The Da Vinci Code
A short story by Keeley Ross 8S
"Garçon?" Constable Jean-Pierre Rousseau asked him. He walked over to the chair where the small white boy was seated. The boy stared at him with blood-red eyes. "Where is your family?" He continued in French. The white boy did not answer, he only continued staring.
"Do you speak French?" Rousseau queried, still no answer. The policeman rubbed a hand over his face. "You speak English?" he tried again, speaking English but with a very heavy accent.
There was silence for a beat. "Non" the white boy muttered and looked away.
The policeman suppressed a smile; he had gotten further than any of the other policemen in the Marseilles police department. Another man in the force, Dubois, had made a bet with the others that Rousseau wouldn't get anywhere with the white child. Rousseau hated Dubois, he had recently been promoted to 'Captain', and he never let anyone forget it.
"What is your name?" He probed the boy. The white child turned to look at him again; he had no expression on his face. They stared evenly at each other until Rousseau looked away and picked up the folder of papers, eventually the boy looked away as well. "The fact of the matter is" Rousseau began "that we already know your name." The boy snapped his head back to Rousseau. Rousseau smiled and nodded at the boy. "Ô! Oui! We just searched some old missing persons files, and we were very interested in one of these people." He read out a name from his folder. "Is this you?" he catechized. "I bet it is, you have been out on the streets for a long time, five years, I believe." Again, Rousseau used that name again, the name that the white boy wanted so hard to forget.
The boy clenched his teeth. "That is not my name." he whispered. Rousseau raised his eyebrows.
"Ah bein, vraiment?" Rousseau laughed softly, not believing the boy for a second. The boy bit his snow-white lip and turned his head away from the policeman. "What happened to your father?" Rousseau quizzed him. The white child narrowed his eyes. Rousseau assessed his reaction and moved on to the next question written in the folder. "Did your mother kill him?" Rousseau asked, glancing up to look at the boy. The boy met his eyes for a second, but averted his red eyes. "Did you kill him?" the policeman asked, tilting his head to meet the boy's gaze.
The boy clenched his hands into fists. "Non"
Rousseau sighed. "Well" Rousseau began once more, using the name again. "I happen to think that you did kill him, because he saw you as a child, and hated the way you looked" he told the boy, watching the boy's every twitch. "Un fantôme?" he suggested. "Is that what he saw you as?"
"Shut up!" The boy snarled. "You don't know anything!" Rousseau couldn't hold in his smile this time. This was as good as a confession to the murder.
"Rousseau" the speaker said from the top corner of the room. "Can we speak with you a minute?" Rousseau frowned slightly, because he was doing so well. And because it was Dubois' voice.
Rousseau walked out of the room, not looking back at the boy, but feeling the presence of his eyes on his back. He entered the room next door. Dubois was sitting on an office chair with a coffee on the desk.
"Try to stick to the topic at hand with the boy." He drawled, rolling his eyes at Rousseau. "We aren't trying to convict him of anything."
Rousseau nodded and shot him a glare before walking out of that room and into the interrogation room. The boy stared at Rousseau, waiting for him to say something.
Rousseau took a breath. "We are offering you the opportunity to leave Marseilles. If you refuse, then you shall go to juvenile prison. And you would have the chance to clear your name of the charges" Even though there were no charges to speak of, Rousseau wanted to keep the boy in Marseilles; he wanted to prove how good he was to the team.
And he would do anything to do so.