It's full sometimes. When it's full I sleep behind the gas station. How old are you? Eight. I'll be nine in November.
Does anybody know you came here today? Mr. Patel knows I've been coming somewhere. I told him I had to deliver a message to a rich man. He told me to be careful. He told me rich men don't always like messages from kids like me.
Richard sat with that for a moment. He was aware dimly that his hand was trembling slightly where it rested on his knee and he was aware that he did not want the boy to see it tremble. He pressed his palm flat against his thigh. The first siren entered the long drive at exactly that moment faint and rising and Elijah's small body tensed beside him on the fountain. It's all right, Richard said, they're coming for us.
Not for you. For us. The first car was a marked unit white with the city seal on the door and it came up the long drive at a careful speed rather than a fast one because the dispatcher had relayed Richard's exact words and the responding officers had been told this was a vehicle-tampering case, not an explosive threat. A second vehicle unmarked followed it. A third a small white van with the words forensic services lettered along the side in modest blue brought up the rear and parked at a respectful distance from the sedan.
The detective who got out of the unmarked car was a woman in her early 50s named Cordelia Marsh. She wore a navy blazer over a pale gray blouse and walked with a slightly stiff gait of someone who has spent 30 years sitting in cars and now does her own physical therapy on a foam roller in her living room every night. Her gray hair was cut short. She wore no jewelry except a thin gold band on her left hand that Richard, who noticed such things, recognized as the kind of ring widowed women keep on long after they could decide otherwise. She came to the fountain first.
She did not look at the car. She looked at Elijah. "Hello," she said, "my name is Detective Marsh. I'm going to be the person in charge of this from now on. Is it all right if I sit down with you both?" "Yes, ma'am," Elijah said.
She sat on the marble lip of the fountain on the other side of Elijah so that the boy was between two adults and not surrounded by them and she set her notebook on her knee without opening it. "Before I ask you anything, Elijah, I want you to know two things. The first is that you are not in trouble. Not for being here, not for climbing the wall, not for sleeping behind the gas station, not for any of it. The second is that everything you saw and everything you heard belongs to you."