I’m covered in blood after my attempted CPR. I’m still shaking. The ambulance guys check me out. They wrap me in a blanket because I’m shaking so hard. They inspect me for wounds. They listen to my heart a couple of times. Apparently, it’s racing. They tell me it’s shock at what I’ve witnessed. Once they’re satisfied I’m not hurt, they hand me over to the cops, who take me back to a police station, put me into a small room and tell me to take a seat, that someone will be with me shortly. If I’m suspected of anything or under arrest, no one bothers to tell me. I’m not worried—not yet anyway. I haven’t done anything. Besides, down here the cops have to tell you whether you’re arrested or not. If they don’t and the case goes to trial, it will get kicked because they didn’t follow the rules. But they fingerprinted me, which I don’t understand. Why the fingerprints if I’m not under arrest? I guess I could have said no. But, like I said, I haven’t done anything. If you haven’t broken any laws, you have no worries, right?
So I sit—or try to—and I wait. I’m as squirmy as an addict in need of a top-up. I still can’t believe what happened. I don’t want to believe it. I stand again, and I pace. I stop for a few seconds to look at the mirror on one wall. Of course, I know it’s not really a mirror. It’s a one-way window. Whoever is on the other side can see me, and that’s all I can see too. Me. With blood on the front of my jacket. With a face that looks too white considering how much surf and sun I’ve had lately.
Me, pacing. Which makes me look guilty of something. But I can’t stop. I don’t even want to think about sitting still. I just want out.
The door opens and a massive black guy comes into the room. He tells me his name—Daniel Carver—and says he’s a homicide detective. He’s wearing a dark suit with a shirt and tie, and he’s carrying a file folder. He flashes me his badge and tells me to take a seat.
“I didn’t do anything,” I tell him. That doesn’t sound right. I don’t want him to get the wrong idea. “I mean, I tried CPR. But it was too late.” There, that’s better. Sort of.
“I said sit.” He doesn’t yell it at me. It sounds more like a guy giving a command to his dog. And like a good dog—or like someone who knows enough about cops to know it’s not a good idea to annoy them, not when something this serious has happened—I sit. But one of my legs is jumping up and down like it’s keeping time to music that no one can hear. Carver notices. He looks at it. I make it stop. Carver looks me in the eye. My leg starts to jump again.
“Rennie Charbonneau. That’s your name?” He’s got the deepest voice I’ve ever heard and a way of talking like I’m a piece of garbage he’s about to ditch as soon as he can find out who tossed me in his path. He scares me more than the Major ever has, and that’s rare. I don’t get scared very often, and I sure don’t get intimidated. Maybe it’s shock, like the ambulance guy said. “That’s a French name, right?”
I nod. “My dad’s Quebecois.” Will a Detroit cop know what that is? “He’s from Quebec. It’s in Canada.”
“I know where Quebec is,” Carver says mildly. He’s looking at a page inside the file folder. “What’s a Canadian boy from Quebec doing down here in Detroit over Christmas, Rennie?”
I start to relax, even though I know I probably shouldn’t. Just because a cop—a homicide cop, at that—sounds friendly, it doesn’t mean he is. More than likely he’s trying to find out what I sound like and look like and how I act when I’m not being grilled and not spinning a web of lies. He’s using psychology on me. I tell myself to relax. I remind myself of something I’ve heard the Major say before, which is that you might be able to put one over on a good investigator now and then, but unless you’re a career criminal—a successful career criminal—you’re basically a rookie up against someone who’s seen and heard it all. Carver is doing his job here, the same job he’s been doing for a couple of decades, judging by the look of him. Me—I’m just in a situation that I sincerely hope is temporary.
“I’m on my way home from a vacation with my dad,” I say.
He glances up from the folder. “Oh? He’s here with you?”
“No, sir.”
He hears the “sir,” and a wolflike smile appears on his face.
“You trying to snow me, Rennie?”
“No, sir.”
His eyes lock onto mine. If I look hard enough, I can see his vision of my future in their black depths. I want to look away, but I know not to. If you don’t look straight at the cops when they’re talking to you, they start to think you’re lying. And if you’re lying, then you’re probably guilty of something. But what I said is true. For once I’m not trying to snow anyone with the “sir.” It’s just that Carver reminds me of the Major, so the “sir” is an automatic reflex.
“My dad shipped out,” I tell him. Then, before he can ask, I add, “He’s with the military. He has an assignment overseas. Afghanistan.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“You haven’t explained what you’re doing in Detroit. It says here you’re a Canadian citizen, residing in Canada. You have friends here?”
“No, sir.”
He looks at the file folder again. “You told the officers on the scene that you had dinner with friends and that you were in the alley where the shooting occurred because you were doing a favor for one of those friends.”
I feel my leg jump. I wish it wouldn’t, but I can’t stop it. I realize it looks like he’s caught me in a lie. But it’s not a lie. The fact is, I can barely remember what I told the two uniforms who questioned me at the scene. Mostly I was thinking how close I’d just come to being a corpse like Duane. If those cops were to walk into the room right now, I doubt I’d recognize them. There are only two faces burned into my brain, and believe me, I wish they weren’t. They’re Duane after he stopped breathing and the guy with the massive spider tattoo.
“They aren’t really friends,” I tell Carver. “I mean, I didn’t know any of them until the day before yesterday. They’re more like acquaintances.”
Carver shakes his head. He’s disappointed. “It’s late, Rennie, and it’s been a long day. Let’s not play word games, okay?”