Page 71 of The Family Cross

My mind raced as I compared Campbell’s version of events with Hawk’s. “Did you see each other before the car was set on fire?”

“Yes,” Choir Boy said. “I saw him twice. Once the day before and once the day of.”

Sampson pressed him. “How long after the Audi was torched did Hawk appear?”

“I dunno. Like, ten or fifteen minutes?”

Enough time for Hawk to torch the car, go to the barricaded end, climb the ramp, and come down through the hole into high-troll town.

Sampson said, “So you left before the police came?”

“Hawk seemed to think it would be a good idea. I think it’s always a good idea to get away from bad stuff, so I did. I went out through the hole.”

When we asked where he’d gone, Campbell said he went to another squat in Northeast not far from the one where he claimed he’d seen my brother Charlie. He said he was the only person there.

“Like a private bunk?”

“Yup,” Choir Boy said. He seemed to have reached the end of his patience. “That’s where I would like to go now, since I’ve eaten and answered all your questions.”

“We haven’t quite finished yet, Mr. Campbell,” Sampson said. “Where were you on Saturday night?”

“There, the same place,” he said, sighing. “I holed up and had a good long drink so I would not have to look at myself.”

“You weren’t at the Avid Eyeball?” I asked. “The place near the homeless camp in the ravine?”

His gaze narrowed. “The strip joint? Nah. Why?”

I told him the news. Choir Boy took it badly. He hadn’t known, I realized. Whatever else Choir Boy was involved in, he wasn’t Corey McGovern’s killer.

He slumped down onto the bench, his elbow striking the keys. The organ let out a low moan that almost drowned out the sounds of Campbell’s grief. We let him sob genuine sobs until the worst of it was out of him.

He looked at us like we’d been through a battle together.

“I loved Corey, man. No matter how messed up things were with me, she was always kind. Always a friend. This is… this is so wrong. Why would someone shoot that poor girl? Why would someone set her on fire?”

Sampson said, “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

After talking to Aldous Campbell a bit more, we convinced him to check into a detox center and promised that we would help him afterward. Sampson and I drove him to the center’s front door.

When he balked, I said, “You feel most alive, most free, when you’re singing, don’t you?”

Choir Boy thought about it and nodded. “When I sing, it’s like no one can touch me.”

“Then get sober and start singing for real,” Sampson said. “There’s your freedom, brother. Not at the bottom of a bottle.”

He still hesitated.

I said, “Go in there and show Friar Driscoll and that monk who hates you that you are not the person they think you are.”

Choir Boy set his jaw. Then he threw back his shoulders and marched inside. Sampson and I followed him in and told the staff that Campbell was a material witness in a homicide investigation.

Then we left him to withdraw from the booze and promised to help him when he was released.

62

ON THE SIDEWALK IN front of the detox center, I checked my watch. It was nearly seven p.m. The air was cooler with a sweet breeze.

Aldous Campbell had given us one important lead—we’d mentioned avgas, and he told us that Hawk worked a few hours a week fueling jets and planes at a private terminal at Dulles. We’d go check that out in the morning.