The Odds (4 page)

Don’t know, don’t see, don’t want to see.

Colleen went into the single room, leaving Potocki just outside to quiz the old man. Inside the darkened room, the EMS guys who were on their phones and writing things up stepped aside so she could see the body. In the center of the floor was a boy, a dark-skinned black boy, about fifteen, sixteen. The needle was still in his arm. He’d gone fast, never knew what got him. There was nothing fun in the room—no basketball, no posters, no portable CD or MP3 player, even though there were some CDs tossed around. All through the mess, there was powder, either heroin or what he cut it with.

She could hear Potocki outside getting the name of the old man— “Lee Evan Bodance.”

“Mr. Bodance, what relationship did you have to the boy?”

“He just rented from me.”

“And tell me his name again.”

“Something like De-Mott Roi. Something like that.”

“You never saw it written?”

“Never did.”

“How did you find the body?”

“Some little kid knocked at my door. He was on his way to school. Said he saw the door open and peeked in, just curious.”

“Where is this kid?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You ever see him before?”

“Nuh.”

“What age?”

“Six, seven.”

“What did the kid say?”

“He said, ‘You better call an ambulance. He’s either bad or he’s dead.’ Then the kid run.”

“You think he was buying?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Okay, where did your tenant go to school?”

“He didn’t go to school. I never knew him when he went to school.”

“Why don’t we go around to the front and sit down, Mr. Bodance,” Potocki was saying. “How well did you know your tenant?”

Tenant
. Such a polite word for this rattrap.

Colleen got herself a ziplock and picked up the used stamp bag. She used another one for the powder she began to scrape up. Looking some more, she thought she saw, in a shoe wedged under the body, another bag. She was right. And it looked different from the first. This one was filled and not bordered in blue ink. She took it, put it in another ziplock.

She stooped down and studied the kid’s face. He was bruised. And there were a couple of cuts. He’d been in a fight. She stayed there, looking, because it’s what Christie would have done. She’d seen him do it. The time, the attention paid, signaled the patrol boys, even Forensics, they could joke all they wanted after they took a tiny moment to remember this was a kid, a person, someone who had died too young. Period. Never got the chance to turn it around, have a life. And so she studied him.

The more she looked, the more certain she felt the case wasn’t simple or routine. She got out a digital camera from her big purse and snapped several pictures—of his face, of the evidence around him. Two bags, one plainly stamped, one with a blue ink border. One full, one not. Powder spilled. Everything a mess.

She’d get the bags looked at, tested. She’d get a team here.

She walked around to the front of the house, ducking under the yellow tape that was going up. She heard, “What am I going to live on now? I got my food by renting out the place.”

Potocki caught her eye. He asked the man a few more questions about when he’d last talked to the boy while Colleen called for the cars she needed to take further evidence and to get the body to the morgue for an autopsy.

“He’s got some scratches, some contusions,” she told Potocki on the front steps. “Fresh. He was in a fight. Maybe it means nothing, given the life he led. But I wouldn’t mind finding out who hit him as a start.”

“I don’t think it was Bodance. How many hundreds of possibilities are out here?” With a wave of his arm, he indicated the street and beyond. He looked around.

“After we get the team here, we can go to the schools. Somebody can possibly tell us when he dropped out.”

They started back to the small room where the boy lay dead on the floor.

   CARL WALKED THROUGH THE park to the library. The building was beautiful, made of some kind of light stone in large blocks, peaks and towers, formal looking. He stood outside, looking at it, then sat on one of the benches, watching kids go to school. Because he had to wait for the library to open, he slinked to a corner of the park that was secluded and waited. He slept for a little while. And then it was time.

At the hexagonal stand of computers, people tapped away. Finally one of them was free.

Standing there, his legs aching, Carl searched out the chat room he’d been in yesterday. At first he’d thought he wouldn’t join in. They aren’t like me, he thought, the people who chat here. They misspell every other word. Yet he’d read on. And after a while he was used to them, the way they sounded, their spelling. He’d typed in his own entry.
I have been reading your stories. I want to get off H. I have started weaning myself and was having some success, but I’m having trouble yesterday and today. Terry, did you really do it cold turkey?

He hadn’t signed his real name—just Carl, the addict. He wasn’t Carl at all. He was Matt. He kept Matt protected, inside him.

Today he found that people had written back to him. It was sort of exciting.

Oooohh, Baby
, a person named Beautiful wrote.
You’re doing it the hard way, thinking to make it easier on yourself. I have quit so many times and finally the only thing that worked was cold turkey. Look for Terry. Terry really did cold turkey, I know that. But Baby, you just keep logging on and we’ll be there with you
.

Terry, who dropped apostrophes, not to mention vowels and consonants, had answered,
Carl, Dont let nobody tell you Methdone. It sucks. Its the wors. Dont do Methdone, hear me. You do on your own. First two days is good, easy, you say you can do it. Third day is the hump day you fuckup on the third day, back to hell. Dont do gradul, just cold turky. I’m serious. Got a job and all, listen to old Terry
.

He kept reading. He learned methadone had worked for a person named Simplesolutions.

He didn’t want to be like the guy who wrote,
Bad day, bad day. Went and got some. Amen
.

He was going to do it. He started up the street to say good-bye to BZ.

   COLLEEN HAD JUST DRIVEN A block down the street and was about to turn the corner when she and Potocki both became aware of a kid with a mop of dark curly hair coming toward them, turning onto Garfield. Both detectives saw his eyes register the police cars. The kid turned and started walking back the way he’d come. Colleen sped up to catch him, and Potocki flew out of the car as soon as she stopped. “Whoa,” he called. “Just a minute. Hold on. Police.” He jogged toward the kid and overtook him. Colleen got out of the car and trotted alongside them to hear the boy ask, “What’s this about?”

“You were looking for something,” Potocki said.

“I was just walking up the street.” He dropped his arms, his head. “Oh, shit, I was just walking. Why am I being stopped?”

Was it going to be this easy? Was he the one who’d done it, come back to look at the crime? She took in his long sleeves, the look in his eye. He was on it; he was probably dealing it. She saw him look around, eager to dump something, eager to run again. “You don’t have to run,” she said. “We just want to ask you a question. Just help us make an ID, if you would.”

“What? What kind of ID?”

But his face showed he had guessed.

“You know this kid?” Colleen showed the photos in her camera.

“No.” But the kid was already crying.

“I can see you do.”

The boy looked around helplessly. “Oh, my God.”

“What name did he go by on the street?” The boy swiped at his eyes, but didn’t answer. “Look. You know we could take you in. It’s clear what you’re up to. Why don’t you help us out, just tell us what name your friend went by?”

“BZ.”

“And his real name?”

“I never did know it.”

“We need to get your name. Can you show us some ID?”

“I don’t have any ID.”

“Your name?”

“Carl. Metzler.”

“Where were you last night?”

“Around. At my apartment.”

“And where is that?”

The boy gave them an address. Sweat had broken out on his forehead, but Colleen thought he looked sorrowful, the first person who seemed sad about the other boy’s death.

“When did you last come by BZ’s house?”

“The house? A week ago.”

“Did you see him anywhere else last night?”

“No.”

“You hesitated. Why?”

“I saw him yesterday, earlier in the day.”

“Where?”

“Up the street. Just … we just sat.”

“Can you be more specific? Could you show us?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s get in the car. We have some nosy neighbors around here.”

The boy hesitated again.

“Calm down. We’re not taking you in,” Potocki said. “Just turn and let me do my thing. I got to do this.” He patted the boy down, looked at Colleen with a shrug that communicated there were a couple of stamp bags in the pockets, but no gun.

They put the kid in the passenger seat. Potocki got into the backseat and Colleen took the driver seat. Potocki spoke. “We’re working Homicide. We’re too busy to make a Narcotics arrest. What we need is information. Did your friend make somebody mad lately?”

“Nah.”

“Who’d he work for?”

“Don’t know.”

Potocki nodded. “Where do you go to school?”

“I don’t. I’m eighteen.”

“Where did you go?”

“Not here. I come from Chicago.”

“What are you doing in Pittsburgh?”

“Just … trying to figure out where to be.”

“You have any family?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“Mother died.”

“What was her name?”

“Sarah Metzler.”

“Show us where you met BZ.”

“Two blocks up.”

Colleen drove and a minute later they all looked at the stoop of the apartment building Carl pointed out.

“We sat there sometimes,” Carl said.

“Before we leave you, we’ll need some addresses. Where you and your mother used to live. We’ll need your cell number.” Potocki nodded toward the kid’s pockets. “You have a cell phone.”

“Okay.” Carl wrote addresses and phone numbers down. When he finished, Potocki took the phone from him and checked the number, then wrote down a few numbers of callers.

She said, “You must have liked BZ. Tell me something about him.”

“He was funny. Made me laugh.”

“I’d like to help you, Carl. I don’t want you to end up like your friend.” His moist eyes met hers, and she knew, as she took out her card to give him, she had made a connection.

Her phone rang. Christie. “It’s Boss,” she told Potocki before answering. “Hey, Boss.”

“Hey, yourself. Look. Can you and Potocki come up here to the hospital? Now. Seems you have a victim our Narcotics people are interested in. There’s a boy you’re talking to—you’re supposed to let him go.”

“Someone knows this already?”

“Yes. Eleven o’clock meeting. Farber is on his way.”

“Oh. Okay. Just a minute.” She turned to Carl. “Where do we drop you?”

“I can walk from here. This is fine.”

“We’ll have to be back in touch. You understand?”

They watched him walk down the street. She got back on the phone. “We were just about to go to the schools … to get the identity of the young kid who died.”

“Give the photo—you have a photo?”

“Yeah. I have to print it.”

“Give it to … I’d say Coleson and McGranahan. Let them do the schools.”

She noted the time and hung up. “We have to stop at the office, make the photos, then go meet Christie. Something to do with Farber,” she growled.

Potocki laughed. Nobody liked to muck with Farber, Narcotics.

“And also, on the way, I want to get these bags over to the lab. See if they say anything beyond what I’m guessing.”

“Which is?”

“One ordinary Pittsburgh dose. One very intentional hot shot.”

   ON FRIDAY MORNING, WHEN Ms. Stephanyak, the school counselor, called Joel into her office, he got a stab of fear. Had someone reported them? Stephanyak, a short, round, worried-looking woman, was saying, “I called … but we didn’t get a reply from your family about the Honors Assembly.”

“Oh. Sorry. It’s … no, nobody can come.”

“Your mother can’t come?”

“She’s working.”

“That’s a shame. They want to make a big fuss over you. Does your mother understand what an honor it is? She ought to see if she can get out of work.”

“I’ll ask again, but I don’t think she can.”

“Joel?”

“Yes?”

“Is everything all right at home?”

“Yes.”

“Good. No, don’t go yet, there’s more news. There’s a woman from an association, well, it’s charitable, and they want to give a scholarship to someone for Shadyside Academy. They’re taking names from about seven schools. All your teachers put in your name.”

He couldn’t think what to say. Shadyside. “How would I get there?” he asked finally.

“Either your mother’d drive you or you’d take the bus. Transportation can be worked out. It would be a great honor.”

“I don’t know. I wanted to have a job next year.”

“You’re a little young for a job. Joel? Is everything okay with your family?”

“Oh, yes.”

“These are all honors coming to you. I hope your mother understands that. I’ll put her on my list for a visit.”

“She’s just really busy.”

“Joel? Why are you half out the door?”

“The bell already rang; I’m late.”

“Oh, just tell Mr. Harper you were talking to me.”

He escaped and was walking fast when he ran into his friend Ryan coming out another doorway. Ryan said excitedly, “Police are here. Did you see?”

“No. What about?”

“I don’t know. I think some kid who used to go here died. I was trying to listen, but I got called to the nurse for my allergy shot.” Ryan made a big wheezing sound. “You? You in trouble?” Ryan looked toward the principal’s office, where Stephanyak had a corner.