Gun Games - Faye Kellerman [88]
Mikey appeared to give the question some deep thought. “No. I would remember Greg saying something like that.”
Beezel said, “He never said anything to me about a top-secret project. But I will say this. Greg loved his camcorder and seemed to record anything in his path. Maybe he accidentally hit upon something that he felt was newsworthy.”
“Just what I told the lieutenant,” Joey said.
Beezel said, “He got kind of obnoxious with it . . . it made any real conversation hard ’cause he was always recording it for posterity or something.”
“It was real obnoxious,” Mikey said. “I used to tell him I was going to smash it over his head if he didn’t get out of my face.” He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes watering. “I didn’t know . . .”
The room fell silent.
“Mikey, did you ever see Myra and Greg working together?” Oliver said.
The boy slumped in his chair. “Myra didn’t write for the Tattler. She did some cartooning. Greg wrote some articles—at least one was published.” He threw his hands in the air. “I never noticed them together, but I wasn’t paying attention.”
Oliver said, “I told you we had a few snags to clear up before we can clear the file. The first issue was the stolen gun, but we’re concerned about a few other things: Greg’s camcorder is missing.”
Joey was taken aback. “Stolen?”
“It appears that way,” Marge said.
“Who’d want Greg’s camcorder?”
“Maybe it was like Beezel said,” Marge suggested. “Maybe he accidentally filmed something scandalous.”
“If he did, he never showed it to me,” Joey said. “All we ever saw were clips of us nerds farting around. Nothing even remotely scandalous.”
“Mrs. Hesse found things on Greg’s computer,” Oliver said.
“Porno?” Mikey asked. The boys looked at each other and smiled. “And that’s weird because . . .”
Oliver said, “It’s not weird at all if they were standard skin flicks. But she found amateur porno on Greg’s laptop: a girl giving oral sex.”
“Oral sex to Greg?” Beezel was incredulous.
“We’re not sure,” Oliver said. “No faces to match the genitals.”
Joey said, “If it was Greg, he never said anything about scoring.”
“Would he have said something about scoring?” Oliver asked.
“Yeah.” Joey let go with a single laugh. “I mean, who wouldn’t?”
“Maybe he cared about the girl and didn’t want to embarrass her,” Marge suggested.
“If he cared about the girl, why would he film it?” Mikey asked.
“Maybe the images were for his eyes only,” Oliver said.
“That’s what guys always tell girls. And then they wind up showing it all around,” Joey said. “It’s bragging rights.”
“But he didn’t show you anything, did he?” Oliver said.
Silence. Then Beezel said, “Uh . . . I’m not saying this to be weird or anything, but if you showed us the images, we could maybe identify somebody.”
“Like I said, there were no faces, so what would be the point.” Oliver looked up from his pad. “Not only is the camcorder missing, his computer was also stolen.”
Three surprised faces. Mikey said, “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Marge said. “About three weeks ago, Mrs. Hesse left his computer on the dining room table before she went to bed and it wasn’t there in the morning.”
Oliver said, “She was going to bring it into the police station not because of the oral sex, but because it showed Greg playing with a gun. She wanted us to see if it was the same gun he used to kill himself.”
“Shit!” Joey said. “That’s really weird.”
“It’s really creepy!” Mikey said.
“What do you mean by playing with a gun?” Beezel asked.
“She told us he was twirling it, pointing it at the camera,” Marge said. “She also told us that Greg’s eyelids were droopy—like he was drugged or drunk.”
“Man oh man,” Mikey said. “This is getting more bizarre by the moment.”
“This is definitely not the Gregory Hesse that we all knew,” Joey said.
Beezel said, “I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job, but . . . is it possible that Mrs. Hesse changed her mind about the computer and just told you it was stolen to prevent further . . . I don’t know . . . embarrassment about her son.