At the Edge (16 page)

“Thing is,” Charlie Hart continued, “the officer called me back a couple of hours after I spoke to him. He'd dug out the notebook he used at the time and taken a look at what Johnson had told him. And you know what? That first description he gave to the officer—it matched what the boy told us.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it really matched—dark eyes, long, thin nose, ears that stuck out, shaggy brown hair, scar on his chin. He was definitely describing the same person that the boy said he'd seen. If we'd known that ...” His voice trailed off.

“If you'd known, what would you have done?” I said.

“Well, for one thing, Richard Johnson could have been called to testify. It might have made a difference.”

“Might have?”

“Well, it wouldn't have put Leonard at the scene of the shooting, and it wouldn't have put the gun in his hand. The boy was the only one who could do that. And we still didn't have any physical evidence. But it would have put Leonard close to the scene at the time of the shooting. On the other hand, the prosecution led with the boy, and your mom managed to plant a huge seed of doubt. And the other witnesses who saw Leonard only saw him before the shooting. They had no idea what he was doing in the area. He could have been on his way to an appointment or to meet a friend. They didn't even see him near that alley. So their evidence was pretty weak. After your mom managed to shake the boy, she had an easy time making her case. Without any physical evidence, the outcome probably would have been the same. Leonard would have walked.”

He sighed. “In any event, the worst part of my job is having to deal with the victim's loved ones. We focused on the brother. He was young, he'd been right there, it was obvious he was in shock. Maybe we should have paid more attention to the dad. Maybe we underestimated how hard it had hit him.”

“But you told me that he was with James the whole time—when he was looking at pictures and at the lineup. Wouldn't he have recognized Leonard when he saw him?”

“I like to think that if it had been me, I would have recognized him,” Charlie Hart said. “But it happened right downtown, Robyn. There were a lot of people around. People can get really mixed up when they're under a lot of stress—and I can't think of anything more stressful than the murder of a child. I feel sorry for the brother, though. That kid had a lot riding on him.”

He sure did. The whole murder case.

“I guess, if nothing else, it'll make an interesting sidebar for your project,” Charlie Hart said. “It sure speaks to some of the problems with eyewitness IDing. You see a face in a crowd for a second or two. How well can the average person pick that person out again an hour later—never mind a day or a week or a month?”

“You said if you'd known, Johnson could have testified. Is there anything else you would have done if you'd known?”

For a moment he said nothing. Then, finally: “When I said the father's description matched the son's, I meant it, Robyn. They matched almost word for word. That doesn't happen very often. It makes a person wonder. It sure would have made me wonder.”

  .    .    .

My father had just appeared from his bedroom—his hair was disheveled, and he was wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt—when I spotted James's car pulling up at the curb below. Suddenly I was glad to be going. I was even more curious now about James and what had happened to him.

“I have to go, Dad,” I said to my bleary-eyed father. “My ride is here. See you tomorrow.”

My dad grunted at me as he made his way to the kitchen to put the coffee on.

I grabbed my things and ran downstairs.

James got out of the car to greet me. I threw my backpack and purse into the backseat. I was getting into the car when I heard a loud rowf. Nick and Orion were in the park across the street. Nick stared at me. Well, let him. He obviously didn't care about me. I met his eyes for a moment before getting into the front seat next to James.

  .    .    .

We chitchatted until we were out of the city, and then James put some music on. We had been driving for nearly an hour when I glanced at him.

“It's great out here, isn't it?” he said, smiling at the fields on either side of the road.

“I always forget there's an ‘out here' out here,” I said. I told him about my summer in the country, but without mentioning Nick.

“Do you mind if we take a little detour?” he said when I'd finished.

“I thought you had to be up there in time to sign for something.”

He grinned. “Change of plans. This weekend I tidy up the place. Next weekend, when my dad's around, we start to pack.”

“Well then, let's take a detour.”

He turned off the main road and followed a winding gravel road to a waterfall.

“We rented a place up here one summer when I was a kid. I loved to go behind the falls,” he said. “I'd pretend I was an explorer. Or that I was sneaking up on the enemy.”

“It's beautiful,” I said.

We got out and walked around, and then, because I could see he was dying to, we picked our way across some rocks and slipped behind the cascading water. James smiled. He looked more content than I had ever seen him. He was still smiling when we started back down the gravel road to the highway.

This was my chance. I hesitated. I didn't want to ruin his mood. But I did want to know more about Eddy Leonard.

“Can I ask you something, James?” I said at last.

“Sure.”

“I've been doing some reading about ...” Why was it so hard to come out with it, to call it what it was? “About what happened to your brother.”

I felt James tense up beside me. “Oh?”

“You said your dad told you that he'd seen someone hurrying away from the sound of the gunshots. He thought that was strange, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Well, he said the same thing to the first police officer who arrived on the scene. He even described the man. But then he changed his mind and told the officer that he'd been wrong. He said that there were so many people on the street that when he heard those shots, all he could think about was his son.”

James winced at the word. He glanced at me. “Where did you hear that?”

“I read it,” I said, lying—again. It seemed kinder than telling him I had spoken to a detective. Or maybe I was just being a coward. “I'm sorry. After you told me, I went online.”

He was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “And?”

“Did your dad describe that man to you—the one he saw hurrying away from the alley?”

James's jaw tightened.

My dad is pretty good at reading people—at least according to Vern Deloitte, his business partner. My mom disagrees. In fact, I once even heard her ask Vern, “If Mac is so good at knowing what people think, why does he always act so surprised when I get mad at him for doing the same thing for the millionth time?” It was a good question.

I was good at reading some people. I could always tell when Nick was angry but was trying not to show it. I could tell when Morgan was irritated and was trying to hide it. Okay, maybe that was a no-brainer—Morgan never tried very hard. I would have bet my life that I had just struck a nerve with James. The thing I couldn't figure out was, which nerve?

“No, he didn't describe him.”

“Are you sure? He didn't describe the man to you and ask you if he was the one who'd shot your brother?”

“No!” His hands were clenched on the steering wheel. His eyes were fixed firmly ahead, as if I were the last person on Earth he wanted to look at.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I just—” Just what? Don't understand? What was there for me to understand? Gregory Johnson was dead. Edward Leonard had walked on the charge. And James hadn't gotten over it. Maybe he never would, and who could blame him? And what was I doing? I was thinking about the mistakes that everyone had made—James, his father, the prosecutor, the police—everybody except my mom. She hadn't made any mistakes. It was everyone else who had messed up.

James had made a mistake when he'd insisted at the trial that he had seen something the night of the shooting he couldn't possibly have seen. Eddy Leonard hadn't been wearing a blue plaid shirt. Other witnesses corroborated that fact. Besides that, there were gaps in James's story. He hadn't answered all of my mom's questions. He hadn't told her how the shooting had actually happened. Why was that? Why hadn't he answered?

Then there was James's father. He had told the first officer on the scene that he'd seen someone hurrying away from where he'd heard the shots. Then he had changed his story. And, according to James, he had never described this man to James, had never asked James if the man he'd seen was the same one James had seen. Why not? And why hadn't he recognized Eddy Leonard in the photo array or at the lineup? He'd been right there with James, holding his hand. If he had recognized him, would he have strengthened the prosecution's case? Charlie Hart didn't seem to think it would have made much difference, given the lack of physical evidence. And, knowing what I knew, I had to agree with him. It probably didn't matter.

Then there was the prosecutor. Maybe if he had prepared James more carefully, James wouldn't have become so rattled on the stand. Maybe James wouldn't have confused what he saw at the lineup with what he had seen the night of the shooting—assuming that James had been confused and not mistaken.

The first officer on the scene, the one who had spoken to James's dad before the detectives arrived, had definitely messed up when he hadn't passed along everything that James's father had said. Maybe Charlie Hart had messed up too. Maybe if he had gone over everything carefully with the other officer when he arrived on the scene himself, he would have known what James's dad had seen. Maybe that would have changed something. Or maybe not. Sure, maybe Mr. Derrick had seen Leonard fleeing the scene. But that didn't put Leonard at the scene. It didn't put the gun in his hand—the gun that had never been found. It didn't have him pulling the trigger. James was the only one who could testify to those facts. James was the only real eyewitness.

James, who had insisted at the trial that he'd seen something he couldn't possibly have seen.

James, who had been rattled.

James, who had already been carrying a heavy burden. His little brother had almost died once before in James's care. And then, that night in the alley, James had been responsible for Greg—for Richard's son—and Greg had died. That was certainly bad enough. But then to stumble so badly during the trial, to feel responsible for letting the killer walk, to believe that the man he called Dad blamed him for that ...

“I'm sorry, James,” I said again. “I was just wondering, that's all.”

James was silent for a few moments. A new song started to play.

Finally James said, “I told the cops. I told the prosecutor. I told everyone. He had dark eyes. He had a long, thin nose. He had ears that stuck out. He had shaggy brown hair. He had a small mouth. He had a scar on his chin, right here.” He touched his own chin.

Those were the same words James had used when describing the man to Charlie Hart and that Charlie Hart had read to me out of his notebook. They were the same words he had used when he first described the man to me.

They were the same words he had used in court.

Always the same words.

Charlie Hart had said that after James had described the man he'd seen—and that had taken a while because James had been so rattled that he'd been mute for an hour or more—he had repeated the description over and over. Charlie had said it was as if he didn't want to forget it. Or couldn't shake it. I could see that. But to still be using the same words, the same order, every time, after all these years? The only things I could do that with were song lyrics and a couple poems I'd been forced to learn by my seventh-grade teacher, who had insisted that everyone should know a few solid poems by heart.

“James, why did Eddy Leonard shoot Greg?” I said.

James tensed up again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what did Greg do?”

“He surprised him. We surprised him. The man was standing beside my dad's car when we went into the alley. He fired at Greg.”

“You must have been afraid he was going to shoot you, too,” I said. I sounded just like my mother had at the trial.

James didn't look at me.

“He shot Greg,” he said. “Then he ran away.”

“But weren't you afraid he was—”

“I don't want to talk about it, Robyn,” James said. His face was white. “I'm sorry I ever brought it up.”

I mumbled an apology and promised myself that I wouldn't mention it again. It had been a mistake to bring it up in the first place. The past was the past. But it kept eating at me. At first I'd thought my mom had been at fault. She had made it look like he wasn't sure what had actually happened.

But the more I found out, the more I began to wonder. James had described the aftermath of the shooting to me in detail, just as he had at the trial, but in different words, emphasizing different things. He had told me what he'd thought, what he'd felt, what he'd seen. But he had never told me—or anyone else, according to everything I had read or heard—about the shooting itself. Why had Eddy Leonard shot a nine-year-old boy? Was it because he was trying to steal James's father's car and he was afraid that the boys would identify him to the police? It seemed like an extreme response. And both boys had seen him. Both could have ID'd him. Why did he only shoot one of them? Especially since James could identify him as the man who had shot Greg?

And why had James's dad told the first cop on the scene that he had seen someone suspicious and could even describe him—using words almost identical to the description James would give—and then almost immediately change his story? What had made him decide he was wrong?