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Chapter 13: Revelations
"I'm sure you're confused, and you must be terrified right now, but we are concerned about you. That's what this is about. You have to understand that. It's our job to…" William was rambling on from the chair next to Craig, but the boy was trying hard to block him out.
He dropped his arms on the table in front of him and put his face down, cradling it just above the surface of the table. The wood finish had a smell to it like disinfectant that stung at his nose. He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to imagine Bobby sitting on the other side of the table. He wanted to hear his brother's voice, telling him he was going to fix everything, but he knew, deep inside that he probably wasn't going to see Bobby again, ever.
They were going to arrest his brothers and lock them away. His fears were growing by the second, and with the medication in his system he couldn't block any of it out. He could feel all of the emotions stirring around; churning like a storm, ready to let loose a destructive force, powerful enough to leave a path of nothing behind him by the time it was over.
He wanted to tell William to shut up. He wanted to find something to break, something to strike out at and William was quickly becoming that something. If Bobby were there, he'd tell him to get it all out. He'd let him scream, or cry but he'd help him do it. He show him how to get it out so that it wasn't eating him up inside.
The door opened and closed loudly. When Craig looked up he realized Jim had returned with a can of soda and a thick looking leather brief case. He set the can on the table in front of Craig and took a seat opposite of Craig. "Let's get started." He spoke with no hint of emotion in his voice.
Craig sat back in his chair and was surprised to find more tears had fallen down his cheek. He wiped at them quickly before hugging his arms to his stomach. "Where are my brothers?" He asked quickly.
"Craig, don't make this harder than it has to be. We need to know about your father." Joe started emptying files and papers from the case, looking at them each closely before laying them out in a straight line. "You will not be permitted to see your brothers, for your own good." He looked at William once the files had been laid out in the middle of the table.
"We need to wait." William spoke quickly. "He said he wanted to be here."
"Screw him, we have a job to do, we're going to do it." Joe reached back to the case and pulled out a paper tablet. He dropped a ballpoint pen on top of it before he slid it across the table to leave it in front of Craig. "I want you to start writing out a statement. You need to tell us what happened in the cemetery this past Saturday, January the first." Joe grabbed the first file in his neat line and pulled it directly in front of him.
Craig didn't move. He didn't understand how this had turned into questions about Saturday.
"Come on Craig, we need to start somewhere, and since Agent Harris needs a statement from you that details what took place on Saturday, then we may as well start there." William spoke quickly. "We need that information too."
Craig swallowed hard. His confused mind started clicking off facts in his mind, subtle, small details that he'd missed before because of the fears and the pain he felt from being ripped away from his home. "You aren't with Social Services." He muttered. He'd lived with Evelyn Mercer for seven years. He knew how the system worked. He knew how it had been for him when he was hurled into it when he was six years old. As awful it had been, no one had actually treated him this way. There were rules that had to be followed, and these guys weren't holding themselves accountable to those rules. No case worker would bring him to a place like this, it was so much like a jail, or treat him as if he were a criminal to be interrogated.
"Yes, actually, we are." William spoke quickly.
Craig turned his head slightly to look at William. "I knew the people who worked with my mother." He spoke quietly. "You didn't." His voice sounded deceptively calm, considering the panic that was building inside of him.
"We aren't from this county. Our office is located out of Southfield." Jim spoke quickly. "We were brought in because whatever is going on here, you seem to be in the middle of it, and you needed to be removed from the situation." He reached out and tapped at the tablet of paper in front of Craig. "We need you start writing." He snapped the last part of his statement at Craig, each syllable pronounced with precision.
Craig still didn't reach for the pen and paper. "Agent Harris brought you here." He remembered the remark Jim had made in the car.
"Yes, he did. He felt that for whatever reason, the local office of Child and Family Services would not handle this case appropriately. If your mother worked for them, then that might explain his concerns." William had reverted back to the same voice he used in the car.
"Fuck you." Craig muttered, knowing that if Bobby heard him repeating his favorite word that he would have served up a bar of Ivory. But Bobby wasn't there; he had no idea where Bobby was. For all he knew he was in jail right now. After his encounter with Harris that morning at the police station it made sense that the FBI guy would want to get some kind of payback.
William stood with no warning, his chair scraping on the concrete floor. "Look, kid, you are in a situation right now. Either you do what you are told, or this situation will only get worse. You don't want to be here for days, do you? You want to sleep in a comfortable bed tonight, don't you?"
"You'll let me go home?" Craig asked without looking up at William who was turning to sit on the table almost directly in front of him.
"No." Jim spoke quickly. "You aren't going home Craig. You are being permanently removed from the Mercer household. You will be taken back to Southfield with us, where you will be placed into foster care. Now, if you don't co-operate with us, we will be forced to lock you up. That doesn't sound very pleasant, does it?"
Craig felt as if he'd been kicked hard in the gut.
"Look, Craig, it's scary, I get that." William looked down at his tie and brushed some lint off of it. "But, you're home is not stable, it's not safe." He flicked at his tie again, apparently finding something else marring its surface.
Craig hugged at his stomach a little harder while fresh tears built behind his eyes.
"You are going to be fine, you're safe now. You can tell us what has been going on at home. No one is going to get angry, or hit you for talking to us. Your father will not be able to…" William was still talking.
"My father is dead." Craig muttered.
William looked at the boy, his brows raised slightly. "So, your brothers have been hitting you." He wasn't asking.
"No." Craig muttered. "My father hit me."
Jim sighed heavily. "You just said your father was dead." He sounded irritated, clearly confused by the statement.
Craig shook his head. He wasn't saying anything else. He wasn't writing anything down on the paper resting on the table next to William. His stomach growled loudly and his head was starting to thud dully, just behind his eyes.
William stood again, and turned to look at Jim. "This isn't getting us anywhere. We need to wait for him, he knows more about what is going on here." He spoke calmly.
Jim sat back in his chair. "Craig, we can do this back in Southfield." He sounded as if he was giving a warning. "Agent Harris will be talking with you, and then you'll spend the night at St. Vincent's. We will leave in the morning." He started gathering up some of the files, but left one folder on the table. "If you don't write out a statement for us, we'll have to write one up on our own, stating our observations and opinions. You may not be so happy with what we have pieced together. Think about that. You don't have a choice here. You are in the custody of the State of Michigan at this point in time. You are ward of the State, and you will be treated as such. As I stated before, you are going back to Southfield with us. Whether you are treated as a victim here or as a juvenile delinquent will rest on your own shoulders." He stood and walked to the door. "Come on Will." He pulled the door open. "Harris will be here soon enough. I guess we'll just wait for him."
William looked down at Craig. "You really don't want it this way Craig." He spoke quietly. "I don't want to see you end up behind bars because you are withholding evidence that the federal government obviously needs. Why don't you trust us?"
Craig thought he would throw up at the sound of those words. How stupid were these guys? He shook his head slowly and avoided looking up at William.
Jack had told him before that he needed to trust his instincts and his instincts were screaming at him that these guys were no better than Adam Macks. There was something beneath their outward appearance, something that felt like his father, only not as strong. His instincts were telling him to run from them; the only problem was he was trapped with no place to run. His life was falling apart around him and there was nothing he could do about it. If he wrote his statement down now, there was no chance of being taken back home. He was never going home.
Johnson was saying something about going back to the station, to check on Jack and see if he could corner Harris somehow to demand some information about what the hell the son of a bitch was trying to do. It was normal to try to intimidate suspects, and Harris' tactics were old school, but his method of execution went against all logic. Bobby stood at the front in front of the couch, staring out the window, his mind rolling over the pictures from just a couple of hours earlier. Jack in handcuffs, his rights being clicked off by Harris in a cold, unfeeling voice; Craig being half carried up the sidewalk to a waiting car. Both of them calling out to him, Craig's voice more of a scream than anything else. His chest clenched on him as his brain flashed a picture of Craig, through the back window of the car, fighting like hell to break free from the Social Services worker who had his fucking hands on him, and then flashed another picture of Jack, hands cuffed behind his back being pushed into the back of a dark colored sedan, a hand pushing his head down so that he wouldn't hit it on the roof of the car as he slid in.
"Listen, why don't you guys give Robert a call and find out if he's made it there yet? You might want to give your buddy, Johnny, a call as well. I'm sure Harris is going to be focusing on him next. He's gonna try to take down everyone who was a part of what happened on Saturday. Maybe you could give him some warning, just in case he has anything going on that could drag him down?"
"Naw, man, Johnny's straight." Angel spoke from somewhere behind Bobby in response to Johnson's warning.
"Straight or not, he needs to have some kind of warning. They are liable to try to set him up." Jeremiah put in quickly. "Harris is already screwing around with us, there's no telling what he might try to do with Johnny."
Bobby turned to face his brothers and focused on Johnson. "Give me your phone." He snapped harshly, though he really wasn't pissed at the detective. Johnson was the only person present that he felt he could take a little frustration out on.
"Green was supposed to be calling me with some news from Judge Ames." Johnson spoke quickly. "I'd like to keep the line open."
"Who the hell is Judge Ames?" Angel asked.
"One of the few Judges we have in the county who hasn't got dirty hands. He doesn't take kickbacks; he doesn't go light on the big time hoodlums that come in front of him, no matter how many death threats have come across his desk." Johnson reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "You should use your own phone…" He started his statement quietly.
"Harris is gonna be tracking any calls made from our phone, and you know it. You gonna tell me the house phone wasn't tapped while they were in here? He'll track any call made from the cell phones too, we've seen firsthand the shit they can do with cell phones. He connects any of our calls to Johnny and he's gonna use it against us. Now give me your fucking phone, it will do that beep thing if Green calls, so you won't miss that call right?" Bobby took three quick steps to stand in front of Johnson; his hand held out as if he had no doubt the man would surrender it to him.
Johnson stared at Bobby for a long moment, a look on his face that let the oldest Mercer know he was trying to think of an argument to contradict his reasoning. He finally sighed and held his phone out to him. "Now it's gonna look like I gave him a call, great." He muttered as he relinquished his phone.
Bobby called Johnny and quickly caught him up to speed on what had been happening with his family. "I need you to keep your fucking nose clean Johnny, keep your guard up." He spoke quickly. "And I need some information." He added with a more slow precision. "I need to know what all Macks was involved in before Sweet died, I need names and details on all of his operations."
Johnny was calm, as always, and made some kind of joke about his ex wife would get a fucking kick out the problems coming down on him now if she knew about them, before he agreed meet up with Bobby about seven o'clock that evening. "I'll meet you down by the river. I feel like doing a little fishing tonight."
Bobby could hear the grin that he knew as spread across his friend's face; he knew exactly where Johnny wanted to go fishing. He felt a smile try to trace his own lips, and it probably would have if his chest hadn't felt so heavy at that moment. "Thanks Johnny, I owe you." Bobby moved to flip the phone closed.
"Again," Johnny amended Bobby's statement loud enough to be heard before the younger man snapped the phone closed.
Johnson held his hand out, expecting his phone be dropped into it just as it rang out with the Ohio State University fight song. Bobby eyed Johnson for a long moment before looking at the name lighting up the front screen on the phone. "Ohio State my ass," He muttered as he allowed a sarcastic smile while answering the phone. "Green, you ass hole, what the hell is going on with my brothers?" He spoke with more pitch to his voice than he'd intended to, but he wanted to hear something positive for a change. The past couple of hours had been hell.
"Bobby? What the hell are you doing answering Johnson's phone?" Green cried out from the other end of the line.
"What did your judge say?" Bobby asked quickly. "What's going on with Jack, and how the hell am I going to get Craig back?"
Bobby was sure he heard a heavy sigh in his ear. "Judge Ames is looking into the warrants that were issued. But they were issued by a federal judge, and he isn't sure what he can do." Green spoke with a carefulness to his words that Bobby didn't like. "But he thought he might have a few cards up his sleeve. He's going to get back with me."
"What else?" Bobby eyed each of his brothers and Johnson.
"Well, I tried to contact Children's Services, to find out where they were taking Craig." Green's voice was barely audible.
Bobby strained to hear the words, the confusion spreading across his brow as Green continued speaking. "They don't know anything about Craig. No one from the local office of Child and Family Services has any knowledge of taking custody of Craig this afternoon." Green's words seemed to choke off.
Bobby's stare hung on Jeremiah for a long moment while Green's words sunk in. "They didn't come for him, then who the fuck did?" He finally asked the question that was burning in his throat. "Who the hell has my little brother?"
Jack allowed Paul, the Correction's Officer who acted as if he had a corn cob stuck up his ass, to push him into the small interview room. He felt relief hit his stomach when his eyes adjusted to the lighting and he recognized Robert Bradford sitting at the table, with some papers in front of him.
"Robert." Jack spoke quietly as Paul removed the cuffs from his wrists and allowed him to sit down across from his lawyer. "What the hell am I going to do? Are my brothers here?" He looked at the older man with expectation.
"They aren't here. It's the last place they need to be." Robert looked at Jack and managed a small smile. "Are you okay? Has anyone questioned you yet?"
"No, Harris said he was going to the courthouse where they were holding Craig first." Jack shook his head. "What the hell is he doing? I think he's using all of this to get to Craig and not me?" He wasn't sure. "When can I get out of here?"
Robert scowled. "The courthouse is not where Craig should be taken." He spoke quietly. "Why would Children's Services take him there?"
Jack repeated what Harris had said in the car. "He wanted to question Craig, about Saturday, and Bobby wouldn't let him do it this morning." He reminded the lawyer.
"Yes I know. What have you told them?" Robert asked.
"Nothing, I haven't said a word." Jack shook his head. "And that pissed him off. He said he'd have time to question me after he talked to Craig."
"He can't talk to Craig. It goes against every right that boy has." Robert shook his head. "He has to have an advocate with him, and as your family's lawyer, I can petition to have him returned as soon as possible. I've got some calls in now."
"Okay." Jack didn't feel any better, though he knew Robert's words had been spoken with the intention of easing his worries about Craig. "But what about my little brother, when are you going to get him away from Harris?"
"Right now, we need to concentrate on you. You haven't been questioned at all?" Robert looked confused.
"No, I was booked and then locked in a cell, alone, which is fine by me, by the way. Harris went to meet up with whoever has Craig. He is going to question him, and I don't think he's exactly going to be all that pleasant with him." Jack shrugged his shoulders. "You need to be going after Craig."
"They have you in a secluded cell? Not so fine with me." Robert let out a huff. "I don't like that you are being separated from the general population Jack, it can mean trouble."
Jack listened while Robert went on to outline his plans for getting him out of county lock up before the end of the day. He said he'd spoken with Green and that he was contacting a judge who was going to push some paperwork through.
"They don't have anything to hold you on, however when I started quoting precedence they laughed at me and said that I needed to talk to Federal Agent Harris, that this was his case. I talked to Lieutenant Green just before I got here and he is doing all he can to get Judge Ames to push the paperwork through to release you on your own recognizance until you initial hearing to determine if charges will be pressed." Robert's words came out quickly as he looked at his watch.
"What are the chances of that happening? I mean, of being released tonight?" Jack asked quietly, expecting to hear that the chances weren't good at all, that more than likely he was going to be stuck behind bars for a day or two. Since he was sure he was stuck where he was for a time he didn't understand why Robert wasn't more concerned with finding Craig. He was about to voice that thought when Robert surprised him.
"Actually, with Judge Ames working on our side, the chances are very good. Don't worry. It's a little after five o'clock now, so it might be a couple of hours yet. Until they tell you that you are being released, do not, under any circumstances, talk to anyone. No matter what they tell you, you keep your mouth shut. In the mean time, I'm going to find out exactly where they took Craig and why, okay?" Robert picked up his papers and stood. "When this is all over, I am going to look forward to filing charges for false arrest." He remarked. "I say that because I know you are innocent Jack. If anyone tries to question you, you demand to that I be present and do not say a word."
Jack nodded his head. He would have stood, but his knees felt weak while he was sitting, he wasn't sure they would hold his weight if he rose from the chair.
There was little more to be said, and Robert shook hands with Jack quickly. "I'll see you soon Jack."
"Thanks." Jack muttered, not feeling the least bit more at ease after the talk. "I think." He sat back in his chair.
"Look, Jack, we'll get you out of here, I promise. Believe me when I say that having you back at home by eight o'clock is something to be happy about. By all rights they can hold you for forty eight hours without charging you with a crime. I know it doesn't sound very helpful, knowing the charges may still be hanging over your head, but you will be home at least, and when the time comes for your hearing, we can use the fact that you have been home under supervision without running to prove you are not going to be a flight risk."
Jack nodded his head slowly. His fears were still there, but at least Robert seemed positive about his release, soon. "And Craig, you're going to find out where they took him and get him back?" He asked quietly.
Robert smiled, but is looked weak. "Believe it or not Jack, getting you out of here is going to be much easier than getting Craig back. Once Social Services have a child, they are very reluctant to release them. They wouldn't have taken Craig unless they had been given some kind of information to lead them to believe it was in his best interest."
"How do you know Social Services have him? Just because they showed papers, and I.D. doesn't mean they're legit', right? I mean, Harris could have had his own people snatch him and flash fake papers." Jack was surprised the thoughts were even in his head once he'd voiced them. "After all the lies we've been handed over the past few weeks, I'm not so quick to believe they were anything but Harris' men, working with him to separate us all."
Robert frowned and sucked in a hard gulp of air. "Well, let's find out, shall we? I'll be back soon enough Jack. You just hold tight and do what I told you." He turned and walked over to the door.
Jack watched silently while Robert Bradford knocked on the door and waited to be let out of the room. An unfamiliar uniformed officer opened the door and allowed the lawyer to step out. The door was closed and Jack was sure he heard a 'click' as the lock was engaged. He sat back in the chair, wondering how long they would leave him sitting in that room. He would have preferred to be taken back to his cell, but the cops were going to play games with him, he was sure. He hoped Robert was right about only having to a couple of more hours.