“He got someone to pick him up tonight and take him home?” Yates was asking.

“We haven’t been able to locate his mother.”

She was in the operating room and could not be disturbed, not that Brazil had tried very hard. Weed didn’t want to go home and Brazil didn’t want him to, either.

“There’s no beds in detention. I just checked,” Yates said.

“Never are,” Brazil replied.

“So if he can’t go home, he’s going to end up in a holding cell until the morning.”

“That’s fine,” Brazil said, not taking his eyes off Weed. “As soon as you can get here, I’ll sign the petition and take him on over. And try to make it fast, Charlie. There’s a lot going on.”

Weed had an intake room without much of a view, a cell no bigger than a closet, everything stainless steel, including the bed. He could not sleep. He stared out a small grate and watched other kids brought in who reminded him of Sick, Beeper, Divinity and Dog. No one reminded him of Smoke. Smoke didn’t look like what he was.

It was dark when Officer Brazil had transported Weed to this place. They called it the Juvenile Detention Home, but it wasn’t like any home Weed had ever been in. He couldn’t see what the outside of it was like but he knew it was in a bad part of town, because right before he’d gotten here they’d driven past the jail. It was all lit up, rolls of razor wire shining like knife blades waiting to cut someone. Weed’s stomach got hollow and he had a cold feeling in his heart.

Weed was still mad they had made him take off all his clothes and go into the shower. When he came out they had a uniform for him to wear. It was nothing to make Weed proud. He was reminded of what his daddy wore cleaning out gutters and clipping hedges when he wasn’t gambling away what he earned.

“Hey!” Weed banged on the door.

Someone was cussing and a deputy was telling a cocky badass boy everything he had done wrong and why he was going to pay for it.

“Hey!” Weed pounded the metal door with his fist, standing on his tiptoes to see through the grate.

Suddenly a deputy was in his face, nothing but a crisscross of metal between them. Weed could smell cigarettes and onions on his breath.

“You got a problem?” the deputy asked.

“I wanna see my police officer,” Weed told him.

“Yo!” the deputy called out. “He wants to see his police officer!”

Laughter and bad-mouthing followed.

“What, you got your own personal po-lice officer?” the deputy smarted off to Weed. “Now ain’t that something.”

“He’s the one who brought me in,” Weed said. “Tell him I got to talk to him.”

“You can tell him in court.”

“When’s that?”

“Nine in the morning.”

“I need to find out if he called my mama!” Weed exclaimed.