Page 45 of What Boys Learn

“No, in the break room. That new machine. The one with the little pods.”

“Keurig.”

“No, thelittlepods, the shiny kind. The ones that look like chocolates.”

“Nespresso.”

Hernández gave me a look—Can you believe this place?

He’d already told me, the very first time we talked, that he’d worked in Waukegan around the time we lived there. When he mentioned pining for the tacos from a particular Washington Street restaurant, I’d sighed and closed my eyes. Even then, I’d gotten the sense that the detective was trying to bond with me over our shared outsider status here in Pleasant Park. But now it all felt like a ruse.

“Never mind,” Hernández said. “Coffee will keep you up. Water’s better. Two waters, Joe, cold if possible. Not from the case under Tina’s desk. From the break room fridge. Please.”

After the door closed, Hernández said, “We’ve got texts, we’ve got posts, we’ve got pictures, we’ve got cell phone data. Full toxicology will take a while but we may not even need it. Benjamin is just helping us tie up loose ends.”

If I was rich and if I had a private lawyer, he would have been here already. I would have texted him even before I entered the room and now he’d be pulling up a chair next to Benjamin and no one would stop him. But a public defender? I didn’t know what kind of hours they kept or how fast they came running.

“We can get a lawyer, Benjamin,” I told him. “It doesn’t mean you’re not innocent—”

“But it does take longer,” Hernández said, leaning back in his chair, eyes flicking toward the institutionally bland clock on the wall. “A lot longer. And like I said, every one of your classmates has already talked to us.”

“But my son’s the only one sitting at the police station.”

“You offered to come in.”

“And if we hadn’t?”

Hernández stretched his arms and started what looked like a fake yawn, all show. It turned into a real one, followed by a second. He didn’t bother to cover his mouth with his hand. I tried my hardest to stifle my own yawn, but it was catchy. Hernández chuckled as he saw the sleepy contagion he’d triggered.

I was mid-yawn, eyes watering, when I glanced to Benjamin. He wasn’t yawning. He’d never caught a yawn from me.

My eyes darted to Hernández, wondering if he’d noticed. He had.

“Some people are just like that,” the detective said. “Interesting, isn’t it? What does that say about a person? Must be nice in some ways, like there’s a barrier between you and the world. Do you feel that way sometimes, Benjamin? Like you can’t read people? Or you can, but you don’t want to? Stuff just rolls off your back? Other people’s needs don’t concern you? Yawns don’t make you yawn? Your mom freaking out doesn’t make you freak out? And even a girl asking you to stop—”

“Don’t answer that,” I said to my son.

Robert had said that no sex seemed involved in Izzy’s death. And no one had pressed Benjamin on whether he’d had a relationship with Sidney. Yet the cases seemed to be linked. Izzy, Saturday. Sidney, Sunday. Someone had left a dying or dead girl in a motel and decided, the next day, to pay a visit to her closest friend and have sex with her, then somehow convince her to overdose. Or pills first, sex after. I was starting to see how that would make more sense, especially if the girl was unwilling.

“Here’s a bit of trivia that knocks me out,” Hernández said. “Do you know that psychopaths, when they go to prison, don’t even mind it very much? It’s ’cause they live in the present. They don’t ruminate. That means, ‘thinking stuff over, regretting the past.’”

In a low voice, Benjamin said, “I know what ruminate means.”

“You take the SATs yet?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you do?”

Benjamin shrugged.

Above average: 640 math and 680 verbal, but he could do better. He’d retake it next year, if he got that chance.

I looked at Hernández, smirking. He was figuring it out—how to reach my son. Don’t tell him he seems guilty. Question his intelligence. Benjamin thought too highly of himself to let people think he’s stupid.Arrogance. Grandiosity.

The detective said, “Psychopaths are like genius monks in a way, right? Maybe we’re the ones who are f . . . sorry, who aremessed up. Right? What do you think about that, Benjamin?”

“Don’t answer,” I said.