Angel of Darkness (15 page)

Maggie leaned toward him. ‘Look, I know it's hard for you to talk about this. People say you were together for a long time, maybe even months.' She looked at him for confirmation and he nodded. ‘Maybe you could just go into a little more detail about why the two of you broke up?'

The kid was no fool. ‘You think there was someone else, don't you?' he said. When Maggie did not answer, he continued. ‘I don't think she had another boyfriend after me. If Darcy had wanted a boyfriend, she would've chosen me. We were together almost a year, but one day she just told me that we couldn't be together any more. She said that having a boyfriend and getting married and telling yourself that life was all about having a man was what had gotten her mother and grandmother into trouble. She said she wanted more for her life. I tried to explain that keeping her back was the last thing I wanted to do, that I would be there for her no matter what she decided to do with her life, but she just said she wasn't ready to get involved with anyone. She wanted to concentrate on school and her art and stuff like that. She said she just wasn't ready . . .' For the first time, he looked uncomfortable. He was trying to say something, but I couldn't figure out what.

I hoped that Maggie had a better take on it. I knew it probably had something to do with sex. At his age, what were the chances it didn't?

‘Did you have a close relationship before that?' Maggie asked gently.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Did you spend a lot of time together? Did you hang out at her house a lot? Did she hang out here a lot? Spend the night?'

The boy looked embarrassed. ‘She liked to hang out here with me. We would do our homework together and watch TV. Even with Grandma asking for help all the time, it's still quieter here at my house than over at her house. My dad owns his own business, so he's gone a lot. At her house, her grandmother is always watching TV with the volume turned up really loud. So we liked to hang out here and sometimes she would make me and Grandma a sandwich or something, if we had anything to eat in the house. I used to stop by the grocery store and pick up stuff to make sure we had supplies.' He sounded wistful at the loss of this simple pleasure. ‘But then my dad would usually come home and ruin things. He's an asshole. He would start yelling for a beer or asking where his sandwich was and why didn't Darcy like him enough to have a sandwich waiting for him. Darcy would always leave soon after he got home, not that I blame her. I'd have left, too, if I'd had anywhere to go.'

‘Look,' Maggie said. ‘I really hate to ask you this, but where is your mother? It doesn't seem like she lives here.'

The kid was still just a kid. Whatever had happened to Adam's mother, it had been bad and it showed in his face. ‘She died six years ago.'

He did not explain and Maggie did not press him further. He was shutting down enough as it was. I could tell that she felt sorry for him. Like Darcy Swan he, too, had deserved a better life than the one he had been given.

‘Did you and Darcy stay friends after you broke up?' She asked, steering the conversation back to safer ground.

He nodded. ‘Yes. I mean, as much as we could. She started working at the diner a lot more, she was saving up to get out of here as soon as she could, but she still had to come up with the rent money in the meantime. And . . .' He looked miserable, but had the courage to continue. ‘It hurt a lot to be around her at first, so it's only in the last couple of months that we've been able to really be friends again. But she talked to me, if that's what you mean.'

‘Are you absolutely sure she did not have a new boyfriend?' Maggie asked him. ‘I know it's not something that you want to think about, but it could be really, really important. It could lead us to who might have killed her.'

The kid thought hard. A whole kaleidoscope of emotions crossed his face as he wrestled with each possibility. In the end, he stuck to his belief that Darcy could not have had another boyfriend. ‘I really think I would have known about it,' he explained to Maggie. ‘I mean, I know all of her friends, and even when we weren't talking much, I could keep up with what she was doing on Facebook. I could see when she came and went from her house, and it really didn't seem like she did much more than go to school and work at the diner.'

‘Do you think you could do me a favor?' Maggie asked him. ‘Do you think you could go through her list of Facebook friends and tell me if there are any names you don't recognize?'

I could only hope that Darcy had not had as many friends as the mega-achieving student council president did or else the kid would have his hands full.

‘Sure, I can do that,' Adam said. ‘She wasn't really in to all that online stuff. She could never get on the computer at home because her mom was always hogging it for online dating and stuff. Darcy used her cell phone for posting updates and she didn't really like to spend time online. I only have a couple hundred friends and I think she has even less.'

‘It would help me a lot if you could do that,' Maggie said. For the first time, she pulled out a notepad and made a comment to herself in it, probably to check the whereabouts of Darcy Swan's cell phone. It had not been found with her body, her mother had not mentioned a phone and Maggie had probably assumed Darcy could not afford one.

‘I can look at her Facebook friends right now,' Adam offered. ‘I'll just need a couple of minutes.'

Before Maggie could reply, the sound of a truck motor startled the boy. He looked out the side window and then at Maggie, knowing that trouble was coming. His father was home and Adam was smart enough to know how he might react to finding the police there. He leapt up from the recliner nervously.

Maggie instantly understood. ‘It's OK,' she told him, rising. ‘I'll take care of it. I'll make sure he knows that this was just routine questioning.'

Adam's father came charging through the back door with the unselfconscious focus of someone who does not realize he has company. He had the refrigerator door open and was reaching for a beer before he realized that his son was not alone. He took one look at Maggie and pegged her for what she was: law enforcement. He did not look happy to see her.

‘What's he done?' he asked belligerently. He stared at Adam with a warning in his eyes.

Nice. Good to see a father with such faith in his son. He reminded me of my old man.

‘He hasn't done anything. I'm going door-to-door in the neighborhood asking people if they knew Darcy Swan or her mother.' Maggie kept her voice casual, but I could tell it took effort.

Adam's father belched and popped open his beer. He had drained half of it before he spoke again. ‘My kid's got nothing to say to you. He barely knew the girl.'

‘And yet they were boyfriend and girlfriend for almost a year,' Maggie answered mildly. She shot a warning glance at Adam, begging him to let her handle it.

‘Dumbass,' the older Mullins shot at his son. ‘Don't know why you're bothering,' he taunted Maggie. ‘Her mother's making a fortune on the kid's death. It's the best thing that ever happened to that family of gold-diggers.'

‘
Dad!
' Adam was appalled at his father's comment. ‘You know she was really upset about Darcy. You sat here and listened to her talk about it for hours.'

The old man settled down in his recliner and put his feet up, holding his beer can out as he debated whether or not to ask his son to bring him another cold one. I could almost feel the weight of the can in my hand. I had done the same thing a thousand or more times in my lifetime – gauging how much beer I had left, always wanting more.

‘You thought we were talking all that time?' Mr Mullins leered. ‘Let's just say me and Darcy's mother went way back. Like mother, like daughter.'

‘Perhaps you would like to talk about your relationship to Darcy Swan for the record?' Maggie said sharply, hoping to keep Adam from going off at his father.

The old man got the message. ‘I was just talking crap,' he said, holding up a palm like Maggie was getting ready to come at him swinging. I could only imagine the legions of females who had been presented with that hand and how much they had wanted to slap the smirk off his face in response to it. I know I had the same impulse, although I thought he deserved a series of punches more.

‘Darcy was a good kid, and me and her mother go way back,' Adam's father said. He slurped at his beer. ‘We went to high school together. She's OK. She's just another old broad desperate to hook someone to support her fat ass, but she didn't deserve what happened to her daughter.'

Wow, the kid had truly been right: his old man was an asshole.

Maggie let it go. She'd been baited by plenty of men before. There was something about Maggie's position of authority that just seemed to piss them off. She wasn't going to waste her time on this loser. ‘I'm just collecting background information on Darcy,' Maggie said calmly. ‘I may stop by again. But I think I better get going. I have a lot of people to talk to.'

‘Yeah, maybe you better,' Adam's father said. ‘Sounds to me like you guys don't know your ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to who killed her.'

Maggie ignored him. She stuck out her hand at the boy instead and Adam, after a startled moment, shook it. ‘Thanks for your help, Adam,' she said. ‘I really appreciate it. Good luck with your studies. I hope you keep up the good work. I heard really good things about you from your principal. He says you're really going to go far in life. I wish you the best.'

She left without a word to the father, and I knew her encouragement to Adam had been her parting shot. ‘Your kid is so much better than you,' she had wanted the old man to know. ‘One day he will leave you in his dust.'

Adam's father got the message all right – but he was the kind of guy who likes to take his anger out on those who were weaker than him. Maggie had barely left the house when he moved with a quickness that startled me. He was out of the recliner and in his son's face before Adam could react. He slapped his kid across the face and sent him reeling into a wall.

‘I catch you talking to the cops ever again about anything,' he threatened Adam, ‘and I will beat you within an inch of your life for sheer stupidity. You think the cops give a shit about people like us? You think they want to do anything but blame us for their problems and put us behind bars so they can say “case closed” and call it a day? You are a living, walking, breathing patsy and don't you ever forget it. You are garbage in their eyes. They only pretend to be your friend so you'll do something stupid like give them enough rope to hang you with. I don't ever want to see you talking to that bitch again.'

‘Adam?' His grandmother's voice floated out from the back of the house. ‘Adam, honey? Are you OK? Are you alone?'

Adam was leaning against the wall, his hand resting on his cheek where his father's blow had left a red imprint. I don't know how he did it, I really don't, but the kid had monumental self-control.

‘I'm OK, Grandma,' he said. ‘I'm coming in to check on you before I go to the library.'

He stood there for a moment, staring at his father, before he walked calmly from the room. His actions spoke louder than any words ever could.

Adam was letting his old man know that he was of absolutely no importance to him and that all the violence in the world would not change that fact.

TWENTY-ONE

I
returned to Holloway to find that a guard had been posted at the front entrance and was checking the credentials of all visitors against a list. My guess was that the press had tried to infiltrate the grounds in the wake of Vincent D'Amato's murder and that no one wanted the spotlight of publicity shone on either Holloway or the residents who lived there.

I saw Morty, the beat cop I had known when I was alive, checking in with a bouquet of yellow roses in his hands, on his way to see the woman he visited each week. The guard started to give him a hard time about not being related to her, but a nurse coming in for her shift saw the situation unfold and intervened. She took Morty by the elbow and guided him around the guard, with a warning glance that told the kid he was not to argue.

A few visitors later, Adam Mullins showed, backpack in hand, and handing it over to the guard to be searched. The guard rooted around in it, handed it back to him and accepted Adam's lie that he was there to see his brother.

Or maybe it wasn't so much of a lie. I followed him back to the juvenile unit, where Michael and his peers were being shooed away from the television set by a harried-looking nurse. Her grim expression told me that she had not liked whatever the newscaster had just announced. And no wonder: I caught a glimpse of a well-dressed man with graying blonde hair being interviewed right before she clicked off the image. The news scroll beneath his name said it all: Otis Parker's lawyer had requested a competency hearing, citing his years of treatment and the recent murders by unknown parties as proof that he was not a mad killer as everyone thought. He wanted Parker released from Holloway as soon as possible.

It was inconceivable that Parker might one day be set free to prey on the world again, but I had seen enough of the law to know that his freedom was a definite possibility. If that happened, no one was safe.

Michael spotted his friend Adam at the entrance to the ward and shook off the attentions of a girl who had been trolling for his friendship all week. He and Adam greeted each other in that awkward way of teenage boys who don't want to shake hands like their fathers or hug like their mothers. They leaned forward and touched shoulders while thumping each other on the back then drew away, embarrassed by their affection for one another.

‘How's it going?' Michael asked his friend, and I realized that Adam was one of the few people who could distract Michael from his own troubles.