“And what are you?” she said, with a laugh.
“I’m a poor white boy,” he said, with a nod. “Although I don’t think I’m exactly all white.”
“Meaning?”
“My mom is mixed something or other.”
“Something or other. You don’t even know what nationality your mom is?”
“Well, I know what she is. She’s Canadian, but she’s also part Native American and part white. I just don’t know what band or tribe or whatever she’s from.”
“Interesting,” she said. “Most kids have a little more knowledge about the heritage of their family than that.”
“Well, I haven’t seen her in a very long time,” he said. “She went off on a drunken bender, and I never saw her again.”
“And your dad?”
“He’s a mechanic.”
“So, you’ve been driving for a lot longer than your license may suggest.”
He nodded. “And I know how to hot-wire, but the thing is,… I mean, this didn’t even need hot-wiring.”
“That’s because it was a getaway car,” she said quietly.
He looked at her, his eyes growing wider. “What do you mean?”
“That truck was used in several drive-by shootings,” she said. “And guess whose fingerprints are all over it now?”
He stared at her, as the hammer went down in his brain, and he bolted to his feet. “Holy shit,” he said. “I didn’t use any guns. I don’t even have any. I didn’t kill nobody, honest.”
“So you say, but you’re the one who was driving the vehicle. For all I know, you were part of the team, and you were the driver of the getaway car.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No way, no way, no way.”
“Yeah? So prove it,” she said, leaning back, crossing her arms over her chest, completely nonchalant.
The kid looked from her to Rodney and back again. “No, no, no, you see…” He stopped and said, “How am I supposed to prove I didn’t do something?”
“Tell us where you were beforehand, like right before,” she said.
“Well, if this guy did the drive-by shooting, wouldn’t he have just taken off?”
“He took off, came around the corner, parked, and then walked back, so he could see the chaos he caused.”
“Oh, gross, that’s,… that’s just cold. Did he hurt somebody?”
“Killed two men. Young, under twenty-five, healthy, fit, complete strangers.”
His face blanched. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear.”
“So you’re just a stupid punk who steals trucks?”
“I didn’t even mean to do that,” he confessed. He raised both hands. “Honest, I didn’t.”
“Yeah? And so, here we are. You driving a stolen truck, trying to tell me that you had nothing to do with the drive-by shooting just a few minutes earlier.”
He shook his head at a rapid rate, tears coming to his eyes, and, with a sinking heart, he appeared not involved, didn’t have anything to do with it. She looked over at Rodney, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders.