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“Yeah.”
“Smoking what, cigarettes?”
“Nope,” he said with a smirk.
“Who all was out there?”
Mike counted on his hands as if he would otherwise forget. “Me, Nyleah, this cat from my school named Terrell, and Demetrius were the only ones smoking. There were some other folks out there talking though. I don’t remember who all it was.”
Webb was intrigued. He’d already talked to Terrell, so this wasn’t a big revelation, but Mike was the first of the Twelve kids to put himself outside with both the victim and Demetrius Branch.
“And how did Nyleah seem when you were outside? Happy? Sad? Upset?”
“I mean…normal, I guess. She was cool. She liked to have fun.”
“Did you observe hertalkingto Demetrius Branch?”
Mike shifted in his seat and pressed his lips together before speaking. “The three of us talked.”
“What did you talk about?”
The young man spread his hands. “Bullshit. Small talk. But me and him talked the most, cuz we’re friends. Before that night, she didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her.”
“I see. And where were you when the victim was found deceased?”
“I was downstairs playing Spades. It was four of us, obviously. Me, Terrell, this chick named Skye, and her friend Destiny.”
“Alright. This is helpful, so thank you. Just a few more questions and you can get out of here. Do you have a dog?”
“Nah.”
“Do you lift weights?”
Mike chuckled. “Do Ilooklike I lift weights?” He held up a whisper-thin arm. “I’m not an athlete, man.”
That last sentence was loaded with emotion. Webb understood. Probably better than most. When he was that age, he never came anywherenearbeing named Best Athlete, Most Attractive, Best Dressed, Biggest Flirt, or any other of the other ultimately meaningless but vitally-important-to-a-sixteen-year-old-kid honorifics. He’d just been Vaughn With The Jacked-up Haircut—that widow’s peak never looked right no matter what he did—and bobos on his feet.
Adult Vaughn wanted to reach back in time and slap the shit out of little Vaughn for letting words and jokes get in his head, because Little Vaughn was the reason he spent way too much on designer suits, and had a watch collection that would make Jay Z blush. But that was a conversation for his therapist.
Webb chuckled. “I have to ask everybody about lifting. And listen, I wasn’t an athlete either. But I had other talents.”
“Idon’t.”
“Nothing?”
“Just this,” Mike said, tapping his index finger on the side of his head.
Webb nodded. “Trust me, that’ll get you a lot further than a ball.”
Ackerman cleared his throat, and Webb remembered what he was there for. “Did you at any time see anyone going up or down the stairs inside the venue?”
Mike paused and looked to be thinking. The boy stared at his feet and took a deep breath. “No.”
“Uh-huh. One more question, Mike. Do you have any thoughts on who might have done this?”
If Webb had looked away, even for a split second, he would have missed it. Mike blinked and glanced at the recorder before looking down at the table.
He knew something.
