Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) Read Free Page A

from Gillespie Park. Gillespie Park is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood just north of Fruitville, the street that marks the northern border of downtown Sarasota. The driver had driven away. One witness. I didn’t remember who. I didn’t have to ask if the driver had been found. I knew from the look on Nancy Root’s face that he or she hadn’t.
    I could now place the look on the woman’s face. It was the look of pain and no answers that I had seen in any mirror I looked into. I knew what was coming. I
was the right person for it. I was the wrong person for it. I didn’t want it, but I knew before the question was asked that I would do it.
    “You want me to look for the person who killed your son?” I said.
    “I want you to find the person who killed Kyle and drove away.”
    “The police,” I said.
    She shook her head and said firmly, “It’s a case. On a list. In a file. They’re ‘looking.’ That’s what they tell me,” she said. “Looking. I think they are. I just don’t know how hard. I don’t know what else they have to do. I don’t know if they really care. I’ve spoken to the detective in charge of the investigation, a Detective Ransom. He expressed his sympathy, promised he would give Kyle’s death the highest priority. He gave a very unconvincing performance. I want someone finding, looking full-time and finding. I want to know.”
    “I understand,” I said.
    “Nancy, Miss Root has been told that you’ve done an amazing job finding people for us,” Tycinker said, brushing a hint of nothing from his lapel.
    “I have a job I’m working on,” I said, thinking about Dorothy Cgnozic and her night vision of murder.
    “But you will do this?” she said.
    “Coffee, Lewis?” Tycinker asked.
    He wanted to catch my eye. He wanted his smile to remind me that I was on a small monthly retainer from his office and that I had access to the computer-hacking skills of Harvey, whose room was just down the hall. Tycinker and Company were my bread-and-butter clients. I looked at him and shook my head yes, acknowledging the offer of both the coffee and the job.
    “I’ll get it,” he said, moving toward the door.
    He could have picked up the phone and had someone bring the coffee but either he or Nancy Root wanted Tycinker out of the room and so Tycinker was gone.
    I sat in the chair next to Nancy Root. She looked at my face. I was uncomfortable and looked away, placing my cap on my lap.
    “What can you tell me?” I asked.
    “That my son is dead,” she said. “That someone ran him down in the street, that there’s a witness who thinks it was intentional, that the driver wanted to kill Kyle. I don’t think the police believe him.”
    I asked more questions. She answered. Tycinker came back with coffee, which reminded me that I hadn’t had anything to eat. He went back behind his desk, sat and listened, hands folded, lips pursed, head moving, turning toward whoever was talking.
    Traffic whooshed gently by on Palm and I was aware of the passage of colors, yellow, red, black, blue, from people who had someplace to go.
    We started with Nancy Root handing me an eight-by-ten color photograph of her son. It looked like it had been taken in his bedroom. There was a poster behind him on the wall of a dreadlocked black man in a soccer uniform about to kick a ball directly at the camera. His teeth were bared. The ball, the camera or whoever was looking at the photograph was his enemy.
    Kyle looked like many teens, a little scrawny, mop of reddish hair, face like his mother’s, teeth a little large. Good-looking kid. I turned my cap over and laid the photograph gently inside, face-up, so I could look down at it.
    Kyle had been a good student at Sarasota High. Not a great student, but a good one, his mother said. Played soccer, hoped to be a starter the next season, had there been another season for him. Liked science.
    I could also tell he liked video games, the new kind with people scoring points for how