Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(51)

“I take it you know why I’m here,” Gage said.

“You have questions,” Maureen said, “about the death of your son.”

“I do, I do,” Gage said. He reached into his bag. He pulled out a digital recorder, set it in the middle of the table.

Maureen eyed the recorder. Gage had turned it on. She covered it with her hand, pushed the device across the table. “We won’t be recording this conversation, Mr. Gage. You can put this away.”

“Many people would consider your refusal to go on the record as an admission of something to hide,” Gage said. “If our roles were reversed, you would use it against me, as cause for suspicion.”

“Consider it anything you like,” Maureen said. “I’m willing to discuss whatever it is that troubles you about what happened to your son. But we won’t be recording anything.”

Gage raised his eyebrows. “You’ve already told me so much. Thank you.”

He returned the device to his bag. Maureen wasn’t sure he’d turned it off.

“You wouldn’t believe what it’s like trying to have a simple conversation in this city,” Gage continued. “The police, the coroner’s office. Or maybe you would. Doing what you do.”

He set his elbows on the table, leaned a bit forward. “And I’m not uncomfortable with the word murder. Because that’s what it was. Murder. I am not a fearful man. Fear is how we lose our truth, by obscuring things from the very beginning of the story. Hiding the truth for the sake of people’s feelings, or for correctness, or to pass along responsibility for it. My son didn’t die. He didn’t have a stroke. He didn’t drown. He didn’t fall down a flight of stairs. He was killed. On purpose. As a choice someone made. That difference in wording, that specificity, acknowledges that someone, a free individual, bears responsibility for him being dead.” He paused. “I want that acknowledgment made and sustained.”

“Consider it so acknowledged,” Maureen said, resenting being made to feel like she was on the witness stand. If any one person bore prime responsibility for Clayton Gage’s death, she figured, it was Clayton Gage. He’d made choices of his own. She figured withholding that opinion from his father was best.

“Most people,” she said, “don’t have your fortitude when it comes to the truth. It’ll make this conversation easier if I don’t have to hold anything back. And neither should you.”

Gage frowned at his tea as if he regretted ordering it. “So you’re not a detective, then? You said ‘officer’ when I sat down. You’re not from Homicide?”

“I am not,” Maureen said. Why hadn’t Detillier told this man, she wondered, that he’d be talking to a patrol officer? For the same reason, she realized, that she’d made him meet her in a restaurant full of black people and Creoles. To knock him off balance. “I am one of the first officers to become involved in your son’s case. I was involved from the very beginning.”

“So you were with my son when he died,” Gage said, using his fingertip to press his glasses against the bridge of his nose. He did that whenever he finished a sentence, Maureen noticed, whether or not the glasses had moved.

“No,” Maureen replied. “I was not with him.” Time to test Gage’s love of the truth. “As far as I know, Clayton was alone when he died.” He’d been found lying spread-eagled with his throat cut open like Leary had, Maureen thought. Like her, left in a place where he’d be found not long after he’d died.

“You’re the one who found his body, then?” Gage asked.

“I am not,” Maureen said. “A college junior named—well, doesn’t matter what his name was—found Clayton’s body. Outside a bar uptown.”

Gage shifted in his chair. He reached into his bag again, tossed a pen on the table. Next came a yellow legal pad. He flipped through several pages of notes written in impossibly tiny, impossibly neat handwriting. “I know about where Clayton was found, how he was found. But maybe I could talk to that boy, then. I’d like to know exactly what he saw. I’ve been to that bar, but no one there was very helpful. I’ll go back.”

“Talking to that witness is not going to happen,” Maureen said. “No way. And I’d advise you not to return to that bar. Clayton’s murder remains an open police investigation. Conducting your own investigation would be considered interference, a criminal act.”

“Is that an official warning?” Gage asked. “Are you authorized as a patrol officer to give it?”

“Mr. Gage, I am here to help you,” Maureen said, “and as a courtesy to you and your family.”

Gage raised his hands, shaking his head, as if only then realizing he’d spoken those last thoughts aloud. “Okay. Of course. Understood. I just, I’m confused.” He paused, looked away from her, frowning at a television, not really watching what was on the screen, a rerun of the local news noon broadcast. Maureen watched the images play across his glasses. He said, “So why are you the one I’m talking to? I asked for that detective, Drayton.”

Maureen shook her head. “Drayton’s no longer on the case. Consider yourself lucky.”

“They could’ve told me that when I called headquarters,” Gage said, pen at the ready. “So who has the case now?”