Dark Web by T. J. Brearton

one would notice anything, he reasoned. To check his son’s laptop was a natural reaction that anyone could understand.
    He entered the living room, turned and saw two shapes behind the window of the front door. They were here.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Swift pressed ‘record’ on the video camera, though he wasn’t obliged to do so in this case. Robert Darring was an adult and it was only minors who had to be videotaped during interrogation. For adults the audio record was sufficient. But since it was already there, having the video on certainly couldn’t hurt. Swift didn’t have the benefit of a partner, not yet. He’d spoken with Kim Yom, who would be arriving shortly from BCI headquarters in Albany to head up computer forensics, but he didn’t want to waste any time. His name suited him — as people all too often said. Justice should be timely. The kids were here now, and before the lawyers got to them, he wanted to hear their stories. He couldn’t force them to say anything they didn’t wish to, and he wouldn’t. He would do it by the book. They had a right to counsel, but they could talk too. Maybe they even wanted to. The truth set people free.
    Of course, it could also send them to jail
    Robert Darring looked at him across the table. Now that he was in closer proximity, Darring didn’t look his age. From afar, at a glance, yeah, he’d looked twenty three. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants, the kind of outfit worn by college kids; only the sweatshirt displayed no collegiate logo. It read, simply, “OBEY.” Swift had seen the word before, something to do with street art. It was usually accompanied by a creepy face, a rendering of the late Andre the Giant.
    There were some faint lines around the boy’s mouth and eyes, and pouches beneath eyes that were dark, so brown they were almost black. He wore his sable-colored hair close-cropped. He looked Italian or Hispanic, or a mixture of both, though his surname suggested Irish or Gaelic descent. Perhaps he was mixed-race with a white father.
    “Could you please state your full name and age?”
    “Robert Matthew Darring, aged twenty-three.”
    “And where are you from?”
    “Originally or now, sir?”
    “How about both.”
    “Originally from Queens, New York. Currently from Queens, New York.”
    Kid was trying to be smart. But Darring’s face was blank. He looked like someone standing in line in a cafeteria or at a post office. The initial hard-ass impression was easing slightly. Or, he was playing it cool.
    “And why were you on Route 9N tonight around 3 a.m.?”
    Darring opened his mouth and proceeded to relate exactly the same story as Hideo Miko. They had come to visit Braxton. They saw a man standing over a body in the middle of the road and they freaked and turned around and got the hell out of there.
    “Okay,” Swift said, folding his arms. “Here’s my problem with that story. One, it’s the middle of the night — or very, very early morning. Two, you were beyond Braxton Simpkins’ house. If you were coming from I-87 and turned off at exit 30, you would have been coming from the east. The crime scene is further west along the road.”
    Darring nodded soberly. “I understand, sir. It was the middle of the night for a couple of reasons. One thing, none of us have ever come up here before. We got a little lost. And I screwed up — I had the directions in my phone, but then I forgot my phone at home. So we had Sasha’s phone and used GPS. I guess you could check all that on his phone, or whatever. But then as we got about to — oh, I don’t know, I think exit 24 or so, not far north of Albany? The snow really started coming, and that slowed us way down. And that’s why we went right by his house, too. This area is really small, like, really off the map.”
    “Oh don’t I know it,” smiled Swift. The kid was talking a nice little streak. Seemed happy to volunteer details about what and where.
    “The GPS went wonky,” Darring went