Page 5 of Royal
Chapter 2
Gray
Present Day
“Please. You gotta know I had to do it,” the teen said, waving his hands in the air. The look in his eyes told of someone who’d been through some tough shit. He was young, too, which was a damn shame.
I sat across from him in the interview room, mentally playing over what approach would be best.
Some suspects needed coddling. The whole, ‘I know you didn’t want to do it. I know you feel bad. But I need you to tell me what happened. You’ll feel better once you get it off your chest.’ Others needed a firmer hand. The kid had confessed, though. There wasn’t a need to scare the life out of him by playing the bad-cop angle.
“Calm down, Trevon,” I said in a low but kind voice. “Why don’t you start from the beginning? Tell me everything that happened leading up to the incident.”
The kid ran a shaking hand through his short brown hair. His eyes of the same color were wide and frantic.
“I woke up and went to school,” he said, his voice trembling. “Dad was asleep on the couch. He and Ma fought the night before, and I guess he crashed there. But anyway. I went to school and came home. When I walked through the door, I heard Ma screaming in the kitchen. So I ran in there and saw my dad with his hand around her throat and shoving her against the fridge.”
“Your dad had a history of abuse?”
“Yes, sir.” Trevon nodded. “He was always beatin’ up on me and Ma. She went to the police the last time he beat her up real good, but she dropped the charges. Decided to give him another chance.”
I listened with a heavy heart, feeling for this kid. My dad had beat up on me, too, so I could relate to him more than I cared to. But I had to keep my own feelings out of it and interview without bias, only look at the facts.
“What happened next?”
“Well, I shouted at him. He told me to go to my room and kept choking Ma.” Trevon swallowed, and his hands shook even more. “Ma was cooking dinner, and I saw the knife she was usin’ to cut the potatoes. Somethin’ came over me, sir. She cried out as Dad hit her, and he was screamin’ real loud. Saying he was goin’ to kill her. I saw red. I grabbed the knife and stuck it in his neck.”
His eyes flashed to me.
“But you gotta understand. I tried to save him.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I grabbed a rag and held it against the hole in his neck while Ma called an ambulance. He died before they got there.”
The incident was clearly self-defense. I’d pulled up records earlier that day, before I questioned Trevon, and saw the police reports filed by his mom against his dad. However, it wasn’t up to me on what to do going forward.
It was my job to gather the evidence and interview Trevon. Get his statement. The prosecutor would ultimately decide whether or not to file charges against him.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” I said before offering a tight smile and standing from the table. He looked scared out of his wits. Understandable. “I need to step out for a moment. Can I get you something to drink? Eat?”
“A soda?” He pulled the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands, as if it was a protective layer between him and the world.
“You got it.”
I left the room.
“What do you think?” Ruby Shaw asked, leaning against the wall outside the interrogation room. At five-foot-five, she was short but feisty as hell. And she was a damn good detective, who just so happened to be my partner.
“I think he’s telling the truth.” I walked over to the Coke machine. “Evidence shows his dad was an abusive asshole. The mom backs up the kid’s story. If it were up to me, it’d be case closed.”
After I got the soda and gave it to Trevon, I walked back out to Ruby.
“Poor kid,” she said, looking through the one-way mirror. The bangs of her pixie-cut blonde hair swooped across her forehead, and she slid a hand through them as she puffed out a breath. “It sucks. If this goes to trial, he’ll be tried as an adult.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said, watching Trevon.
He opened his soda and took a drink, his eyes moving about the room as if he expected something to jump out at him.
The other guys at the station were hoping for a trial because it’d bring attention to the ones who arrested the kid. Their egos were bigger than the sun. Some of them didn’t care whether someone was guilty or not, just as long as it made them look good.
“Can I go in and talk to him?” Carol Mills—Trevon’s mother—asked as she appeared at my side. Bruises covered her neck, and she had a black eye. All signs of the abuse she’d suffered. Signs that would fade with time.
