SO WE GO PAY A visit to the Hines family compound. Meaning a trailer over by the beach. Half-dozen junk cars in the yard, and a couple of kids sitting there, throwing junk picture tubes against the wall. They tell me their brother isn’t home. Their father’s down at the clam flats.
This wasn’t our first run-in with the Hines family. Russell himself is only seventeen and he’s been in the boys’ correctional facility twice. Has a cousin doing time in state prison for armed robbery, an uncle in for arson. Quite the family tree. We figure this isn’t a family that’s so shocked by the idea of a criminal in their midst. These people have got to be realistic. They can’t very well expect to see their boy going straight. So maybe they’ll be receptive to a lighter sentence in exchange for him agreeing to jump in first with a confession. Especially knowing if he doesn’t do it, someone else is bound to. It’s like playing chicken, you know? See who swerves first.
We drive out to the clam flats. Wade out in low tide to have a chat. Tell him maybe we can still prosecute the boy as a juvenile. Just because the kid knows how to hot-wire cars and has a two-year-old son, is that any reason to suppose he’s an adult?
Guy doesn’t say much. But I’m thinking we got our point across.
“Prosecute him as an adult and he’s looking at life without parole,” I say. “We’re figuring Jimmy’s the one that pulled the trigger, based on reports he and the Maretto woman were lovers. One kid saw them kissing out behind the dumpsters at the high school. Someone else spotted them at a video arcade at Little Paradise Beach.”
And then there’s that gold chain the boy pawned in the city last week. Is the father aware that that chain belonged to Larry Maretto?
Father says he’ll have a word with his boy. Maybe they’ll be paying us a visit down at the station.