half barrels of more flowers are scattered about. The lights are on inside and out. This is something Sue and Carol did for Clay, too. To make him feel like he wasn’t being a bother getting dropped off in the middle of the night when his father had to rush his mother to the hospital.
Seeing the place again, especially at this hour, pulls at Clay’s heart. He can’t take his eyes off it but keeps both hands gripping the steering wheel lest he get sucked into a vortex that pulls him back to those terrible days. Sue and Carol did their best toease Clay’s pain. In some ways, they were both the mothers Pam couldn’t be. Not on her bad days, anyway.
“You okay, Dad?” says Braedon, watching his father lost in another time.
Clay manages a smile. “Yeah, Brae. I’m good. Sue and Carol meant a lot to me. Still do. You’ll be in good hands here. Now let’s go. My guess is there’s going to be hot chocolate and cookies waiting for us.”
CHAPTER 25
The Riverwood Police Station is not a big place, so sitting the boys down in three separate rooms pretty much fills it out. Clay is surprised to learn that one of the three boys is Thomas Becker, Steph and Wags’s son. Clay figures it’s best if he doesn’t interrogate Thomas—let someone else do that.
Judd questions Thomas Becker at the facing desks Mike and Andy use. Zoey questions Markey Franzen in her office. Clay questions Graham Collins in the basement storage area. All three boys are cuffed at the ankles and wrists, but that is the extent of their confinement. Zoey hasn’t even put them in a cell. Nor has she arrested them, though she has every right to since they assaulted Judd and stole forty-five thousand dollars, and she witnessed Graham point a handgun at Braedon and Daniel, even though the handgun was not loaded.
Judd allows Thomas Becker to sit at Mike Wahlquist’s deskwhile Judd sits in Andy Kimmich’s. This is Judd’s way of making Thomas feel he has some importance and control in the conversation. That’s how Judd defines it to Thomas. “This is just a conversation. That’s all. No big deal…”
Thomas Becker is one of those fifteen-year-old boys who could pass for eighteen. He’s six feet tall, has to shave every day, and has deep-sunken brown eyes and olive skin like his father. He also has Wags’s black hair that falls down the sides of his face to his jawline. He tries to look like a man, but Judd sees the boy. Thomas has the cheeks and forehead of a child. His hands are delicate as if the kid were a concert pianist. His eyes are not yet hardened. Judd sees fear but also inquisitiveness, an eager anticipation of what’s about to happen.
“Where exactly did you find my brother’s things?” says Judd.
“I already told all this to Zoey,” says Thomas, whose voice is deep but without much resonance in his tiny chest.
“I know,” says Judd, “and I appreciate that. But humor me. I want to hear it right from the source.”
Thomas sighs. “All right.” He fidgets a bit with the handcuffs on his wrists and adds, “We found the stuff halfway up the mountain bike trail on Miller’s Bluff. We ride there a lot.”
“Could you lead us back to that exact same spot when it gets light?”
“Yeah,” says Thomas. “Easy.”
“How did the stuff look when you found it? Was it all over the place or stacked in a neat pile or some combination of the two?”
Thomas takes a moment and looks up into his brain as ifthe answer is posted there and he just has to read it. “It was in a messy pile, kind of… like the hoodie was just tossed on the ground with the saw and glove and earring on top of it.”
“And did the earring have the little pink back on it or did you find that separately?”
Thomas looks down for a moment and then up. “Off, I think. Like crumpled up in the sweatshirt.”
“Okay,” says Judd. He’s trying to convince himself that this is just another questioning of a suspect who’d found a random man unconscious on a trail. Not his own brother. Judd tries his best to mask the urgency he’s feeling. “And whose idea was it to take the earring?”
“That was Graham.”
“Was this fake kidnapping and ransom note his idea?”
“I guess,” says Thomas.
“You guess or you know?” says Judd.
Thomas shifts in his seat. “I suppose I know.”
“And you and the other guy, Markey, you went along with it.”
Thomas nods.
