then state cuts requiring the closure of the Iron River Post helped cinch the title for him. With setbacks like these, how was he supposed to build a decorated police career that could prove he wasn’t a juvenile delinquent anymore?
Mark referred to his notes from the manager and looked to the boy again. “Blake Wilson?”
“Present.”
Blake lifted his hand and let it fall without bothering to look up. He was trying to appear tough, all right. But the coating of filth on his jeans, sneakers and flimsy zipper sweatshirt and the grime melding with the crop of peach fuzz on his chin hinted that the world was beating up on Blake Wilson instead of the other way around.
“Well, good.” Mark stepped over the boy’s outstretched legs, pulled out a second chair from behind the desk and dropped into it. “I’m Trooper Shoffner of the Michigan State Police. Now, I’ll tell you how this is going to go. You’re going to sit up in that chair, take off that hat and look me in the eye. Then we’re going to have a talk.”
“So that’s how it’s going to go, huh?” The boy continued to stare at a spot on the floor.
“Unless you prefer me to cuff you now and take you on a ride in my patrol car first.”
Seconds passed without any movement from the teen, but Mark folded his hands and waited. One of them had to win this power struggle, and it was going to be him. Though they’d only just met, Mark knew the kid well. He’d been that kid. But he wasn’t that guy anymore, whether others accepted that truth or not, and he needed to stick with the present if he wanted to show the suspect who was in charge.
Finally, Blake straightened and lifted his head, meeting Mark’s gaze with intelligent hazel eyes.
“The hat.”
Though that gaze flicked to the trooper’s hat in unspoken challenge, the boy yanked his cap off by the bill. A mess of greasy dark blond hair fell loose.
“Thank you.” Mark left his own cover in place, as state police policy required that troopers wear them whenever responding to a call. “How old are you, Blake?”
“Fourteen.”
He bit at skin on the corner of his pinky fingernail and then, switching hands, chewed again. His fingernails were so heavily bitten that it was a wonder he still found anything left to nibble. Just fourteen. Mark jotted the figure in his notebook, guessing that the jaded boy’s life experience made him much older than that. “The store manager has reported that you were caught in possession of shoplifted items when you left the store. Can you tell me what happened?”
The boy shrugged. “I was hungry.”
The manager materialized in the doorway. “Oh, he was hungry, all right. He walked out of the place like it was a food bank or something.”
“Food bank?”
In answer to Mark’s question, the man indicated items arranged on a table lining the office’s back wall. Something heavy settled in Mark’s throat. No cold medicine that could be cooked up into more powerful drugs. Not even a six-pack of beer or a pack of cigarettes. The suspect was accused of swiping a half gallon of milk, a box of corn flakes and a carton of cherry toaster pastries. A teenager’s breakfast of champions. Arresting a hungry kid was the last thing he wanted to do, particularly so close to the annual gorgefest that was Thanksgiving, but unpleasant tasks sometimes were part of the job.
He turned to the store manager. “Thank you for your help. I will be taking Mr. Wilson back to the post for further questioning. I will be in touch.”
The trip would also include a breakfast stop at a fast-food restaurant, but Mark didn’t mention that to the manager, who would be complaining about special treatment. He’d questioned many things about his new faith that had helped him to turn his life around and then failed to keep his wife from leaving him, but the lesson he’d learned about feeding the hungry still seemed like a good idea.
Soon the suspect was Mirandized, cuffed and seated in the back of the patrol car, and they were headed west on the Interstate toward the post. Well, fidgeting in the backseat, anyway. How Blake had managed to do that with his hands cuffed, Mark wasn’t sure, but the boy’s wiggling had already caused the blanket that Mark had tucked around his shoulders to fall behind him. The only thing that stayed in place was the hat that Mark had returned to him.
“You’re just going to make the cuffs rub your wrists raw,” he pointed out.
“So?”
But the squirming stopped for about a minute, and then it resumed as if the boy couldn’t control it. Instead of mentioning it again, Mark took the Milford Road exit and headed south toward a shopping plaza with several fast-food restaurants nearby.
“We’ll call your parents once we reach the Brighton Post, but I’m hungry, so I’m going to stop for some breakfast.” He glanced at the boy in his rearview mirror. “I can pick something up for you if you like.”
Unmasked longing flitted through Blake’s eyes as he took in the brightly colored fast-food restaurant signs, but he blinked it away as he met Mark’s gaze in the glass.
“Can’t we just go to my house first? I mean...it’s right by here.”
Mark wasn’t sure which surprised him more, that a hungry teen was turning down food or that the boy was begging to see his parents sooner than he would have been forced to once they reached the post. Since he’d suspected that Blake might be a runaway, he was curious to see just how close they lived.
“Why would you want to go there now?”
“My parents will go ballistic when they hear about me getting into trouble anyway, so we might as well get it over with.”
The Lie-o-meter should have exploded on that one because Mark wasn’t buying it. The kid had probably figured out that the store was unlikely to press charges. Or maybe he had a juvenile record a mile long and wanted to delay Mark’s chance to get back to his computer. Mark’s lips lifted at the thought. Blake had missed the laptop mounted on the patrol car’s dashboard if he believed a side trip could slow access to that information.
“Good to get it over with.” His gaze flicked to the mirror. “Sure you don’t want to eat something before—”
Blake shook his head, interrupting him. That settled it. Something was making the boy desperate to get home. Something more powerful than hunger intense enough to drive him to steal. And Mark had to know what it was.
“Okay, what’s your address?”
He popped open the laptop and typed the address Blake gave him into the GPS. The short trip led to a rural area near the line that separated Oakland and Livingston counties. Turning off on a county road, he made a second left onto a lane with only a few houses spaced along it. He pulled onto the narrow drive of an expansive two-story brick house, remarkable in no way beyond its size. The place had seen better days. Its outbuildings were faded. Its gutters hung loose. Its long, blacktop drive begged for recoating. The owner had obviously tried to warm up the place with a fall display of hay bales and yellow chrysanthemums next to the porch, but the effort only reminded Mark of a tiny color portrait on a bare wall.
“Is this it?” At least it was a house. Many of the suspects he’d met lived with less. Far less.
“Guess
