The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,51

some home calls.”

He lit a cigarette as he walked to his car, not even bothering to hook his pants cuff back over the knife’s handle, flicking the match angrily at the air.

Valerie stared at me. “He said Jenks?”

“That’s the detective who’s been giving us a bad time since Loren Nichols’s car was torched and the Mexican girl was killed,” I said.

“Merton Jenks?”

“Yeah, that’s his name. You know him?”

“Jenks was in the OSS with my father,” she replied.

Chapter

12

I HAD NEVER WORN handcuffs before. Or been pushed face-first against a car and probed under the arms and in the crotch. It happened at the filling station the next morning in front of my boss and our customers. A plainclothes detective pulled my arms behind me and snipped the steel tongs into the locks and squeezed them into my wrists, bunching the skin, then turned me around and set me on the backseat. “Stick your feet outside.”

“Outside?”

He had a narrow face and large ears and nicotine breath and a level of irritability and malevolence in his eyes that seemed disconnected from the situation, as though he carried an invisible cross and wanted to visit as much damage on the world as possible. “You go to school. You don’t understand English?”

“You want my legs outside the car?”

I looked at his eyes again and didn’t wait for an answer. I hung my legs out the door. He pulled off my shoes, glanced at the soles, and dropped the shoes into a paper bag.

“Sir, what are we doing?” I said.

“Watch your feet,” he said, and slammed the door.

It was a short ride to Mr. Krauser’s house. A cruiser and a cage truck from the SPCA were parked in front. I could see Saber’s head through the back window of the cruiser. Krauser was standing in the front yard, wearing tennis shoes and a yellow strap workout shirt and slacks dotted with paint, his shoulders and upper arms ridged with hair. His face was dilated, as though it had been stung by bees. The man who cuffed me was named Hopkins. He had taken off his hat inside the cruiser; there was a pale line across the top of his forehead. He looked at me through the wire mesh. “I talked about you boys with Detective Jenks. I don’t know why he’s put up with you. But that’s him, not me. That man standing in the yard has the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Somebody should beat the shit out of both y’all. Your buddy in the cruiser says it was your idea. Is that true?”

“What idea?”

“Last chance. It’s you or him or both y’all. He’s already put your tit in the ringer.”

“Saber said I committed a crime?”

“His words were ‘It was Aaron’s idea. I just went along.’ ”

“It looks to me like he just got here. When did you talk to him?”

His gaze went away from me. “Saw your belt buckle. Don’t try to ride this one to the buzzer. You’ll end up in Gatesville.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You’ve already got a jacket, boy. You think your shit don’t stink? You think you’re going to get away with this?”

“With what?”

I could see the hair moving in his nostrils. He got out and pulled open the back door. The pupils in his eyes looked like burnt match heads. He fastened his hand around my bicep. “Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to,” he said. “Don’t be eyeballing, either.”

Krauser stared at me as we went up the driveway. His face was razor-nicked, a piece of blood-spotted toilet paper plastered to his chin, one of his eyes bulging and the other recessed and watery, as though diseased.

“I don’t know what happened here, Mr. Krauser, but I didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said.

“Broussard?”

“Yes, sir.”

He blinked and looked at Hopkins. “What did he tell you?”

“Maybe you should go inside and cool off, have a glass of water,” the detective said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get the truth from these boys.”

“Bledsoe is the ringleader,” Krauser said. “He belongs in a juvenile facility. This one here is a snake. Don’t turn your back on him.”

The other cops were taking Saber out of the cruiser. He was handcuffed and barefoot, his T-shirt stretched out of shape on his neck, one knee grass-stained, his elbows raw and bleeding. Hopkins pushed me up the driveway.

“I want to call my parents,” I said.

He didn’t answer. I stepped on a bottle cap or a rock and had to hop on one foot. Then we rounded the corner of