The Reapers

Wooster had obtained a warrant for the boy’s arrest on the day Deber had died. The state cops had laughed down the phone at him when he’d informed them of what he’d done. Deber, they told him, had so many enemies that their suspect list resembled a phone book. He had been killed by a miniature explosive device, cu

Now one of those detectives stood and left the interrogation room. A moment later, the door to the chief’s little observation cell opened and the same detective entered, a cold soda in his hand.

“We’re not getting anywhere with this kid,” he said.

“You need to keep trying,” said Wooster.

“Looks like you did some trying of your own.”

“He fell over on the way to the men’s room.”

“Yeah? How many times?”

“He bounced. I didn’t keep count.”

“You sure you read him his rights?”

“Someone did. Not me.”

“He ask for a lawyer?”

“If he did, I didn’t hear him.”

The detective took a long draught of the soda. Some of it dribbled down his chin, like tobacco spit.

“He didn’t do this. It was too slick.”

Wooster wiped his brow with his sodden handkerchief.

“Too slick?” he said. “I knew Deber. I knew the people he ran with. They’re not the slick kind. If someone in his own circle, or someone he’d crossed, wanted him dead, they’d have shot him or stabbed him, maybe cut his balls off first just to send a message. They wouldn’t have wasted their time separating and then soldering a whistle so they could pack it with just enough explosive to tear his face off and turn his brain to sludge. They’re not that smart. That kid, though-” He stood and pointed at the glass. “-that kid is smart: smart enough to break into his school and smart enough to put together a little homemade blasting powder. Plus he had motive: Deber killed his mother and was fucking his aunt, and Deber wasn’t the gentle kind in the sack.”

“There’s no proof that Deber killed his mother.”

“Proof.” Wooster almost spat the word. “I don’t need proof. Some things I just know.”

“Yeah, well, the courts look at things differently. I’m friends with the men who interviewed Deber. They did everything short of hooking him up to a battery and frying him to make him talk. He didn’t break. No evidence. No witnesses. No confession. No case.”

In the interrogation room beyond, the boy’s head moved slightly, as though the men’s voices had carried to him, even through the thick walls. Wooster thought he might even have seen the ghost of a smile.

“You know what else I think?” said Wooster. His voice was softer now.

“Go on, Sherlock. I’m listening.”

Sherlock, thought Wooster. You patronizing piece of shit. I knew your daddy, and he wasn’t much better than you are. He was a nobody, couldn’t find his shoes in the morning if someone didn’t hand them to him, and you’re still less of a cop than he was.

“I think,” said Wooster, “that if that kid hadn’t killed Deber, then Deber would have killed him. I don’t think either of them had a choice. If it wasn’t the boy sitting in there, it would be Deber.”

The detective gulped down the remains of his soda. Something in the eve

“Look, Chief, you may be right. There’s something about that kid, I’ll give you that, but there’s only so much longer we can keep going with this before we have to decide whether to shit or get off the pot.”

“Just a few more hours. You talk to him about the women, about maybe using a threat against them to loosen him up some?”

“Not yet. Did you?”

“Tried. It was the only time he spoke.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me that I wasn’t the kind of man who’d hurt women.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Was he right?”

The chief sighed. “I guess so.”

“Shit. There are other ways, though. Informal ways.”

The two men looked at each other. Eventually, the chief shook his head.

“I don’t think you’re that kind of man either.”

“No, I don’t believe that I am.” The detective crushed the soda can and aimed it, inexpertly, at a trash basket. It bounced off the edge and landed in the corner of the room.

“I hope you shoot better than that,” said Wooster.

“Why, you figure I’m going to have to shoot somebody?”

“If only things were so easy.”

The detective patted Wooster on the shouder, then instantly regretted it as his hand was soaked with the chief’s sweat. He wiped it surreptitiously on his trouser leg.

“We’ll try again,” he said.

“Do that,” said Wooster. “He killed him. I know he killed him.”

He didn’t look at the detective as he left the room. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on the young black man in the room, and the young black man stared back at him.

Two hours later, Wooster was at his desk, drinking water and swatting at flies. The two detectives had taken a break from the questioning and the stifling heat of the interrogation room. They were sitting outside the station house in their shirtsleeves, smoking, the remains of hamburgers and fries on the steps beside them. Wooster knew that the interrogation was almost at an end. They had nothing. After almost two full days of questioning, the boy had uttered only two sentences. The second was his judgment of Wooster. The first was to tell them his name.

“My name is Louis.”

Louis, the way Wooster’s brother-in-law, who lived down in Louisiana, might have pronounced it. The French way. Not Lewis, but Lou-ee.

He watched the two detectives speaking softly to each other. One of them came back inside.

“We’re going to get a beer,” he said.

Wooster nodded. They were done. If they came back at all, it would only be to get their car, assuming they could remember where they’d left it.

In the waiting area outside, across from the main desk, a black woman was sitting, clutching her handbag. She was the boy’s grandmother, but she could have been his mother, her face was so youthful. Ever since the boy’s arrest, one or another of the women in the boy’s family had kept silent vigil on the same cold, hard chair. They all had a dignified air about them, a sense that they were almost doing the room a service by sitting in it. This one, though, the eldest of them, made Wooster uneasy. There were stories told about her. People went to her to have their fortunes read, to find out the sex of their unborn infant, or to have their minds put at rest about missing relatives or the souls of dead children. Wooster didn’t believe in any of that stuff, but he still treated the woman with respect. She didn’t demand it. She didn’t have to. Only a fool would fail to recognize that it was her due.