Over the next few days there were questions and more questions. Not only did the authorities want answers, the media did, too. During it all Andy refused to deny what his mother had seen. She was on a thin mental edge. Using that to explain away what she had thought she had seen would have pushed her through it. They both had to accept what had happened and deal with it. Her six year old son had wrestled a physically brutal notorious gangster for his gun and the man had blown off a fifth of his own head in the struggle.
In the Rain family living room, at the last of the questionings, were Andy, his parents, a Detective Lieutenant Tso of the city police, his assistant, Det. Sgt. Graham, John Draper, and a blond woman that Andy didn’t know. Mr. Draper introduced her as Molly Warton.
“Okay,” began Tso, “we aren’t recording this. We just want to clear up a few things. First, Mrs. Rain, Andy, we’d like to thank you for helping out in identifying the voices of the two other kidnappers. The two you identified both work for Boss Brandt. They aren’t saying anything right now, but that’s typical. Even without your IDs we have enough to put them away for a long time.”
“Will we have to go to court?” asked Marnie Rain with a timid voice.
“Chances are, no,” answered the lieutenant. “They’ll probably go for a plea, if they have any sense. All we really need to clear up is exactly what happened at 1207 Beecher. Mrs. Rain, can you add anything to what you’ve already said?”
“I don’t think so. I was blindfolded most of the time, except when they let me go to the bathroom. It was while I was in there that the shooting started.” Her voice caught and Andy held her hand. “Andy was in there all alone. I was sure he’d been killed.”
She wrapped her arms around Andy and the boy hugged her back. “Why don’t we do this some other time?” said Captain Rain. “Marnie’s too upset to go on with it.”
“No,” she said. “Let’s get it done this time. I couldn’t bear it if I had to wait to go through this again.”
Lt. Tso looked at Capt. Rain, got a nod in return, and looked at Marnie Rain. “I just have a couple of questions left, then Graham and I’ll be out of here. Did any of the men use names?”
“No,” answered Marnie Rain. “As I said, they called us by our names, but they didn’t use any names among themselves. They seemed to be very careful about that.”
Andy nodded his agreement.
Tso looked at him, fixing the boy with his fierce black eyes. “What were they fighting about, Andy? When the fight started, you were in the room with them. What did they say?”
Andy shrugged and held out his hands. “It didn’t make much sense to me. One of them said the other had used his name, the other guy said he didn’t, then it sounded like someone hit someone, then there was a shot.”
“That was when you got free of your bonds?”
Andy nodded. “I took off my blindfold and one of them was on the floor. He had on a police uniform. The other one was holding his tummy. Right then, though, the one on the floor picked up his gun and fired. He hit the other man and killed him. Then the man on the floor slumped down like he was dead. I thought he was dead.”
“What’d you do then?” asked Sgt. Graham.
“I went to the phone and called my dad to tell him we were all right. After that I went and checked my mom to see if she was okay and gave her the phone.”
“What happened then with the man in the uniform?”
Andy described it just the way it had happened. He thought the man was dead. In anger he had kicked the man, the kidnapper lifted his piece, they had struggled for the weapon, and the man had fired through his own forehead. Lt. Tso nodded for a few seconds and then asked, “Andy, you look afraid. Why?”
“Are you kidding?” said Capt. Rain, his eyebrows raised.
“Please,” demanded the lieutenant as he faced Andy. “What are you afraid of?”
“Did I kill him?” asked Andy. “That man. Did I kill him? That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Lt. Tso’s shoulders seemed to slump into a relaxed mode. “No, Andy, you didn’t kill him. That was his finger on the trigger, not yours. I wouldn’t worry about it, in any event. Did you ever hear of King Girard?”
“Sure,” said Andy. “He’s a big gangster.” He faced his father. “Dad talked about him when Bear Brandt was sent to the prison.”
“Well, that’s who that was, Andy. King Girard. He was a bad man. Dead is a good place for him to be.”
Andy’s mom leaned forward and wrapped her arm around her son’s shoulders. “I have a question, Lieutenant. If you knew his name, why have you kept it from us all this time?”
“I’d like to know the answer to that myself,” said Capt. Rain.
“It was nothing.” The detective shrugged and shook his head. “We just wondered if somehow one of you might have mentioned one of the kidnapper’s names and not remembered it.” He smiled sheepishly and glanced down. “We have to explore every possibility. As is, we just can’t explain why these two smoked each other. King Girard and Tony Zara were old hands; pros. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t have any answers for you,” said Marnie Rain.
The lieutenant looked at Andy. “Do you have any good guesses, kid?”
The boy shrugged as his mouth went dry. “Crime makes you stupid?”
They laughed. Everyone laughed, including John Draper and the psychic. After a little, even Andy laughed.
Andy considered himself lucky that his dad’s friends in the city police leaned on the press to leave the description of Andy’s part of the saga to a single paragraph, playing down the struggle between the gangster and the little boy for the gun. No one really believed that anyway. Besides, it was a hot news week. A little war in the East, a little riot in the West. The media simply left the boy and his mother alone.
Just before New Year’s, though, there was a tabloid reporter for the National Investigator who was listed as missing by his paper. He had a reputation as a brutal journalistic blackmailer and he had been sent to the area to find something to sensationalize about the death of mobster King Girard. “SUPERBOY TAKES ON THE MOB” or “PRISON OFFICIAL PLANS BREAKOUT” kind of thing. The reporter’s name was Murray Gordon. Before he could really begin, he was found frozen to death in a snow bank. That was a week after he had left a local saloon at closing.
His wallet and money hadn’t been taken, hence it was decided Gordon had passed out and had died from exposure. The local reporter who tried to do a follow up on the story Gordon was doing questioned almost everyone connected with the attempt to break Bear Brandt out of prison. He learned that the tabloid reporter had failed to interview even one of the principals involved in the case, although he had been seen hanging around Andy’s school the day of his death.
Andy Rain himself had not been available for comment. He was in bed with a severe case of bronchitis.
Early the next April, Andy was in the school’s playground during the afternoon recess. He was standing by himself, outwardly interested in the game his classmates were playing. Inside, however, he was thinking about John Draper. His novel, Killer’s High , was a big success and had been optioned for a movie. But that wasn’t Andy’s concern right then. Instead he was thinking on the way John Draper kept looking at him. Ellen’s widower appeared to have a mission. It was either to understand his wife’s death or to nail Andy for it. Either way, Andy was certain John Draper had been gathering everything he could track down about Andy, about everything Andy had ever done, and everyone with whom Andy had ever met.