page. “What’s a big, brave boy like you, in some macho gang, hiding like some scared poodle in the shower for, anyway?”
“I saw the news. About those guys that lit up that place. When I heard you coming, I got scared.”
“What do you have to be scared for, Victor? Because you made some threats? Because you were heard making threats against the family of the man who runs the place that got hit? I bet you weren’t so scared when you were running around saying how you were going to even things up. What you were going to do to those kids who took off and left your sister to die. You did say those things, didn’t you, Victor?”
Victor swallowed drily. “You got some water in here?”
“Sure.” Munoz shrugged toward Hauck. “We got some water, don’t we, Lieutenant? You want pizza? We can send out for that too. Maybe you’d like to order in some fajitas, some guac…” Munoz leaned back over the table. “You did say those things, Victor, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I said them.” Victor nodded. He brought his hands across his scalp. “But that was months ago. How would you feel, Detective? They left my little sister for dead. But I never meant them no harm.”
“But you understand, don’t you, Victor, given those things you said, how if you were us you might be looking your way too? You tight with any hombres that might want to make this thing right for you? Maybe DR-17…?”
“You crazy, Detective. I told you, that’d get me killed.”
“So then where the hell were you, boy? We’re gonna keep going back to that, Victor, and don’t keep telling me you were at home, not with me trying so hard to be your friend.”
Victor stared back at Munoz. Worry had started to build up in the kid’s eyes. He dropped back his head, slowly shaking it from side to side. “I just can’t tell you, Detective.”
“Can’t tell us what, Victor? Can’t tell us something that might save your life? You know at all just what you’re looking at here? You know who that was who you shot?”
“I didn’t shoot anyone. I swear.”
“Then help us see that, Victor. We can square this up, just like that.’ Cause that was a federal attorney killed there today. Someone very important, Victor, and the lieutenant and I…we’re all there is from turning your ass over to the FBI and making this a federal crime. And that means the death penalty, Victor. You’re seventeen. Once that happens”—Munoz shrugged— “nothing we can do.”
Victor rubbed his hands across his face.
Munoz glanced at Hauck. “Look, we know you didn’t mean to hurt that person, Victor. We know it was just an accident, that you were just trying to settle some scores about your sister. Anyone who calls himself a man might do that. And it just got out of control. That’s manslaughter, Victor. That’s something entirely different. That’s something we can work with, if that’s what you want. So I’m gonna ask you one more time and you’re gonna tell us, Victor, if you have any sense left in that head of yours—where were you this morning?”
“I didn’t shoot anyone!” Victor said again. He stood up. His cap fell off his head. He brushed his wiry hair back with two hands and leaned against the wall, palms flat, shaking his head. Tears glistened in his eyes.
Hauck stepped over to him. He placed his hand on the frightened teenager’s shoulder. “Victor, listen to me. You’re not being smart today, son. And I know you’re smart. I know you’re in school and that you do well and I promised your mother I’d watch out for you here, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I swear.
“But Detective Munoz here is right…There’s gonna be a witch hunt for whoever killed that man, Victor, and right now we’re the only thing in between you and being handed over to the Feds. And if that happens, son, there’s no one who can watch out for you then. Wherever you were, whatever it is you’re protecting, you have to tell us now,’ cause there ain’t nothing, nothing you could possibly be protecting in this world that’s more important. Your mother’s already been through hell, Victor. You don’t want to put her through all that pain all over again…”
Victor turned around. He was on the edge of sobbing.
Hauck pulled the boy against him. He let the kid cry. When he was done, Victor pulled away, wiped his nose, and took a breath that made his whole body shudder. “I didn’t shoot anyone, I swear. Whatever I may have said back then— that wasn’t me. I tell you where I was, you have to involve anyone else in it? You can keep someone out?”
“We’re trying to solve a murder here, son.” Hauck looked the boy in the face. “Nothing else.”
“Okay…” Victor nodded, drew in a deep breath. “I was with someone. All night. A girl. Her folks were away. She’s only fifteen. Her father finds out, she’s dead as that lawyer at the station you’re talking about…”
Munoz glanced at Hauck. “You can prove this, Victor?”
“Yeah, I can prove it. People saw me. People knew I was there.”
Munoz pushed a pad of paper across the table. “Start writing, hombre.”
It was after ten when Hauck finally made it home to the two-level renovated cape he rented near Hope Cove in Stamford.
The raucous press conference set up on the station’s front steps had been a mob scene. Reporters shouting about the “person of interest” being held in their cell. Hauck urging them not to jump to any conclusions. Everyone demanding to know if this was indeed some kind of twisted act of revenge.
As Hauck climbed up the outside stairs and put the key in the lock, he realized he was still wearing the same blood-soiled clothes from the shooting twelve hours before.
Tobey, Karen’s Westie, whom he’d been taking care of while she was in Atlanta, scratched at the door when he heard Hauck’s footsteps on the landing. Hauck opened and knelt down as the excited dog jumped against his chest. “Hey, bud…”
It seemed like days ago that he and Jessie were supposed to pick him up before heading onto the boat. But it was only hours. “You must be starved, guy.”
He went into the bedroom, pulled off the soiled fleece pullover, and flung it into the hamper. He took a long look at himself in the mirror.
His short, dark hair was matted from sweat, his clear blue eyes dulled and drawn from the day. Hauck’s body, still fit and athletic at forty-three, ached like it did after he’d been pounded by two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linemen back in college. He was exhausted. The bandaged gash on his neck had begun to throb. He couldn’t remember his last meal.
He trudged back to the kitchen and opened a can of dog food and a Yuengling beer. He clicked on the TV, still standing there bare-chested in his jeans.
“Brazen gunfire erupts in one of the area’s poshest suburbs…” the newscaster announced, “and a rising young attorney is dead.”
Hauck listened as the pretty reporter recounted the details of the drive-by shooting,
