Chapter 7: Suspect
They were upset, he could tell. The parents of Brad Pierce were sitting in front of the detective, glaring at him as they listened to the radio, hearing every move of the police officers using it as their home was searched for their missing son. Alfred cut down the volume as soon as the house and the surrounding land was cleared.
"Where is he?"
"Why should we tell you?" Brad's mother huffed, crossed her arms. The woman was a fiesty little brunette, standing about chest high on Alfred, but with a glare that made it clear she was used to taking on the world's bullshit. "We don't have to."
"Actually, Mrs. Pierce, you do." Alfred, pulled off his glasses, letting the parents see the bags under his bright blue eyes. "He is under the age of eighteen, and is a suspect in an arson and kidnapping. You are required by law to tell me where he is, or else you will be imprisoned for impeeding an investigation."
"Honey," the father put a hand on his wife's shoulder, then looked at the detective. "We don't know where he is officer. He called last night and said he'd be home soon, but then he never showed up, and we can't find him because the E911 locater on his phone has been disabled."
Mrs. Pierce nodded. "However, we know he was at school today because we weren't called."
"Tell about what he did in the hours leading up to the call."
Mr. Pierce sat back in his chair. "It was fairly normal, he came home from school did his work then went out with friends."
"But he was out late, and that's why he called us. He said he got held up talking with a friend, uhm, Davie something."
"Davie Chase?"
"Yeah, that's the name."
Alfred pinched the bridge of his nose. "Davie Chase... is the boy who was kidnapped from the fire. It is now the upmost importance that we find your son, and find out whether or not he was directly involved with the incident... Thank you for coming, and should Brad come home you should call us or bring him directly here, but do not let him know about anything we have just spoken about."
"Of course."
"Mrs. Chase?" Savannah muttered, opening her eyes to watch a teenage boy walk over. "I-I know I'm probably one of the last people you want to see right now, but I wanted to come apologize for what happened to Davie the other day."
"Who're you?" Savannah tried to make out the features of the boy, but everything was blurry from the medicine in her system. "How do you know Davie?"
"I'm the kid who beat him up." she saw the boy sit beside her bed. "But I didn't mean to. My friends, if I can even call them that anymore, they kinda pushed me into fighting him, I tried to take it easy on him so he could get away, but then he started fighting back and my friends grabbed him. They tore him up good, but the only way I could get him away was for me to attack him. I pretended to slip up and miss, and he did get away from them, but then he got me back."
"I taught him to fight back."
"You taught him well."
"Why are you here?"
"Like I said, to apologize. It's my fault all this is happening, all because I told one of my friends about a stupid little crush. Now he's out for blood."
Alfred paced back and forth in front of the whiteboard that had been set up behind his desk, thinking about the new information that had been gathered since the meeting with the Pierce folks. It was going on twenty-eight hours since the fire, and it had him worried, but a few things had popped up to help him.
The fire fighters had found the remains of a stun gun, shot from inside the living room towards the door before it had been tossed aside. Davie had tried to defend himself, then ran to his bedroom, where the door had been broken into by something other than debris. The arson investigator had also made a discovery, burn patterns and other things Alfred didn't care to try to repeat had proven his earlier suspicion: alcohol had been poured first in the center of Davie's room, then trailed out to the stove and then to the door where the empty, charred bottle had been discovered, partly broken with pieces in the drywall.
"So whoever took the kid, tried to break the bottle and hoped the fire would destroy the rest?" Another detective, a tall, athlete brunette woman named Kelly spoke up from a chair behind him. Kelly had been assigned to work alongside the new detective by the chief, and had helped him set up a proper timeline of the events. "Whoever did this wasn't very bright."
"No, they weren't, but they must have had some kind of back-up plan. What if it had been Savannah that answered, or another resident spotted them during the attack. I think they just wanted to get in the apartment fast, and get out with what appeared to be an alibi. The only problem is Davie wasn't wearing anything generic, he was wearing something everybody knew was his."
"The German hoodie?"
"The German hoodie that he had worn for years." Alfred frowned. "Now if only we could find Brad..."
"Detective Jones?" Dylan stepped up. "We have. We found Brad Pierce."
