The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,13
your house, and your mother said you overslept and were on your way to school. I told him I’d deliver you to the station. I also told him you had never been in trouble and were a good kid. You owe me a big favor.”
“What’s a cop want with me?”
“That is not the issue. The issue is the conversation we had with the four hoods in the souped-up Ford. I told them they were on school property without authorization. I told them to get off campus. That was the entire substance of the conversation. Right?”
He was nodding while he spoke, waiting for me to agree with him, his eyes as hard as marbles, locked on mine. There was no window in his office; his body odor seemed to eat up the oxygen in the room.
“You made out I was a snitch. You set me up, Mr. Krauser. Has something happened?”
“Don’t you dare lay this on me, you little son of a bitch.”
“You told Loren Nichols you’d rip out his package and wrap it around his throat. Has somebody hurt him? Is that why you’re so afraid?”
“I hope that cop sticks a baton so far up your ass, you’ll be coughing splinters.”
AT THE SUBSTATION, a patrolman ushered me into a small room and left me alone with a huge thick-necked man gazing through the window at the high school campus across the street. He wore cowboy boots and a brown suit and white shirt and a tie with a swampy sunset painted on it. Behind him, a fedora rested crown-down on an army-surplus metal desk that was otherwise bare. He turned around and stared into my face, his eyes the color of lead. A snub-nose chrome-plated revolver and a badge were clipped on his belt. “I’m Detective Merton Jenks. Sit down,” he said.
“Are my folks here?”
He pawed at his cheek, his gaze never leaving my face. The skin around his eyes was grainy, like scales fanning back into his hairline. I thought of a reptile breaking out of its shell, perhaps millions of years ago. I sat down and looked up at him. He had not answered my question. I tried to hold his stare.
“You carry a shank?” he asked.
“A knife? No, sir.”
“Turn your pockets out. Put everything on the desk.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did I tell you to stand up?”
“No, sir.”
My hands were shaking as I removed my belongings from my pockets. He sat on the corner of the desk and watched me. “What do you call this?” he said.
“It’s a penknife. I use it to cut string at the grocery.”
“You sack groceries?”
“I tote them outside, too. Sometimes I work at a service station.”
“That’s a good job for a boy. Pumping gasoline, fixing tires, and all that,” he said, half smiling. “That’s what you do, right?”
“Yes, sir, oil changes, too.”
“What were you doing last night?”
“Not much. I took a walk.”
“Where’bouts did you walk?”
“I can’t rightly say. I have spells.”
“What kind of spells?”
“Like down in the dumps. They pass. They run in my family.”
“Know who Loren Nichols is?”
“A guy I had trouble with up in the Heights. He came to the school with his friends yesterday.” I straightened my back and took a fresh breath. Maybe this was about Loren Nichols and his buddies, not me.
“Were they in a 1941 Ford that belongs to Loren and his brother?”
“It was a ’41 Ford. I don’t know who owns it.”
“You wouldn’t have vandalized his car, would you?”
“No, I don’t do things like that. Are my folks on their way?”
“You mean ‘no, sir’?”
“Yes, sir, that’s what I meant.”
“Loren says he saw you in the Heights last night, not far from his house. Were you in the Heights?”
“I never bothered those guys. They came after me. I don’t know what’s going on, Mr. Jenks.”
“Detective Jenks. You didn’t answer my question. Were you in the Heights or not?”
“I don’t know where I was. Did somebody cut their tires? Is that why you asked if I had a knife?”
“You have no memory of where you were or what you did? I’d better get this down.” He felt his pockets as though he didn’t know where his pencil and pad were, then removed them from his shirt pocket and began writing, pressing the pencil hard into the paper, dotting an “i” as if throwing a dart.
“I know I didn’t cut anybody’s tires,” I said.
“If you were in a blackout, how do you know what you did?”