“It’s my brother’s,” says Graham. His voice is high-pitched. It hasn’t changed and maybe never will. “He’s in the army. He keeps it locked in a box in his room but I know where the key is.”
“Why didn’t you load it?”
“He keeps his ammo and clips in a safe with a combination lock. I don’t know the combination, so I just carried the gun in case something went wrong and I needed to scare someone with it.”
“You realize you’re in a lot more trouble because you threatened someone with a gun.”
“But it wasn’t loaded.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re in trouble with the law. And you’re in trouble with me. You pointed that gun at my son.”
Graham winces with fear and averts his eyes from Clay’s. “Like how much trouble?”
“That’s up to the police and the courts,” says Clay.
“Hey,” says Graham. “You’re not the police. Why am I talking to you?”
“Because I’ve been asked to help by Chief Jensen. She has the authority to do that.”
“But why? I thought you were a soccer player.”
“I was. I was also in the army. Now, you told Chief Jensen that you found Teddy’s sweatshirt, a glove, an electric saw, and his earring.”
“Yeah,” says Graham. “Because we did.”
“And you only took his earring.”
“Right…”
“Why should we believe that? Why shouldn’t we think that you abducted Teddy for the purpose of extorting a ransom? You certainly seem capable of it.”
“Because we didn’t do it,” says Graham. “We just found his stuff. Plus, all we needed was the earring. It’s not like we needed to take Teddy so we could chop fingers off him and tie those to a rock and throw them through your dad’s window.”
“That’s your reasoning?” says Clay.
Graham swivels on his chair. “What’s wrong with it?”
Clay stares hard at Graham. “The police and prosecuting attorney will consider your attitude and willingness to cooperate when deciding what to do with you.”
Graham drops his eyes and doesn’t respond.
“Not that it matters legally,” says Clay, “but whose idea was it to send the ransom note and earring to make it look like you’d kidnapped Teddy?”
Graham keeps his eyes down. “Mine.”
“By the way, who wrote that ransom note? It doesn’t read like any of you three wrote it.”
“We had AI write it so it didn’t sound like us.”
Clay nods. Makes sense. “So you find a guy’s earring and think,Hey, let’s make it look like we kidnapped him and make a quick forty-five thousand?”
“It didn’t happen like that,” says Graham.
“Then how did it happen?”
Graham lifts his eyes. “I just wanted to take the earring. You know, ’cause Joe Strummer supposedly gave it to Teddy. I thought it might be worth some cash. Then when we heard Teddy was missing, I had the idea to make it look like we kidnapped him. Figured we could get a lot more money that way.”
“Yeah,” says Clay. He leans back into the chain-link. “Forty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money. What were three fifteen-year-olds going to do with that kind of money?”
