The cop was fat. Dameon remembered that much about him; he could barely sit in his chair, and made a fair commotion about doing so. He was a member of the Corellian police force, overpaid and under worked, completely unaccustomed to dealing with the case that had been placed in front of him. “Okay, son,” he said, placing a small holorecorder on the table and saying the date and time. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“My dad’s dead,” Dameon said, “And you want to know who killed him.”

The cop nodded slowly, but Dameon wasn’t looking. He was staring at his lap, and not moving a muscle. “That’s right, son. Now, why don’t you just tell me what you saw, today, and then we can go downstairs and get you something to eat?”

Dameon didn’t say anything for a little while. This was troubling to the fat cop, whose name was Emerson. Earl Emerson, though most just called him ‘Emerson’, even his friends. He shifted in his seat a little, glancing at the case file beside him.

The kid in front of him was Dameon Velin, his father’s name being Gerrik Velin. He was an average little kid from an average, lower-middle-class Corellian family, maybe a little paler and skinnier than most, but certainly normal. His parents seemed fairly normal, as well; there’d been one call for domestic disturbance, but the father had seemed, the report said, amiable enough and it’d been cleared up without arrests.

His parents were normal, except for the fact that his father was now dead. He’d been found, out in the rain-soaked streets of Corellia just feet from his house, beaten to death with a small piece of wood, apparently broken from the fence outside their house. The rain had left no fingerprints, no fluid evidence on the victim, and no witnesses; nothing to link anyone to the crime. The mother had been too distraught to tell police anything, and what she had told them had been incoherent rambling about just finding him out there, face in the muck. As far as Emerson could tell, this was a dead trail, and after they were done interviewing the kid, there’d be nothing left to do but close the case and declare it another unsolved murder.

That is, unless the child’s silence implied he’d seen the crime. “Son?” Emerson said again. “Did you understand the question?”

Dameon inhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I understood it. I understood it just fine.” He was eleven years old. Exactly eleven years old.

Today was his birthday. Some present, the cop reflected; a dead father, the poor kid. Still more silence. “Would you like to answer it, then, son?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

Emerson pursed his lips. “Well. Did you see your father die?”

Silence, for a moment more, but a shorter break, this time. “Yes, I did, sir.”

He still hadn’t looked up. The poor kid must be terrified, after what he’d seen. “Did you see who killed him? Do you know who it was?”

“Yes, sir, I did, and yes I do.”

“Who was it?” The kid sat there, staring at his lap, for another moment. Emerson was on the edge of his seat, now; so much for an open and shut case. The kid had seen the murder, and knew the killer. “Who was it, son?”

“It was me.”

Now, they both sat in silence. Emerson rocked back in his chair and looked at the one-way transparisteel mirror across the floor, blinking several times and looking at the kid much more closely. “Dameon – Dameon, is it? Yeah? Dameon, I’m sure you don’t mean that. Now, I know you may feel guilty, and that’s perfectly normal, but don’t blame yourself, it wasn’t your fault.”

For the first time, the kid looked up. There were dark circles around his eyes, like he hadn’t slept in years. Dameon met Emerson’s gaze solidly staring at him. “No, sir,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you quite understand. I did it. I killed him.”

Emerson wiped his brow with the back of his hand. A thousand questions jumped to mind, but he voiced only two of them; “Why?” He asked. “How?”

“It was my birthday, today, sir. I’m eleven years old. My mom decided to do something special; we don’t have an awful lot of money, but she went out and bought me a hoverbike. She lost her job last week, so she used my father’s CorelBank account to pay for it,” the kid was talking fast, now, but clearly, and calmly. “I unwrapped it, today. It was red, one of the new HiFlite models, a real beauty. I was happier than I’ve ever been. My father wasn’t. He got angry – flew into a rage, I guess you could say. Shouting about how we didn’t have enough money for that sort of thing. He started hitting my mom, beating her real hard. I tried to stop him, but he hit me, too.” Emerson looked into the kid’s eyes, searching for tears, but he found none. “Then he ran up to his room. Mom and I thought that’d be it, but it wasn’t. We heard a glass breaking, then another; we knew he was drinking. He came down about an hour later, mad as hell, bottle of brandy in his hand, and drunk as anything. He started hitting my mom again, and me, too. He was still yelling about how tight money was.” His sentences were short, clipped. Emerson was transfixed. “Then he started pulling my mom’s clothes off – he was laughing, then, real hard, calling her all sorts of names. He stripped her naked, sir, and he threw her outside into the pouring rain. Thought it was real funny, the neighbors seeing her beaten and naked. Then he turned to me, again.” Dameon swallowed. “He punched me right in the stomach, then started slapping me around. He threw me out, too.”

Emerson blinked again. There were tears in his eyes. He blinked more, getting them out. “What happened then, Dameon?” He asked hoarsely.

“I’m not really sure, sir. I remember taking my mom to the neighbors’ house, getting her in there. And then I went back to our house. I tore one of the pieces of wood off of the fence, and knocked on the door. My dad opened it and dragged me inside when he saw it was me, and hit me again, in the mouth. The piece of wood fell out of my hand, and he laughed at me. He kept saying ‘What were you going to do? Fight me?’ and laughing. Always laughing. He almost never hit me in the face, where the bruises would show. Just everywhere else. When he’d had enough, he just left me there, and started going upstairs, I guess to drink again.” Dameon paused. “I got up. He thought he’d beaten me bad enough that I couldn’t but I did. Then I picked up the piece of wood, and smacked him in the back of the leg as hard as I could. This is all really blurry, but I remember hearing a pop, and he screamed and dropped to one knee.”

Emerson was still staring, still blinking tears out of his eyes. “How?” He croaked. “How were you strong enough to do that?” It didn’t make any sense. The kid must have been full of it.

“I really don’t know, sir,” Dameon replied, honestly. “But I know he hit me back, or he tried. He must have been hurt, because he was really weak. I remember hitting him again and again, and then dragging him out the door. He was hurt, but he kept trying to get up. I just kept hitting him as hard as I could until he stopped moving. Then I called you guys.”

Emerson couldn’t believe it. He’d just gotten a full, un-requested confession of murder – from an eleven-year-old boy. He wiped his eyes. “I don’t believe it. I… was this the first time your father had… done this…?”

“Oh, no,” Dameon said. “We’re always calling you guys. But the cops would always come down, and dad would be all chummy with them, and then they’d go away and not report it. But not this time.”

Earl Emerson stared, then got up. “Come with me, Dameon. We’ll get you something to eat. That’s enough for today.”