In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite #3)(29)

“Does your mom know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you tell them you were coming here?”

“They would have tried to stop me. But I’m eighteen. I’m an adult. So I can do this.”

He dug a hand into the front pocket of his jeans. “Here’s my license again. In case you don’t believe me. My birthday was yesterday.”

“Happy birthday,” Mayweather said.

Connor glanced at Mayweather, looking uncertain.

“You’ve handed me your driver’s license.” Tracy took a moment to consider it before handing it to Mayweather. “It confirms that you turned eighteen yesterday. And you’re here of your own volition? No one forced you or coerced you to come here?”

“I came because I wanted to.”

“Okay. When we met in the lobby, you said you had something you wanted to tell me. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Tracy looked to Mayweather, who nodded his consent. “Okay, Connor. What do you want to tell me?”

Connor sat up and glanced at the camera again. “Okay. Well, what I wanted to tell you was that my mother . . . she didn’t shoot my father.”

“She didn’t?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I did.”

“Stop talking.”




Tracy played the video. Rick Cerrabone stood with one hand covering his mouth. Kins sat near the one-way glass, largely ignoring the video and watching Connor Collins, who remained in the hard interrogation room.

After Connor’s confession, Tracy and Mayweather had stepped out of the room to discuss the situation. Both agreed that Tracy had followed established protocol but that Connor’s confession now mandated that he be read his Miranda rights. After Tracy did so, Connor described again how his father had come to pick him up and forced his way into the house. He confirmed that his father and mother had quarreled, and further confirmed Angela Collins’s statement that his father had picked up the sculpture and used it to hit his mother, knocking her to the ground. He said his father then kicked her in the stomach.

From that point, however, his and his mother’s stories diverged. Whereas Angela Collins said she sent her son out of the room, Connor said he intervened and his father slapped him hard across the face. Connor said the distraction, however, had allowed his mother enough time to get to her feet and run down the hall, locking herself in the bedroom. His father followed her and was threatening to kick in the door, and that’s when Connor remembered the gun in the closet. He said he got the gun and went down the hall, but by then his father was in the room with his mother, threatening to hit her. Connor pulled the trigger, shooting his father in the back.

“What did you do with the gun after you shot your father?” Tracy asked.

“I put it on the bed,” Connor replied.

“Then what did you do?”

“Nothing. My mother was pretty hysterical. She said we needed to call my grandfather. She told me to go into the living room and sit on the couch.”

“Did you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Did you touch your father?”

“Touch him? No.”

“Did you touch the sculpture?”

“No.”

“How long was it from the time you shot your father until the time your mother called your grandfather?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who called 911?”

“She did.”

Tracy shut off the video, and the room was silent for several moments.

“I thought he was going to tell me what Angela told you and Faz,” she said to Kins. “I figured he’d back up her story and say it was self-defense.”

Cerrabone lowered his hand. “Where’s Mayweather now?”

“Typing out a statement for Connor to sign,” Tracy said. She turned to Kins. “This could explain the twenty-one-minute gap between when the neighbor heard the shots and when Angela Collins called 911. She was cleaning up after the kid’s mess.”

“Or the kid’s lying, and they were covering up her mess,” Kins said, standing from his chair and turning away from the window. “The brother said Angela’s a master manipulator and that she’s been working the kid for years. She could have put him up to it.”

“Up to what?” Tracy said.

“Taking the blame.”

“For murdering his own father?” Tracy shook her head, not buying it. “What kind of person would do that? What kind of mother would do that?”

“A very, very sick one,” Kins said.

“They each have a motive to lie,” Cerrabone said. “That’s the problem. Both their fingerprints are on the gun. They’re also the same height, so the trajectory of the bullet won’t tell us anything. They each have a story that fits with the evidence.”

“Not all the evidence,” Kins said. “There’s still the problem of the lack of fingerprints on the sculpture, and the kid’s prints on his father’s shoe, which doesn’t fit with either story.” He looked to Cerrabone. “Can we charge them both and see if one of them blinks?”

“Not with what we currently have. Not without risking having the charges against both of them dismissed.” Cerrabone massaged the back of his neck, a habit when he got frustrated. “Besides, Berkshire would see through it and use one against the other to raise reasonable doubt as to both. This seems calculated to me.”