Mom alerts Mr. Stone and he sits up in his chair, probably embarrassed at being caught in such a relaxed state.
“Come on in,” Mr. Stone calls out.
Mr. Gaines shuts the door and it takes everything in me not to press my ear against it.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I don’t dare let on that I know about the case. Mom is a stickler when it comes to office gossip, and Reagan has more than one strike against her in Mom’s book right now.
Mom takes a deep breath. “I hope this doesn’t mean what I think it does.” She twists her hands and then busies herself at her desk. I know she wants to sneak out for a cigarette right now, but there’s no way she’ll leave until Gaines does.
Mr. Gaines is in there a while, and nervous energy seems to be bouncing back and forth between Mom and me. I’ve alphabetized the files on Mom’s desk, shredded about two inches’ worth of documents in the shred pile, and watered all the plants.
Thirty minutes pass before the door opens.
Mr. Gaines leaves without sparing us a glance.
Mr. Stone leans against the door frame and lets out a deep breath. “The district attorney has decided to put the River Point case to a grand jury.” He pauses a moment before continuing. “And he wants us to present it.”
From the first day I started, Mr. Stone referred to any case he had as “ours,” since it is a group effort to get him through it.
“Is there enough evidence against them to even make a case?” Mom asks in a whisper.
Stone shrugs. “Doesn’t sound like it. The picture the DA painted for me is this is a wild but essentially good group of boys who partied a little too hard and against their better judgment went hunting that morning. He wants Grant Perkins’s death to be classified as an accident, but there’s that pesky part about them being drunk and negligent.” He says the last part scornfully. “The victim’s family isn’t as willing to sweep this under the rug and are threatening to make a big stink, which Gaines doesn’t want since he’s up for reelection next year. The other boys’ families have contributed to Gaines’s campaign, so he’s in the ‘difficult position’ of making everyone happy.”
He says difficult position with enough disgust that we all know what he means—Gaines doesn’t want any of the boys to get in trouble, no matter what the evidence shows.
“Gaines said he’s too close to both sides so he’s going to leave it up to the grand jury to decide if there was a crime committed. He thinks this is the only way to appease everyone, but he wanted to make sure I understood that I wasn’t to ‘press too hard’ on this.”
And that’s the thing about a grand jury—they only hear from the prosecutor presenting it, so if Stone presents a weak case, this whole thing disappears and no one will be arrested for Grant’s death.
Mom moves closer to him and squeezes his arm. “We’ll be behind you no matter what.”
He nods at Mom, then glances toward me. “Kate, I understand the boys involved in Grant Perkins’s death transferred into your school today.”
“Yes, sir,” I answer.
He fumbles around in his suit pocket, finally pulling out whatever he was searching for and holding it up for Mom and me.
It’s a picture I’ve seen a thousand times.
In the image, there are five guys, all dressed in camo, holding rifles and standing behind a sign that says River Point Hunting Club. The woods behind them are alive with the reds, oranges, and yellows of fall foliage. They look happy and carefree, just as boys with bright futures and privileged backgrounds should look.
But one of those boys is dead now.
“Have you ever seen any of these boys in any social situation? Maybe at a football game, school dance, or anything like that? Ever dated any of them?”
“I’ve met a few of them but never hung out with them at a party or anything. And I’ve never dated any of the River Point Boys.”
And technically, that’s the truth.
Mr. Stone ponders this a moment. In a town this size, everyone pretty much knows everyone else, so there’s never any true separation. He finally says, “Steer clear of them at school. Don’t talk to them. Don’t talk about them. Things are different now that I have this case and you work for me. Until this is over, keep your distance from them. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir. Very clear.”
Mom and I follow him into his office. He sits in his chair and gazes at the wall. Most would assume he’s lost in thought, but I know he’s looking at us the only way he can.
Mr. Stone does a good job faking it for others, but with us he lets his guard down. He has macular degeneration, which means everything in his central line of vision is blurry, but the edges are in focus. So basically to see something clearly, it has to be in his peripheral vision. His disease is getting progressively worse and there isn’t a cure.
The DA is aware of his condition, but pride has stopped Stone from telling Gaines how bad it’s gotten. This job has been Stone’s life, not leaving any room for a wife or kids. In fact, Mom and I are the closest thing he’s got to a family, and he spends most holidays at our kitchen table. I’m not sure Gaines could actually fire him over his deteriorating vision, but Stone knows he would be more or less put out to pasture and he says he’s just not ready to go out like that.
“Gaines already subpoenaed the grand jury. We’re set for Tuesday, November eighteenth. This case will be in front of them in four weeks, so it looks like all of this will be over soon enough.”
I swallow hard and examine each face in that picture, wondering which one of them pulled the trigger.
Just as Mom’s about to speak, I say, “But you’re not going to do what Gaines wants, right? I mean, you have to try to find out what really happened.”
Stone leans forward, resting his elbows on his desk. “I’ve got three options: present this the way Gaines wants so that it disappears quickly and quietly, try to convince a grand jury to indict all four for negligent homicide since they were all hunting while under the influence, or dig a little deeper and try to find out who pulled the trigger.”
I’m nodding my head at his last suggestion. I’d even be okay with the second option. Mom directs a confused look at me and I school my features. I’m not normally this enthusiastic when it comes to Stone’s cases, and I don’t really want to explain why I care about this one.
“We’ll be making an enemy here if I push too hard. These boys’ parents are powerful, and going against them could turn out badly.”
He’s going to throw the case, I can feel it. I consider any argument I can make to change his mind.
And then he surprises me when he says, “Damn, if it doesn’t piss me off, though, that he’s given it to me to lose.”
Relief rushes through me. It’s not over yet. “Yeah, it sucks he didn’t give it to that new guy…what’s his name? Peters? This will probably be the last big case you get.”
Mom lets out a gasp. I may have gone too far.
Stone cocks his head; his pupils roll around trying to find a spot where I’m in focus. And then he smirks.
Yes!
“Okay, then, Kate, let’s see what we can do with this heaping pile of shit Gaines just dropped on us. It’ll be next to impossible to indict them all for this, so for the next four weeks, we see what we can dig up. Within the hour, we’ll have all the evidence that was collected and copies of the police interrogations from the morning of the accident. Apparently, there was a big party at River Point the night before, so we’re getting some videos with witness statements from some kids who were there. The findings from the coroner are expected next week.” Mr. Stone leans closer to Mom and me, his voice dropping when he says, “Just so you understand, I’m only going to try to push this case through if we have hard evidence and a clear perpetrator. We need to be at the top of our game. Because if we pull this off, Gaines is going to be gunning for us all.”
They call us the River Point Boys.
We are never called by our individual nam
es. That’s what we wanted, so that’s what we got. This way, the focus is on the piece of land where Grant died, not on any one of the four names that potentially pulled the trigger.
The picture of us in front of the River Point Hunting Club sign was taken last year, last hunting season. Grant is in the center, holding the Remington—the rifle that killed him. He’s got a big smile on his face, his friends—his brothers—on either side.
If any one of us, other than Grant, had been holding that gun, our story would have fallen apart. Regardless of who pulled the trigger, an image of one of us holding the Remington would have been the only proof the public needed.
We all got a copy of that picture in the same rough wood frame as a gift from Grant’s mom. She liked doing that—taking pictures of us, then printing and framing them so we could all share in that memory.
I’ve kept every one…lined them up from first to last. You’d think the last one would be hardest to look at, but it’s the first one that strikes a pain straight through me every time I glance at it.
In the picture, we’re dripping with mud from head to toe, arms thrown around each other, and we’re grinning like idiots. It was one of the first weekends we spent together—just the five of us. We took a trailer full of four-wheelers to the Mud Nationals and it was the best weekend of our lives. We rode over every trail and raced through every mud pit and camped high on a ridge where we cooked hot dogs and talked through the night about everything from girls we liked to the same unreasonable expectations all of our dads seem to have.
I look down the line of framed pictures, stopping again on the one of us in front of the River Point sign. The one that’s been posted with every news story about us.
That was a good weekend, too. One of the last before the drinking and the pranks got out of control. Before a lot of things got out of control.
And then I get to the end of the line. I printed and framed this one myself, since there’s no way Grant’s mom would have. It was taken the day before he died. Age isn’t the only difference between this picture and the one from Mud Nationals. There’s a hardness in our expressions and a distance between us that wasn’t there before.
Seeing all of these moments in time, lined up in chronological order, makes it really easy to see when things went wrong.
Pulling my phone out, I look at another image. One I can’t frame. One that reminds me who Grant really was.
We are lucky the police can see us on that day a year ago, happy together. Before things changed.
Who could look at that picture and think we meant him any harm?
OCTOBER 5, 11:15 A.M.
REAGAN: Did you hear? Grant Perkins was shot hunting this morning at River Point
KATE: WHAT???? Is he ok????????
REAGAN: I heard he died
REAGAN: Are you there?
REAGAN: Kate???
REAGAN: I tried to call you. Call me back.
I’m boxing up all the old files on Stone’s desk to make room for the mountain of paper and folders and evidence that was just delivered for the River Point case.
A felony case like this one, with no clear perpetrator, can’t move forward until the prosecutor proves there is enough evidence to bring someone to trial by going in front of a grand jury. In four weeks, hopefully Mr. Stone will be standing in front of twelve jurors, asking them to believe one of these four boys committed negligent homicide.
But even if he can prove who pulled that trigger and get the grand jury to indict, there’s still the hurdle of a judge or another jury finding him guilty. And knowing how well-connected these boys are, my bet is whoever did this may never see the inside of a jail cell.
I throw the lid on the box, then kick it. I hate the legal system. Hate it. I’ve learned that not all who should go to jail do. And not all who should walk free will. The facts of a case and the innocence of the accused are only as strong as the person presenting them. And if you have enough money and connections, there’s little to no chance you’ll ever get in any real trouble. A slap on the wrist, some community service, and it’s back to life as usual.
Lately, Mr. Stone has been given the cases no one else wants, like the third-offense drug possessions and the ones for domestic violence and child abuse. It’s so unbelievably hard seeing how the system can fail the women and kids who come through here.
But now, we’ve got the biggest case in the parish. Mr. Gaines’s intentions couldn’t have been any clearer when he threw this case our way.
He gave it to Stone to lose.
By the time our shift is over and Reagan drops me off at home, I’m worn-out.
Mom and I live in the small side of a duplex in an old area of town. It’s not a bad area, just an old one…and not the kind of old area that gets revived. The house is quiet and dark when I make my way inside, since Mom will be working late tonight and probably every night for the foreseeable future.
It’s just been Mom and me for a while. My dad bailed when Mom found out she was pregnant with me; then he turned back up a few years later. Mom and I were sitting at the table in the kitchen, eating spaghetti, and he just walked in like he’d only been gone five minutes instead of five years. We played house for about three months before he took off again. I wished he had never come back. It was one thing when he just ran from the idea of me; it was another to know being with me every day wasn’t something he wanted.
There’s only one picture of Dad and me, and it’s hidden in the bottom of my desk drawer in my bedroom. Mom doesn’t know I have it and I have no idea why I’ve kept it all these years, but I feel like I should have some proof that he existed. Sometimes I try to think back to the day that picture was taken, remember what we were doing just before someone, probably Mom, asked us to look at the camera and smile. But there’s nothing.
And then there was a series of Mom’s boyfriends, some good, some bad, some really, really bad, but none who hung around for long.
Mom has sworn off men since the last one convinced her to invest all our savings into some crazy business idea he had and then skipped town when the business went bust.
I pop a frozen pizza in the oven and sit at the table so I can tackle my homework, but I’m distracted. I check my texts—no new messages. My finger hovers over the screen of my phone and I try to talk myself out of what I know I want to do. I’m all but torturing myself by going back and rereading the conversations. After holding off as long as I can, I scroll down until I get to what I’m searching for, the text from Grant that never fails to bring a smile to my face:
GRANT: Truth or dare?
ME: Truth
GRANT: Dang I was hoping you were going to say dare
ME: ?? Why? What craziness were you going to have me do?!
GRANT: I can’t tell you now. You picked truth.
ME: Well then ask me something and I’ll tell you the truth
GRANT: Ok. If I dared you to come to a party with me Saturday night would you say yes?
ME: :)
ME: Yes
GRANT: Truth or dare?
ME: Dare
And then I scroll down to the last message Grant Perkins sent me. The one that scrapes out all happiness and leaves me hollow inside.
The one he sent the night before he died.
I’m sorry. Please give me a chance to explain.
I run my hand across my eyes, wiping away the tears that have formed there. I was so mad at him I couldn’t see straight. I was going to surprise him, meet him earlier than we had planned, but I was the one who was surprised instead when I saw him with another girl. It’s not like he was cheating on me, because we weren’t dating. In fact, pretty much our whole relationship had consisted of late-night texts, but something was there between us. Something new and exciting. I thought we both wanted to take the next step.
Then I saw him with her. His arm across her shoulders, his words in her ear, and the smile on her face because of something he said.
That should have been me.
&nbs
p; I took a picture of them. Stared at it for what seemed like forever. Sent it to him in a moment of weakness hours later, just before I was supposed to meet him at that party—the party at River Point—with a message asking how could he have been talking to me all this time and not have told me he was with someone else.
It was a while before he responded. A simple I’m sorry. Please give me a chance to explain.
I couldn’t bring myself to respond because I knew any excuse he gave me, I would take it. And I wasn’t ready to sacrifice my pride so quickly.
I was going to wait a day. Or two. Then respond. Make him sweat it out.
But then he was gone.
If I could change anything, I wouldn’t have ignored his last message.
I throw my phone across the table and move to the couch and turn on the TV, anything to distract myself.
And of course, the first thing to flash across the screen is a copy of the picture Mr. Stone showed me earlier. The news stations found out the River Point Boys were slumming it in public school and thought this deserved the top story of the night. Everywhere I turn, there is the image of the River Point Boys.
One of those boys shot Grant.
I stare at the screen until they move on to the next story—the protesters who have gathered outside one of the older buildings downtown. Reagan and I passed them this afternoon when we left work. A local construction company renovated the building for some sort of downtown renewal project but apparently charged way more than they should have. The project is millions over budget and it’s not even finished yet.
Everything about this town is so screwed up.
• • •
Because of block scheduling, there was no way to know yesterday if I was going to share any classes with the River Point Boys.
Three of the four of them are already seated along the front row of my English class when I get there.
This is Our Story Page 2
