“Well, what did you say?” I asked.
William's face reddened a bit, and he looked at the ground.
“Uh, we said, uh, we said we'd think about it,” William responded.
“Why you little—” his father growled as he lunged for his son. I managed to step between them and hold him off. It was a difficult enough job because he was rather large and very strong, not to mention very angry.
“Mr. Stevens,” I said as I struggled to hold him back. “Please, restrain yourself! Your son is cooperating here.”
He stepped back and raised his hands in an “I surrender” gesture, but his eyes were still full of rage and wrath.
“Alright, fine,” he muttered. “Go on, ask the boy what you gotta ask the boy. I'll... try not to kick his ass... I'll try.”
“Okay. Thank you,” I said, turning back to William, who was trembling with fright and staring at his angry father. “You heard him, he's not going to hurt you. Now let's get back to the questions. So, Mr. Mask is dealing now as his former dealer skipped town?”
“That's right, Mr. James.”
I turned to Ben and whispered, “That must be the guy we saw in the apartment building.”
He nodded. “It's gotta be him. So, now that he's out of the picture, it could just be Mr. Mask operating on his own for a while.”
“That might make him easier to catch,” I said. “But it also might make him a lot more dangerous – a cornered criminal is much more prone to acts of deadly violence.”
Ben nodded grimly. “We'll have to watch our backs, Ev. We really will.”
I turned back to William to continue the questioning. “So, since you seem to know Mr. Mask at least a little, considering that he trusts you enough to ask you to deal for him, can you tell us why he started dealing on school premises on Saturdays?”
“He knows that someone is on to him,” William replied. “He and the other guy used to deal from the park at certain times, but then I guess the cops or someone found out about that. So now he's trying to find a way to get into the school by having students deal instead because it's a real big market for his Rocket.”
“That makes sense. Tell me the rest of what happened when Kendrick came across you two buying the drugs from Mr. Mask on Saturday,” I urged.
William sighed and shook his head. “Okay, so we were doing the deal, and then we hear someone shout, 'smile, you're on camera, suckers!' We look up the hallway and see this Kendrick kid filming us. So anyway, Leon just charged for him straight away – he knew how much trouble we were going to be i
n if that footage got out. And Mr. Mask joined in the chase, too. Leon was on the track team before, so he's a real fast sprinter. Kendrick didn't get too far before Leon caught him.”
“And then what happened?” Ben asked.
“Leon tackled him, they fought on the ground for a while. Leon was trying to get Kendrick's phone away from him. That Kendrick kid is pretty skinny, but he put up one hell of a fight. He actually managed to get out of Leon's grasp, and that's when Mr. Mask stepped in.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“Man, he just pulled a piece out and shot Kendrick. Just like that. Me and Leon, we were shocked as hell. I mean, it's one thing kicking a guy's ass, but it's another thing you know, freakin' shooting a kid with a gun.”
“So, what happened after that?” I questioned.
“Mr. Mask was real calm about the whole thing. He just reached down, took Kendrick's phone, and put it in his pocket. It was like, for him, shooting this kid meant like, nothing, like nothing at all.”
“And what did you and Leon do?” Ben inserted.
“We freaked the hell out, man! I've seen some crazy stuff before, but I'd never seen anyone get shot, and man, it happened just a few feet away from me! There was so much blood. I... I thought Kendrick was dead. We both just ran like crazy. And that was it; I don't know what happened after that, we only stopped running when we ran out of breath. And after that we made plans to skip town, to get to LA where we have some friends to stay with.”
“I see,” I said. “Well, I guess you'll be relieved to know that Kendrick had surgery and that he's gonna make it.”
A look of relief came over William's face. “I'm uh... I'm happy to hear that. Neither of us wanted that kid to get shot, you gotta believe me. We were just gonna rough him up a bit and make him delete the video off his phone. That's all, man, seriously. We didn't wanna hurt him bad or anything.”
“I believe you, and I'll take that into account when figuring out your punishment,” I said to him. “I do have one more question for you, though.”
“Sure, go ahead,” he said.