"It sounds like you don't consider them the best possible company for your son."
"Well, no," says Fred, caught between his desire to tell the truth and his innate wish to avoid the appearance of unfairness. "Not if you put it like that. Ebbie seems like kind of a bully, and the other two are maybe a little on the . . . slow side? I hope . . . or I was hoping . . . that Ty would realize he could do better and spend his free time with kids who are more on, you know . . ."
"More on his level."
"Right. The trouble is, my son is sort of small for his age, and Ebbie Wexler is . . . um . . ."
"Heavyset and tall for his age," Jack says. "The perfect situation for a bully."
"You're saying you know Ebbie Wexler?"
"No, but I saw him this morning. He was with the other two boys and your son."
Dale jolts upright in his chair, and Fred Marshall drops his invisible bat. "When was that?" Dale asks. At the same time, Fred Marshall asks, "Where?"
"Chase Street, about ten past eight. I came in to pick up Henry Ley-den and drive him home. When we were on our way out of town, the boys drove their bikes into the road right in front of me. I got a good look at your son, Mr. Marshall. He seemed like a great kid."
Fred Marshall's widening eyes indicate that some kind of hope, some promise, is taking shape before him; Dale relaxes. "That pretty much matches their story. It would have been right before Ty took off on his own. If he did."
"Or they took off and left him," says Ty's father. "They were faster on their bikes than Ty, and sometimes they, you know . . . they teased him."
"By racing ahead and leaving him alone," Jack says. Fred Marshall's glum nod speaks of boyhood humiliations shared with this sympathetic father. Jack remembers the inflamed, hostile face and raised finger of Ebbie Wexler and wonders if and how the boy might be protecting himself. Dale had said that he smelled the presence of falsity in the boys' story, but why would they lie? Whatever their reasons, the lie almost certainly began with Ebbie Wexler. The other two followed orders.
For the moment setting aside the third of his thoughts, Jack says, "I want to talk to the boys before you send them home. Where are they?"
"The interrogation room, top of the stairs." Dale aims a finger at the ceiling. "Tom will take you up."
With its battleship-gray walls, gray metal table, and single window narrow as a slit in a castle wall, the room at the top of the stairs seems designed to elicit confessions through boredom and despair, and when Tom Lund leads Jack through the door, the four inhabitants of the interrogation room appear to have succumbed to its leaden atmosphere. Bobby Dulac looks sideways, stops drumming a pencil on the tabletop, and says, "Well, hoo-ray for Hollywood. Dale said you were coming down." Even Bobby gleams a little less conspicuously in this gloom. "Did you want to interrogate these here hoodlums, Lieutenant?"
"In a minute, maybe." Two of the three hoodlums on the far side of the table watch Jack move alongside Bobby Dulac as if fearing he will clap them in a cell. The words "interrogate" and "Lieutenant" have had the bracing effect of a cold wind from Canada. Ebbie Wexler squints at Jack, trying to look tough, and the boy beside him, Ronnie Metzger, wriggles in his chair, his eyes like dinner plates. The third boy, T. J. Ren-niker, has dropped his head atop his crossed arms and appears to be asleep.
"Wake him up," Jack says. "I have something to say, and I want you all to hear it." In fact, he has nothing to say, but he needs these boys to pay attention to him. He already knows that Dale was right. If they are not lying, they are at least holding something back. That's why his abrupt appearance within their dozy scene frightened them. If Jack had been in charge, he would have separated the boys and questioned them individually, but now he must deal with Bobby Dulac's mistake. He has to treat them collectively, to begin with, and he has to work on their fear. He does not want to terrorize the boys, merely to get their hearts pumping a bit faster; after that, he can separate them. The weakest, guiltiest link has already declared himself. Jack feels no compunction about telling lies to get information.
Ronnie Metzger shoves T.J.'s shoulder and says, "Wake up, bum-dell . . . dumbbell."