Chapter Five: There's Never a Cop Around When You Need One

The silence in the small room had gone on for so long that Mark wondered whether Tucker had decided to plead the fifth a little early. Finally though, just when he knew he would have to break the silence himself, Mark was surprised by the sound of Tucker's voice.

"It was just a normal day, y'know."

Mark groaned inwardly, ten minutes of nothing for that, maybe this was going to be a waste of time after all.

"I had tried to get away from him all day, but he just kept bugging me, on and on. I did what they tells ya to do, I snitched."

Mark nodded, not wanting to say anything just yet, but remembering how Steve had always felt that reporting someone was a bad thing, or at least he had, until he realised what the alternatives were.

"Didn't do no good, he'd lay off when teachers were around, but soon as they were gone he'd just start up again. 'Hey, special boy, Tuck, Tuck, Tucker!'" Tucker paused for a moment and Mark could see him think things through again. "He was real clever y'know, he never said nothin' that was real nasty, but he just kept on and on. He knew what I'd done at my other school too, kept callin' out about me havin' a record, being so dumb all I could do was thump people . . . sometimes I wanted to kill him." Tucker's hands were now in tight fists and, suddenly realising this, he hid them in his lap.

"But you had been goading him too, hadn't you?"

"Uh?" Tucker looked at Mark and it was obvious he had no idea what Mark meant.

"Letters, you sent him letters."

"No, I never, I sent him one letter. Got suspended for that, ten lousy days. D'you know what I had to do for ten days?"

"I have no idea." Mark didn't really want to know, "The letter said you were going to kill Rico . . . with a hammer."

"So? It don't mean I done it. Besides, if I'd put gun instead of hammer I'd have got a lot longer than ten days. I didn't see no one for ten days."

"So the fact that you said Rico would be killed with a hammer and he was, that was coincidence?"

"I already told that cop it was . . . Hey, I seen you before." The realisation suddenly hit Tucker and he stared intently at the old man across the table from him. "I guess I should apologise, I sort of messed up your hospital, huh?"

Mark just nodded, the boy hadn't messed it up, he'd trashed it. It had taken Steve, Cheryl and a security guard ten minutes to subdue the boy and then it had taken maintenance four days to repair the damage.

"Tucker, I have to tell you, things look real bad for you, you need to tell me how I can prove you didn't kill him, because otherwise you are gonna go to jail and my son is going to die."

Sloans' Deck

Donald couldn't believe what he was seeing; the black and white was parked so close to his truck that he'd have to get in the passenger side or he'd damage their vehicle and his own. He ducked back down an aisle which, he realised belatedly, wasn't the type he usually went in. Trying to look interested in the items on the shelves he picked up a box and began to slowly read the words on the front.

'Cl . . . air . . . ol . . . hair col . . . or . . . ant." He turned it over and there on the back were four squares with different shades of red in them. For a moment he considered buying it, changing his hair colour and just driving off, but his pa'd find him for sure, and then he'd whup his hide, no matter that he was thirty-four already.

"Hey, Barb, how's it going today?" The voice almost made him drop the box and he scuttled further up the aisle as he saw the back view of probably the biggest cop in California standing just a little way from him.

"Dead, nothing going on, but Jake called in, told me that Marsha's in the hospital. He thinks her twins'll be born today for sure." The store assistant laughed a moment before continuing, "I told him, it's their first, she's got days yet, days." Even in his state of panic Donald knew that Barb was enjoying the prospect of the woman taking ages to deliver her babies.

The cop laughed along with the assistant and then began to talk. "Guy's an optimist, gotta give him that. I need to get some soda, antacid and Joanie needs a new hair colour, says she's fed up with being blonde, what colour you think she should go this time?"

Donald made his way quickly into the next aisle, saw that it was full of chocolate, candy bars and potato chips and pulled a handful of each into his basket, on top of the bandages and first aid equipment, listening to the conversation and his loudly beating heart at the same time.

"She doesn't want to go black, it'll make her look like Morticia . . . how about pink?"

Donald didn't wait to hear the answer, he made for the door, scooted across the parking lot, clambered into the truck, started the engine and was gone before the police officer or store worker realised that he had even been there.

Sloans' Deck

"Doc, I found him, he was just lying there, an' the hammer was stickin' out of his head, I don't know why I pulled it out, but I did." For a moment Tucker shuddered as the memory of the difficulty of the task, as well as the sucking noise it had made, came to the front of his mind. "It splurted, blood, ucky stuff, I don't know what, but it splurted all over me." Again he stopped talking but then resolutely he started again. "I knew he must still be alive, the blood was still flowin' that means he's alive right?" Tucker didn't wait for an answer, now he was talking he didn't seem able to stop.

"I got down on the floor next to him, I put the hammer down an' I spoke to him. He was a bully an' a whole lot of other things too, but I knew he was dyin', I just wanted to let him know I was there."

"So, if you were on the floor, talking, why did the school resource officer find you standing over the body with the weapon in your hand?"

"I was scared, ok? I heard this voice, I didn't know who it was, but it could have been the killer comin' back, I didn't want to be next."

"Why didn't you tell Steve that?" Mark knew that when his son had interviewed the young man he had refused to say anything other than they were gonna hang him anyhow so what was the point.

"Because that cop, him and the lady, they thought I'd done it, and I may be thick but I'm not stupid, I was found standing over a dead body with a hammer in my hand when the body don't have a skull left. Besides . . . " Tucker trailed off and Mark sat and waited.

It didn't take long before the young man began to speak again, "Besides, I'd just smashed up that hospital room, I thought he was gonna kill me y'know, he's big and strong, I didn't want to annoy him any more than I'd already done."

Mark detected a little bit of respect for Steve in the voice of his companion and smiled inwardly. Maybe that would help him; because right now he had precious little else to go on, time was running out and he needed all the help he could get.

Sloans' Deck

Steve had no idea how long Donald had been away, he thought that he had probably been out of it for a while, he wasn't sure, but usually when he was in this much pain he didn't stay conscious for very long at a stretch. He tried to move himself into a more comfortable position and was unable to stop from crying out as the grit and gravel off the dirty floor rubbed into his wound causing it to burn even more.

"Boy, if you wanna be movin' about I can find you a job to do. I ploughed a whole field one year with a bullet in me which makes your'n look like a splinter."

"Yeah, well good for you. Ughhh." Steve felt himself being kicked out at and, not being sharp enough to move quickly, he couldn't protect himself as the work boot made contact with his side, knocking the wind out of him and jarring his back against the floor once again.

"You know, Donald may be my son, an' all, but he's soft, he hasn't worked out yet that there is no way, whatever happens, that you're going home to your cosy little life by the beach. You'm a dead man, me too, so I don't got nothing to lose, understand me?"

The stinking breath of his captor almost made Steve pass out where he lay. The smell of the muskrat was mixed with the moonshine and God knew what else to provide Cletus with an odour which would probably kill all known germs and him as well.

"So, is your pa clever as they say he is? Does Donald's boy stand a chance? I never thought he'd do it, not kill a man, guess I was wrong."

"Are you saying he did it? Tucker killed Rico?" Steve could only stare in horror at the man in front of him. They had sent his father on a wild goose chase, and Cletus was right, he was a dead man.