The Boy Must Die Read Online Free Page A

and girls did she counsel in this halfway house?”
    “As far as we know, it was just the two of them.”
    “And both of them are dead.” Billy held Dodd’s gaze for a second before he went on. “The knife turn up?”
    “No, sir.” Dodd seemed uneasy about this and moved his eyes down as he spoke.
    “Fingerprints?”
    “Johnson is there now.”
    Billy downed the rest of his coffee and stood.
    “You known the chief long?”
    “Since high school. We’re old buddies.” Dodd grinned. He rose and hiked up his trousers.
    Billy folded his cup and dropped it in the waste basket.
    “I can get you a refill, no problem.”
    “What I need is a washroom.”
    “Right through here, sir. It’s the chief’s private toilet.”
    Billy waited as Dodd took out a key from the desk, strolled to a door at the back of the room, turned the lock, and switched on the light.
    “Yamamoto. That’s Chinese, right?”
    “Japanese. Canadian born and bred. My mother was Scottish.”
    “That so?” Dodd nodded, lifting his eyebrows.
    “We got some good Vietnamese restaurants here in town now.”
    “Thanks, Dodd.”
    As he washed his hands, Billy wondered what Dodd was thinking back in the computer room. Billy knew how territorial sergeants and bureau chiefs could get about their precincts. And their jobs. From what he could tell, Dodd was a man at ease with a retired big-city detective poking his head into a local case. So far so good, but old anxieties were beginning to surface. What did Dodd see when he looked at Billy?
A wiry middle-aged guy with a Jap name? Skin not quite white?
    “Seems the chief is still at it.”
    Billy had walked through the reception room and joined Dodd in the main hallway of offices. His ear was against Butch’s door.
    “Chief suggested I show you the mother’s statement if he got held up. Looks like we have time if you want to, sir. We got it on tape earlier this morning.”
    Dodd led Billy along the hall to a staircase. They walked down two flights, through a set of glass doors, along another hall, then into a ten-by-twelve windowless room. Dodd snapped on the overhead fluorescents. There was a cabinet and a television on a table. A VCR sat on a shelf under the TV . There were three metal chairs set out. Dodd opened the cabinet with a key he took from a hook beside the door. He turned the lock. Rows of tapes were lined up vertically. Each tape had a cardboard sleeve and a white label.
    “Here she is.”
    Dodd handed the cassette to Billy.
    The label of the cardboard sleeve read JUNE 29, SHARON RIEGERT, FILE NO: 64.
    On the screen, the woman looked pale, tired, her acne-scarred face pudgy and ill-fed. Her voice was hoarse from cigarettes. Billy watched her eyes dart as she told Dodd about her last twenty-four hours, what she could remember. The sergeant’s voice interrupted her at times, trying to keep her on track. Behind her, the wall was white. Her hands were folded in her lap.
    “No, I didn’t even see my little boy go out. No way he shoulda been there, no way. She’s been stealing him and all those kids from us. She made him die. She killed my baby.”
    “She was hard to keep on track, sir. She was out of it.”
    “What else do you know about her?”
    “Not much. No driver’s licence. On welfare. She and her boyfriend, Woody, spend a lot of time in her rental place, a two-bedroom bungalow. Seems he lives the rest of the time in his own place a few blocks away. Sharon Riegert is divorced. Darren’s father left her when the boy was born. No relatives in town. We ran a quick check on her. No arrests. No record.”
    “Anything on him? On Woody?”
    “Not yet. I’ve only had time to do her.”
    “Roll it again.”
    This time Billy took mental notes. The woman said she’d been at home all night. She’d been at home the day before as well, though she couldn’t prove it. Only the boyfriend, Woody, was her witness.
    “Where’s the boyfriend’s statement?”
    “Uh, we didn’t get that far,