Knockout Games (27 page)

“But you're—” I was going to say disabled, but he grunted. “So . . . how far are you going, then?”

“Oh, not far. Maybe five blocks or so—”

That's when he looked at me for the first time. “Do I know you?”

My shoulders tensed up, my feet itching to run. But I held my ground. “No. But I know you. I . . . came to your wife's funeral?”

“I remember you.” His hand reached out for my arm. I had that same panicked feeling as when he was lying on the ground and grabbed my leg. My hand turned into a fist. I was shocked to feel my body ready to hit him to get away. His hand gently held my fist as he used me to help regain his balance. “You came to say good-bye.”

I relaxed my fist. “Yeah. She was my teacher.”

He looked into my eyes. “She had that effect on you young people. They flocked to her. . . .” he paused, struggling to remember.

“I'm sorry,” I said so quietly, I don't think he heard me.

“I still don't get much sleep,” he said. “Nightmares. They keep you awake.”

“Do you remember much?” I blurted out. I don't know why. Did I want to know if he remembered
me
at the scene? “I mean, it's not my business.”

He glanced up. “No. Nothing. They even showed me a surveillance tape and it was like watching two actors in our place.” His gaze fell to the ground. “I am grateful that my last memory of that day is of her, in the library. Her smile. That's what I remember.” He choked back the thought. “But I regret getting so caught up in my cause that I forced their hand. Some of the things I said . . . stupid. I should have just—”

“No, you were right,” I said. “It was right to stand up.”

He went silent, lost in his own head. I needed to tell him. “I was there,” I said suddenly. “When it happened.”

He seemed confused. “What do you mean?”

I caught my breath. “I . . . saw it happen.”

I could see all kinds of thoughts racing around his brain. “You
saw
it?”

“I—”

He moved toward me. “You saw them? You know who they are?” He was getting manic. “Did you tell the police?” He was only a foot away now. I could smell his desperation.

I nodded slowly.

Then his eyes went wide. “
You're
the one who identified them?”

I nodded again, unsure.

He wrapped his arms around me and started crying. “Thank you, thank you . . .” he kept saying, rocking me back and forth. “You will help keep these boys off the streets so that it doesn't happen again. And then we can start the healing process, help bring them back from the ignorance that's set in their minds—”

“No!” I said. “No, I—it wasn't like that—”

I pushed myself away from him. I couldn't bring myself to say it.

“It wasn't like . . . that,” I said again.

“What do you mean?”

I was one of them.

I started to back away and he just stared at me, confused.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

It was my fault.

“Where are you going?”

Suddenly, I couldn't face him anymore. I turned and walked away quickly.

“Don't leave!” he shouted.

People in the parking lot had their eyes on me. I didn't want to face any of them.

“Hey!”

I ran. Hard and fast. I slipped and fell, scraping my knee.

“Wait!”

But I got up and kept going until I couldn't hear him anymore.

42

I don't know how I made it home. I was shaking badly when I stumbled through the front door into Dad's bags.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Are you leaving?”

He seemed distracted. “I have some work I have to attend to back in Little Rock. I'll be going back and forth until the trial.” He gestured toward the couch. A woman in a suit was sitting there. “This is Ms. Hallstrom. Remember, she's the one from the family court? You do what she says and you'll be OK.”

“Where is Mr. Graves?” I asked.

“I'll be handling your case from now on,” she said, slightly dismissing her partner.

Great. The last thing I needed was another handler. I was still trembling when I shook the woman's hand. Hers was dry and steady.

“Erica. We have a little problem we need to clear up.”

We sat. She took out her iPad. “There's this video—”

I knew what she was talking about. Metal Detector Man.

“Now's not a good time.”

Dad was in a bad mood. “Erica, I need to get back. If there's a problem, we need to deal with it while I'm here.”

“I don't feel good,” I said. I didn't want him to see the video.

“Erica—” Dad said.

The woman interrupted him, calmly but firmly. “Would you mind if I speak to Erica alone?”

Dad was offended. “Yes, I do mind!”

Hallstrom remained calm. “It's my experience that sometimes clients are unwilling to talk about certain issues in front of family members.”

“Her lawyer's not here.”

She was short on patience. “We're on the same side, sir. We all want what's best for Erica, if she's to be our main witness.”

Dad was having none of it. “What do you mean
if
?”

“It's OK, Dad. I'll talk to her,” I said. Better her than him.

Dad huffed and puffed, arguing with himself. “That's not how things are done, Ms. Hallstrom. I am in the business, you know.”

She was steady and sure, but lowered her eyes. “Which is why I'm asking. Please.”

Dad grunted, held up his hand. “Five minutes. I'll be downstairs loading my bags. If you do anything illegal, there'll be hell to pay.”

Ms. Hallstrom let him rant. “I work for the family court. I'm bound by oath and common sense.”

Dad grunted again and made his way to the front door. “Five. I'll be counting.”

When the door shut and we heard him go downstairs, Hall-strom turned to me. “Actually, there's more than one problem.”

Not a good way to start. “I got sucked into it. I didn't think it would happen.”

“What?” she asked.

“Um, that I'd hit that guy?”

She made a face.
Wrong video
. “Yes, there's that one. It's generally not good to have visual evidence of a star witness doing the same crime the perp is up for. But that's not the video I was talking about.”

She held up her device and pressed play. Immediately, I heard the sound of myself moaning and I knew what it was. For those few seconds, it wasn't at all like I remembered it. There was an overweight girl, awkward and fumbling to take her shirt off. When the boy pulled it off for her, she got stuck in the neck hole, her pale skin flabby and white even in the dark. She noticed her back scraped up from rolling around on the roof, her hair matted with sweat, her cheeks flushed—

“Turn it off,” I said.

She did. “Your parents haven't seen this, I assume?”

I shook my head, “No. Where did you get this?”

“Kalvin's computer.”

I guess it shouldn't have surprised me that he backed it up. Was all that struggle to get him to delete it just for show?

“I'm afraid it will come out in the trial,” she said. “The defense will use everything at their disposal to discredit or embarrass you. But one thing's for sure, the judge will not like it.”

“My parents won't either.” I buried my face in my hands. “Everyone will see it?”

“All evidence has to be shared by both sides and the first thing they'll notice is that you and Mr. Barnes appear to be . . . closer than we thought,” she said. “It will show up in the trial; you can be sure of that.”

“I was . . . confused, OK? He . . . set me up. . . .”

“Set you up?” she asked, skeptically. “That's not what it looks like. I need to know how serious this was.”

My face was getting hot. “It happened once and then . . . I ended it. I didn't like who he was becoming.”

“Did you fight?”

“I guess . . . yeah. We had words.”

“Did you hate him for using you?”

“I do now. What's it matter?”

She leveled her gaze. “It matters because the defense will try to get this case thrown out, saying you have motivation to get back at Kalvin.”

I began to panic. “Why would I do that?”

“Jilted lover? Angry at being kicked out of the club? I don't know. What
are
your motivations?”

I couldn't believe this. “Isn't trying to make things right a good motivation?”

She sighed. “In my eyes, yes. In the judge's . . . it's questionable. I have to be honest, Erica. I don't like finding these things out after you've said you told us everything. I need to know what's in that head of yours before we continue walking down this road. What else aren't you telling us?”

I thought about my encounter with Joe an hour ago. I didn't want to get into that. But then Dad came back before I could answer. “Are we done?”

Ms. Hallstrom looked at me. I nodded. “There's one more thing,” she said. “This one, you should see.”

Dad sat down, all his bluster gone.

“We finally got something off your camera. It wasn't the whole video, more of a snippet. But I should warn you, it's not easy to watch.”

She scrolled through some videos and brought up the one she was looking for. She pressed Play. The images were a far cry from my usual work. It was broken up with glitches and skipped around. It began with me running, the camera all over the place. The sound cut in and out, and you couldn't make out anyone clearly.

But then the image froze on Mrs. Lee. She had fury and fear in her eyes. It stuck there for a moment and then speeded up again. The camera fell to the ground and settled on a scurry of feet. I was struggling with her. We were both screaming when the sound cut out. Then there was a blur and we were both knocked out of the frame. The video ended with part of her body blocking the lens.

Hallstrom turned it off and let it all settle in. “It doesn't look good, does it, Erica? I don't think you've been entirely honest with us and that's not a good sign. The defense will jump all over us, and you in particular, and they
will
show all these videos—”

“There's more than one?” asked Dad.

“There might be a lot more than one.” She leaned over and looked me dead in the eye. “I need you to really think hard about this, Erica. I know we will be. I'm pretty sure there's a hard drive somewhere with all kinds of videos you haven't shown us. The lead prosecutor would like a sit-down tomorrow in our office. With your lawyer.”

Dad appeared worried for the first time. “What's going on here? This is my daughter. We've risked a lot coming this far. I don't like what I'm hearing.”

Hallstrom put away her iPad and closed her briefcase. She was all business, but I could tell she was exhausted. “We will reassess where we stand and discuss our decision tomorrow morning.”

“
Reassess
?” said Dad.

She got to her feet and shook my dad's hand. “I don't like wasting time, sir. And neither does the State of Missouri. We'll see you tomorrow.”

By the time Dad walked Ms. Hallstrom to the door, I'd locked myself in my room. I couldn't bear to tell him what she told me.

43

I guess it was no surprise that everything fell apart. Our meeting did not go well. It was New Year's Eve day and the office was half empty. The prosecutor, an older man who was all about winning, told Tillman and Dad that I'd become an unreliable witness and that too much was riding on me. He'd met with the judge and the defense. The defense let them know that, in no uncertain terms, they were going to expose me as unreliable, misleading, and someone who could be easily manipulated.

The prosecutor's office was backing out.

When Tillman raised hell, Ms. Hallstrom reminded him that I was lucky not to be charged as an accessory, something that it was still possible. Maybe worse.

Dad's shoulders slumped. “But you've left us exposed. They'll come after her.”

She knew. “I have to deal with a city that's crying out for justice. Trials are never that easy. We can get him tried as an adult, but there are things clouding the investigation. No one else is talking. Even Mr. Lee's memory of previous incidents is cloudy at best. If we mounted a big trial and it goes bust, it'll be twice as bad. We can't go down that road again. I'm sorry.”

She got up to leave, but before she reached the door, she stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She reached into her briefcase and produced my camera. “Just returning your property since . . . well, it's no longer required for evidence. The guys managed to get it working, at least.”

She put it on the table and we all stared at it like it was a ticking bomb.

After the deal was officially declared dead, all the lawyers left my dad and me alone in the room. We were silent for a long time.