“Dash, it’s the third time those mailboxes have been overturned,” Decker said. “We installed a closed-circuit TV camera after the second time.” That part was true. “You and your friends were caught on tape.”
Shaking leg. “I wasn’t there.”
Decker had yet to tell the kid about Brady Neil. He and Dash had been at it for twenty minutes, so it was time to turn up the heat. “Do you really think I’d go through all this trouble to interview you here if it was just about a couple of broken mailboxes? Well, more than a couple of broken mailboxes. Anyway, that’s not what I’m after.”
Harden continued to squirm. “I wasn’t there.”
“Yes, you were.”
Sweat on his forehead. “I swear I wasn’t.”
“You were there.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I saw you on CCTV.”
A long pause. “It wasn’t me.”
“Okay, it wasn’t you.”
The kid’s face brightened. “I can go?”
“No, you can’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Because I saw you on tape, and what I saw matters more than what you say.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Dash, your buddies and you have been vandalizing mailboxes, walls, street signs, and buildings in Greenbury for a long time. Then you run back to Hamilton, where you think you’re safe. Not this time. Just tell the truth and you’re done here.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Yes, you were.” Decker poured the kid a drink of water. “Son, the first one of your gang to tell the truth gets the most leniency, because you’re all going to be charged. I know that you know about the dead body. That means I bump up the charges from destruction of property—federal property—to murder—”
The kid jumped out of his seat. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I believe you, Dash.” The kid was quiet. “Come on. Sit back down.”
The kid cooperated.
“Tell me what you know about it.”
More sweat on his pimply forehead. “Sir, I don’t know anything about a dead body.”
Decker looked at Lennie and gave her a slight eye roll. “Dash, I think you’re a good kid. You’re the first one who came in to talk to us. And that’s why you’ll get leniency if you start telling me what really happened. If you don’t talk, you’ll force my hand. Then I go over to the next interview room, where my colleague is making the same offer to Chris Gingold.”
“I don’t need an offer.” He bounced his leg up and down. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Okay, you didn’t do anything. Tell me what you know.”
“I know my rights. I can ask for a lawyer.”
“I haven’t charged you with anything. But if I do charge you and you get a lawyer, he or she is going to tell you the same thing. Start talking. It’s your best chance. Otherwise all of you will be charged with murder. You were on the tape; you were all there.”
“If there really is a tape, then you’d know that we had nothing to do with it.”
Decker’s thoughts whirled around for a split second. “How would I know that?”
A long pause. “That’s all I got to say.”
Decker sighed. “I’m a good guy, Dash, so I’m going to be honest with you. And it’s just between you and me.”
The kid was silent.
“There are gaps in the tape. We can see you swinging at the mailboxes, but we didn’t get a clear picture of what happened to the body.”
“Then you have no evidence against me.”
“We have circumstantial evidence. We have you boys swinging at anything upright, and with a track record like yours, it’ll carry weight. It doesn’t take a whole lot of smarts to infer what else you did with those baseball bats.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.” His voice cracked.
“I believe you, son. But you’re not giving me much to work with.”
The wheels were turning in his peabrain. “What happens to me if I tell you that we saw the body and then we all got spooked and took off?”
“Is that the truth?”
Harden nodded.
“You need to answer yes or no for the tape. Did you see the body while you were on Canterbury Lane while you and your friends were vandalizing mailboxes?”
The kid nodded again.
“Dash, you need to answer yes or no.”
“Yes. Okay … okay.” He exhaled, sighed, exhaled again. “We were … you know.”
“I do know, but you need to tell me for the tape.”
“Having a little fun.”
“What do you mean by having a little fun, Dash?”
“Okay … okay. We were just, you know …”
“Dash, let’s get this moving. Just say what you were doing, okay?”
“Whopping down mailboxes. I mean, it’s no big deal. It’s not like we were busting headlights or something.”
Decker had had calls about busted head- and taillights. Be easy to goad him into talking about that, but right now, all he cared about was Brady Neil. “Go on.”
“Life is so fucking boring! My mom smokes pot all the time, my stepdad drinks, and whenever they get mad or drunk or stoned, which is all the time, I’m the fucking punching bag. And don’t tell me to go to Social Services. I’ve smoked that doobie. It’s useless. I got no choice but to live at home. I get a bed, food, and heat in the winter. I’m working toward a car. Once I get a set of wheels, I’m never coming back.”
“You won’t have a job if the courts find out what you’ve been doing.”
“Meaning I’m fucked no matter what.”
“Not necessarily, Dash. If you promise to stop whacking the mailboxes, you can walk out of here. But, first, you have to tell me about the dead body.”
Harden looked down. “I saw it first—at the corner house with the woods
