Free When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) by Warren Murphy Page B

that equipment in there,” he said, pointing vaguely toward the bedroom that housed his noisemakers.
    “Was Tony into sound equipment too?”
    “No. Into junk he was. Gadgets. Phone machines and things. Tape recorders. Bugs. Stupid stuff. He liked toys.”
    “Who’d you go with?” Trace asked.
    “I told this to the cops, the family and everybody, you know, and they checked out everything, and if I need like an alibi, I got like an alibi because I went with these guys and that’s what the cops got told by them.”
    Trace took a small notebook from his pocket and pushed it and a pen across the table toward LaPeter. “Write their names down there in case I need them.”
    LaPeter wrote slowly, laboriously, and Trace said, “Were tickets expensive?”
    “What tickets?”
    “For Megan’s Friends? Were they expensive?”
    “Yeah. Twenty-five bucks and they weren’t either good seats.”
    “Everything else was sold out, though, right?” Trace said.
    “That’s what my friend said, the one who works there. I wasn’t going to go, but Tony lent me the money at the last minute, so I went with my friends. Those are the names there.” He pushed the paper back.
    Trace put the notebook and pen back in his pocket without looking at the list. “So what do you think happened to Tony?”
    “I think he got killed.” LaPeter chuckled softly.
    “Why did you do it?” Trace asked.
    “What, what?”
    “Calm down. I just wanted to get your attention again and see how you’d act and stop you from acting smart. Now why do you think he got killed?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Try harder. Who hated him?”
    “Nobody hated Tony. He was just, well, he was just Tony. He was okay.”
    “You ever meet his parents?” Trace asked.
    “Just at the funeral.”
    “What family did you talk to?”
    “Huh?”
    “Before, you told me you talked to the cops and the family about where you’d been when Tony was killed. What family did you talk to?”
    “I told the father. He was up here after the funeral to talk to me. Him and a couple of guys, like big guys.”
    “Look like ugly twins?” Trace asked, and LaPeter nodded. “And Armitage wanted to talk about the murder?”
    “I don’t know,” LaPeter said. “Like he wanted to talk, but it wasn’t the murder so much. He wanted to talk about Tony and his other friends and stuff like that, more than the murder.”
    “Did Tony belong to any clubs or anything like that?”
    “No. I don’t think so. He was in a prelaw program, and not much for clubs he wasn’t. Neither was I. Why?”
    “Because of that mask he was wearing,” Trace said. “I thought it might have been an initiation or something. It wasn’t that?”
    “No. I don’t know of anybody that’d initiate Tony into anything. He didn’t join things.”
    “You never saw that mask before?”
    LaPeter shook his head.
    “Would you say you two were close friends?” Trace asked.
    “Yeah. Sure.”
    “How close?”
    “To what compared?”
    “Well, was he your best friend at school here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Now we’re getting to it. Was he the best friend you ever had in your whole life? The bestest goodest friend any boy ever had except for his dog?”
    “No. Ernie Wisniewski was my best friend ever. He taught me how to jerk off.”
    “Were you Tony’s best friend in the school?”
    “I don’t know. Tony had friends. He had money and people wanted to be his friends, so he let them be.”
    “Did you know each other before school here?”
    “No. We met in a lit class when we were freshmen and we were okay, friends like, and then there was an ad in the paper for this house and we wound up, both of us going here at the same time, not knowing the other one was, and that’s how we got this place and became really good friends like we were. Are we going to do this a lot more because if we are, I’d like some more coffee? It keeps me awake.”
    “I’ll be going soon,” Trace said. “What kind of drugs did you and