Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“You gave me away!”

That much was true, and she wanted to help him, but not more than she did any other teenager in trouble.

Are you kidding? Trying to balm your own sense of guilt? He’s right. You have a responsibility to him, one that goes beyond just being a cop trying to help a troubled kid and bring him to justice. He could be your son, damn it, Selena!

“So ... what exactly do you expect me to do?” she asked, trying to stay calm when she felt as if her entire world was turned inside out.

“Find out who planted the gun on me.”

“One of your friends?”

“No!” he said quickly. Too quickly. His gaze skittered away and around the room, as if he were searching for the right answer. Or a place to hide. “Not my friend. No way. But, maybe one of his friends ... those guys ... I, uh, don’t know ... We were hanging with some people Joey knew that night.”

“Joey?”

“Lizard.”

“That’s his nickname?”

“No!” She saw it, he nearly rolled his eyes but held back, probably was too scared. Or too smart. Was he playing her? How would she know? Gabe cleared things up a little, at least in his mind, by adding, “Joey’s last name is Lizard. But, yeah, sometimes we, like, call him Lizard.”

She knew that fact, of course; was just checking, trying to figure out how much of the truth she was getting and how much of what he said was just plain BS. Gabe had come to her, so she expected he wouldn’t lie, at least not too much. If he had any brains at all, which he obviously did, then he’d know she’d already have some of the information on him. He just didn’t know how much.

Joseph Peter Lizard’s name had been all over the information O’Keefe had accumulated as well as on the original police report, which, of course, Alvarez had read. Lizard’s “friends,” Donovan Vale and Lincoln “Line” Holmes, had been listed along with Joseph Lizard and Gabriel Reeve, who were both underage and whose names had not been given to the press.

Not that they weren’t guilty. Just young.

She said, “Tell me about Lizard’s friends.”

“Like, they’re older.”

“How much?”

&nb

sp; “I dunno, around twenty or so, I think.” He appeared to be thinking, hard, trying to come up with the right answer, or maybe just a plausible one.

So far, though, so good.

“What was the plan?”

“There wasn’t really a plan. They just wanted to break into the judge’s house and mess it up, I guess.”

“Vandalize it?”

He shrugged, then stopped, as if sensing he might be digging himself in too deep.

“Why?” she asked. “Why mess it up?”

Another lift of the shoulders, but he did say, “I think, like, cuz the judge, he sent one of them’s girlfriend to jail or something.”

“Ramsey, he was the sentencing judge for the girlfriend? Is that what you’re saying? Judge Victor Ramsey.”

“Yeah, he was the guy.” Worrying his lip, he added, “I guess.”

“Not ‘the guy.’ Judge Ramsey, in this case, was the victim,” she repeated, to clarify. “And his daughter, she’s in your class at St. Francis’s Academy in Helena?”

“You know this already, don’t you?” he charged. “Crap! Then why are you asking me?”