Snitch by Norah McClintock Read Free Book Online Page B

nurses. I don’t think they saw us. We took off down the stairs and kept right on going until we were a couple of blocks from the hospital.
    â€œDid you say what you wanted to say?” Amy asked.
    â€œYeah.” Then I said something else I wanted to say. “Thanks.”

Chapter Thirteen
    Miranda was pacing up and down in the kitchen when I came through the door. She was holding Digby in her arms. He wasn’t wearing a sleeper like he usually did around the house. Miranda had dressed him in a T-shirt and a pair of little baby jeans. She was more dressed up than usual too.
    â€œAre you going out?” I said.
    â€œThe police phoned. They want you to go down to the police station.”
    I felt sick, like someone had punched me in the stomach.
    â€œAndrew can’t get off work. He said I should go with you.”
    â€œAre they going to arrest me?”
    â€œThey just said they wanted to talk to you and that you should come down there.” She picked up Digby’s diaper bag and grabbed her keys. “We’re going to have to take the bus.”
    She didn’t say anything all the way to the police station. When we got there, she asked for a police officer by name. It was the woman cop again. She showed us into a room and said she wanted to ask some more questions. She said Miranda could stay if I wanted her there.
    â€œHe does,” Miranda said before I could answer. I guessed that Andrew had told her she had to stay with me. She settled Digby on her lap.
    The woman cop put my wooden priest onto the table.
    â€œRemember I said we found this in the park where Scott Alexander was beaten up?” she said. I nodded. “Is it yours?”
    I stared at it. It was mine. Even without the initials I would have recognized it. It was beat up in a few places—it had been for as long as I could remember.
    â€œDid you take it to the park, Josh?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDo you have any idea how it got to the park?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThe only fingerprints on it are yours,” she said. “Can you explain that?”
    â€œIt’s his,” Miranda said. “Of course his fingerprints are on it.”
    â€œI meant, if he isn’t the one who hit Scott Alexander with it, why aren’t there other fingerprints on it?” the woman cop said. She said it nicely, though. “When was the last time you saw it, Josh?”
    â€œI—I can’t remember. A couple of weeks ago, maybe.”
    â€œDid you take it somewhere and lose it?”
    I looked at her. The questions weren’t the ones I expected.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I never take it out of the house. It’s always in my room—” I broke off. It wasn’t
my
room. “It’s always in the living room. That’s where I sleep. I keep it in a crate in the living room.”
    â€œSo as far as you know, it’s never been outside of the apartment?” the woman cop said. She sounded disappointed.
    â€œThat’s right,” I said.
    â€œJosh, do you own a leather jacket?” the cop said.
    â€œNo,” Miranda answered for me.
    The cop looked at her. “We can check.”
    â€œHe doesn’t own a leather jacket,” Miranda said. “Why?”
    The cop looked directly at me.
    â€œScott says he didn’t see the guy who attacked him. He says the guy grabbed him from behind, but he could tell he was wearing a leather jacket. He says he tried to get the guy off him. He slammed him backward into the cement wall that runsaround the side of the park. You know that wall, Josh?”
    I nodded. I could picture it.
    â€œHe says he rammed the guy into the wall and then tried to pull away. He says he could hear the guy’s leather jacket scrape against the wall before the guy started hitting him with that.” She nodded at the priest, but she was looking directly at me. “The jacket must have got scraped pretty bad,” she said.