The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (15 page)

Broken spine? Maybe. Brain damage? Also a real possibility. But nobody was telling me anything.

Though I didn't remember much of what happened after Grant fell into the grease pit, somehow I must have had the presence of mind to call for an ambulance. And because I mentioned Grant as the accident victim by name, the entire Ashland emergency response team showed up at Roger's. A fire truck, ambulance, and all four patrol cars crowded the street, all with roof lights rotating and casting a kaleidoscope of yellow, red, and blue. The junkyard seemed alive with the movement of light, and watching it for too long made me feel stoned.

I was asked, and answered, questions but could only give one response. “He fell. He fell.” I kept saying it over and over again. Once it became obvious to them I wouldn't, couldn't, say anything else, I was largely forgotten in the clamor of emergency responders.

I had been biting the skin around my thumbnail obsessively since the police arrived at Roger's garage. Gut-tightening fear had dumped an almost lethal dose of adrenaline into my bloodstream, and I was still trembling and sweating, my legs bouncing when I tried to sit still. As the paramedics rolled Grant Parker out on a gurney and loaded him into the back of an ambulance, I could see that Grant's neck was held in line by a red brace, his torso strapped to a body board.

Leland Parker, who was called by the police as soon as the ambulance had been dispatched, showed up in his Sedan DeVille. It was my first time seeing him up close, because Grant's family didn't go to Dad's church. Leland Parker was a big man. Huge. Made to seem all the more so from my position as a prisoner in the back of Chief Perry's patrol car.

Leland Parker wore a tweed sport coat and a crisp blue Oxford cloth shirt. These were awkwardly out of sync with the dark blue jeans and dusty work boots he also wore, but somehow he made the outfit work. He looked like he had just walked out of the pages of a cigarette ad, snowcapped mountains and horses as his backdrop.

It wasn't clear if I was under arrest. They hadn't put me in handcuffs. Just stowed me away in the back of the car while everyone tried to figure out what to do. Every once in a while Chief Perry's eyes would stray in my direction to pierce me with an arrow gaze. My face would get hot with shame, though shame about what … I wasn't sure.

After all, I hadn't really done anything wrong. Other than stick up for myself against Grant at school, a fact that would make me look guilty as hell.

I wanted to scream out my innocence, tell them I had done nothing to hurt Grant. Hadn't even touched him.

Would that make me look guilty?

I tried to think about all of the suspect interviews I had ever seen on crime shows. Wondered if Chief Perry would use some special interrogation ploy—a good cop/bad cop scenario, for example—to get me tripping over my words and admitting that I had actually caused the (
let's face it
) possible impending death and almost certain permanent vegetative state of Grant Parker.

Once the ambulance left to deliver Grant to the hospital, Leland Parker riding shotgun in the cab, the attention of the four sheriff's deputies turned to me. They held a brief conference, all of them staring at me as they spoke, and then Chief Perry came to get behind the wheel of the car.

His judgment hung heavy between us, but something told me to keep my mouth shut. No matter what. Keep my mouth shut and wait until my brain was functional again before speaking.

But Chief Perry didn't ask me anything. Didn't really even acknowledge my presence at all on the short drive to the police station. I wanted to ask him things. Wanted to know about Grant's condition and whether my dad had been called. But I didn't say a single word. I needed to pee but wasn't even comfortable admitting that. Any words or action, even taking a piss, seemed like an admission of guilt in my confused and tortured mind.

At the station, Chief Perry escorted me to a small room. Not an interrogation room like you see on television, just a shitty little room with a couple of filing cabinets, a scarred wood table, and a water cooler that was dusty from disuse. Chief Perry stood across the table from me in the cramped room, his hands tightening and loosening on the ladder back of a chair as if he were imagining my throat in his grip. He seemed wary of me, the way a person would act with a poisonous snake or an unfriendly dog.

When Chief Perry thought the worst offense I had ever committed was trying to make time with his precious daughter, he had looked at me as if he wanted to kill me. Every time he saw me, his eyes would turn sharp and his left eyelid would narrow, as if he were sighting my head through the scope of a rifle.

Now that he believed I was an attempted murderer
and
I was trying to sleep with his only daughter, he still looked like he wanted to shoot me. And I got the sense, definitely, from the glint in his eyes, that he enjoyed the idea that his suspicions had been proven correct, that I was nothing but trouble.

He still hadn't said anything to me, and I realized he probably wasn't allowed to ask me anything since I was only seventeen and still a minor. Or maybe I should be asking for a lawyer, though asking for a lawyer would also make me look guilty as hell. Every way I turned in my mind, trying to decide what to do, what to say, all I could see was an appearance of guilt.

As Chief Perry stared at me I kept my gaze fixed on his hands, unable to meet his eye. I fought the urge to tell him that I hadn't put the moves on his daughter, that I hardly even thought about Del in that way since I had seen Penny Olson in her cheerleading uniform. Del never wore anything even remotely revealing. Before I had been given the opportunity to touch one of them, I hadn't even been sure she had breasts. Thinking about Delilah's breasts reminded me of our heated embrace on her dead brother's twenty-first birthday.

When was that? Yesterday? It seemed like a lifetime ago. The sudden thought of our fevered groping and kissing under the moonlight gave me a half hard-on, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

Jesus, what was wrong with me? What kind of sick, depraved individual gets a hard-on at a time like this? The fact that Delilah's father was actually in the room with me at the moment just made the whole thing so surreal I wondered if this was just a nightmare—a nightmare–wet-dream combo, which wouldn't be a first.

When he finally broke the silence, I knew immediately that in
his
mind, I was already tried and convicted.

“What I find most disturbing, Mr. Grayson,” Chief Perry said as I gnawed at the side of my thumbnail, “is that you haven't even asked me about Grant's condition. Aren't you at all curious if he's alright?” Chief Perry's southern drawl made the question sound downright polite, a veneer of courtesy that made almost everything these southerners said come across as sinister.

I knew the thumb gnawing would also make me look guilty, but I couldn't help myself. I was dying to smoke a cigarette and guzzle a forty-ounce can of some shitty domestic beer. Maybe follow it up with a bong rip and a hit of Molly—shit, anything to get me out of this situation and into an alternate reality.

I didn't answer him, but my eyes narrowed into slits as I tried to see through his guile. Thanks to Roger, I had watched enough episodes of
Law & Order
to know Chief Perry was probably just trying to trick me into giving up some damning evidence. Appearance of guilt or not, I kept my silence.

*   *   *

The chief reached my dad at the church during Bible study, and Dad and Doris arrived at the police station in such a state of shock and confusion that I almost wished they hadn't come. Almost. At the very least they created a distraction from my status as an assailant.

We were all crammed into the room, Doris's clip-on earrings garish under the fluorescent lights and her cloud of perfume expanding to fill the small space. Chief Perry was very formal, called them “Reverend and Mrs. Grayson.” His formality made me nervous, as if he was intentionally putting distance between himself and Dad because I now held status as a perp. I was wracking my brain, trying to remember if Chief Perry usually called them Frank and Doris.

“I've been waiting for you to get here before I asked him anything,” Chief Perry said. “But let me just say that Grant Parker's condition is bad. Your boy has managed to get himself into some serious trouble. And right now we only have his word to listen to. There were no other witnesses, and Grant Parker can't tell us anything.”

“Luke,” Dad said turning to me, “I can't believe it. First a call from Principal Sherman about you fighting at school. Now this?” I wanted to kick Dad for saying something so damning in front of the chief.

Chief Perry's eyes widened slightly, like a bird with a hit on prey. The fistfight story was news to him. Maybe there hadn't been time for that story to spread through Ashland like kudzu. Or maybe Chief Perry's sources weren't as good as Roger's.

“Answer me, Luke,” Dad said with a gulp of air, genuinely upset. “What is going on with you? This isn't the big city, son. Here we obey the word of the Lord as it was written.”

I wasn't aware of anything in the Bible that prohibited fistfights at school, but I got the sense Dad was bringing the Lord into the conversation to remind Chief Perry that we were God-fearing people. At least that's what I hoped. I hoped that Dad didn't also believe I was a murderer, which was what everyone else seemed to think of me.

Now, murder, they do get specific in the Bible about whether that's a good or bad thing. They even gave that rule a number so you could use shorthand to remember it.

“Tell us what happened,” Chief Perry said.

I tried to start by recounting everything that had happened up to that point—the cow tipping, giving Penny a ride home, the threats and abuse from Grant and his friends—but it all came out sounding garbled and ridiculous. The sense of burning humiliation and status as an outcast was a big part of the story, but not something I could explain adequately. And I was losing my audience, Chief Perry barely listening to me as he sized me up, watching for indications that I was lying.

Eventually I gave up trying to explain the past few weeks and just told the events as they had happened that night. I hadn't touched Grant. He had come after me, tripped, and fell. It was so simple, really. So little to tell. It was the confusion of events leading up to Grant's attack that came off sounding unbelievable.

When I got to the part about the vomit and calling the ambulance, Doris had a complete and total meltdown. She started crying and wailing like a crazy person. “How?” she asked. “How am I supposed to host a women's club function at church this Friday when I have a stepson who is in jail? I've already confirmed a seated dinner for forty people with the caterer. It's not like they are going to refund our deposit.” She turned helplessly to Chief Perry, her hands held out in supplication as if to beg him to understand. “His mother is not a fit role model. I've done the best I could to help him to be a better person. Can you talk to the caterer?”

“Uh … no, ma'am, I'm afraid that's not something I can do,” Chief Perry said, looking uncertain for the first time. He hooked his thumbs in his broad leather gun belt and rocked back on his heels as he tried to figure out how to handle this new development.

“This is your fault,” Doris said, turning to me, her voice lowering to a hiss. “You've ruined everything! Your father told you not to wear that shirt on your first day at your new school.” Then she succumbed to weeping and collapsed into Dad's arms while he shushed her and tried to offer comfort.

Doris's breakdown prevented Chief Perry from asking me any of the questions he had been saving. The disappointment was clear on his face, and he took a deep breath and blew out a sigh as Dad left to deliver Doris home.

Or maybe to an insane asylum.

They refused to release me into Dad's custody, said I had to stay at least until the county prosecutor returned from a fishing trip the following day. The idea of a seventeen-year-old murderer was too foreign in Ashland for anyone to know the rules, but they were pretty sure they didn't want to turn me loose onto the streets of Ashland to maim anyone else.

Chief Perry gestured for me to stand up as he held the door to the conference room open and waited for me to walk out of the room. “I'm going to put you in a holding cell,” he said. “I'll have someone bring you some supper.”

“I'm not hungry,” I said woodenly. The stress was making my stomach ache, and my throat burned from the bile that kept creeping up my esophagus.

The holding cell was only about ten feet square, with a single cot bolted to the wall, a thin mattress rolled and stowed at the end. I paced and sat, paced and sat. I spent ten minutes trying to coax a pee into the stainless steel toilet with no seat, even though I had to pee so badly I couldn't focus on anything else.

Everything had been taken from my pockets, and there was no clock within view of my cell. For a long time I was afraid to shut my eyes because when I did, all I saw was Grant's twisted, broken body at the bottom of the grease pit. Finally I was so exhausted that I had to lie down, though I kept my eyes open until sleep overtook me like a wave.

 

23

“Luke,” someone whispered, and for a second I thought I was imagining it. I was still lying on my back on the thin mattress in my jail cell, one arm draped across my eyes. Normally I would sleep on my side, but the metal cot was only comfortable if I stayed flat on my back. My throat burned with acid reflux, but I had refused all food and drink other than water since being taken into custody.

“Luke.” Definitely not a part of my dream. A girl's voice whispering my name.

I sat up and twisted toward the sound of the voice in one motion. The feeling of having no privacy, of being on display for the world to see me in my cage, was almost unbearable.