Part 20 (2/2)

Vincent says nothing.

”Are you listening to me, Vincent? You better start thinking about every f.u.c.king thing I'm saying here because a lot of s.h.i.+t is going to be coming down.”

Silence.

”Are you worried about Frazier? Listen to me, son, you better start worrying about yourself. Frazier's been in here already. He's trying to f.u.c.k you. He's telling us about you.”

That gets it. Vincent looks up. ”What's Frazier sayin'?”

”What do you think?” says Kincaid. ”He's trying to put you in for these murders.”

”I didn't ...”

”Vincent, I don't believe this motherf.u.c.ker Frazier,” says Garvey. ”Even if you're involved in one or the other, I don't believe you killed your father.”

Garvey pushes his chair closer to Vincent's corner of the room and drops his voice to little more than a whisper. ”Look, son, I'm just trying to give you a chance on this. But you've got to tell us the truth now and we'll see what we can do with that. You can be at the defense table, or you can be on the prosecution side. That's what we can do. We do a few favors now and then and we're doing you one right now. Are you smart enough to see that?”

Probably not, thinks Garvey. And so the two detectives begin to lay it out to young Vincent Booker. They remind him that his father and Lena were both shot with the same kind of ammunition, that both murder scenes are identical. They explain that right now, he's the only suspect who was known to both victims. After all, they ask him, what was your father to Robert Frazier?

At this, the boy looks up, puzzled, and Garvey stops talking long enough to reduce this abstraction to paper. On the back of a lined statement sheet, he draws one circle on the left-hand side of the page, then writes ”Lena” inside the circle. On the right-hand side he draws a second circle with ”Purnell Booker” written inside. Garvey then draws a third circle that intersects the circles of the two victims. Inside that third circle he writes ”Vincent.” It's a crude little creation, something any algebra teacher would know as a Venn Diagram, but it gets Garvey's point across.

”This is our case. Look at it,” he says, pus.h.i.+ng the sheet in front of the boy. ”Lena and your father are killed by the same gun, and right now the only person who has any connection to both of the victims is Vincent Booker. You're right in the f.u.c.kin' middle of this thing. You think about that.”

Vincent says nothing and the two detectives leave the room long enough to allow the geometry to sink in. Garvey lights a cigarette and watches through the one-way window in the door as Vincent holds the crudely drawn diagram to his face and traces the three circles with his finger. Garvey shakes his head, watching Vincent turn the diagram upside down, then right side up, then upside down again.

”Look at this f.u.c.kin' Einstein in here, will you?” he says to Kincaid. ”He's about the dumbest motherf.u.c.ker I ever seen.”

”You ready?” says Kincaid.

”Yeah. Let's do it.”

Vincent doesn't look up from the diagram when the door opens, but his body gives an involuntary shake when Garvey enters and immediately begins another rant, his voice louder this time. Vincent can no longer manage eye contact; he grows smaller, more vulnerable with each accusation, a bleeder in the corner of the shark tank. Garvey sees his opening.

”You've got a knot in your f.u.c.kin' stomach, don't you?” Garvey asks abruptly. ”You're feeling like you're going to be sick. I've seen a hundred or so just like that in here.”

”I seen 'em throw up,” says Kincaid. ”You ain't gonna throw up in here, are you?”

”No,” says Vincent, shaking his head. He is sweating now, one hand clutching the end of the table, the other wrapped tight in the hem of his sweats.h.i.+rt. Part of the sickness is the fear of being pegged for two murders; part is the fear of Robert Frazier. But the greater share of what's holding Vincent Booker on the precipice is a fear of his own family. Right here and now, Garvey can look at Vincent Booker and know, with even greater certainty than before, that there is no way this boy killed his father. He doesn't have that in him. Yet the bullets connect him to the crime, and his rapid reduction to a speechless wreck in less than an hour of interrogation testifies to guilty knowledge. Vincent Booker is no killer, but he played a role in the death of his father, or at the very least, he knew the murderer and said nothing. Either way, there is something that cannot be faced.

Sensing that the boy needs one more good shove, Garvey walks out of the interrogation room and grabs the plastic soap dish from Vincent's bedroom.

”Gimme one of these,” he says, taking a .38 cartridge from the dish. ”This motherf.u.c.ker needs some show-and-tell.”

Garvey walks back into the cubicle and deposits the .38 round in Kincaid's left hand. The older detective needs no further prompting; he stands the round on its end in the center of the table.

”See this here bullet?” Kincaid asks.

Vincent looks at the cartridge.

”This isn't your ordinary thirty-eight ammunition, is it? Now we can get them to type this for us at the FBI lab, and it usually takes 'em two or three months, but on a rush job they can have it back in two days. And they're gonna be able to tell us which box of fifty this bullet came from,” says Kincaid, pus.h.i.+ng the round slowly toward the boy. ”So, you tell me, is it going to be just coincidence if the FBI says this bullet comes from the same box as the one that killed your daddy and Lena both? You tell me.”

Vincent looks away, his hands clasped tightly in his lap. A perfect deceit: even if the FBI could narrow the .38 ammunition to the same manufacturer's lot number of a couple hundred thousand boxes or more, the process would probably take half a year.

”We're just trying to lay it out for you, son,” says Garvey. ”What do you think a judge is going to do with evidence like that?”

The boy is silent.

”Death penalty case, Vincent.”

”And I'm gonna be the one to testify,” adds Kincaid in his Kentucky drawl, ” 'cause that's my thing.”

”Death penalty?” asks Vincent, startled.

”No contest,” says Kincaid.

”Honest, son, if you're lying to us ...”

”Even if we let you leave here today,” says Kincaid, ”you'll never know the next time there's a knock on your door whether it's us coming back to lock you up.”

”And we will come back,” says Garvey, pulling his chair closer to Vincent. Wordlessly, he brings himself face-to-face with the boy, leaning forward until their eyes are less than a foot apart. Then, softly, he begins describing the murder of Purnell Booker. An argument, a brief struggle, perhaps, then the wounds. Garvey moves closer still to Vincent Booker and tells of the twenty or so blade wounds to the face; as he does so, he taps the boy's cheek lightly with his finger.

Vincent Booker sickens visibly.

”Get this off your chest, son,” says Garvey. ”What do you know about these murders?”

”I gave the bullets to Frazier.”

”You gave him bullets?”

”He asked me for bullets ... I gave him six.”

The boy comes close to crying but quickly steadies himself, resting both elbows on the table and hiding his face behind his hands. ”Why did Frazier ask for bullets?”

Vincent shrugs.

”Dammit, Vincent.”

”I didn't ...”

”You're holdin' back.”

”I ...”

”Get it off your chest, son. We're trying to help you to start over here. This'll be the only chance you're going to have to start over.”

Vincent Booker breaks.

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