“That was a group effort, Detective Higgins.”
“Make it Jack. Cassie Sheen called. We’ve got your guy in an interview room. His name is Dereece Neville.” Higgins spells the first name. “We were going to turn him loose, anyway. Several people who saw the incident corroborate his story—he was jiving around with the girl, she took offense and ran into the street. Neville saw the truck coming, ran after her, tried to push her out of the way, mostly succeeded. Plus, practically everyone down here knows this kid. He’s a star on the Todhunter basketball team, probably going to get an athletic scholarship to a Division I school. Great grades, honor student.”
“What was Mr. Great Grades doing on the street in the middle of a school day?”
“Ah, they were all out. Heating system at the high school shit the bed again. Third time this winter, and it’s only January. The mayor says everything’s cool down here in the Low, lots of jobs, lots of prosperity, shiny happy people. We’ll see him when he runs for reelection. Riding in that armored SUV of his.”
“Was the Neville kid hurt?”
“Scraped palms and nothing else. According to a lady across the street—she was closest to the scene—he pushed the girl and then, I quote, ‘Went flyin over the top of her like a bigass bird.’”
“Does he understand he’s free to go?”
“He does, and agreed to stay. Wants to know if the girl’s okay. Come on. Have your little chat with him, and then we’ll send him on his way. Unless you see some reason not to.”
Hodges smiles. “I’m just following up for Miss Robinson. Let me ask him a couple of questions, and we’re both out of your hair.”
18
The interview room is small and stifling hot, the overhead heating pipes clanking away. Still, it’s probably the nicest one they’ve got, because there’s a little sofa and no perp table with a cuff-bolt sticking out of it like a steel knuckle. The sofa has been mended with tape in a couple of places, and that makes Hodges think of the man Nancy Alderson says she saw on Hilltop Court, the one with the mended coat.
Dereece Neville is sitting on the sofa. In his chino pants and white button-up shirt, he looks neat and squared away. His goatee and gold neck chain are the only real dashes of style. His school jacket is folded over one arm of the sofa. He stands when Hodges and Higgins come in, and offers a long-fingered hand that looks designed expressly for working with a basketball. The pad of the palm has been painted with orange antiseptic.
Hodges shakes with him carefully, mindful of the scrapes, and introduces himself. “You’re in absolutely no trouble here, Mr. Neville. In fact, Barbara Robinson sent me to say thanks and make sure you were okay. She and her family are longtime friends of mine.”
“Is she okay?”
“Broken leg,” Hodges says, pulling over a chair. His hand creeps to his side and presses there. “It could have been a lot worse. I’m betting she’ll be back on the soccer field next year. Sit down, sit down.”
When the Neville boy sits, his knees seem to come almost up to his jawline. “It was my fault, in a way. I shouldn’t have been goofing with her, but she was just so pretty and all. Still . . . I ain’t blind.” He pauses, corrects himself. “Not blind. What was she on? Do you know?”
Hodges frowns. The idea that Barbara might have been high hasn’t crossed his mind, although it should have; she’s a teenager, after all, and those years are the Age of Experimentation. But he has dinner with the Robinsons three or four times a month, and he’s never seen anything in her that registered as drug use. Maybe he’s just too close. Or too old.
“What makes you think she was on something?”
“Just her being down here, for one thing. Those were Chapel Ridge duds she was wearing. I know, because we play em twice every year. Blow em out, too. And she was like in a daze. Standing there on the curb near Mamma Stars, that fortune-telling place, looking like she was gonna walk right out into traffic.” He shrugs. “So I chatted her up, teased her about jaywalking. She got mad, went all Kitty Pryde on my ass. I thought that was cute, so then . . .” He looks at Higgins, then back at Hodges. “This is the fault part, and I’m being straight with you about it, okay?”
“Okay,” Hodges says.
“Well, look—I grabbed her game. Just for a joke, you know. Held it up over my head. I never meant to keep it. So then she kicked me—good hard kick for a girl—and grabbed it back. She sure didn’t look stoned then.”
“How did she look, Dereece?” The switch to the boy’s first name is automatic.