Page 112 of Take Your Breath Away

Forty-Seven

It was Tyler himself who gave Detective Hardy the name “Cam.” As they were bringing him down the stairs, Tyler had said to her, “Ask Cam. He’ll tell you. I only went there to talk to her.”

So the detective went looking for him. Tyler had said he worked with Cam, and when Detective Hardy learned that the two of them were employed at Whistler’s Market, she called the manager there and asked where she could find this Cam person.

“He’d be at school,” Whistler said, and he told her which school that was.

She went to the school office, found the principal, who determined Cam was in a chemistry class up on the second floor.

“Let’s go get him,” Hardy said.

They found the classroom. The principal interrupted the teacher mid-lesson, pointed to Cam, and beckoned him with his finger.

Cam, tall and skinny and ravaged by acne, stepped out into the hall and said, “What’s going on?” Then he saw Detective Hardy and said, “Who are you?”

She told him.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Is this about the slashed tires because we didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“What slashed tires?” Hardy asked.

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “So what’s up?”

“You were talking to your buddy Tyler this afternoon. Tell me about it.”

“Why, what’s happened? What’s going on?”

“Why did he go to Candace DiCarlo’s house?”

“Who’s that?”

“Tell me about your conversation.”

“Okay, so, there’s this whole thing going on with Tyler’s sister’s boyfriend, okay? Like, a long time ago, his wife vanished and people, like, you guys, think he killed her.”

“Go on.”

“But a couple of days ago she came back. And Tyler saw her at Whistler’s and followed her home.”

“Why did he do that?”

Cam shrugged. “He wanted to know if it was really her, because all this not knowing one way or another was really fucking things up at home. And he wanted to ask her if she was going to want to stay married to his sister’s boyfriend. Like, if that happens, Tyler doesn’t know what that’s going to mean for him and his sister, whether she’s still going to want him living with her, because he can’t go back with his aunt.”

Hardy blinked, not entirely following. “What about his aunt?”

“That’s some shit that happened back in Providence. She didn’t want to look after him anymore because of her eye.”

Hardy thought following this kid’s line of thought was like trying to track a firefly.

“So Tyler called you, and he’d been to see this woman and asked her all these questions.”

“Not yet.”

“What do you mean, not yet?”

“Okay, so he’d been there once, and this woman wouldn’t talk to him. She went in the house and locked the door and Tyler left. That’s when he called me.”

“Why did he call you?”