Locust Lane(23)

Michel hesitated. In America, you didn’t have to let the police inside your house without a warrant. He knew this.

“Or we can take him with us,” the man said, guessing his thoughts.

Michel led everyone to the living room. He gestured to the two chairs facing the sofa. The detectives didn’t move.

“We’d like to speak with him alone,” the man said.

This was too much.

“No, I need to be here. He’s only seventeen. I have the right.”

The detectives exchanged a look. He waited for them to sit before he conducted his son to the sofa.

“I’m going to be recording us,” the woman said as she placed a small device on the coffee table between them.

“Christopher, my name is Detective Gates. I’m with the state police. This is my colleague Detective Procopio. He works here in Emerson. Do you know why we’re here?”

“No…”

Michel looked at his son. He knew. It was in his voice.

“We’d like to ask you if you know a young woman named Eden Perry.”

Christopher stared at them in blank terror. He shook his head. It seemed to be more convulsion than denial.

“We have her phone, Christopher,” Gates said.

“Lotta texts from you,” Procopio added. “Including one from last night saying you were coming over.”

“Yes,” Christopher said, his voice almost a whisper. “I know her.”

“And you saw her last night?”

Christopher hesitated. Michel’s heart thudded against his ribs. A terrible knowledge was blooming in his mind. The police being here was no mistake. The shell had landed where intended.

“You need to tell us the truth, Christopher,” Gates said. “This is incredibly important. You understand that, right?”

“What is this?” Michel asked. “What are we talking about?”

The woman gave her head a slight silencing shake, though her eyes remained on the boy.

“Yeah,” Christopher said, his voice somehow softer. “We hung out.”

“Where?”

“The house where she’s staying.”

“You know what happened to her, don’t you?”

Christopher shook his head.

“I think you do.”

Gates’s voice managed to be both comforting and merciless.

“I just woke up. I saw it like ten minutes ago.”

“What is this?” Michel asked. “What’s going on?”

Gates finally looked at him.

“Eden Perry was murdered in the early hours of the morning.”

The pounding in Michel’s chest grew even more powerful. Gates turned back to Christopher.

“You sure there isn’t something you want to tell us about that?”

But words were beyond Christopher now. He couldn’t even seem to move his head. Gates stood and walked over to him. She put her index finger beneath his chin. It was a gesture so intimate and gentle that Michel did not even think to object. She raised his head until he was looking at her.

“What’s this on your neck, Christopher?”

There were four scratch marks, like the vapor trails of fighter jets. Michel hadn’t seen them last night. He remembered his son’s flipped collar, his refusal to remove his jacket.

“How did you get these?”

Christopher pulled away from her and covered his neck with his hand.

“I don’t know. I must have scratched myself.”

Gates nodded, as if this made perfect sense. The man stood.

“You’re going to need to come with us,” he said.

“You’re arresting him?”

“Nobody’s under arrest,” Gates said. “But your son is a material witness to a murder. We need to formally interview him at the station.”

“Do it here.”

“Mr. Mahoun, there are procedures we are all going to need to follow from this point forward.”

“Then I’m coming with him.”

“Christopher? Is that what you want?”

He nodded. Stunned.

“Speak up,” Michel said.

“Yes. I want my father there.”

“You got your phone on you?” Procopio asked.

“Yes.”

“You can bring that along.”

They wanted Christopher to ride with them; Michel could follow. He agreed, but only after he extracted a promise that they’d ask his son nothing until Michel was with him again. Gates seemed to be decent but he did not trust the man. There was an anger in him that Michel had seen when he was younger, at roadblocks, in the markets.

The drive over took a very long time. Thinking had become difficult. He could not make things fit together. A girl named Eden. We have her phone. His son arriving home, speechless and distressed and late, far too late. Those scratches on his neck, the way he’d hidden them. At the station, he parked in the visitor lot while they drove Christopher to the back of the building. A small group of people had gathered out front. The press. They watched him suspiciously as he approached. One of them raised a camera.

“Sir, who are you?” a woman’s voice asked as he passed.

“Nobody,” he said without thinking.

The officer behind the glass told Michel to wait. He started to pace, terrified that they’d lied, that they were holding him out here while they tricked his son into saying things. But then the door swung open and Gates was beckoning him with a manila folder. He followed her to a small windowless room with a table. Michel took the place next to his son. Christopher looked completely bewildered now, as he had in the days after Maryam’s death. The world had changed and he couldn’t understand why.