“You should have told them you didn’t know where I am.” He pulled on a white polo he wore for work, one with the green Eastern Point Creamery logo embroidered on the breast. He shoved a foot in one yellow Converse, searched under the bed for the other. “This is completely fucked.”
“Comb your hair,” she said. Stop looking so guilty.
“Don’t leave me alone with them, okay, Rain?” he said as they climbed the stairs.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ll just feel better if you’re there.” Now he was acting like she was the older one, which she would have thought she would like, but it freaked her.
“Okay? Promise?”
“All right,” she said in a tone that suggested she was doing him a huge favor. Actually, she had no intention of missing the action. Even though she had let them inside, it was still shocking to see them in the hall, filling the air with their presence.
“Hello, Duane. I’m Detective Gordon, and this is Officer Slovak.”
“Hi.”
Look them in the eye, Rain wanted to scream. Duane stood there all hunched and nervous and looking guilty as shit.
“We’d like you to come down to the station with us, son.”
“The station?” Duane’s voice did that twelve-year-old cracking thing again.
“So we can ask you some questions. Clear some things up.”
“Jeez. I don’t know,” he said.
Rain could see she’d have to help him. Obviously. “Our parents aren’t home right now.” She was surprised by how loud her voice sounded. “I think they’d want him to wait until they are here and can go with him. Him being a minor and all.”
The three of them turned and looked at her. Gordon in an appraising glance, the other one, Slovak, clearly annoyed at her interruption, and Duane with a look of such doglike gratitude she was both gratified and annoyed. She wished he would stand the hell up straight. “What is this about anyway?”
The men exchanged a look, and Slovak gave Gordon a what-the-hell shrug, which must have been some kind of signal between them, because Gordon started the questioning right there with no more talk of going down to the station. At least for the moment. He leveled his gaze at Duane.
“Can you tell us the last time you were at the chapel of the Church of the Holy Apostles?”
Rain snickered. Duane? At the chapel? Then she remembered one of the loser dopeheads at school saying it was a place where kids could score. The locked bedroom door. Duane’s thin body.
“The chapel?” Duane looked confused. “I don’t go there.”
“Well, that’s a little strange, Duane, because we have your signature on the register at the church. The one you have to sign to get the key.”
Duane darted a glance at Rain, then looked back at the men. “Oh. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I forgot. I went there a couple of times. During final exams.”
He did?
Gordon checked his notepad. “And that would be in June?”
“I guess. Yeah. That’s right. June.”
“Were you there alone?”
Duane shifted his weight, wiped a palm against his thigh. “Yeah. Alone.”
“So no one was with you?”
Duh. That’s what alone means, cone head. Rain nearly rolled her eyes.
“No. I was by myself.”
“Okay.” He jotted a note on a pad that had appeared as if by magic. “Tell us how well you knew Lucy Light.”
The words shot a current through the hall. Lucy’s name reverberated. Lucy Light. Lucy Light. Lucy Light.
Duane shrank, actually took a step back. He shot another look at Rain, but after the first shock of hearing Lucy’s name the significance of the policeman’s phrasing hit her. Not if Duane knew Lucy, but how well he knew her, as if Lucy was his girlfriend or something, which was so ridiculous she nearly laughed.
“I knew her better,” she blurted. “She was my best friend.” Of course they already knew that. We know how best friends tell each other secrets.
“We appreciate your help, Rain, but we want your brother to answer our questions.” They turned their attention back to Duane.
“We’re trying to locate someone who might have had an object that belonged to Lucy,” Slovak said. “We’re hoping you can help us with this.”
“An object?”
“Yes. Something Father Gervase found in the chapel that Lucy’s father believes belonged to her. A little plastic figure of Yoda.”
“Yoda?”
Rain knew exactly what he was talking about, had seen it in Lucy’s bedroom about eight kazillion times. Feel the force! Lucy’s Yoda voice was so clear it was almost as if she were standing right there in the hall with them. Patience you must have, my young Padawan!
“That’s right,” Slovak said.
“No,” Duane said. He swiped his palm against his thigh. “No, I haven’t seen anything like that.”
Rain had always been able to tell when Duane was lying. He’d make a sucky criminal. The lie was so obvious she was sure the two policemen knew it too.
“That’s too bad. We were hoping you could help us out here.”
“Yeah. Save us some time,” said the fat one, Slovak. “I guess we’ll just have to send it off for DNA testing and fingerprints.”
Now he was lying. Rain was just a living lie detector. The FBI should hire her. But she could tell by her brother’s face that he totally believed the cop.
“I think you should come back later,” she said. “When our parents are here.”
Slovak opened his mouth to argue, but the other one—Gordon—said okay and, amazingly, just like that, they left. Their departure was so abrupt that she and Duane stood in stunned silence for several minutes.
“He was lying, you know.” They were in the kitchen, and Duane was drinking a beer from the six-pack of Coors, his father’s drink of choice now that he no longer drank scotch. He popped the tab right there in the open where either of their parents could walk in and catch him, a clear sign of how much the visit from the police had shaken him. “That stuff about the DNA testing and fingerprints. It’s a lie.”
Duane took a long swallow. Rain knew he had a beer now and then—who didn’t—but the way he was sucking it down surprised her. He had the look of someone who intended to swim through the entire six-pack without hesitating to belch. “Do you think they’ll really come back?”
“No doubt.” Even though she didn’t really like the soapy taste of beer, the yeasty smell of it, she reached for the can and took a foamy sip. “So you go to the chapel?”
“I did. A couple of times.” He took the can back.
“That’s a surprise.”
He shrugged.
Once more she pictured his thin frame, the locked door to his room. “So what? Are you doing drugs or something?”
“What?” His voice rose in shock. “Drugs? No. Jesus, Rainy.”
“So what was all that about Lucy and Yoda?”
He avoided her gaze. Drank more beer.
“Duane?”
“I had it. Okay? I guess I must have dropped it in the chapel.”
“Wait. You had Lucy’s Yoda?” Her voice was thick with disbelief.
“Yeah.”
“What the hell, Duane? Did you steal it or something?”
“Steal it? From Lucy? Fuck no, Rainy. You think I’d steal from Lucy? Jesus.”
“So how did you get it?”
Another long swallow of Coors. “She gave it to me.”