Gun Games - Faye Kellerman [24]
“Absolutely, but it takes a couple of weeks. Let’s go back to Greg and the possibility of a girl. I’m curious as to why you’d throw that out as a possibility.”
His eyes were doing a dance. “He smelled better.” A sip of water. “You know how it is when it gets a little chilly and the heat’s cranked up. A bunch of dudes get together and eat and hang out and sometimes . . .” He turned red again. “You know you watch some stuff that you can’t watch when your parents are around. It gets a little rank.”
“I get it,” Decker told him.
“Greg had always carried some extra pounds. He sweated a lot. The past month or so, I think he started showering more often.” He averted his eyes. “And when a dude starts showering that often, it means to me that there’s some girl involved. Plus . . .” A long pause. “How do I say this without sounding like a perv? We watched stuff. I think Greg finally discovered he had a dick, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Understood. Was Greg addicted to porno?”
“We’re all addicted to porno. We’re teenaged boys.”
Decker thought a moment. “Could he have been filming material that he shouldn’t have been filming? Maybe secretly filming the girls’ gym lockers?”
Joey gave him a wide-eyed look. “If he did, he never showed anything to me.”
“How do you think Greg might have reacted if he got caught doing something like that?”
“Well, for starts, the school would have kicked him out.”
Decker nodded, thinking: What would have happened if a quiet, bookish kid had been caught secretly filming a popular girl in the nude? What kind of number could she have done on him: embarrassed him, humiliated him, blackmailed him, or worst of all, threatened to go to the principal? And if the kid would have been faced with torment and expulsion . . . who knew what he might have done.
Joey’s mind was still on the question. “I think he would have showed me something like that. Not that it’s nice, but it’s the way dudes are.”
“Did you ever see what was on Gregory’s camera?”
“Sometimes he’d show us a playback, but I don’t have any idea of the totality.”
“Does his mother have the video camera?”
“I would think so.”
“Okay, Joey. This gives me a little bit of a start.”
The boy nodded. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you doing this?” Joey looked pained. “I mean if Greg was doing something bad, why dig it up?”
“That is a very good point. Originally, his mom asked me to help her understand her son’s motives for doing something so terrible. But if it is something distasteful, I’m going to be doing some serious editing.”
“Yeah, I think that would be a good idea. Not that I think he was doing something bad.”
Decker regarded the kid’s face. He looked sincere. “Do you think your pals would mind if I talked to them?”
“Nah, they wouldn’t mind. I don’t know what they’d tell you. I probably knew Greg better than any of them.”
Decker gave him a pad of paper and a pen. “Could you write down names and phone numbers for me?”
“Sure.”
While he was writing, Decker was figuring out his next move. Get the camera, get the kid’s computer, and look around the room. Joey was right about one thing. How much did Wendy Hesse want to know? After Joey handed him back the pad, Decker said, “I do have one other important question. Do you have any idea where Greg could have gotten hold of a gun?”
“Not that specific gun, no.” Joey exhaled. “But I can tell you this much. It isn’t hard to get weapons at B and W. You can get guns, you can get booze, you can get dope, you can get porn, and you can get good grades and test scores.”
“That easy, huh?” Decker said.
“That easy,” Joey answered. “All you have to do is pay for it.”
Chapter Eight
During the final duet—“Gran Dio, morir si giovane”—Gabe’s eyes wandered to Yasmine, whose face was buried in her hands. Her eyes were visible through splayed fingers, tears streaming down. The entire time he had been concentrating on pitch, voice timbre, sound mixture, and volume. But the little girl next to him was sobbing because Violetta was about