Double Homicide Page 6

  “From what I heard, that boy wasn’t even at the club.”

  “Boy.” Ellen looked ready to spit. “It wasn’t anyone from Ducaine?”

  At Dorothy’s silence, Ellen became fierce. “It wasn’t him, it was his friend, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? A Ducaine pig. Tell me the truth, Dorothy. Tell me! Tell me!”

  “There were some players from Ducaine—”

  “I knew it!” Ellen broke away. “I knew it! I knew it! The game! It’s not a game when they allow monsters and thugs to play. This world’s insane!” She was shouting now. “Insane!”

  “I agree, but we don’t know everything just—”

  “I know enough to know it’s insane!”

  There was a knock at the door. Rias Adajinian came in. “Leo Van Beest is here.”

  Ellen pulled up a tissue and wiped her eyes. “Lord, this is all I need.”

  “You want me to put him in another room, Ellen?”

  “Yes . . . no. No, he can come in.” She faced Rias. “Bring him in here.”

  As soon as Adajinian left, Ellen started to pace. “We divorced when Julius was five. It was hard on the boy because Leo was still playing overseas. Not that Julius would have seen much of his father even if we had lived in Italy. With all his running around.”

  Her face had turned stony.

  “It was hard on Julius after we both remarried. I don’t think he ever forgave either one of us. He refused to take my husband’s last name even after Paul adopted him. That’s why I kept the name Van Beest. I wanted Julius to feel that connection . . . that we still belonged to each other. ’Cause Leo was never around.”

  She swallowed hard and continued to walk off her nervous energy by circling around the room like a herding dog.

  “Never around, never paid for a damn thing. Spending on Lord knows what. Certainly not on his kid. Not only Julius, not on his other kids, either. Not that Leo was a bad man. He just wasn’t a good man. He was just a regular man.”

  Ellen bit her thumbnail.

  “The last time Leo divorced, it hit him hard. Real hard. He was fat and old and full of pain. His feet were gone, his knees were gone, his back was gone. Couldn’t play ball and hardly any money left. Not that he was destitute. He’s got his house, but it wasn’t like his glory days, you know. The drinking started getting real heavy. I almost felt sorry for him. Julius . . . he did feel sorry for him. He made it a point to call him once a week, once every other week. Something like that. They got closer than they ever got.”

  “That was nice,” said Dorothy.

  “Yeah, it was nice. Julius was trying to reconnect. I think he was the only bright spot in Leo’s dreary life. And now that’s gone . . . Oh Lord, I need to sit down.”

  Dorothy helped her into a chair. “When was the last time you spoke to Leo?”

  “Tonight at the game, actually.” Ellen laughed bitterly. “We nodded to each other. That’s what we did when we saw each other. We’d nod, all polite.”

  The door swung open, and Leo Van Beest barreled across the threshold. “Ellen!” He spread out his arms, but she was too weak to stand up. Instead, she just sobbed into her hands. He placed his own big mitts on her heaving shoulders. Tears were trailing down his cheeks. “Oh my, oh my, oh my!”

  Leo had never been as tall as his son, had never had quite the athletic prowess. He’d played two seasons in the NBA before being cut, spent the next fifteen years overseas, always hoping to have that one magic season that would make the scouts back home stand up and take notice again. In his young years, at six-seven, he’d been as versatile at shooting guard as at small forward. But time had not been kind to him. He was now rotund, leathery, and gray. Looked like an oversize medicine ball. Sweat beaded his brow. He pulled out a handkerchief and dried off his face.

  “How’d this happen?” he demanded of Dorothy.

  “We’re still investigating—”

  “I don’t want bullshit! I want answers!”

  “And I will be happy to give them to you as soon as I know something.”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  Dorothy started to speak but thought better of it.

  “What motherfucker shot my son?”

  “We’re still sorting out the details.”

  “I want that motherfucker strung up by his neck, you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “And if you people ain’t gonna do it, I know people who will.”

  “Sir, the police are in control. We will find the perpetrator, I promise you.”

  “Yeah, I know what a promise from the police is worth.”

  Again, Dorothy didn’t reply.

  Leo’s lower lip trembled. “Where is he? My son!”

  “Oh Lord.” Ellen started to cry. “I can’t look at him like that, Leo. I just can’t do it!”

  “I know, Ellen. I’ll do whatever needs to be done. You don’t have to do it. I’ll do it.” He faced Dorothy. “I want to see him!”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange.”

  “Yeah, you go do that!” Leo ordered. “You arrange it right away, Detective. Right now! ’Cause Julius don’t belong here at a police station. You understand? My son don’t belong here.” He started to cry. “He don’t belong here!”

  Helpless, Dorothy watched their pain and misery, making her problems appear very small. “Can I call someone for either of you? A minister maybe?”

  “Pastor Ewing,” Ellen said.

  “Church of the Faith,” Leo added. “He can help with . . . with what needs help with.”

  “He can make the arrangements.” Ellen wiped off her face. In a clear voice, she announced to her husband that she’d accompany him to the morgue.

  “You don’t have to do it, Ellen,” Leo said. “You don’t have to.”

  “I know, but I’ll do it anyway.” She stood up, swayed a moment, but then regained her balance. “We brought him into the world together. We should say good-bye together.”

  9

  Well, that was a total bust!”

  Even over her crackling cell, Dorothy heard the frustration in her partner’s voice. “Spring Mathers wasn’t home?”

  “She never made it home,” McCain said. “And I had to be the one to tell her parents about the shooting in the club. They hadn’t a clue. They thought she was asleep, all tucked in cozy and warm. They charged into her bedroom, and when they found her bed still made up, they freaked. Started calling everyone they could think of to find out where she was.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “Yeah, oh boy!” McCain griped. “So instead of finding the one witness who may have been with Julius when he was shot, we now got a pair of hysterical parents who are filing a missing-person report and demanding answers. I’ll tell you, Dorothy, this one’s gonna bite the town in the ass. College is our tourist trade. Parents get too scared to send their kids here, we’re in trouble. I’m not talking about Harvard or MIT. Cambridge is its own fiefdom. BU is an institution, sure. But what about all the Boston schools that feed off those babies?”

  He was working himself up. Dorothy tried to keep her voice even. “I know. Sometimes it would be nice if things just went right.”

  There was a pause. McCain said, “I shouldn’t be bitching. Your morning wasn’t exactly coffee and the paper in bed. How’d it go with Ellen Van Beest?”

  “As expected. The father was there, too. Leo. He played pro for a couple of seasons, although I don’t remember him.”

  “Me, either. Jeez, I’m sorry. Must have been tough for you.”

  Images of despair crept into Dorothy’s brain, of parents’ faces when the doc on the monitor took off the sheet. Luckily she was able to convince them to do it via camera. Seeing the body in person would have been just too much.

  Dorothy shuddered. “I’m going to bed, Micky. I told Doc C. to wake me up when he’s done with the autopsy. I figure we’ll go down for the briefing.”

  “C.’s doing the cutting himself, huh?”

&nbs
p; Dorothy winced at his words. It made a difference, knowing the dead boy and his mother. The whole thing was nauseating. She was working hard to maintain her professionalism.

  “You know what it’s like,” she said. “Big-time case. So what’s on your schedule?”

  “Sleep sounds good. Who do you think put the squeeze on, the mayor or all the way up to the governor?”

  “Maybe both. It happened in Boston proper, but the governor has good reason to sweep it under the rug because both colleges are in Massachusetts.” Dorothy shifted her cell from one ear to the other. “Either way, politics is going to take over. We’ll get our asses whipped if we don’t get a cut-and-dried solve.”

  “Any luck finding the matching weapon?”

  “Techs are still going through the confiscated firearms. If we find the right gun, maybe Pappy left a usable print behind. He wasn’t gloved when he discharged the gun. We know that from the powder marks.”

  “Except most prints are smeared by the kick of the recoil.”

  “Then maybe a palm print.”

  “Speaking of the son of a bitch, what’s going on with Pappy?”

  “He ain’t a rich boy, but someone posted bail for him.”

  “Bail on murder?”

  “Discharging a firearm’s all it is so far.”

  McCain cursed. “Politics. Isn’t it against NCAA rules for him to take gifts? Isn’t bail a gift?”

  “I doubt that’s in the rule book, Micky. And Pappy has more important things to deal with than the NCAA board.”

  “Scumbag. We both know damn well that he was the shooter, even if he didn’t mean to hit Julius. Let’s just hope we can keep a good case against him. You know witnesses. Their memory gets foggy after the panic wears off. Even without politics, we gotta hope to get this nailed down in a couple of days or else things will start to get very murky.”

  “Look how long it took them to arrest that kid from Baylor . . . What was his name?”

  “Carlton Dotson,” McCain said. “Yeah, I forgot about that. What’s with these basketball players anyhow?”

  The question was rhetorical. Dorothy ignored it. “What was it? Six months before they issued the warrant?”

  “Difference was Dotson confessed to one of his friends that he shot the other kid—Dennehy. And it took a while because there was no body. We sure have a body, but maybe I’d trade it for a confession.”

  Suddenly, Dorothy felt the crushing fatigue from the last twelve hours. “It’s a waste of time talking about it. Try to get some rest, Micky.”

  “I’ll try,” McCain answered. “If I don’t succeed, there’s always drugs.”

  Dorothy expected to find both boys gone, had hoped to unwind by having her tiny house to herself. Instead, they were home, their faces grave and filled with what could have been remorse for every sin they’d committed in their lifetime. Seeing a “hero” gunned down could do that to you.

  Big-time remorse: They’d prepared breakfast for her: toast and jam, coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice. Upon seeing her, Marcus marked his place in his anthropology text, and Spencer looked up from his algebra homework. They regarded their mother; she looked back at them. Dorothy spoke first.

  “Don’t you boys have school?”

  Marcus said, “Classes were canceled for the day.”

  “What’s going on with the team?”

  The older boy sighed and shrugged. “Everything’s on hold. We’ve got a meeting—the whole team’s got a meeting—at three.”

  Dorothy looked at her younger son. “And you? What’s your excuse?”

  Spencer bit his lip. “I’m way behind, Mama. I’m trying to catch up, so I figured—”

  “You can catch up on your own time, young man. Get packing.”

  “If you want, Mama, you can tell the school I have an unexcused absence. I can’t go back to class until I know what’s going on in algebra. It’ll be wasting my time and I won’t learn nothing. It’d be better if I studied here, but if you kick me out, I’ll just go to the library or something.”

  Dorothy blew out air. “How long will it take you to catch up?”

  “If I be working all day, maybe two days.”

  “You bet sweet Jesus you’ll be working all day. Especially if I write you an excuse! No doing anything with your friends until you’re all caught up.” Spencer nodded and Dorothy sat down. “Thank you, boys, for making me some breakfast. I know that you’re both doing it because you are feeling real bad about Julius. And you’re feeling bad that I’m dealing with it . . . with his parents.”

  “That must have been awful,” Spencer said.

  Tears formed in Dorothy’s eyes. “No words for it.” She picked up a piece of toast and bit into it absently. “One of you guys pour me coffee.” She sipped her juice. “Did you make decaf or regular?”

  “Decaf,” Marcus said. “Figured you might want to sleep.”

  “Good thinking,” she said.

  “Yeah, he’s the smart one,” Spencer said.

  “Cut it out,” Marcus retorted.

  “Don’t fight,” Dorothy said.

  “No one’s fighting,” Spencer said. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

  “I thought we were talking,” Dorothy said.

  Spencer said nothing.

  “Go on,” his mother urged.

  “Maybe it’s not the right time—”

  “Go on!” Dorothy said testily.

  Spencer cleared his throat and looked at his older brother.

  Marcus put down a cup of coffee for his mother. “I’ll be in the other room if you want.”

  “No, stay here,” Spencer said. “I might need help.”

  Dorothy’s eyes narrowed. “What’d you do this time?”

  “I didn’t do nothing. Just listen, okay?”

  And then it dawned on her why she was snapping at him. Because it made her feel like a normal parent. At this moment, if she didn’t act like a normal parent, she’d break down and sob, thanking the good Lord for her two beautiful sons and for keeping them healthy. She didn’t want to do that—to be weak and vulnerable and helpless—in front of the boys.

  She said, “I’m listening, but you ain’t talking.”

  Spencer frowned. “All right. I’m gonna work real hard in school, Mama. I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna try not to get distracted by all the stuff that goes down there—the guns, the drugs, the gangstas. Lots of shit goes down there.”

  “Watch your mouth!”

  “Sorry.”

  “No more carrying guns, right?”

  “Yeah, right,” Spencer said. “Can you let me finish?”

  “Who’s stopping you?”

  Spencer didn’t bother answering the obvious. “I’m gonna try real hard. But you have to know this. I know Marcus knows this. And I know I know this.”

  “Know what?”

  “I’m getting to that, okay?”

  No one spoke.

  Spencer sighed. “Mama, I ain’t a student. I don’t like school, I don’t like books, and I don’t like keeping my ass parked for five hours when nothing goes on except people yawning, throwing things at each other, or even worse.”

  “There are some good teachers.”

  “They try, Mama, but it’s a zoo. The classes are crowded, the books are old and boring, and I’m not interested in what they’re teaching me.” He looked desperately at his brother.

  Marcus shrugged. “School’s not for everyone.”

  “You shut up,” Dorothy said. “Now, you listen here, young man—”

  “Mama, please!”

  Dorothy started to speak but stopped herself.

  “Can I finish?” Spencer whined. When there was no comment from the big lady, he said, “I don’t like dodging knives and bullets and drugs and people asking you to prove yourself or showing off their shit. I know, I know. My mouth. But that’s what I deal with day in and day out.”

  “And what do you think I deal with?”

  “The same thing. Which is
why I came to this conclusion. If I’m gonna deal with the stuff—see, I said stuff—I might as well get paid for it. I don’t want to go to no college. I don’t have a college brain like Marcus does. Wait, Mama, don’t interrupt.”

  “I didn’t say nothing.”

  “It’s on your face.”

  “Sure is,” Marcus muttered.

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut it?” said Dorothy.

  “Yes, Queen Dorothy, I apologize for my untimely interruption.”

  Despite herself, she smiled.

  Spencer bit a nail and said, “Ma, I want to go to the academy. That’s what I want to do if I don’t make it in the pros.”

  Dorothy stared at her younger son. “The police academy?”

  “No, Exeter.”

  “Don’t be fresh.”

  “Yeah, the police academy. I wanna be a cop if I don’t make it in b-ball.”

  No one spoke. Finally, Marcus said, “Your coffee’s getting cold, Ma.”

  “I don’t care about my coffee.”

  “Don’t yell,” Spencer said.

  “I’m not yelling, I’m talking with excitement! Spencer Martin Breton, I don’t want you being a cop. You’re too good for that.”

  Spencer looked down at the table. His lips quivered.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  He kept his eyes averted. “I’m proud of what you do. Maybe one day, you’ll be proud of yourself, Mama.”

  She had no answer for that.

  “It’s not my first choice,” Spencer went on. “My first choice is playing pro ball. If I don’t make it into the NBA, I’ll go to Europe. I know even that’s a dream. And that’s why I have a backup plan. Still, I believe in myself. I really do. Our high school made it to the semis. I think I can bring them to the finals. My coach thinks I can bring them to the finals. He believes in me, too.”

  “He’s right,” Marcus said.

  “I believe in you, too, Spencer,” Dorothy said. “Because you are that good. Which is why you can get an athletic scholarship.”

  “It’s a waste of time and money, Mama. Let ’em give it to a kid that has a head for school. ’Cause I don’t. I hate it!”

  “Everyone needs a college education these days.”