Paul and I stood alone in the dim hallway. Under his Grover Cleveland High School letterman's jacket, he wore a bulky knit sweater that had a row of reindeer prancing merrily from shoulder to shoulder. He wore tight black pants and gleaming white high-top basketball shoes.
“I came back to get my gym bag.” He held up the item mentioned. His soft deep voice thrummed through the corridor. He stood at least six foot five and weighed 220 pounds. I remember seeing Paul as a skinny six-foot freshman. He spent that year quietly and meekly. Then his voice had stopped squeaking, he'd grown five inches, gained seventy pounds, and now as a senior was president of the class and co-captain of the football team. Now boys flocked around him and girls swooned. I couldn't figure out what a kid with so much going for him saw in Becky Twitchell.
In the dimly lit hallway, he avoided making eye contact. I explained about helping Jeff. “Anything you can tell me about Sunday's party might help,” I said.
He shifted his books from his right hand to his left. He whispered, “I can't.”
“You're a friend of his. Don't you want to help him?”
“Yeah.” He returned his books to his right hand, leaned one
elbow on the trophy case, and rubbed his face with his other hand.
“Did you talk to the police?”
He nodded.
“Something go wrong with them?”
“Yeah. No.” He peered at me, looked away.
I pondered on how to break through his teenage reticence. Obviously, something was wrong. I let the silence build.
“Man, this is too much.” He paused. Silence ticked away. “Lots of the kids say you can be trusted. That you've helped some of the guys out of tough situations and didn't tell their parents.”
I confirmed his statement with a nod.
Suddenly, he bashed the flat of his hand against the glass of the trophy case. “Everybody has to get off my back.” He gave me an agonized look.
“Who's on your back?”
“My parents, Becky, Mr. Montini, the police, you. I didn't do anything. Jeff killed her.” He gave me a horrified look. “Shit,” he muttered. He swung his head from side to side. “This is too much.”
I let a few moments of silence develop, then asked, “You didn't tell the police that you think he killed her?”
“I didn't lie.”
“You didn't tell all?”
He nodded.
“Why do you think he killed her?”
“Jesus, I can't squeal on a friend.” His knuckles on the hand clutching his books shone whitely. His shoulders hunched with tension.
I said, “I'm willing to listen. I'd like to help.”
He gazed at me, turned his back to the wall, and slid down it until his ass rested on the tile floor. He spread his legs, slumped his rear a foot from the wall, closed his eyes, and softly set his books on the floor next to him. “Okay,” he mumbled.
I sat down opposite him, our feet perhaps ten inches apart.
I felt the cold of the floor on my ass. Probably dirty. He sighed. The red of the exit sign made the side of his head toward the doors glow oddly.
“Tell me about Sunday's party.”
He described an average teenage party, a little beer, and, under prodding from me he admitted, a few drugs. A few guys from the team and their girlfriends got together every Sunday. They went to his house to watch football games because his parents never bothered them, and he had the widest-screen television.
About Jeff and Susan, he was specific. “They had a big fight even before they left my house Sunday.”
“What about?”
“It started because she wanted him to take her to a dance next week. He wouldn't go. Jeff got stubborn like he always does. Usually, he acts like a jerk, then agrees to go. She used to have to nag endlessly to get him to do anything. He didn't like to do stuff.”
“I thought Susan was a quiet girl.”
“Not this year. She wanted to do everything and go everywhere. Said she wanted to make her senior year count, make up for lost time.”
“What did they actually say to each other that night?”
“We were all kind of teasing him. The girls, Becky especially, were after him. I was, too. I mean we were friends, teammates all these years, but he could be such a jerk.”
He fiddled with the cover of his
American Government in Action
textbook, his fingernail working on a loose corner, drawing the cover picture away from the binding.
“So what happened?”
“Sunday, he acted jerkier than usual. He wouldn't say anything, just kept asking Susan to leave with him, way before everybody else wanted to go.”
“How were they when they left?”
“Pissed. Susan especially. Jeff practically dragged her out. He
was really mad. I could tell. People yelled, especially Becky, trying to get him to let Susan alone. But she left with him. I think maybe she didn't want to be the only girl at the party without a boyfriend.”
“They were angry, but why would that make you think he killed her?”
“The stuff they yelled at each other.”
“Like what?”
He gulped. “Like Susan dared Jeff to hit her. Said he couldn't talk without hitting her. Dumb stuff, but I think she meant it. When she said that to him, he swung at her, but he missed. He tried to swing again, but I grabbed him until he cooled down.”
They'd walked to the car, still arguingâSusan shouting that she wasn't going to be a doormat; Jeff telling her to listen to him for once.
“You and Jeff were pretty good friends?”
“I was his best friend on the team, but I've got lots of friends. I think he only had a couple. He's a good player. We got along. He knows a lot about sports. We've gone to a few Bulls games together.”
“What'd you think of Jeff and Susan's relationship before Sunday?”
“Okay, I guess. They had their little arguments, you know, but ⦔ He shrugged.
“Why not tell all this to the police?”
“If the cops thought Jeff and Susan had a fight, they'd be more likely to think Jeff did it. You can't tell on your friends. I've never done it. If anybody ever told on me, I'd pound the crap out of them. Besides, who wants to be involved in a hassle like this?”
âWhat about Becky? How does she see all this?”
“You know, sometimes I don't understand her.” He gave me a look of teenage wistfulness. I saw what he must have looked like as a three- or four-year-old gently puzzling over a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. He continued: “She was on the phone
right away Sunday night, telling me we couldn't tell about the fight. She said we shouldn't rat on our friends. She said everybody would know if we cooperated with the police.”
“That sounds stupid,” I said.
“I guess.” He looked sheepish. “I was kind of confused.” He gave me a weak smile. “Nobody I know has ever been murdered.” He shook his head. “But won't telling you all this make it worse for Jeff? I mean, all this is bad stuff. How will it help him?”
“I don't know yet. But I think the truth usually helps more than lies.” I wasn't sure I bought that completely, but it was the correct teacherly thing to say for the moment. I thought for a minute.
“You didn't see either Jeff or Susan the rest of the night?”
“No.”
“You and the coach today at noonâ” I began.
He interrupted. “That was about the team and our next game.” “You going to be eligible?”
I got a confused look from him. “Why shouldn't I be? My lowest grade's a C in calculus.”
I mumbled a disclaimer to him while considering the lie that either he, Montini, or both had told me.
“Were Becky and Susan good friends?” I asked.
“I guess. All those girls sort of hung out together. Best friends one day, catty bitches the next. Kind of typical girls.” He paused. “Can I leave? I have to be home.”
I let him go.
I'd called Scott from the school office, asking him to pick me up at six. His lone car sat in the parking lot as I walked out the door.
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We stopped at my place, barely managed to keep from burning some leftovers, and ate them. Over dinner, I told Scott about George and drugs. Scott asked whether I was going to turn him in. I'd thought about it. However, George didn't do drugs on
school grounds as far as I knew, and he didn't go to school doped up. I didn't see him as some mad-fiend addict mugging kids for their lunch money. After dinner, we drove to Mrs. Trask's. Events had moved too quickly the day before to talk with her as much as I'd wanted.
Mrs. Trask lived a mile north of the police station in the oldest section of River's Edge, off of 159th Street. The house stood on a slight rise, with a twenty-foot front yard and only a bare patch of dirt for a backyard. Snow had been meticulously shoveled from all the sidewalks and the driveway. I saw Eric's candy-apple-red Corvette in the driveway. I could check with him about my car before we left. Mrs. Trask met us at the front door. She was dressed in blue jeans and a black sweater, both of which bagged indecorously on her as usual. Distant hard-rock music indicated the presence of Eric somewhere in the house.
We passed through the living room, which contained countless mismatched knickknacks in ordered rows on the floor-to-ceiling shelves that covered three walls. Not a speck of dust sat on any of them. The paraphernalia ranged from cheap kids' dinosaurs, to pet Snoopys, to little men whose heads bobbed in the breeze. Few of them seemed to rise above the level of bargain-basement specials. A soundless television showed Vanna White twirling letters. We sat in the kitchenâno knickknacks here, but the pattern of neatness continued.
I introduced Scott. She vaguely recognized the name but made no comments. She probably wasn't up on sports. I asked for the latest on Jeff.
“Not much. The lawyer said he's still trying to get bail.” She offered us beer as we sat at the kitchen table. She stood leaning her ample back end against the sink. “I'm not sure that lawyer knows what he's doing,” she said. “I know it's not supposed to be like Judge Wapner's courtroom, but I just don't understand what the problem is. I know my boy didn't kill her. The police won't tell me anything. And when I try to talk to the lawyer on
the phone, he's always in meetings. I have a right to know what's going on.”
We commiserated on the cruelties of the system. I glanced around at the avocado-colored refrigerator, pale pink drapes, and gleaming white linoleum.
I explained what I'd done so far that day in trying to help Jeff.
She said, “It's hard for me to believe that any of them could do such a thing. I've known most of them since grade school, when I was a room mother. Susan was the first girl Jeff ever loved. When he was in eighth grade, he always seemed to take girls so serious, but he was shy. 'Course in these last couple years, he hasn't talked to me much. All teenagers are like that. But a mother knows when her boy's in love.”
I asked about Jeff and Mr. Trask.
She went on a seven-minute tirade about the man I'd seen her pounding to a pulp the day before. She explained that he did everything to drive the children away from her. After she wound down about him, I got her back on the subject of the kids.
“Paul Conlan and Jeff have played together since kindergarten. They've had all the fights and scrapes two boys do. They used to be pretty equal in sports, but then Paul just shot past him. I hate those games. I don't understand what they're trying to do. I watch, but I'm hopeless. Jeff is a good athlete, so I encourage him. I try to get to as many of his games as I can.”
Eric bounced into the room, saw us, and gave a breezy greeting. He only paused a second or two when I introduced Scott. His reaction was, “Wow, cool. The guys at the garage won't believe I met you.” He stood at the open refrigerator, extracted a half gallon of milk, and, over his mother's protests, chugged a few gulps directly from the carton. He wore a heavy pea coat. On his way out, he told me he'd be sure to get to my car tomorrow. I managed to stop him long enough for him to agree to talk to me at school around four o'clock the next day. He told me he'd drive the car over if it was finished, then he left.
Mrs. Trask sighed. “They don't listen to me.” She offered us another beer, but we declined. We moved to the living room. From the corner of a sagging couch, I observed the filled shelves. Amid the paraphernalia, I saw portraits of her kids. I recognized them as school photos in cheap frames. Mrs. Trask eased her bulk into an imitation leather chair and shook her head.
“I feel most sorry for that Paul Conlan,” she said. “He's such a sad boy.”