“I didn’t know how you take it so I grabbed everything.”
“I usually take it with a cigarette.”
“I told you there’s no smoking in this building,” he said, then slid the boy’s cigarettes and lighter across the table.
The boy thanked him and got one lit.
Luske watched him.
“Do you know what day this is, Sean?”
The boy thought and said, “Sunday?”
“No. This is your lucky day.”
“It is?”
“You better believe it. We picked up the owner of that Ford truck, this boy named Valentine, and he fell to pieces like a china doll. I never saw a boy that size cry so hard. Did he cry like that when you hit him with that stick?”
“No, sir. He didn’t say a word.”
“Well, he’s got plenty to say now.”
“I don’t suppose he said I wasn’t any part of what they did to that girl.”
“No, he didn’t. He rubbed his big red ear and said you just wanted to get you some of that free *.” The detective lifted his coffee and sipped it and set it down again.
“He’s lying,” said the boy, and Luske said, “Maybe. But who’s to say?”
“I am.”
Luske seemed to be waiting for him to say more. When he didn’t, the detective said: “He did give us names, however. And this morning I gave the girl a photo array to look at and she picked them out, all four of them. And she’ll testify.”
The boy drew on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke.
“I guess my picture was in there too.”
Luske nodded. “She didn’t look twice at it.”
“And I guess that doesn’t count for much since she was passed out.”
“No. But other things do.”
“What other things?”
“The waitress’s account. The fact that you were pulled over within sight of the hospital. That dead dog we found where you said it was. Although there was no blue tarp.”
“The wind might’ve got it.”
“Or somebody took it.”
The boy tipped his ash and watched the flakes fall to the floor. “What about the gun?”
“Sold by a dealer outside Lincoln. Purchased by Reed Lester five days before you picked him up.”
“And what about him?”
“Lester? Still at large.”
The boy observed the tip of his cigarette. As if reading some message in the thin scroll of smoke.
“So now what?” he said.
“So now I’m compelled to release you, Sean. Your father’s waiting at the front desk.”
Some heavy thing like an ax swung in his chest. He stared at the detective.
“We called him about the truck, Sean.”
“How much does he know?”
“I don’t know. I just know he’s here.”
The boy said nothing. He stared at his cup of coffee.
“I’m compelled to let you go, Sean, but I’m not happy about it.”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I got a feeling about you, despite what it looks like you did for that girl. Maybe because of it. Maybe because of the way you did it. The fact that you didn’t call the police and you didn’t look for any help whatsoever but you just walked back there and whipped those two boys with the handle of a shit plunger. The fact that you had Reed Lester in your truck for whatever reason. There’s something in the eyes of people who are capable of certain things, and I see it in yours.”
The boy did not look away.
“I’d never do what they did,” he said.
“I didn’t say you would. But there’s plenty more a man can do that will end just as bad. He might not go looking for it, and he won’t think he wants it, but he won’t do enough to avoid it either and it will find him. It will find him, Sean, sooner or later.”