The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (16 page)

My first reaction to seeing Delilah was relief. It was good to see a friendly face, even if she had never really been all that friendly toward me. It didn't occur to me to wonder how she had managed to get into the prisoner area. She was as sneaky as she was clever.

“Does your dad know you're here?” I asked as I craned my head to peer through the bars, afraid Chief Perry would come storming at us any second and bludgeon me to death.

“Of course not,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

“Dad's radio at home. I heard everything from the paramedics and the dispatcher.”

“Do you know if Grant's okay?” I asked, relieved to finally be able to ask the question.

She bit her lip and turned her head to one side, looking at the hall door instead of at me. “He was alive when he got to the hospital,” she said finally. “That's all I know.”

“They think I threw him. Pushed him,” I said. “I didn't do anything. He fell. Just … tripped and fell. I thought he was dead.” This all tumbled out in a rush as I felt comfortable speaking for the first time since the accident, as if I was finally in the presence of an ally.

“I'll talk to my dad,” she said. “I'll tell him it had to have been an accident. There's no way you would kill someone, no way you would have hurt Grant on purpose. I mean, I know you … sort of.” As she said this last part her expression changed and she paused for a moment, as if to consider how well she actually knew me. “Anyway, there's no way you could kill someone.”

“Do me a favor and don't say a word to your dad about me,” I said quickly. “He already hates me because he thinks I'm trying to get into your pants. If you take up my side, he'll do whatever he can to make sure my ass goes to jail for a long time.”

“Are you?” she asked.

“Am I what?”

“Trying to get into my pants?” Her eyes were wide with the question as she waited for my response.

“No,” I said. “I have no interest in getting into your pants. Can we not talk about anything to do with you and me right now? Please. Grant Parker is seriously fucked up. And everybody thinks I'm the one who fucked him up.”

“So, what did happen, then?” she asked. “Did you hit him with something?”

“I didn't hit him at all,” I said too loudly, and lowered my voice as I leaned in closer to the bars, still with an uneasy eye on the hallway. “He came after me. I moved out of the way and he slipped and fell. That's it. There was no fight.”

“Did you tell my dad that?”

“Look, you should go before anyone finds out you're here. Don't say anything to your dad. Please don't make it any worse than it already is.”

“I told you not to mess with Grant Parker,” she said, taking the last word for herself and not giving me time to argue that I hadn't messed with anyone. Everyone else kept messing with me.

Before I could say any of that to her, she left as quietly as she had come, and I was back to my pacing and worrying.

About thirty minutes after Delilah left, Chief Perry came back to see me in my cell, this time with Roger in tow. I stood quickly at the sight of Roger, and my hands moved nervously from my back pockets to my thighs as I tried to find a natural way to rest my arms.

“Hey, kid,” Roger said in his gruff way as Chief Perry started to unlock the door to my cell.

“Hey, Roger. What are you doing here?” I asked, my eyes darting nervously between him and Chief Perry.

“Turns out that Mr. McElroy has a closed-circuit television system in his shop,” Chief Perry said, though his words didn't mean anything to me in my current state.

“Used to have a guy working for me who would steal parts, sell them out the back door, and pocket the money,” Roger said. “Got the cameras installed then but never had much use for them since.” He shrugged and tilted his head, one eyebrow lifted. “Until now.”

“You mean…,” I started, not daring to hope.

“The whole thing was caught on tape,” Chief Perry said, by his tone conveying clear disappointment that I would not be going to the state penitentiary for life.

My heart had started to hammer crazily, and my breath was coming in short pants. “So you saw? You saw that I didn't do anything to hurt Grant. He came after me. He fell. Just like I told you.” I waited expectantly, wanting to hear Chief Perry say that he had been wrong.

“Your story checks out,” Chief Perry drawled. “But this isn't the end of it. Not by a long shot. I'm going to be watching you, boy. I get even a whiff of trouble from you and I'll be on you like stink on manure. You hear me?”

“Am I free to go?” I asked, hating him so much at that moment I wanted to scream.

“I called your dad,” Chief Perry said. “He's taking care of your mom. Doesn't want to leave her. Your dad said I could release you to Mr. McElroy's custody. He's going to take you home.”

“Stepmom,” I said through clenched teeth. “She's my stepmom. Not my mom.”

“Come on, kid,” Roger said as he put a rough hand on my shoulder and gave me a tug toward the exit.

*   *   *

When we emerged from the police station Roger directed me to his truck, an old Ford F-250 with the garage name and number stenciled on the side paneling.

“Can you just drive me back to DC?” I asked as we both slid into the cab.

Roger chuckled at that, a bark muffled by his bush of beard. “'Fraid not,” he said.

“My life is over,” I said with a moan as I leaned forward and ground my forehead into my palms.

“Yep,” Roger said with a nod. His eyes never left the windshield, but I detected a note of sympathy in his voice. “Just be glad the Parkers aren't Baptists,” he continued. “It would be worse if they belonged to your daddy's church.”

“I have to leave the country,” I said. “It's my only real option.”

“Leland Parker is not the type of man to forgive and forget,” Roger said in agreement. “You lie low until the police have a chance to explain what happened, show him the tape.”

“Oh, I'll lie low,” I said as I rested my head against the cool glass of the window. “I'm never coming out of my room again.”

 

24

The next day the local paper broke the news of the whole debacle under the splashy headline
LIFE HANGS IN THE BALANCE FOR LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL HERO.
The article included a laundry list of Grant's awards and accomplishments as well as the win-loss record of the Wakefield Wildcats for the current and two most recent past seasons. Leland Parker made a statement to the press that he and his wife were “overcome with grief,” and were “concerned about public safety” with the influx of people moving to Ashland from the big city.

As a minor, I was not mentioned in the article by name, my identity cleverly disguised as the “son of a local prominent pastor, and a recent transplant from a large city, now attending Wakefield High School.” I scanned the article quickly, looking for an update on Grant's condition. That he had survived the night, I took as a good sign. At least a hopeful sign.

I made the executive decision to stay home from school that day. Dad either didn't notice or agreed with my decision, though even if he had tried to force me to go, there was no way I would have shown my face at Wakefield. Dad was still overcome by the situation and was in full damage-control mode. Neighbors called and dropped in throughout the day in a show of expressing concern, but really they were just digging for gruesome details to share at the hair salon or the bank.

Even Penny's mother, though she was a lifelong Presbyterian, showed up with a green-bean casserole. Doris navigated the social awkwardness of the casserole offering with stoic and cold civility. I wasn't sure what help Mrs. Olson thought food would be. And green-bean casserole turned out to be a disgusting mixture of green beans and cream-of-mushroom soup. Worse even than the ambrosia salad that southerners ate by inexplicable choice.

Dad called Mom to try to explain to her what had happened. I stood in the kitchen doorway watching Dad's end of the conversation. He fumbled for a while, and I could hear Mom's voice, high-pitched and asking rapid-fire questions peppered, I was sure, with gratuitous swearing.

Dad finally gave up and handed the phone to me.

“Luke, what the hell?” Mom said as her opener.

“It wasn't my fault,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm … fine. Sort of.”

“Were you hurt?” she asked, and at the same time I swore I heard a cork popping out of a bottle of wine on her end.

“No. Not at all. Things are just … awkward right now.”

“I'm supposed to be catching a flight to L.A. in exactly”—a pause while she checked the time—“forty minutes. But I can cancel my trip if I have to. I can be there tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. How far is DC from Tennessee?”

“Really fucking far, Mom.” I glanced up at Dad, who stiffened at my use of a curse word. And not just any curse word. The king of all curse words. But he said nothing.

“Yeah. Okay. I can be there by tomorrow.”

“No,” I said quickly. “Don't come. Just go on your trip.”

“Luke, seriously, what is happening there?”

I sighed wearily. I thought about telling Mom all about Grant and how everything had unfolded, but the idea just made me really tired. I had already spent too much time talking about it.

“It's nothing I can't handle. Okay? Go on your trip. I'll talk to you in a couple of days.”

I managed to get her off the phone with only a few promises to call with an update the next day.

*   *   *

Reporters from local papers were relentless as they called the landline seeking a quote from Dad or me. By midafternoon Dad turned the landline off and stopped answering the door.

Doris went to bed with a wet rag on her forehead, overwhelmed by the strain of being polite to nosy busybodies all day. Dad went to the hospital to check on Grant's family. The house was now as much a prison to me as the police station had been. I couldn't leave the house, expected any minute for a crowd with torches and pitchforks to materialize in the front yard. Maybe they would burn a cross on the lawn or throw a rock through the bay window. I was never going to be able to leave the house again.

 

25

The news Dad brought home was grim. Grant Parker was in a coma and was suffering a swollen spinal cord and a severe concussion. A full recovery was not expected, but possible.

A prayer vigil was scheduled for that night. People had been leaving flowers and mementos outside the hospital and on the Wakefield home goalpost all day, a tribute to their fallen knight. At dark they would light candles and sing hymns outside Grant's hospital window to invite the healing grace of the Lord.

The Lord was obviously someone who cared more about Grant Parker than he did about me. Which made him something less of a god in my eyes. If this was how God conducted himself, he was no better than Principal Sherman.

Dad and I argued about whether I should attend the prayer vigil or not. I said no way. No way in hell. Dad argued that if I didn't go it would look as if I didn't care about Grant or his family, didn't care about whether Grant recovered from his injuries. But I held my ground and refused to even consider the idea of attending the vigil. I knew I would be publicly crucified if I showed my face so soon after the accident.

Dad never raised his voice because it wasn't in his nature, and he finally gave up. He did coax Doris out of bed with a rousing sermon about the community responsibilities of a preacher's wife, and she mustered the etiquette to select a conservative gray dress and flat black shoes.

I sat home that night and watched news coverage of the gathering, recognizing my classmates and teachers among the crowd. There were no pitchforks or torches present, which I took as a good sign. The cameras kept cutting back to Dad and Doris, and, inevitably, Dad was asked for comment.

“It was a terrible accident,” Dad said earnestly. “My family and I are in pieces about it.”

“An accident?” the reporter asked skeptically with an exaggerated lift of her eyebrows. “We were under the impression that this was a case of self-defense.”

“No, no,” Dad answered quickly as I squirmed urgently in my seat. “It's all a misunderstanding. It was just an accident.”

“You mean, Grant Parker was accidentally almost killed during an altercation with your son?” the reporter pressed.

“Jesus wept!” I yelped at the television, sitting up so quickly my drink sloshed onto my pants, but I barely took any notice of it.

“No, I…”, Dad started to yammer, when the camera cut away suddenly to capture an image of the entire cheerleading squad, crying and holding each other in a distractingly sexy group hug.

The reporter promised further updates on Grant's condition and the “alleged assault” before returning to one of the nineteen or so
CSI
spin-offs already in progress. At the mention of murder and forensic evidence, I quickly shut off the television and sat staring at the fireplace, contemplating the least painful method for suicide.

With my tail between my legs, I retreated to my bedroom and lay on the bed in the dark. As testament to just how miserable I was, I didn't even think about looking at my phone or jacking off before sleep.

I was in a world of suck.

*   *   *

Though I didn't remember even feeling tired, I woke suddenly to a scratching noise outside my window. Azalea branches tapped insistently against the siding as Delilah fought her way through the shrubs.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as I opened the window sash.

“Let me in,” she said simply.

I popped out the screen with the side of my fist and held out an arm to her as she struggled to get her leg up to the windowsill.