by G. Neri
“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.
“What are we going to do, Dad?”
He stopped and turned to face me. “I’m going to undo the biggest mistake I ever made. I’m taking you and your mother back home. You’ll get back on track, go to your old school, graduate, then—”
“Then what?” I asked. I really didn’t know.
His eyes couldn’t hide the doubt. “Then . . . we’ll pretend this whole thing never happened.”
We waited for the elevator. I could see he didn’t believe his own words. I reached over and held his hand. He kept staring at the elevator door, but squeezed my hand back.
We had a family meeting. Actually, it was more like a fight, but after a while everyone calmed down. During a lull, I got a call from Destiny.
“They’re being released. I just got a text from Prince,” she said.
“That was fast.”
“What are you gonna do?” she asked.
I listened to my parents. “We’re fighting about it now.”
“We are not fighting,” said Dad. “We’re discussing.”
“Are we?” asked Mom.
I held up five fingers, asking for a break. They didn’t notice. I walked away to my room and closed the door. “We might be moving back to Little Rock.”
There was a long pause. “That would suck,” Destiny said. “For Little Rock, I mean.”
She still knew how to break the ice.
“There is one other option,” I said. “But my dad would kill me if he found out.”
“Like that’s better than Kalvin killing you?”
I shuddered. “I really don’t think Kalvin would do that. He’d be the first one the cops tracked down. Besides, I got him off, didn’t I?”
“Technically. I don’t think he’ll see it that way.”
She paused for a long time, weighing the options. “Do you need help?” I didn’t want her getting sucked into this. But I did need one thing.
“You can help me arrange a sit-down,” I asked.
“A sit-down? What’re you, a mafia guy?”
I shrugged. “Even the mafia knows you have to respect a sit-down, especially with your enemies.”
“You know you’re crazy, right? That’s just in the movies.”
“I know . . . but will you just . . . text him and ask? Somewhere public. For tonight? Before we move away?”
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” she sighed. She was thinking it over. “Fuck it. Might as well ring in the new year with a bang.”
I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
She called me back ten minutes later.
“Tonight,” she said. “Taco Bell on Grand. Ten o’ clock. But I’m coming with you. You’ll need backup.”
“Fine. I just have to sneak out. I’m pretty sure we’ll be on lockdown tonight. My mom might even stay home from work.”
“So how are you gonna pull that off?” she asked.
“Uh, I’ll think of something. Did you talk to Prince? What’re they doing?”
“Celebrating. You should see the TKO page. They talking shit like they’re political prisoners set free. Say they gonna sue the city and all that kind of stuff. K’s talking about how they’re the Trayvon Martins of St. Louis.”
“Jesus. I know he doesn’t believe that shit. He’s just saying whatever will get him on the news.”
“They’re already on the news. They’ve been the lead story today. You should check it out.”
I turned on my TV, flipped a few channels until I saw the news showing the crew emerge from juvie. Even their parents were out there cheering and high-fiving each other.
A reporter cornered Kalvin. “Of course, the case got thrown out,” he said. “They’re always trying to profile us, ’cause of the way we dress. Some people get attacked and who do they look for? Black teens.”
The reporter asked him what he felt about the victim. “I don’t hold no grudges. I feel sorry for Joe Lee and his wife. It’s sad. Whoever did this is messed up.”
So what were they were going to do now? He shrugged. “Celebrate. Be with my family and start the New Year free. Just be happy to be out. I’m going to Taco Bell first thing.”
He looked into the camera and winked. At me.
44
Mom and Dad didn’t say too much during dinner; we just resigned ourselves to the idea that we’d probably have to leave St. Louis. We’d sleep on it and talk more in the morning. Dad felt we’d be OK tonight, that no one was stupid enough to come after us on the day they got out of jail.
Still, just to be safe, he’d use the chair under the doorknob trick. And he’d be sleeping on the couch. With his gun.
Mom and Dad wanted to stay up and watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV. When 9:30 rolled around, I pretended to be tired and said I was gonna crash. Before I locked my door, Mom and Dad each came in and gave me a pep talk.
Mom was gentle. “I stare every night through a microscope at these cells, knowing that couples are out there praying for fertility. And some of them will go on to have babies and it’s a miracle. But what I think about now is how they can never imagine what it’s like when that baby grows up and something like this happens. You can get mad, say you’ll disown them, but in the end, you’re still our child. No matter what, we’ll do what’s best for you. We aren’t going to let somebody else ruin our lives. The new year will bring us better things; you’ll see.”
Dad took a more direct approach. “I almost hope that bastard tries something, because I’d be perfectly in my rights to shoot that son of a bitch. That’d be my New Year’s resolution.” But then he let the bravado slip and he put his hand on my head. “We’ll get through this, kid. And then we’ll start over, OK?”
Each followed with a hug and a kiss and a good night.
I locked the door behind them.
When the TV in the living room came on and was loud enough, I opened my window and listened to the distant sirens coming out of this huge city. Then it sank in: how stupid was I to meet to meet Kalvin at night? They could be waiting for me in the parking lot to jump me.
“Hey!”
I looked down and saw Destiny standing on the sidewalk. “Are we doing this?” she whispered loudly.
I’d snuck out once before, shimmying down the drainpipe and almost killed myself. But I knew I’d caused all this. I brought this on my family. It was up to me to do something about it. To fix my own mess, as Dad always said.
I had no plan, just a feeling. I grabbed my camera, took a deep breath, and reached for the drainpipe.
When I walked into Taco Bell, I could see why Kalvin had picked it. It wasn’t too crowded, just some teens loading up on burritos before hitting the parties, and a few homeless people escaping the cold. I didn’t see Kalvin at first, but he was around the corner, back toward the bathrooms, sitting in a booth. Just him and Boner. He had his leg hanging out the side and I spotted my homemade tattoo faded and almost gone.
I expected him to be pissed, but instead when he saw me, his eyes lit up. He was all swagger. “Bet you didn’t expect to see me again.”
Boner was wagging his little tail at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Destiny outside the window behind him. She hung back out of sight.
“I don’t think they allow dogs in here,” I said.
“You kidding? He’s the Taco Bell Chihuahua, ain’t that right, Boner?” he said. Boner barked and Kalvin gave him some of his Burrito Supreme.
I slid into the booth across from him. I decided I’d just cut to the chase and took out my camera, putting it on the table between us.
He look
ed at it and chuckled. “Like old times, huh? I suppose you expect me to confess on camera or something? Please . . .” He picked it up and turned it on. “I am innocent,” he said into the lens.
Then he just sat there staring at me, trying to read my mind.
“What?” I asked.
“No New Year’s Eve kiss?”
I started to leave, but he laughed it off. “It’s a joke. Just trying to make this less awkward.”
“That didn’t help.”
“Fine. Come on, why don’t you sit next to me,” he said. “I won’t bite.”
He wasn’t going to make this easy. I glanced quickly over at Destiny lurking in the background. There were enough people around that he wouldn’t make a scene. Plus I spotted the surveillance cameras in the corners.
“Come on, I need to be careful,” he said.
“I’m fine here.”
“Suit yourself.” He got up and moved into my side of the booth. I was about to climb over the back, but he reached out and held my hand. “That’s not the way to treat the guy you almost fucked over for life, is it? Just relax.”
I slid up against the wall. He smiled, then leaned in and touched the zipper on my jacket. I flinched.
“Don’t worry. I need to see if you’re wearing a wire,” he whispered.
“I’m pretty sure minors can’t wear a wire,” I said.
He shook his head and slowly pulled the zipper down. “Still. Can’t be too careful, no?”
I took a quick look over my shoulder. Destiny wasn’t outside the window anymore. Kalvin slipped his hand inside the jacket, where it came to rest on my chest. I lost my breath, panicked, and scanned the main room, where I spotted Destiny sitting at a table near the front door. She had a confused look in her eyes, wondering why we weren’t talking.
Kalvin watched me closely as he moved his hand down my front. When his fingers touched my breast, I caught my breath. I was sure he could feel my heart racing.
He sighed. “Memories. That’s all I got.”
He cupped my breast for a few seconds and smiled to himself. Boner watched me with his big eyes, trembling. Then Kalvin’s hand continued to wander down, over my stomach. He paused when he came to my belt.