Page 37 of Tommy Gabrini: All Fall Down
“Yes sir.”
“But why would he leave with them?” asked Grace. “Are you saying they kidnapped him?”
Jaden looked sad. He shook his head. “No ma’am. It looked like he willingly went.”
Tommy and Grace looked at each other. “How could that be?” Grace asked.
“I don’t know,” Jaden said, “but he was acting weird all day in school way before the shooting.”
“What do you mean weird?” asked Reno.
“He wasn’t himself. Like he was really worried about something. And then those . . .”
“Those what, Jaden?” asked Grace. “Tell us.”
“He had on a long sleeve shirt, but one time it was pulled up a little and I saw those stitches on his arm, like he’d had surgery. I asked what happened and he got real defensive and like the blood drained from his face and stuff. Then he said he fell and hurt his arm. When I wanted details he got angry with me and said it was nothing and to mind my own business. So I left it alone. But that wasn’t like TJ. He never talked to me like that before.”
“And you’re certain you saw stitches?” asked Tommy.
“Yes sir.”
Tommy looked at Grace. “Did Tommy get injured while I was out of town?”
“No, not at all,” said Grace. “And certainly not where he would have needed stitches.”
As Grace was speaking, Sal and Gemma hurried into the command center.
Chief Browne, who knew Sal too, inwardly shook his head. In that double-breasted suit pretending to be a businessman, he looked like the straight-up mob boss he was, even like a John Gotti clone if you asked the chief, while his wifein her blue skirt suit looked like the no-nonsense lawyer she was. The odd couple, he called them. The law-and-order wife, and the criminal husband. He was stunned when he found out that the racist Sal Gabrini he knew married a black woman. And a dark-skinned one at that. With his crooked, racist ass.
But Sal and Gemma weren’t thinking about those cops. They hurried to Tommy and Grace. “Oh Grace,” Gemma said as they hurried over, “have you spoken to him again?”
“They won’t let me,” said Grace. “They said he hasn’t been harmed and that’s all they’ll tell us.”
Sal, ever suspicious of new faces, looked at young Jaden. “Who are you supposed to be?”
“That’s one of TJ’s best friends,” said Trina. “He said he knows for a fact that TJ didn’t shoot up that cafeteria. He also the shooters.”
Sal was relieved to hear it. “You did?”
“Yes sir.”
“He said he saw an injury on TJ’s arm that required stitches.”
But Gemma the attorney went to work. “You actually witnessed the shooting?” she asked Jaden.
“Yes ma’am. I was there. I saw the whole thing.”
But then Grace thought of something. “Chief?”
“Yes?”
“Could you check and see if our son was put in juvenile detention in Tatem two days ago? On Saturday?”
Everybody in the family had heard about that arrest. “What does that matter, Grace?” asked Sal. “What that got to do with this?”
“Because it was after that arrest when I noticed TJ was acting strange too, like Jaden was just telling us. I assumed it was because that detention center traumatized him, but now I wonder if something else was going on.”
Tommy looked at her. “That’s a good point, Grace.”
