Truth and Lies (15 page)

I slid into the front seat and fastened the seatbelt.

“I didn't know you could speak Spanish,” I said.

“I spent some time traveling in Latin America,” Riel said, “while I was trying to decide what to do with my life. I wanted to meet girls. And after I met a few—” He shrugged. “If anyone ever tells you that the best way to learn a language is to go out with a girl who speaks it, they're not lying to you, Mike. Trust me.”

The thought of Riel being tutored by a pretty Spanish-speaking girl made me smile. It also made me think about what I would do when I finished high school.

Instead of heading home, Riel drove down to Queen Street. He parked the car and led me into his favorite restaurant, which from the outside looks like a hole in the wall. Inside, though, the place is clean and cheerful. Better than that, it serves the best burgers and the best ribs I've ever tasted. Maybe that's why Riel liked it so much. Or maybe he liked it because all the waitresses knew him and seemed to enjoy flirting with him, even the married ones.

Riel led the way to a booth in the back. He ordered coffee, then looked over at me. I ordered a Coke. Riel didn't say anything while Annette, the waitress, went to get our drinks. That made me nervous all over again. Whatever Riel wanted to talk to me about, it was serious.

Annette set a mug of coffee and a small bowl of plastic creamers in front of Riel and a large Coke in front of me. Riel pulled the foil lid off one of the creamers and dumped the contents into his mug. He stared down at his coffee while he stirred it. When he put down his spoon, he looked directly at me.

“Jonesy wants to see you again,” he said. “You have any idea why?”

I shook my head. But I guessed that if Detective Jones wanted to see me again, it had to be something about Robbie Ducharme.

“We've got an appointment downtown,” Riel said. “I asked a friend of mine to meet us there. A lawyer.”

Part of me wanted to laugh—nice try, ha-ha, but you can't scare me. Another part of me felt cold and numb. A lawyer. That must mean that Riel thought it was serious too.

“Why would he want to see me again?” I asked.

Riel wrapped his hands around his mug of coffee. So far he hadn't taken even one sip. “Mike, if there's anything I should know, anything you want to tell me, anything at all, now would be a good time to speak up.”

It felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the little restaurant. I had to breathe hard to fill my lungs. The bright sunny lighting faded to a dull gray. I saw Riel's lips moving and knew that he was saying something else to me, but the words were drowned out by the hammering of my heart. Did Riel think I hadn't told the
truth about that night, about Jen? Did he still think I was lying? Is that why he'd said that?

“Mike?”

I looked up at him and swallowed hard. If the cops wanted to talk to me again, it couldn't be good. If they'd just wanted to say that my story had checked out, no problem, they would have told Riel. And for sure Riel wouldn't be sitting across from me with the same expression on his face that my mother used to have when she got another call from Billy's school saying Billy had ditched classes again.

“I told you the truth,” I said. Please believe me.
Please
. “The whole truth.”

Riel peered at me. After a while he nodded. Maybe I would have felt better if he had nodded sooner or if he hadn't looked like he'd just been fired, or like Susan had dumped him.

“Drink up,” Riel said.

But I didn't touch my Coke. Riel threw a couple of dollars onto the table. He hadn't touched his coffee either.

Riel's lawyer friend was named Rhona Katz. She was tall and thin and pretty—Riel seemed to know a lot of pretty women. She had on a pale blue skirt with a matching jacket. The color reminded me of my mother's eyes. She smelled nice too, the way my mother used to. She was standing outside police headquarters, holding
an expensive-looking leather briefcase. She smiled when she saw Riel and shifted her briefcase from her right hand to her left so that she could shake my hand when she introduced herself. Her grip was firm. So was her voice as she told me that the best thing for me to do was answer all of the questions the police wanted to ask. But, she said, if anything came up that I wasn't sure about or that I wanted to talk to her about first, I should just say so. Then she said, “Is there anything you want to tell me before we go up, Mike?” She looked and sounded casual as she said it, and at first I thought it was a routine lawyer question, something she always asked. Then I caught her exchanging glances with Riel.

“There's nothing,” I said. “I already told John.” Meaning Riel. “I told the truth.”

She didn't argue with me. She just nodded and said, “That's fine.”

Detective Jones looked a lot more serious than the last time I had seen him, which was really saying something. His partner, Detective London, was with him. I'd met him before, when Billy had died. Detective London eyed me like I was a three-egg, five-slices-of-bacon breakfast and he hadn't eaten in days.

“Sit down, Mike,” Detective Jones said.

I sat.

“Tell me again where you were the night Robbie Ducharme was killed,” he said.

“Suppose
you
tell me why you're asking,” Rhona Katz said.

Detective Jones glanced at her for all of a nanosecond before turning back to me. “Mike?”

Rhona Katz laid a hand on my arm.

“It's okay,” I said. I was going to convince him this time. I was going to convince them all. I told him again when I had left the house, why I'd left, exactly where I'd gone, what I'd done and when I had returned home.

“And you never spoke to Jen Hayes that night,” Detective Jones said. “And, as far as you know, she didn't know you were there and she didn't see you. Is that right?”

I nodded.

“Pretty convenient,” Detective London said. Something in his tone made me look at him. He stared right back at me like I was every bad kid he had ever come across—a liar, a cheat, a thief, and 100 percent not to be trusted.

“Detective,” Rhona Katz said, “unless you have something concrete—”

Detective Jones kept his eyes hard on me the whole time. He didn't smile at me anymore, didn't try to sound friendly, didn't talk softly to encourage me. “We spoke to Jen,” he said. “She says she was with her best friend Ashley Tierney that night.”

Jeez. That was the one thing I hadn't counted on. I tried to keep my face neutral, but Detective Jones seemed to pick up on something.

“But you knew that already, didn't you, Mike?” he said.

I stared down at the tabletop. I didn't answer. I was thinking about Jen. Thinking about the cops going to her school or her house and asking to talk to her. Imagined them saying,
“It's about Mike McGill. He says he saw you on Tuesday night. He says …
” I thought about the look on Jen's face, and then immediately tried to shake the picture that formed in my mind.

“Ashley and Jen say they were together
all night
,” Detective Jones said. “They were at Ashley's house from a little after six in the evening until the next morning. Jen slept over because they were doing an English presentation together the next morning.”

Jen, walking up the path to Ashley's house with her backpack and the little suitcase she used when she was sleeping over at a friend's house.

“You spoke with Ashley's parents too?” Rhona Katz said.

“They're divorced,” Detective Jones said. “Ashley lives with her mother—who was home all night.”

“And who can testify under oath that Jen Hayes never left her house that night?” Rhona Katz said.

“Mrs. Tierney never left the house,” Detective Jones said, not exactly answering the question.

“That's a no,” Riel said to Rhona Katz. “Ten to one Mrs. Tierney will say the girls were in Ashley's room all night. Or that she was in
her
room all night. Am I right, Jonesy?”

Detective Jones looked annoyed. “Ashley's pretty firm—she insists that Jen was with her all night.”

“You did say
best
friends, didn't you?” Rhona Katz said.

Detective Jones glanced at his partner. Detective London said, “You want to tell us about how you got those marks on your knuckles, Mike?”

I looked down at my hands. They were pretty well healed. You had to look close to notice that anything had been wrong with them.

“You told John that you got your hands banged up when you were horsing around with your friend Salvatore San Miguel, right?” Detective Jones said.

My cheeks felt like they were on fire. Riel had spoken to them about me. He'd told them stuff about me and he hadn't let me know.

“That came as a big surprise to Sal,” Detective Jones said.

They'd spoken to Sal too? Why hadn't Sal said anything? If the cops had come around asking me questions about Sal, for sure I would have told him. Then I remembered the look on his face when Riel and I had appeared at the streetcar door. He had been relieved to see Riel, but he hadn't looked quite so happy that I was there. At the time I thought he was embarrassed at me seeing his father acting so weird, but now I knew that wasn't it at all. At least, it wasn't the whole story.

“I was mad,” I said. I had been mad then and, boy, was I ever mad now. Mad at Sal. Mad at Jen. Mad at everyone who was making me look bad. “I went all the way down there so I could talk to Jen and then it just didn't work out. I punched a wall.”

“Why did you lie to John about it, Mike?” Detective Jones asked.

“Or are you lying now?” Detective London said.

“Okay, that's it,” Rhona Katz said. She started to stand up.

“One more question,” Detective London said.

Rhona Katz sat down again, but only on the edge of her seat this time, like she was ready to leave the room at any moment.

Detective London leaned in close to me. His eyes were hard. His breath hit my face like a warm breeze. It smelled of onions. “Did you and Robbie Ducharme ever go at it?” he said.

I glanced at Riel, who was frowning now. Riel, who had spent some time in homicide. Who knew how it worked. Who knew when they asked certain questions and how and why and what they knew or thought they knew before they asked.

“And Mike?” Detective Jones said. “The truth this time.” He emphasized the last two words, making it seem that I had been lying every other time.

“No,” I replied. “We never
went at it
.” I used the same words that Detective London had, spitting each one at him.

“You're sure about that, Mike?” Detective Jones said. His tone went all soft now. He asked the question in a friendly tone, the way I might ask Vin, Did she let you kiss her? And I got it. He was supposed to be the good cop. His partner was the bad cop. “You told John
you didn't know Robbie, isn't that right, Mike?”

“I said he was in my math class. I said he wasn't my friend, though.”

“You also said you never talked to him. Is that true, Mike?”

I swallowed hard. I didn't dare look at Riel now. Why was he asking me this? What did he know?

“Mike? Is it true you never talked to Robbie Ducharme?”

I took a deep breath. I'd promised myself I wouldn't lie anymore. But telling the truth wasn't going to help me either. It wasn't going to help because it wasn't 100 percent true that I had never exchanged a word with Robbie Ducharme. It wasn't 100 percent true, either, that Robbie Ducharme was just a big empty zero to me, the way I'd let Riel think. It wasn't 100 percent true that I didn't know anything or care anything about Robbie. That is, it hadn't been 100 percent true recently. But it
had
more or less described my feelings about Robbie right up until what had happened to Billy. Then, for some reason that I still didn't understand, Robbie Ducharme had actually decided to talk to me. And what he'd said was something that I hadn't wanted to hear.

I had been walking down the hall at school one day. This was back when I was living in temporary foster care, back when Riel was still being checked out. Robbie and I had probably passed each other in the hall a thousand times. Probably most of those times we hadn't even noticed each other. For sure we had never spoken to each
other. It was after school. The halls were quiet. Some of them were deserted. I had stayed back in music—the one subject I liked—to help Mr. Korchak do his weekly tidy-up. I stayed at school as late as I could in those days. The temporary foster care was okay. The woman, Mrs. Walsh, was nice enough, but she was in charge of three other kids, all of them younger than me. One was a girl who cried pretty much every night. The other two were nine-year-old twins who kicked anyone who came near them. They were in therapy, Mrs. Walsh said. She was sure they'd be fine, she said. She was also sure that Teresa, the girl who cried all the time, would eventually find something to smile about. If I'd pressed her for an opinion—which I hadn't—Mrs. Walsh probably would have told me that she was sure I'd be fine too.