They questioned him for most of that night, once they got him back to Orangetown. They told him that he was in trouble, having left the scene of a shooting, and in response he gave them the least elaborate lie that he could concoct: he had seen the car on waste ground as he was heading home, having been alerted to its presence by someone who had recognized him at an intersection, but whose name he did not know. The car had flashed its lights, and he thought that the horn might have sounded. He stopped to check that everything was okay. The boy had taunted him, pretending to reach for something inside his jacket: a weapon, perhaps. Will had warned him, and then had fired, killing the boy and the girl. After he had gone over the story for the third time, Kozelek, the investigator from the Rockland County DA’s office, had requested a moment alone with him, and the other cops, both IAD and local, had consented. When they were gone, Kozelek stopped the tape and lit a cigarette. He didn’t offer the pack to Will, who had already declined a cigarette earlier in the interview.
“You weren’t driving your own car,” said Kozelek.
“No, I borrowed a friend’s.”
“What friend?”
“Just a friend. He’s not involved. I wasn’t feeling so good. I wanted to get home as quickly as possible.”
“So this friend gives you his car.”
“He didn’t need it. I was going to drop it back off in the city tomorrow.”
“Where is it now?”
“What does it matter?”
“It was used in the course of a shooting.”
“I don’t remember. I don’t remember much after the shooting. I just drove. I wanted to get away from it.”
“You were traumatized. Is that what you’re saying?”
“That must have been it. I never shot anybody before.”
“There was no gun,” said Kozelek. “We looked. They were unarmed, both of them.”
“I didn’t say that they were armed. I said that I thought the boy might have been armed. Rht=anrdquo;
Kozelek drew on his cigarette and examined the man seated opposite him through the smoke. He had appeared detached from the whole process from the moment they had taken him in for questioning. It could have been shock. The IAD detectives had arrived from the city with copies of Will Parker’s service record. As he had just said, he had never killed anyone before, either officially or, from what Kozelek could ascertain, unofficially. (He had been with the NYPD himself for twenty years, and he had no illusions about such matters.) His responsibility for the shootings of the two young people would be difficult for him to accept. But that wasn’t how Kozelek read the situation: it wasn’t so much that Will Parker was in shock, but that he seemed to want the whole thing to be over and done with, like a condemned man who seeks only to be taken straight from the courtroom to his place of execution. Even his description of events, which Kozelek believed to be a lie, was halfhearted in its absence of truth. Parker didn’t care if they believed him or not. They wanted a story, and he had given them a story. If they wanted to pick holes in it, they could go right ahead and do it. He didn’t care.
That was it, thought Kozelek. The man didn’t care. His reputation and career were on the line. He had blood on his hands. When the circumstances of the killings began to emerge, the press would be baying for his blood, and there would be those within the department who might be prepared to throw Will Parker to the dogs as a sacrifice, as a way of showing that the department wouldn’t tolerate killers on the force. Already, Kozelek knew, that discussion was taking place, as men with reputations to protect balanced the advisability of weathering out the storm and standing by their officer against the possibility that to do so might further tarnish the reputation of a department that was already unloved and still reeling from a series of corruption investigations.
“You say that you didn’t know these kids?” said Kozelek. The question had been asked more than once already in that room, but Kozelek had caught a flicker of uncertainty in Parker’s face each time he had denied any knowledge of them, and he saw it again now.
“The boy looked familiar, but I don’t think I’d ever met him.”
“His name was Joe Dryden. Native of Birmingham, Alabama. Arrived here a couple of months ago. He already had a record: nickel-and-dime stuff, mostly, but he was on his way to greater things.”
“Like I said, I didn’t know him personally.”
“And the girl?”
“Never saw her before.”
“Missy Gaines. Came from a nice family in Jersey. Her family reported her missing a week ago. Any idea how she might have come to be with Dryden in Pearl River?”
“You asked me these questions already. I told you: I don’t know.”
“Who visited your house yesterday evening?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“We have a witness who says he saw a man enter you Ranir house last night. He stayed for some time. The witness seems to be under the impression that the man had a gun in his hand.”
“Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but your witness must be mistaken.”
“I think the witness is reliable.”
“Why didn’t he call the cops?”
“Because your wife answered the door and allowed the man to enter. It appears that she knew him.”
Will shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it.”
Kozelek took a final drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in the cracked ashtray.
“Why’d you turn off the tape?” asked Will.
“Because IAD doesn’t know about the armed man,” said Kozelek. “I was hoping you might tell me why you thought they were sufficiently at risk that you needed to protect them, and how that might connect to the two kids you shot.”
But Will didn’t answer and Kozelek, realizing that the situation was unlikely to change, gave up for the time being.
“If IAD does find out, they’ll question your wife. You need to get your story straight. Jesus, why couldn’t you just have thrown down a gun? A gun in the car, and all of this would be unnecessary.”
“Because I don’t have a throwdown,” said Will, and for the first time he showed some real animation. “I’m not that kind of cop.”
“Well,” said Kozelek, “I have news for you: there are two dead kids in a car, both of them unarmed. So, as of now, you are that kind of cop…”