Second Watch. J. A. Jance
what it would take to learn the ropes. When I showed up in the garage, I more than half expected Phil Molloy, who ran the motor pool, to give me the business about it.
“So you’re out of squad cars and into unmarked,” he observed. “Who are you working with?”
“They haven’t assigned me a partner yet. I’m working a case with Detectives Watkins and Powell.”
“You’re lucky,” Molloy said. “They’re both good people.”
I sat in the passenger load zone on Third Avenue for the better part of fifteen minutes before Watty finally put in an appearance.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School on Magnolia to have a talk with Donnie and Frankie Dodd,” Watty replied. “You’re the one who brought up the path question yesterday, so it’s only fair that you’re there when we talk to them. Do you know where Saints Peter and Paul is?”
I shook my head.
“It’s on the far side of Magnolia Village,” Watty told me. “Just head over the Magnolia Bridge and turn right.”
Magnolia Village was the name of the neighborhood’s central shopping district.
“We’re going to talk to them at their school?” I asked, heading the patrol car in that direction. “Without their mother being there?”
Watty favored me with an owlish look. “Mac and I already tried talking to them with their mother in the room,” he replied. “We didn’t get anywhere that way, so now we’re going to try talking to them alone.”
It seemed like a good time to change the subject.
“How much does tuition to a private school cost?” I asked.
“Funny you should ask,” Watty replied. “I wondered that myself, and I already checked. It’s seven and a half thousand dollars a year per kid.”
I whistled. “Fifteen thousand a year? That’s a lot of money. How does a single mom afford something like that?”
“Good question,” Watty said.
I was still mulling it over when we arrived at the school and parked in a designated visitor parking slot. A sign on the door directed all visitors to report to the office, which we did. Moments later we were in the presence of Sister Mary Katherine, a tall bony woman in a severe black skirt and starched white blouse with a black-and-white veil pinned to short, graying brown hair. She examined Watty’s ID badge thoroughly through gold-framed glasses before handing it back to him.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” she asked.
“Detective Beaumont and I are hoping to have a word with two of your students, Donnie and Frankie Dodd.”
Sister Mary Katherine glared briefly at me. It was the first time I had heard the word “Detective” attached to my name, but if she had asked to see my badge, I would have been stumped. The only ID I had still referred to me as “Officer Beaumont.”
I was relieved when she turned back to Watty.
“What about?”
“The boys were instrumental in helping us find a body over the weekend,” Watty said. “I spoke to them on Sunday, but a few more questions have come up.”
Sister Mary Katherine studied us for a moment longer. “On one condition,” she said.
“What’s that?” Watty wanted to know.
“That I stay in the room while you speak to them. These are my students, after all,” she added. “I won’t have them pushed around.”
“Fine,” Watty agreed.
With that, Sister Mary Katherine reached for the intercom button on her desk. “Miss Simmons,” she said. “Please ask Donnie and Frankie Dodd to come to the office.”
I noticed she didn’t have to specify in which classrooms the boys might be found. I had the sense that this wasn’t the first time the two red-haired brothers had been summoned to the office—and that it wouldn’t be the last. I expected them to show up together, but they didn’t. When the first one arrived, he was already protesting his innocence.
“Whatever it is,” he declared, “I didn’t do it and neither did Frankie.”
“It’s all right, Donnie,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “You’re not in trouble. These two detectives would like to speak to you and your brother for a few minutes.”
I was glad the good sister could tell them apart. In a pinch, I wouldn’t have been able to.
A minute or so later Frankie slouched into the room. Without a word, he settled onto a chair next to his brother to await whatever was coming. Yes, they had definitely been summoned to the principal’s office on more than one occasion.
“Do you remember me from the other day?” Watty asked.
Both boys nodded. Neither of them met Watty’s questioning stare.
“What about Detective Beaumont here?” Watty asked.
They both glanced in my direction and then delivered tiny simultaneous nods.
Watty launched straight into the heart of the matter. “I’ve been going over Detective Beaumont’s report. I believe you mentioned you’re not supposed to go down onto the pier or onto the railroad tracks. Is that correct?”
Again both boys nodded in unison.
“But you do go there.”
“Sometimes,” Donnie said.
On Sunday both boys had been equally communicative, but here—perhaps because they were operating under Sister Mary Katherine’s steely-eyed stare—Donnie seemed to have assumed the role of official spokesman.
“And do you always go up and down the same way?” Watty asked.
“I guess,” Donnie said.
“So there’s, like, a regular path you follow?”
Donnie nodded, more emphatically this time.
“And you were on the path when you found the barrel?”
This time the two boys exchanged glances before Donnie answered. “I think so,” he hedged.
“The funny thing is,” Watty said, leaning back in his chair, “I spent all day Monday out at the crime scene. There’s a path, all right, but it’s nowhere near where you found the barrel.”
“But we saw it from the path,” Frankie put in. “It was right there in plain sight until we pushed it on down the hill.”
Watty ignored the interruption and stayed focused on Donnie. “Is that true?” he asked. “Or did you go looking for it because you already knew it was there?”
“We found it when we were coming back from the movie,” Donnie said. “That’s all. We found it, and then we opened it, and then we called you.”
“How did you open it again?”
“We used a stick to pry off the lid,” Donnie declared.
“And where did you find the stick?” Watty asked. “Was it just lying there on the hillside?”
“Yes,” Donnie answered. “We found the stick right there.”
I could see where Watty was going with this. The barrel had been found in a blackberry bramble. The stick the boys claimed they had used to open the barrel had looked to me like a branch from an alder tree, none of which were anywhere in evidence.
“That’s not what the marks on the barrel say,” Watty told them. “They say you’re lying about that.”
He just dropped that one into the conversation and let it sit