Chapter Twenty

That night Raven and Cameron spent time at his apartment frantically calling anyone with even a tangential knowledge of Noe. She searched Noe’s room for some clue about where he could have been, but found nothing.

It was as if Noe never existed.

As for Cameron, he was losing his grip on reality, acting on impulse as ideas popped into his head. At one point he snatched his hoodie and ran out of the apartment without explanation, only to return deflated and sulky about an hour later carrying a six-pack of Fanta soda.

When it was clear that the night would bring no new leads, he parted and braided his hair from front to back in a tribal pattern that made him look young and immensely breakable. Raven’s heart hurt for him but he was too angry with her to allow himself to be comforted. After all, she had blamed him for losing Noe.

The following morning Raven received a call from Goldie to bring her brother in as they had a few more questions for him. She did as she was told by collecting Cameron and driving him into BLPD.

Now, she sat next to him in an interview room, his right knee bobbing up and down. He still refused to look at her. Raven tried to apologize for her behavior when Noe first went missing, but Cameron didn’t want any of it. She leaned across the table to try again, but the door opened, leaving her words unspoken. Liam Golden walked in, his shirt rumpled, his red, round face looking more tired than Raven felt.

“You find him, yet?” Cameron asked as Goldie sat down.

“Sorry, son, no,” he said. “We wanted you to come down, though, because we have a couple of things we need to clear up.”

“Okay,” Cameron said, not a shred of hope in his voice. “I’ll tell you anything you need to know. Just find my kid.”

“I thought this was my case, Goldie,” Raven said. “And Breaker’s. Where is he?”

“Working on the Memorial case. Hard. Henri Toulouse, the kid before Clyde,” Goldie said. “He’s arguing with the chief about something or other. I told him I’d take this one. As far as this being your case, it is. But the chief wanted me to handle anything that has to do with Cameron. It’s a conflict, you know that, don’t you?”

“I’m just trying to find Noe,” Raven said. “That’s where both Cameron and I were last night, on the phone with his friends, seeing if we could find anything in his room about where he could be, checking out his computer, everything we could.”

“Who was doing that?” Goldie asked. “The computer thing?”

“Who do you think was doing it?” Cameron said. “I was. That’s my job.”

“Not for this one,” Goldie said. “You’re too close.”

“Don’t tell me I’m too close,” Cameron said. “He’s my kid.”

“Find anything?” Goldie asked.

“Just what he’s into. Boring kid stuff,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Erase anything?”

“Why you saying that?” Cameron turned to Raven, not quite catching her eye. “Why’s he saying that?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s routine,” Raven said.

“Is it?” Goldie asked.

“Yes,” Raven said.

Goldie laced his fingers together on the table. “So, you know how this works, Cameron. We’re running your financials, your phone records, the boys’, too, including social media, that sort of thing. Your sister is going to be doing the same for the Darlings.”

“You’ve got Cameron’s records yet?” Raven asked.

“Just the second day, Raven. You know the wheels don’t turn that fast,” Goldie said.

“Then why are we here?” Cameron asked.

“Like I told you, we just need to clarify a few things that were in the missing person’s report.”

“Like what?” Cameron said, his voice higher than it had been.

“Don’t get so animated,” Raven said. “Watch yourself.”

Cameron said, astounded, “Don’t tell me to watch myself. What, Goldie, you see a black man and automatically think he can’t take care of his kid?”

“You know that we always look at family first,” Raven said.

“Family first? Don’t even talk to me. You already blaming me for him missing. You don’t have far to travel in thinking I had something to do with it.”

“I don’t blame—”

“Don’t lie!” Cameron said. “I hate it when you lie to me.” Cameron batted away the tear that had appeared at the corner of his eye. “If you didn’t think I had something to do with it, you wouldn’t be wasting time here talking to me. You’d let Goldie do it, and you’d be out there trying to find him.”

Raven stood up and pointed her finger at Cameron. “I told you when you wanted to play daddy that it would be a disaster. You need to wake up and focus. This isn’t about you, it’s about Noe.”

“One-track mind,” Cameron countered, now standing, himself. “Everybody else be fucked as long as you get what you want. You love throwing people away, Raven. Just was wondering when it was going to be my turn.”

“That’s some crazy crap you’re talking. I don’t throw people away.”

He counted on his fingers. “Edmée after high school, and then me and Billy Ray last year.”

“Billy Ray?”

“Man up in the hospital and you off on some—”

“Careful,” Goldie said.

Cameron closed his mouth on what he was about to say.

“Both of you just need to cool it. Take a seat, Cameron. You too, Raven. I need a few things for you to clear up, Cam, and you can go back to doing whatever you think it’ll take to find Noe, including braiding your hair, whatever.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Get in line,” Goldie said. “Now. You said that you saw Noe Friday morning, before school.”

Cameron blinked two or three times, rubbed his face. “Did I say that?”

“Yes, you did.”

Cameron started drawing patterns on the table with a long index finger. Raven thought he looked like a petulant child.

“Then that’s when I saw him.”

“You sure about that?” Goldie asked.

“Why wouldn’t he be sure?” Raven asked.

“Because we got a report that Noe spent Friday night alone, that he spent a lot of time alone. You had a date Thursday night, right?”

Cameron looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “Who said that?”

“A woman named Benita Jeffries. This case hit the news last night. She saw and called into the station to say we should check you out because that kid was cramping your style in a major way. Says you let a lot of women take you away from your son.”

“Aw, that skank. She just mad because we broke up. I dumped her ass a long time ago.”

“But is the skank correct?” Goldie asked.

Cameron scratched his chin. “I don’t know. I think so. Maybe. Does it matter when I last saw him? You know he got to school Friday, right?”

“You bet your sweet Aunt Harriet it matters,” Raven said. “How many times did you leave him overnight alone?”

“He’s fifteen, Raven!” Cameron shouted as if she were hard of hearing.

“That’s fine,” Goldie said. “Don’t really want to question your parenting skills right now. So, the last time you saw him may have been Thursday evening?”

Cameron scrunched his shoulders. He was shutting down. “Could be.”

“Morning?” Goldie tried.

“Maybe.”

Raven hit the table with a flat hand. “We aren’t just talking about Noe being in trouble. You know that, don’t you?”

“Thursday morning, then,” Cameron said. “I left for my date straight after work. Noe spent Thursday night alone.”

“Score,” Goldie said, his voice dry. “Do you have any insurance policies on your son?”

“I don’t have any policies on him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Goldie asked.

“I didn’t take out any policies on my son,” Cameron explained while looking at the red light blinking on the camera. “But his mama did before she died.”

“Naming you as the beneficiary?”

Cameron nodded.

“That was nice of her,” Goldie said.

“Noe’s mother was a planner,” Raven said. “If something happened to Noe, she wouldn’t want Cameron scrambling around for money trying to bury him.”

“How much did Noe’s mother think it would cost to bury him?” Goldie asked.

“I don’t know,” Cameron said. “A few thousand. Maybe five. I didn’t pay too much attention to it. All I wanted was my son.”

“So a couple of thousand?” Goldie asked.

“Maybe.”

“Five? Do I hear a ten?”

“Fine, ten. Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Goldie said. “What about other financial benefits if Noe died?”

“Sure,” Noe said. “He has a trust fund. I get a few extra dollars from it every month to keep the kid in khakis and sweater vests.”

“You don’t have a lot in common with him, do you?” Goldie asked.

“You got that right,” Cameron breathed.

Goldie shuffled a few papers around.

“Cameron,” Raven tried, “does Noe have any enemies? Or Clyde? Anybody they talk about at school who they’ve gotten into fights with?”

“All of that’s in the missing person’s report. And I told you when you wouldn’t stop hassling me about it last night,” Cameron said. “Not anybody who’d want to hurt him bad.”

“Any idea where he might be?” Goldie asked.

Raven closed her eyes. That question, though it might have been a normal one that any cop would ask the parent of a missing child, it was the one that blew Cameron off the edge.

He stood up so fast that his chair fell over. “Y’all some crazy-ass mo-fos if you think I’m going to sit here and take this,” he said. “I got my pride.”

“Calm down, son,” Goldie said.

“Don’t you fucking ‘son’ me, Goldie. You’ve only got a few years on me anyway. Check your biases, brother.”

Raven tried to touch Cameron’s sleeve, but he jerked his arm away.

“What?” he said.

“You need to answer him,” she said.

Raven didn’t turn away from the hurt and betrayal in Cameron’s eyes, even though he had done what she had been willing him to do since yesterday. He was finally looking at her. Fine, he could hate her. For now. She’d deal with it, but only after she found Noe safe. He bent down until he was no more than an inch from her face.

“No,” he said. “I don’t have any idea where he might be. Last time I checked, that was the job you signed up for.”