The Rag and Bone Shop Read online

  “That was kind of Braxton,” Trent said, disguising his dismay and his irritation. He didn’t enjoy surprises, either in his private life or in his interrogations. He had anticipated a long quiet ride, alone with his thoughts, reviewing the procedures that lay ahead. Yet he supposed a personal briefing now would save time later. And time was always a factor with interrogations.

  “Your reputation precedes you,” Sarah Downes said. “I’ve read your transcripts and listened to your tapes. They’ve helped my own interrogations.” She hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, then decided not to.

  “Thank you,” Trent said, settling back as the limo moved smoothly forward, the tinted windows sealing them off from the rest of the world. The driver was a dark shadow at the wheel behind a glass partition.

  “Braxton said to tell you that they’re all set to carry out the scenario. The suspect is being taken to police headquarters along with four other neighborhood boys. Under the pretext, of course, that they’re helping the investigation. The suspect will be isolated for you. All of this timed with your arrival.”

  Something in her voice, a tone, an inflection, that he could not immediately pin down, caused him to glance at her. Devoid of makeup, except for a faint pink lipstick, wearing a gray career suit, white blouse. Everything about her understated and elegant. Thirty years old, give or take a year or two. Attractive in a subdued unflamboyant way.

  Trent felt old beside her. Her freshness and crispness in contrast to his own—what? Not only age, although he was maybe ten or fifteen years older. All the confessions, all those terrible acts he had listened to, that had somehow become a part of him, that separated them more than the years. Entire worlds separated them.

  “Give me some background,” Trent said.

  “You read the fax. Braxton is very thorough.”

  “I’d like to hear it from you. Tell me about the suspect.”

  “His name, as you know, is Jason Dorrant. He’s twelve years old. Shy, somewhat introverted. No previous arrests. But he attacked a classmate last year in the school cafeteria. Apparently unprovoked. He knew the victim, lived on the same street, was one of the last people—if not the last—to see her alive. Braxton is convinced that he’s the perpetrator.”

  That tone of voice again, the hint of doubt. Trent’s instincts were seldom wrong—that was why he had scored so many successes. And he allowed his instincts to lead him now as he asked, “And you?”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Me?”

  “Yes, are you convinced the boy’s the perpetrator?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Yes, it does,” Trent replied. “Everything matters. And I have to know everything that’s possible to know before I proceed.”

  She shrugged. “All right, I admit that I’m somewhat doubtful. There is absolutely no physical evidence. Nothing to link the boy to the crime scene. And I wonder whether Braxton is yielding to pressure. The town, the senator. Acting too quickly . . .”

  “Any other suspects?”

  “Not really. Family members are always questioned, of course. But the father, mother and brother all can account for their time and movements. Father at the office, mother shopping with a friend. The brother, a boy named Brad, thirteen years old, was with two friends the entire afternoon. No other leads. That leaves us with Jason Dorrant.” A wisp of hair had loosened, falling across her forehead. She swept it back. “I’m uneasy about the situation, about this boy, Jason.”

  “You’re overlooking one thing, Ms. Downes.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The interrogation.”

  Her face tightened, her cheeks becoming taut.

  “Don’t you think the interrogation will bring out the truth?” Trent asked.

  She sighed, turning to him. “It should.” Then that shrug again. “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  As if she’d made a sudden decision, she turned and looked at him directly. “You’re in the business of obtaining confessions,” she said. “That’s why you’re being brought in. That’s what bothers me.”

  “Don’t you think I’m also looking for the truth?” he asked. “That the truth comes out of the interrogation?”

  “Not always,” she said. “The Blake case, and Abbott. Both confessions recanted . . .”

  “But upheld by the courts,” he countered. “It’s hard to deny what’s on the record, the spoken word . . .”

  And now Trent knew what disturbed him about Sarah Downes, beyond her doubts about his interrogations. Somehow, she reminded him of Lottie. Not on the surface. Sarah Downes was cool and poised and elegant. Lottie had been disorganized, often in disarray, particularly after a few margaritas with her friends. She had also been warm and affectionate toward everyone, from stray kittens to old men on park benches.

  But the skepticism, the doubt in Sarah Downes’s voice and manner echoed Lottie and that last sad conversation with her the night before she died.

  “I don’t know you anymore,” Lottie had said. “Who are you, anyway?”

  And because she’d obviously been drinking, Trent answered lightly: “What you see is what you get.”

  “I’m not sure what I see,” Lottie retorted, alert suddenly, eyes flashing, voice crisp and flat.

  Taken aback by the lightning change in her manner, Trent thought of his days and nights away from home, time spent at the department, on the road for interrogations, the endless pursuit of the right answers. He saw how much he had neglected her, having assumed that she was content with her volunteer work at the animal shelter, her afternoon drinks with friends, the books in which she immersed herself.

  “But, wait,” she said, “I do know who you are.” Voice rising as if she’d made a startling discovery. “You are an interrogator. That’s what you do. And you are what you do.”

  You are what you do.

  Like an accusation.

  That had been their last conversation. She’d been asleep when he went to bed after studying his notes for the Lane case and still sleeping soundly when he left for headquarters early the next morning. By nightfall, he stood beside her hospital bed in a hopeless vigil. She had been the victim of a freak accident, a minor collision of automobiles in which the air bag and seat belt conspired to cause her death—trapped by safety devices suddenly turned lethal. Lottie died during the night, without regaining consciousness. Thus began the period of mourning from that day to this, eighteen months later, mourning the lost years ahead they might have shared and the past years that had been wasted.

  You are what you do. Her final indictment of him.

  He shook off these thoughts, bringing himself gratefully back to the limo, the landscape passing muted and surrealistic outside the tinted window. And Sarah Downes sitting beside him, legs crossed now, one foot in the sensible low-heeled shoe swinging back and forth, back and forth.

  Body language. At which Trent had made himself adept for his interrogations. The small clues of movement, the use of hands and feet, the body tense or relaxed, leaning forward or drawing away, the attitude of the chin and the trembling of eyelids, all the telltale signs. What clues did Sarah Downes now supply? That swinging foot, her folded arms guarding her chest, the small beat of the pulse in her temple.

  “Tell me about the victim,” Trent said. “The child.”

  “Alicia Bartlett. Seven years old,” she said, sighing. “Precocious. But a nice little girl. Polite and well bred. Excellent grades in school. Utterly feminine. Loved her American Girl doll Amanda. Hobby: jigsaw puzzles, even in this day of computer games. She and Jason Dorrant worked at a puzzle during that last visit.”

  Trent conjured up pictures of twelve-year-old Jason Dorrant with seven-year-old Alicia Bartlett, heads bent together as they worked over a jigsaw puzzle. They, too, were a puzzle to be solved.

  Sarah Downes’s swinging foot now stopped.

  Trent waited. Finally she said: “I wonder . . .” Then faltered, shifted her body and fe
ll silent.

  “And what do you wonder, Ms. Downes?” His voice light, but not playful, suspecting a revealing remark.

  “First, you can call me Sarah, since we’ll be working together.”

  Trent withdrew a bit. He had admitted no one into his privacy, had avoided intimacy since Lottie’s death. No first-name greetings, no first name given. He wanted to operate alone, travel light. Yet he wanted somehow to convince this young woman that he was more than just an interrogator, not some sort of monster who neglected the human condition of his subjects and their victims.

  “All right, Sarah,” he said, conceding her name but withholding his own. “What do you wonder about?”

  “How you can stand it. All those confessions. I’ve often wondered how priests handle it, sitting in the dark, listening to all the sins, all the foul things people do to each other.”

  The foul things.

  I must lie down where all the ladders start,

  In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

  The old poem which had become a sort of credo through the years.

  He said the words aloud but almost to himself: “ ’Down where all the ladders start, in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.’ ”

  “Yeats,” she said.

  Gratified that she recognized the poem, he said: “I admit that I have sleepless nights. Or I wake up from dreams I can’t remember except that terrible things happened in them. All of it, I suppose, from what I’ve heard in the interrogations. But you learn to live in isolation. And that’s where the trouble lies.” What was he admitting to this young woman that he had never admitted even to Lottie? “The terrible thing is that the priest can give absolution. Absolve the sinners. Send them on their way with a clean heart. I can only listen and turn the confession into an indictment. And go on my own way . . .”

  “To another case, another interrogation.”

  He nodded in agreement.

  “And that’s enough for you?”

  You are what you do.

  Or should I be more than that?

  The limo swerved, and he and Sarah Downes were almost thrown against each other, shoulders touching, the faint scent of her cologne reaching him, like a soft breeze in a leafy glade, the echo of an old song coming into his mind.

  “Sorry,” came the word from the speaker connected to the driver. “A dog in the road . . .”

  Sarah Downes drew away, a wan smile on her face.

  “I guess I’ve envied you for a long time,” she said. “Wanted to be as expert, as efficient . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “But now you’re not sure,” he suggested.

  She turned her eyes on him, said nothing.

  What did he see in those deep gray eyes? Pity, perhaps? Or revulsion? And which was worse?

  An unaccountable sadness settled on him, along with the familiar exhaustion that he wore like an old suit, as the limo continued on its way to Monument.

  Lieutenant Braxton greeted Trent at the rear door of police headquarters. As the detective introduced himself, Trent took in the wiry intensity of the man. Tall and thin, all sharp angles, cheekbones and chin, shoulder blades sharp in the sweat-stained white shirt.

  “Glad you’re here,” Braxton said, voice brisk. His handshake was also brisk. And brief. “No time to waste,” he said. “Sarah Downes filled in the cracks.” Not a question but a statement that required no answer.

  Sarah had quietly drifted away after a curt nod to both men.

  “Let’s go,” Braxton commanded, turning abruptly toward the hallway.

  Trent disliked being hurried and purposely lagged behind. Braxton stopped and looked over his shoulder at him. “The senator would like a word with you.”

  At the same moment, Senator Gibbons stepped into the hallway. He looked as if he had just emerged from a political cartoon, everything about him spectacular, almost a caricature. A shock of white hair, bulbous nose, wide smile and gleaming buck teeth. But he carried himself with an air of authority that contradicted the exaggerations.

  Trent expected a booming hearty greeting but Senator Gibbons shook hands with a gentleness that surprised him.

  “Thank God you’re here,” he said breathlessly. “The suspect’s waiting and we know you’ll do your best, Trent. The town needs an arrest, families are upset.” He hesitated, frowning, then added: “Including my own.” An obvious reference to his grandson’s friendship with the victim. “We’re counting on you, Trent, and I will owe you much if you can see this through. You can write your own ticket.” He paused, for dramatic effect, Trent supposed. “I keep my promises.”

  Trent had no illusions about campaign promises. However, this was not a campaign but an investigation in which the senator was personally involved.

  Braxton, who had been moving impatiently at the senator’s side, said: “Let me show you the office.”

  Trent’s pulse quickened, his old enthusiasm for the pursuit of the confession renewed and revitalized, the game of thrust and parry accelerating his breathing.

  The office to which Braxton led him was perfect. Small and cluttered and claustrophobic. No windows, which eliminated the necessity of drawing the shades. No lamps on the desks, the light coming directly and harshly from a ceiling bulb. No air-conditioning, either. Trent, in fact, felt a slight wafting of heat as he entered the room. Two desks and a filing cabinet took up most of the space, which meant that he and the suspect would be in close proximity, their knees almost touching as they sat in the two chairs arranged opposite each other. That was the intent, of course, to conduct the interrogation in a small space with no room for the suspect to be comfortable.

  “Okay?” Braxton asked, a frown on his face. Did he ever relax? Trent wondered.

  “Okay,” he echoed. “Exactly what I need.”

  “We had the extra desk brought in to make it more crowded.”

  “Perfect.”

  “You’ll note that one chair is higher than the other as you requested. Need water? Snacks?”

  “Nothing like that. Austerity. No refreshments.”

  “Fine,” Braxton said, with a small sigh of satisfaction.

  “How much time do I have?” Trent asked.

  “The mother was a bit doubtful but not really suspicious,” Braxton said, leaning back against the doorjamb, seemingly relaxed for the first time. “Her husband’s away until tomorrow. I’d say you’ve got three hours, minimum. She may become curious after that and either call or visit.”

  “The other young people?”

  “It’s hard to fake long interrogations. We may have to let them go after an hour or so. Hard to predict. The quicker you can work, the better.”

  “It all depends, of course,” Trent said.

  Glancing around the room one more time, Trent sighed. Carl Seaton, Califer and now this boy, all in the space of a week. But a twelve-year-old boy should be easy enough to handle. He thought of Senator Gibbons and his words—you can write your own ticket—which provided the necessary thrust of energy he needed.

  “Bring in the suspect,” he said.

  The boy. Pausing at the doorway before entering the office. On the thin side, black hair neatly combed, blue plaid shirt open at the collar, sharply creased chinos.

  Trent imagined the boy’s mother inspecting him prior to his departure for headquarters, checking his fingernails, perhaps. Checking the fingernails himself as they shook hands, Trent found that there was no evidence of their having been bitten. An indication. Everything was an indication.

  Trent ushered him into the office. The boy’s step was halting, blue eyes blinking in the harsh light. He appeared intimidated, which was to be expected, a glint of curiosity in his eyes, but no suspicion. Trent was expert at detecting suspicion.

  Arranging a smile on his face, he welcomed the boy with a raising of his arms, an attitude of praise for something not yet earned.

  “You’re Jason?” Omitting the family name, establishing a sense of familiarity but maintaining a degree of
authority for himself, announcing only his own family name. “I’m Trent.”

  He motioned to the boy to be seated, maneuvering deftly so that the boy ended up in the lower chair. Trent seated himself opposite, slouching a bit so that his loftier appearance would not be obvious until later and even then almost subliminally.

  “I appreciate your cooperation, Jason. And will try to make this as brief and as painless as possible. It would be wonderful if you came up with information that would help find the perpetrator of this terrible crime.” Voice mild, informal.

  The boy nodded. “I hope I can help. I’ll do my best.”

  His first words. Well-modulated voice. A small swallow before answering. Hands moving slightly but not defensively.

  “I know you will.”

  Jason shot a quick glance around the room, observing it for the first time.

  “Sorry for the smallness of the office,” Trent said. “All the rooms are being used and we drew this one.” The use of we designed to give the boy a sense of their being in this together, as partners, as associates.

  Nodding again, Jason seemed to relax, settling back a bit in the chair.

  Trent positioned his hand over the Record button of the tape recorder. “For the purpose of accuracy, we’ll be recording our conversation. Is this acceptable, Jason?”

  The boy nodded in agreement.

  Trent looked at the boy’s trusting face, the surface innocence in his wide-eyed gaze. Was he truly innocent or was this a mask? Trent was aware of the masks people wear and it was his job to remove the masks, if not entirely, then at least to allow a glimpse of the evil underneath. Was there evil in this boy? Was he capable of an evil act? We are all capable, Trent thought, remembering Carl Seaton and the innocence in his eyes, which resembled the look in the eyes of Jason Dorrant.

  “Just relax, Jason. Think of this as a conversation, no more, no less.” Trent was conscious of using his avuncular voice. “We’ll talk about the events of Monday. What you saw and what you remember seeing.” He was conscious of avoiding the word murder, would use soft words throughout the interrogation. “Memory is a strange device, Jason.” The constant use of Jason’s name was important, personal, avoiding the impersonal. “It plays tricks. What we remember or think we remember. And the opposite, what we’ve forgotten or think we’ve forgotten. We’ll find out about it all together.” Establishing them as a team. “Think of this as a kind of adventure.”