Blank Confession (2 page)

“Where is he?” he asked.

Kramoski jerked his thumb toward the bench.

Rawls looked over, surprised. “How come he's not in the interview room?”

“He walked in here by himself. Besides, look at him. What's he gonna do?”

“We're talking about the kid on the end, right?”

“Yep.”

Rawls shook his head. “He looks, like, twelve.”

“Says he's sixteen.”

“Jesus.”

“And Mary and Joseph, bro.” Kramoski returned his attention to the duty roster.

Rawls walked back down the hall, past the man in the suit, past the older woman, past the prostitute. He stopped in front of the kid and waited for him to look up. It took a few seconds. The kid's hair was thick, the color of dried leaves, maybe three weeks past needing a cut. He slowly sat back and raised his head to look directly into Rawls's eyes, his expression devoid of all emotion.

Rawls felt something throb deep within his gut. He had seen that expression before, on other faces. The face of a mother who had lost her only child. The face of a man who had just learned he would be spending the rest of his life in prison. The face of a girl who woke up to find that she would never walk again. A look of despair so deep and profound …it was as if the connections between the mind and the face were severed, leaving only a terrible blankness.

He had seen that expression in other places too. The morgue. Funeral parlors. Murder scenes.

The face of the dead.

But this boy was not dead. Somewhere behind those eyes there existed a spark—a spark that had brought him here, to this building, to this bench, to George Rawls.

“Are you Shayne?” Rawls asked.

The boy dropped his chin. Rawls took that as a yes and sat beside him on the bench, feeling every last one of his forty-three years, fifteen of them as a cop. Despite having conducted hundreds of such interviews, he found himself at a loss. Something about this kid—who could not have weighed much more than his Labrador retriever—frightened him. Not fear for himself. The other kind of fear: fear that the universe no longer made sense, that everything was about to change.

“So …,” Rawls cleared his throat, looking straight ahead, “…who did you kill?”

I met Shayne the same day I got busted for having drugs in my locker, which was also the day after this huge thunderstorm that knocked over a bunch of trees, including the giant elm in our backyard.

I was walking to school. I had left home early so I could look at the storm damage. I could hear chain saws from every direction. Each block had three or four trees down. Some had fallen on houses, some against power lines, and there was even one big oak tree completely blocking Thirty-first Street.

None of the buses had arrived yet when I got to the school. As I started up the wide, shallow steps leading to the front door I heard a humming, burbling sound and looked back to see a motorcycle pull up to the curb. A battered BMW, at least thirty years old. The tank and fenders were painted primer gray. The seat was patched with duct tape. The rider, dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans, put down the kickstand and took off his helmet.

My first thought:
He looks too young to have a driver's license
.

He ran his fingers through his hair, hung his helmet
on the mirror, looked at me, looked at the school, looked back at me.

“Nice suit,” he said. He had a soft, crisp voice, and some kind of accent.

“Thanks.” I was wearing my dark gray three-button, the one with the cuffed trousers. “Nice bike,” I said. I can be a little sarcastic sometimes.

He looked down at his battered motorcycle. “Not really.” He gestured at the school building. “You go here?”

“Why else would I be here?”

He nodded. “Me too. I just moved here. I start today. Where's the student parking?” Definitely an accent—maybe southern, but with a sharp edge to it.

“See that sign?” I pointed. “That huge sign that says STUDENT PARKING?”

“Oh,” he said.

Once again looking at my suit, he said, “Is there, like, a dress code or something?”

I took in his frayed T-shirt, his holey jeans, his beat-up black cowboy boots. “Lucky for you, no. As long as you don't wear gang colors or a T-shirt with swear words.”

He nodded. “So what's with the suit?” He didn't ask it meanly, just in a mildly curious way.

“Some people like to dress nice,” I said.

He nodded as if he understood, popped the helmet back on his head, turned the bike around, and rode off toward the parking lot.

I didn't even know his name, but already I liked him.

Mi nombre es Miguel Martín
, and no, I am not Mexican. Actually, I am Haitian on my mom's side. Her parents came from Haiti back in 1971. They speak Haitian French. I am learning Spanish, however. My mom wanted me to learn French, but learning Spanish is more useful on account of I am often mistaken for Mexican, even by Mexicans, which is weird because Pépé—Mom's dad—is black. That deep purple-black skin color that comes from the west coast of Africa via Haiti. My grandmother, Mémé, is freckled, red-headed, and white. Her ancestors sailed to Haiti from France back in the 1600s. That's her story, anyway. These days her red hair is from a dye bottle, but she claims it's her real color.

My mom turned out to be a medium-brown-skinned woman with Afro hair that turns reddish in the summer. My dad is white, third or fourth generation Italian American.

Anyway, when all those genes got mixed up, I somehow came out looking Mexican. Imagine a Mexican kid, kind of small, wearing a suit and oversize tortoiseshell glasses. That's me. My sister, Marie—we're in the same grade even though she's ten months older than me—has light skin and our grandma's freckles, but her features are more African-looking.

My real name is Mike Martin, aka Mikey the Munchkin, and a
buenodía
is any day I don't feel the need to slink, or, in
español, escabullirse
. Do you know about slinking? It's a way of moving from place to place so people don't notice you. Cats are very good at it. Rats are even better. Lions and polar bears never slink. Okay, maybe a little, but only when they're sneaking up on you.

I have noticed that most short guys (I am the shortest guy in the eleventh grade) adopt one of two strategies. Some, like Chris Rock, or Prince, or Napoleon, have these enormous, noisy egos and make up for their lack of size by dressing and talking big. Others just try not to get stepped on. This is also true of small dogs, which tend to be either world-class barkers or world-class slinkers.

I do it all. I dress big, I bark, and I slink.

I
escabullirse
d into American Lit class and took my usual seat near the windows a few seconds before the 7:40 chime. A few minutes later, the kid with the BMW walked in. Mr. Clemens gave him a raised-eyebrow look.

“Sorry I'm late, sir,” he said. “My name is Shayne. With a
Y
. Shayne Blank. I just transferred here.”

Mr. Clemens, startled by all his politeness, directed Shayne-with-a-
Y
Blank to the empty desk next to me.

Here's what was weird. Every one of us had our eyes on him, the way we would stare at any new face, but this kid appeared to be perfectly comfortable, relaxed, confident, and alert. I've met cats that could pull that off—that combination of hyperalertness and megaconfidence—but I'd never seen it in a human. So, after class, being a friendly and inquisitive type of guy, I followed him into the hall and introduced myself properly. We went through the whole where-are-you-from-what-are-you-doing-here routine—he told me he was originally from Fartlick, Idaho, and that his dad was on a secret mission to Afghanistan, and that his mom was in the Witness Protection Program, and he was living with his aunt.

“I suppose she's an astronaut or something,” I said.

“Yes. But from another planet.”

I liked his sense of humor.

“I thought maybe you were from the South. Because of your accent.”

“I have no accent,” he said, in an accent.

“So is Blank your real name? Or an alias?”

He frowned. “You don't like it?”

I was opening my mouth to say something back to him when I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.

“Hey, Mikey.”

“Hey, Jon,” I said, trying to act as if I was glad to see him.

Jon Brande was borderline movie star handsome, with blond hair, sparkly blue eyes, a strong chin, and a toothpaste-ad smile—the picture of a vibrant, healthy teenager, ready to graduate with honors, accept a basketball scholarship to a Big Ten university, and go on to enjoy a brilliant career in politics. Except that Jon had been kicked off the basketball team his sophomore year and his grades were just barely passing.

Also, he was a violent, psychotic, drug-dealing creep.

“Listen.” He hung his arm around my shoulders and turned me so our backs were to Shayne. “You got room for this in your backpack?” He handed me a brown paper lunch bag. It was limp and wrinkled, as if it had been opened and closed several times. “Just hold it for me. I'll get it back from you after school.”

All my alarm bells were going off, but there was no way I could refuse. Jon was big, he was a senior, and he scared
the crap out of me. I took the bag. I didn't have to ask him what was in it, but I couldn't help asking, “Why?”

“No reason.” He winked and walked off.

Believe me, it is very creepy to get winked at by Jon Brande.

Shayne said, “Friend of yours?”

“Not really.” I stuffed the paper bag into my backpack. “He's my sister's boyfriend.”

On the way to the interview room, Rawls noticed that the kid was limping. The right leg of his jeans was dark and stiff below his knee. Dried blood? It was hard to tell with those black jeans.

“Hurt yourself?” Rawls asked.

“I'm okay.”

“In here. Have a seat.”

The kid limped around the table and sat down. Rawls left the door standing open. Some suspects were more forthcoming if they didn't feel trapped—it made them think they were there by choice, that they had some say in their immediate future. Also, Rawls preferred the door open because the room reeked. Years of citizens with poor hygiene and fear-sweat had permeated the gray-green walls. It got repainted every couple years, but the smell never really went away.

Rawls let the kid settle himself, then said, “Now, there's something you don't see too often.”

The kid looked around, then met Rawls's eyes with a silent question mark.

Rawls smiled—he had been told he had a friendly
smile—and sat down. He let a few seconds pass, then said, “Your shirt.”

The kid looked down at his T-shirt, then back at Rawls.

“It's a T-shirt.”

“Yes it is,” said Rawls.

“What's weird about it?”

Rawls waited a few more seconds to see if the kid would say more. He didn't. Rawls raised the kid's toughness quotient by a degree or two. Most people had a hard time not filling a silence.

Rawls said, “What's
weird
is, it's blank. No rock band, no logo, no message, no nothing.” Rawls once again gave the kid room to respond, with no result. He said, “I didn't even know they made the things in plain.”

The kid nodded, as if to say,
Okay, I get it. Next?

Rawls pulled out his small blue notebook, set it on the table, and flipped through it until he came to a blank page. He clicked his ballpoint pen.

“How about we start with your full name.”

“Shayne Blank.”

“
B-L-A-N-K
?”

“Yeah. And Shayne with a
Y
.”

Rawls wrote that down. “Address?”

The kid gave him an address on the west side, an okay neighborhood bordering one of the wealthier suburbs. Rawls wrote it down.

“Parents?”

“Yes.”

“Two of 'em?”

“Three.”

Rawls waited for clarification. The kid made him wait a few beats, then said, “Dad, mom, aunt.”

“Who do you live with?”

“Aunt.”

“What about your parents?”

“My dad's a SEAL.”

“A navy SEAL?”

“No, the kind you see at the zoo.”

Rawls sat back and regarded the kid, whose face remained empty.

“Are you sure you want to be making jokes, son?” Rawls said.

The kid shrugged.

“Where's your dad now?”

“Iraq. I think.”

“And your mom?”

“Fort Story. That's in Virginia.”

“Military brat, huh?”

The kid just looked at him.

“And your aunt? What does she do?”

“Nothing. She's retired.”

“Who did you kill?”

The kid didn't say anything, same as the first time Rawls had asked him that question—instead, he reached for the metal ring attached to a hinge bolted to the tabletop and ran his fingers over it. The ring was there so that a potentially violent suspect could be handcuffed to the steel table, which was bolted to the floor. Rawls sat back and looked at his watch: 5:09. It didn't matter. This time he was going to wait for the kid to speak, no matter how long it took.