Page 86 of Borden 3

“What sort of kids was she hanging around?”

“Delinquents. The fighting type, you know? They had a ringleader, too. I saw him buzzing around Emma’s house. The officer almost caught him a time or two.”

“You know anything about this ringleader?”

“Rumour had it he was part of the Japanese Mafia.” She widened her eyes for effect. “The Yakuza type.”

Hawke just stared at her, lost for words. “And…he was a kid?”

“Oh, yeah, and, well, he really pissed off Officer Young.”

“Is that the cop that kept coming around, dropping her off?”

“Yeah, he really tried with that girl.” She stared far off, deep in thought. “You know, there was something really peculiar about that boy, now that we’re talking about it. Something that didn’t sit right.”

“The mafia thing?”

“Well, that too, but it was more than that.”

“What exactly was it?”

“Like I said, I’d seen him a few times, buzzing around that house. He’d always come up out of the bushes, like he was emerging from the ground or some such shit. Obviously from all that mafia training. And then…he’d just stand there.”

“Stand where?”

“Well, in front of Darlene’s house. He’d stand there, staring at Emma’s window. He wouldn’t move, either. Just stand there.”

Hawke frowned. “For how long?”

“Very long.”

“You never said nothin’?”

Debbie-Anne looked unsettled. “No, absolutely not. That boy spooked me. He looked ghostly. Sometimes I thought he wasn’t real, like an apparition. He was so pale. The way he stood out in the light like that, like he’d never seen the sun.”

“Then what?”

“Well, this went on for some time. Then…he never showed back up again, and it was like nothing ever happened.”

“Did Officer Young keep comin’ around?”

“No, no, he didn’t.” She went quiet for some time, looking disturbed. “Officer Young died around that time.”

“Died of what?”

She just looked at him. “I think you can guess.”

Well, shit, instead of answers, Hawke left with a stomach full of rancid tea and questions.

A shit ton of fucking questions.

“That girl’s in a better place, I hear,” Debbie-Anne had said right before he left. “Best you leave her alone about it. She came right in the head after that boy split.”

That wasn’t good enough.

Hawke looked into Officer Young’s death. There’d been an exchange of gun fire. He’d been shot in an alleyway. There were no apparent witnesses, even though it was between two residential apartment buildings that were notorious for gang activity and drug use.

Hawke paid one of the buildings a visit. He knocked on some doors, looked for any ancient people that lived there for a while. He found Timothy, a retired schoolteacher, who was around at the time of Officer Young’s death.

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