Archer
It’s nearly six in the morning. Hospital visiting hours are closed, but a patient—the victim of a shooting, the witness to a homicide—demanding to see the police is not really a request Nurse Sally gets to deny.
So Fletch, Minka, Molly, Tori, and I crowd into one room, and just like I knew she would, Minka draws battle lines, sitting with the girls with her lips firmly shut and her eyes boring into mine.
Silent. For now.
“We’re not recording yet, Molly.” I show her my empty hands and shrug.
Fuck knows, IA is already looking at me.
What’s another ding on my record? “I should. You’ve called me and confessed to a very serious crime.
I should have you in cuffs already, sitting in a cold interview room, not a comfortable hospital bed. ”
“Detective…” Minka hits me with a hard glare. “Intimidation?”
“Facts.” I search Molly’s terrified eyes. “This isn’t a game. It’s not something you get to say and expect us to just… ignore. You’re not gonna get a good girl for telling the truth. Just don’t do it again.”
“I know.” She sits up in her bed, pillows propped behind her back, and her blankets pooling in her lap. Already, spent tissues pile up, scrunched and used. “I know what this means. I know what happens after I tell you.”
“And you waive your right to a lawyer?” Fletch paces behind me, a war of cop versus dad waging in his heart.
“Are you sure? You could stop all this right now and tie things up for days. For weeks, even. You could make it impossible for us to come anywhere near you for a good long while, and even then, only when your lawyer is present.”
“I’m sure—”
Tori groans. “They’re giving you an out, Mol.”
“I’m sure,” she presses, wiping her nose and staring down at her tissue. “I need to tell you what happened. I need this to go away, because my dad deserves better.” She parrots my words, already exhausted and tilting her head to the side. “I did what I did.”
“We all do what we do, Molly.” Minka keeps her voice low, leaning closer like she herself is the resident lawyer.
“But our reasons for doing them matter. Because I was defending myself is not the same as because I felt like it. And because I was scared, is not the same as I liked seeing the light go out in his eyes. Frame your words carefully. They’re important. ”
“Your social media shows a cheery, happy relationship, Molly.” I stop at the foot of her bed and wait for her eyes. “You look like you’re in love. He’s a broken kid from a broken world, but he joined you in yours, and everyone who speaks of him says he was working hard to be a better person.”
“He was.” She drops her gaze, hiccupping. “He was trying so hard. He wasn’t a bad person, Detective.”
“But you shot him?” Fletch’s nose twitches in my peripherals. “This is starting to sound less self-defense and more because I liked it. You sure this is the track you wanna take?”
“He slipped. Like you said.” She brings red, puffy eyes up to mine. “He went back and did some things he shouldn’t have.”
My fingers itch for a pencil. My palm twitches with a need to hold a book.
It’s not often I listen to a confession and record none of it.
“I tried to talk to him about it,” Molly whimpers.
“I swear. He was skipping classes again, going missing for a few hours here and there, and getting defensive when I asked about it. I’m not stupid, and my dad hammered this stuff into my head.
Into my brother’s and sister’s heads. He said how living the way he used to was like a drug.
It was an addiction few quit, and even those who do, sometimes they think they can dabble again.
Just a little bit. Ben thought he was…” She draws a long, heady breath.
“He thought he had control of it. So when he first skipped class, and I asked about it, he told me where he’d been. ”
“Where?” Fletch cuts in. “Where had he been?”
“With his old friend. Justin Greaves.” She shreds the tissue between shaking fingers. “You can probably find him in the system if you look. Ben said I wasn’t allowed to meet him at first. He said I wasn’t allowed to hang out with those people.”
“He was protecting her,” Tori adds, raspy and tired. “He knew those crowds were bad, and she was too good to go down there.”
Molly nods, fresh tears slipping onto her cheeks. “He was protecting me. But he told me stuff sometimes. Like how Justin was working for this other guy, and this other guy killed some people a while back.”
My pulse jumps in my chest, bouncing against my diaphragm. “The people who were killed… was this crime reported? Solved?”
She shakes her head, nibbling the inside of her cheek.
“I don’t know who they were. I don’t know if it was on the news or anything, but Ben made it sound kinda like that person never got in trouble for it.
Justin was tight with these bad people, and those people wanted someone to transport stuff from the bay to Midtown. ”
“What stuff?” I cut in again. “How’d they get it to the bay?”
“On a boat. Not a big cargo ship,” she clarifies. “They don’t bring those here anymore. But on a little one. Like a speedboat kind. I don’t know what stuff exactly, because Ben wasn’t involved yet. But it was Justin’s job to get it from the boat and bring it into town.”
“Alright.” I imagine the glide of my hand over paper. The scratch of a pen making notes. “Justin’s working for bad dudes, transporting illegal things into the city. And Ben is friendly with Justin. Go on.”
“So Ben slipped.” She sniffs. “I guess Justin called him, chatting about the old times or whatever. Ben didn’t hide it at first. He didn’t lie.
But then he started skipping classes. He became less available than usual.
” She draws a noisy breath, filling her lungs and expanding her chest. “We knew the odds were working against us. But we also knew we could be okay, like my mom and dad were okay, as long as we promised to always tell the truth.”
“What did he tell you?” Minka murmurs gently, her eyes softening when they meet Molly’s. “What did he confess?”
“He told me the first time he got high with Justin… not, like, the first time ever,” she clarifies. “But the first time since everything got better.”
“Were you mad at him?” Fletch questions. “Did you fight?”
She nods, dropping her gaze. “I got all preachy and naggy, telling him he was better than that. We fought about it, and we shouted and threw things. I know this sounds dumb, but I felt like the fight made us stronger. Like we grew as a couple, and once it was over, I thought we’d come to an agreement. ”
“But he did it again.” Tori takes her friend’s hand, twining their fingers together. “He was skipping school and spending more time with Justin. He’d stay out all night, blowing up Molly’s phone. When he was high, he wasn’t protective anymore.”
“He’d invite me to hang out with them,” Molly rasps.
“Even if we had school the next day, and it was the middle of the night, he’d call and tell me to come smoke with them.
Or to play pool or whatever. He said he was…
” She stops, her cheeks flaming bright red.
In response, the monitors tracking her pulse skitter noisily into the air.
“He was horny when he was high, and though he didn’t say I had to take care of it, it was implied. ”
“Did you go to him? I’m not asking about sex,” I add quickly. Jesus, she’s only seventeen. “I’m not talking about that. But you snuck out to see him on the night he died. Was that the first time you went to him in the dark?”
She drags her lip between her teeth, suckling and staring anywhere but into my eyes.
“I went to him the first time he called. I was worried, and he sounded…” She shakes her head.
“He didn’t sound like himself. He was loud and rude and obnoxious.
I guess he’s one of those happy drunks, ya know?
Some are mean. But when he was drinking or getting high, he was happy and goofy. Flirty and touchy and…”
Horny.
“I went the second time he called, too. But by the third, I was fed up. I told him the next day, when he finally showed his face, that it would be a good idea for us to take some time apart.”
“You broke up with him?” Fletch presses.
“I didn’t use those words.” She fists her tissue and dabs her nose.
“Believe it or not, but I was stupidly in love with him. I was in love with the idea of who he could be. The sober, hardworking, sweet, generous version of him. I didn’t say I wanted to break up, but that we had finals coming and that we needed to focus.
We still hung out, especially since asking for space spooked him and, ironically, meant he stopped skipping school.
When he’s that person, he was good and decent and the kind of man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. ”
“But he wasn’t that person,” Tori murmurs. “We are who we are when our inhibitions are down, right? Mean people get meaner when they’re drunk. Silly extroverts get sillier. Molly wanted him to be someone he wasn’t, and the harder she pushed, the sneakier he got.”
She draws a shuddering, aching breath. “That makes me a shitty person. Wanting him to be—nagging him to be—someone else.”
“You wanted him to reach his potential,” Minka croons. “You knew he was capable of amazing things.”
“Yeah, well…” She shrugs. “The last semester was crappy for us. He was sneaking, and I was nagging. We’d fight, and then we’d make up.
I think my dad noticed I was…” She pauses.
Inhales. Exhales. “Less happy, maybe. He was watching Ben closer than ever, like he knew something was up. But that only made me cover for Ben more. I lied when I should have confided in him. My dad is the one person in the entire world who might’ve had decent, usable advice for me. ”
“Why’d you steal the gun, Molly? What did he say to convince you to sneak into Miranda’s office, pilfer around in her drawer, and steal a weapon?”