Connor nodded.
They rode the elevator in silence to the seventh floor. Tracy deposited Connor in one of the hard interrogation rooms, then went into the adjacent room and turned on the video recorder. She returned to her cubicle and tried Cerrabone and Kins again, without success. She walked to the back of the floor, where the administrative staff sat, and found Ron Mayweather, the A Team’s “fifth wheel,” still at his desk. The fifth wheel was a detective assigned to assist one of the Violent Crimes Section’s four units.
“You have time to sit in on an interview with me?” she asked. “Something unexpected in the Collins case.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Mayweather said, rising from his chair.
When they entered the interrogation room, Connor sat up straight. He’d propped his skateboard against the wall and put his backpack on the floor beside it. He didn’t stand when Tracy introduced Mayweather, nor did he offer his hand. He just gave a nearly imperceptible nod and a soft “Hey.”
Tracy and Mayweather took the two seats across the small metal table. “I’m videotaping and recording everything being said,” Tracy said. “You understand that?”
Connor nodded.
“You have to answer out loud,” Tracy said.
“Oh. Yes,” he said.
“You can sit back. Relax.”
Connor sat back. After getting him to state his name, address, and date of birth, Tracy introduced herself and Ron Mayweather, gave the date and time, and briefly summarized the situation. Then she said, “Let’s back up and start over, Connor. You came to the police department this afternoon, correct?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get here?”
“I took the bus and rode my skateboard.”
“No one came with you?”
“No.”
“You said you do not have an attorney representing you?”
“No. I mean, right. I said that. I don’t.”
“Your grandfather, Atticus Berkshire, is not your attorney?”
“No. He’s not my attorney. He’s my mom’s attorney.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Does your mom know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell them you were coming here?”
“They would have tried to stop me. But I’m eighteen. I’m an adult. So I can do this.”
He dug a hand into the front pocket of his jeans. “Here’s my license again. In case you don’t believe me. My birthday was yesterday.”
“Happy birthday,” Mayweather said.
Connor glanced at Mayweather, looking uncertain.
“You’ve handed me your driver’s license.” Tracy took a moment to consider it before handing it to Mayweather. “It confirms that you turned eighteen yesterday. And you’re here of your own volition? No one forced you or coerced you to come here?”
“I came because I wanted to.”
“Okay. When we met in the lobby, you said you had something you wanted to tell me. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
Tracy looked to Mayweather, who nodded his consent. “Okay, Connor. What do you want to tell me?”
Connor sat up and glanced at the camera again. “Okay. Well, what I wanted to tell you was that my mother . . . she didn’t shoot my father.”
“She didn’t?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I did.”
“Stop talking.”
Tracy played the video. Rick Cerrabone stood with one hand covering his mouth. Kins sat near the one-way glass, largely ignoring the video and watching Connor Collins, who remained in the hard interrogation room.
After Connor’s confession, Tracy and Mayweather had stepped out of the room to discuss the situation. Both agreed that Tracy had followed established protocol but that Connor’s confession now mandated that he be read his Miranda rights. After Tracy did so, Connor described again how his father had come to pick him up and forced his way into the house. He confirmed that his father and mother had quarreled, and further confirmed Angela Collins’s statement that his father had picked up the sculpture and used it to hit his mother, knocking her to the ground. He said his father then kicked her in the stomach.
From that point, however, his and his mother’s stories diverged. Whereas Angela Collins said she sent her son out of the room, Connor said he intervened and his father slapped him hard across the face. Connor said the distraction, however, had allowed his mother enough time to get to her feet and run down the hall, locking herself in the bedroom. His father followed her and was threatening to kick in the door, and that’s when Connor remembered the gun in the closet. He said he got the gun and went down the hall, but by then his father was in the room with his mother, threatening to hit her. Connor pulled the trigger, shooting his father in the back.
“What did you do with the gun after you shot your father?” Tracy asked.
“I put it on the bed,” Connor replied.
“Then what did you do?”
“Nothing. My mother was pretty hysterical. She said we needed to call my grandfather. She told me to go into the living room and sit on the couch.”
“Did you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Did you touch your father?”
“Touch him? No.”
“Did you touch the sculpture?”
“No.”
“How long was it from the time you shot your father until the time your mother called your grandfather?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who called 911?”
“She did.”
Tracy shut off the video, and the room was silent for several moments.
“I thought he was going to tell me what Angela told you and Faz,” she said to Kins. “I figured he’d back up her story and say it was self-defense.”
Cerrabone lowered his hand. “Where’s Mayweather now?”
“Typing out a statement for Connor to sign,” Tracy said. She turned to Kins. “This could explain the twenty-one-minute gap between when the neighbor heard the shots and when Angela Collins called 911. She was cleaning up after the kid’s mess.”
“Or the kid’s lying, and they were covering up her mess,” Kins said, standing from his chair and turning away from the window. “The brother said Angela’s a master manipulator and that she’s been working the kid for years. She could have put him up to it.”
“Up to what?” Tracy said.
“Taking the blame.”
“For murdering his own father?” Tracy shook her head, not buying it. “What kind of person would do that? What kind of mother would do that?”
“A very, very sick one,” Kins said.
“They each have a motive to lie,” Cerrabone said. “That’s the problem. Both their fingerprints are on the gun. They’re also the same height, so the trajectory of the bullet won’t tell us anything. They each have a story that fits with the evidence.”