I sit.
He sits down too. He says, “What did you want to talk to me about, Quentin?”
“I wanted to tell you that I didn't do it.”
He looks at me. “The man's blood is all over your clothes, Quentin.”
“That's because I was standing right next to him when JD shot him. I'm lucky he didn't shoot me instead.”
“There's nothing on JD's clothes. They're clean.”
“That's because he washed his clothes. We went to his house right after it happened and we took off our clothes. JD sent me
upstairs to get clean clothes. He said he was going to put our clothes in the washing machine, but he must have only washed his own clothes.”
Detective Tanner does not look impressed.
“He was with me,” I insist. “I took stuff from the guy's truck. He caught me and was going to call the cops. That's when JD shot him. I was going to tell you. But JD went to you first. He knows you were only looking for one guy. But he was there.”
“You're not telling me anything that you haven't already told me, Quentin.” Detective Tanner stood up. “You should do yourself a favor. Tell the truth. And tell us where the gun is. If there's one thing we don't need in this city, it's another gun out there waiting for some other kid to use it.”
I get up too. “Wait,” I say. I forget that I have a book in my lap, and it falls to the floor. The pictures fall out and slide across the floor to where Detective Tanner is standing. He bends to pick them up. He glances at them, and then he starts to hand them back
to me. Then he looks at them again and frowns.
He says, “Tell me again what you and JD did that day. Start at the beginning.”
So I tell him I went to JD's house.
“What time?” he says.
I tell him. I say we got our bikes out and we rode a few blocks away to smoke up.
“Before you did that, what did you do?” he says.
“Before?”
“Before you left JD's house.”
“We didn't do anything. Leah took our picture and then we left.”
“This picture?” he says, holding it up.
“Yeah.” I tell him again everything we did that dayâmy version. The true version.
“Did JD change before he left the house?”
“Change?”
“Change his clothes. Before you left his house, after this picture was taken, did he change his clothes?”
I'm really confused now. “No,” I say.
“What about later? Did he change his clothes later?”
“Sure,” I say. “We both did. After we got back to his house, we took off our clothes and put on clean clothes.” I tell him what I put on and what JD put on.
“I'm going to need this picture,” he says. He hands me back the other one, the one of Leah and me.
“What's the matter?” I say.
But he doesn't tell me. Not right away, anyway.
I'm surprised when they let me see JD. I am also surprised that he smiles at me when I come through the door. I go over to the table where he's sitting, and I sit down opposite him. I get another surprise when he says, “How's Leah?”
“You don't know?” I say. “She's your sister.”
“She hasn't come to see me. She won't even talk to me. I don't know if it's because of the guy or because of you.”
“It's both,” I tell him. I know because Leah told me. But she didn't tell me that she hasn't been to see JD. “She says she can't believe you would carry a gun around. She can't believe you would shoot someone. And she can't believe you'd put all the blame on me.” I look at him. “Why did you shoot him, JD?”
He shrugs. “He pissed me off, that's all. And he was going to screw things up for me with his stupid citizen's arrest. I just got mad, that's all. I just thought, no way is he going to screw things up for me.” He shakes his head. “You know what I've been thinking, Q? I've been thinking that all those anti-gun nuts are maybe right. If I hadn't had that gun with me, I never would have shot that guy. My sister wouldn't be acting like I have the plague. And I wouldn't be in here while you're out there.”
He's right. I am out. Not completely out of trouble, but at least out of detention while I wait to see what happens next. Because what happened was this: When
the cops said that JD had voluntarily given them the clothes he was wearing that day, I assumed that was really what he had done.
It wasn't.
He gave them clothes that were similar. He had been wearing black jeans with a belt that had a big square buckle on it and a white T-shirt with a dark blue stripe across the chest. He gave them a different pair of black jeans, and a T-shirt with a
light
blue stripe across the chest. He didn't think anyone who might have seen him would notice the difference.
But Detective Tanner has been a cop for a long time and I guess he is a good one because first he noticed the time and date that Leah's camera had automatically put at the bottom of the photo. And then he noticed that the clothes JD was wearing in the picture weren't the same ones he gave to the police. So he got a search warrant and searched JD's house. He didn't tell JD about the picture Leah had taken, and he didn't find the black jeans, or the shirt with
the dark blue stripe that JD was wearing in that picture.
So he came back and talked to me again. I told him that JD said he had burned our clothes and buried them. I told him all the places I could think of where JD might have buried them.
Detective Tanner asked JD to come in for questioning. JD showed up with his father and a lawyer. Detective Tanner had a big paper bag on the table. He opened the bag and pulled out a gun. He said, “You recognize it, JD?”
“I couldn't believe it,” JD says to me now in the visiting room. “How did he even know where to look?”
“He asked me if there were places you liked to go, maybe on your bike,” I say. “I told him you like riding in the ravines.”
JD shakes his head. “I should never have told you I got rid of my clothes. But back then I thought we were going to be okay.”
“You said you got rid of
our
clothes,” I say. I don't add,
But you lied
.
“It turns out that they couldn't find anything on what was left of the clothes that they could use to say I shot the guy,” JD says. “I burned them pretty good. But I had to get rid of the gun, right? So I buried it with the clothes. I didn't think they would ever find it. Turns out that made it even easier for them because they went out with a metal detector. And it turns out that because I was so close to the guy when I shot him, there was some of his blood inside the gun. My lawyer says it's called blowback. And they also got a partial fingerprint off the gun. Mine. And it's good enough that the court will let them say it's a match. My lawyer advised me to cooperate. What could I do? They had me.”
He pauses and looks at me. “I told them you had nothing to do with the shooting.”
“You did?” I say.
“It's the truth,” he says. “I guess you're pretty mad at me, huh?”
I shrug. “I was. But not anymore. It was my own fault I was there. It was my idea to take that stuff.”
“Yeah,” JD says. We talk a few minutes more. When I get up to leave, he says, “Tell Leah to come and see me sometime, okay? Tell her I miss her.”
I promise to do that. And even though I know she's mad at him, I also know that she'll eventually come. She'll have to. He's her brother. They're twins. She loves him.
Norah McClintock is the author of
Tell
and
Snitch
, both Orca Soundings novels. Norah lives in Toronto, Ontario.
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