Free God Only Knows by Xavier Knight Page A

Toya, Julia, and Terry. The events of the night were a tragedy for all
     of them; the tragedies were just most dramatic for Eddie. Cassie had carried on with life by trusting that if God ever saw
     fit for her and her old friends to relive that night, it would be through a reasonable vessel —perhaps Eddie’s mother or another
     family member with a strong Christ-centered faith, one seeking closure, not revenge.
    Instead, God had placed before her Peter Whitlock, and she had no confidence right now that a confession would result in anything
     but direct harm to her and her family. And what ensured that he would stop there? Julia, Terry, and Toya, along with their
     respective loved ones, would be in harm’s way too.
    Whitlock flung his used cigarette out the passenger-side window, then returned to staring her down. “I think I told you shortly
     after we first met,” he said, “that I wouldn’t let up on you until I was convinced you had told me everything you knew about
     what happened to Eddie. Do you recall that?”
    “I’ve heard every word you’ve said, loud and clear,” Cassie replied, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in her own ears.
“Don’t respond in anger,”
something told her.
“You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“I am telling you that I don’t know how Eddie wound up in front of that truck. I can’t solve that for you. What I can do,”
     she said, feeling like a broken record as she pointed toward the notebook in his lap, “is help erase some of your family’s
     debt so that your mother can enjoy her senior years and still take care of your brother.”
    A newly lit cigarette dangling from between his lips, Whitlock shook his head slowly. “You’ve failed a very crucial test,
     Cassie.” Sighing, he looked toward the floor of the car before whipping his gaze back to hers. “An early, simple lesson you
     learn as a detective is to spoon-feed your information to a suspect. The more you tell them, the more raw material they have
     to work with as they build their lies. The less raw material they have, the more they wind up hanging themselves with their
     own words.”
    “Okay, fine.” Cassie reached over, grabbed the notebook unevenly, and jerked it into her lap. “You’re clearly intent on doing
     nothing but antagonizing —”
    Whitlock quickly snared Cassie’s hand in one of his. “You think all I’ve got on you is Lenny Parks’s word that you and his
     sister were hanging out at the game the same night Eddie was attacked?” Holding fast even as Cassie tried to wriggle away,
     the detective yanked her face to within an inch of his. “Lenny told me himself, ‘You ain’t got to trust me, Detective. Toya
     wrote it all down.’ That’s right,” he continued, smiling wide as Cassie’s eyes turned to slits. “Toya, if no one else, had
     a conscience about what you did to my brother. She wrote a confession letter to Lenny, even though she waited to give it to
     him just as she was leaving the country a few years back.”
    Cassie knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she was no hardened criminal. “I don’t believe you. Toya would never do that.”
    “The letter is handwritten, just waiting for me to subject it to an analysis to confirm the author.” Whitlock’s confidence
     was a bubble permeating Cassie’s car. “She didn’t tell
everything,
Cassie, just enough to admit you all had something to do with it. How you all got into a name-calling match with him and
     decided to teach him a lesson for using the ‘N word.’ I’m working on a lot more than a hunch here.”
    Cassie was stunned enough that she felt as if her heart were in free fall. She wasn’t sure how to respond to what she’d just
     heard. She still couldn’t afford to confess —not to this vengeful, likely crooked cop —as they sat in a nearly empty parking
     lot with no onlookers. The best she could manage, as she finally broke free of Whitlock’s grip, was a tepid “Why haven’t