Indefensible by Lee Goodman Page B

Mr. Jones . . . well, I’m with a colleague at the moment . . . yes, let’s talk later on . . . okay, then.” He closes the phone. “Okay, where were we?” he asks.
    â€œSearch warrant.”
    â€œRight. Tomorrow.”
    I leave. I’m dying to know what the phone call was about, but since he didn’t volunteer anything, I don’t ask.

C HAPTER 17
    E ight-forty-five in the morning. A few of Dorsey’s men cover the back and sides of Scud’s house, and three others knock at the front door. The door opens and they go inside.
    We wait a couple of minutes, then Dorsey radios that it’s all secure, we can go in.
    Scud’s street is an old GI Bill subdivision of starter homes and finisher homes. Some yards are tidy; some have dead cars rising from the dirt like topiary. Scud’s is one of the tidy ones. Flowers are planted along the front wall and the concrete walk. The front door has three glass panes in a stair-step pattern.
    The house is bland and spotless inside. The furniture is the kind of generic stuff you buy when you have enough money and don’t know what else to buy. The kitchen is small. There are two bedrooms. The dining table is empty, and there are no unwashed dishes in the sink.
    In the living room a woman and a young boy sit on the couch. The boy is crying. His mother is on the phone.
    â€œYou scared?” I ask the boy, and naturally, he doesn’t answer, so I say, “I’d be scared, too. But you know what? These guys, they’re just looking for some things. They won’t hurt you.” I look at the mother, expecting her to tell me to leave him the hell alone, but she seems not to notice I’m there.
    â€œFive of them, I think,” she says into the phone.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” I ask the boy, who is looking from his mother to the officer who guards them, then back.
    â€œHow the hell would I know?” the mother says into the phone. “Come home and ask them yourself.”
    An officer in a flak jacket walks through the living room carrying a computer.
    â€œOur computer,” the woman says.
    â€œMommy?” the boy says, looking up at her for comfort, but she doesn’t notice him. She’s in her late thirties. She isn’t sitting on the couch so much as giving up to it; everything about her—shoulders, cheeks, voice—seems to be slumping inward. She’s hard to get a fix on. Curled bangs, oversize T-shirt, sweatpants, weary, slow-moving eyes: It all seems to be a husk where she no longer lives. She’s watching the officer guarding her.
    â€œHow old are you?” I ask the boy.
    â€œSeven.”
    â€œSeven! What’s your name?”
    â€œColin.”
    â€œWell, Colin, how come you’re home today?” He is a sandy-haired boy with the top lip scar of cleft palate surgery. It gives him a quizzical look. Otherwise, he’s expressionless. He finally looks at me. He has brown eyes with a spot of green in the right iris.
    â€œI don’t feel well,” Colin says.
    â€œWhat grade are you in?”
    He doesn’t answer.
    Dorsey comes in and says, “Ma’am, it’s going to be several hours. If you’d like to go anywhere, we can call you a cab.”
    â€œI have my car,” she says in a blank voice, not looking at him.
    â€œI’m afraid we can’t release the car, ma’am.”
    â€œIt’s my car.”
    â€œSorry, ma’am.”
    She starts crying. I walk into the master bedroom. The officers have the bed apart and the dresser drawers removed, and the closet door is open. The warrant authorizes a search for any weapons and for biological evidence—blood, hair, and any other DNA sources—from any of the three victims (Zander, Cassandra, and Seth Coen) and for textile or chemical evidence, such as fibers of the clothing worn by any of the victims. It also authorizes the search for