“Maybe you should’ve thought about your mama before you broke the law,” the deputy said.

33

AT SHORTLY AFTER three A.M. a SWAT team raided the Pikes’ clubhouse at the Southside Motel and found the room abandoned. Police recovered no guns or ammunition. They found nothing but liquor and trash and filthy mattresses.

Brazil was on one phone, West on another, each of them in a cubicle inside the detective division. Brazil had called Godwin’s principal, Mrs. Lilly, at home, and when she realized what it was about, she met the registrar at the high school and they started going through records.

Eventually they figured out that Smoke’s real name was Alex Bailey, but the address listed in his school records didn’t exist, the phone number didn’t work, and there was no photograph of him on file. Although the yearbook wasn’t out yet, a check of those who had gotten their pictures taken for it did not include him. All anyone really knew was the classes he had been in and that last summer he had moved here from Durham, North Carolina, where the obscure private high school he supposedly had transferred from didn’t exist.

Brazil called every Bailey in the city directory, waking people up. No one seemed to have a family member named Alex who went to Godwin High School.

“How the hell did he get away with it?” Brazil said to West. “He uses a bogus address, phone number, name of his former high school and who knows what else.”

West was smoking a Carlton. She’d sort of quit months ago, but at times like this she needed a friend.

“Who’s going to check?” she said. “You ever had your high school call you at home or come see you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t. Most people don’t unless they get in trouble. And it sounds like he was just your average kind of keep-to-yourself nobody until a couple weeks ago. Then he cuts classes or doesn’t show up at all. Maybe the school starts calling. But guess what? By then it’s too late.”

“I wonder what his parents know.” Brazil reached for his Styrofoam cup of what once was drinkable coffee.

“Denial. Maybe protecting him. Don’t want to face it and never have. No question in my mind this kid’s not new to the system. No pictures of him anywhere, including the yearbook, just like all these other little felons, so we don’t know what they look like. I bet you anything he’s got a record in North Carolina, probably transferred from Dillon High School.” She sarcastically referred to the juvenile training school in Butner, North Carolina. “His fucking family probably moved him here when he turned sixteen and all his records were expunged. So the asshole gets to start all over again, clean as a Boy Scout.”

Brazil swirled the coffee in his cup. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“So. You going to bother going to bed tonight?” West said.