“I came home.”
“Right after?”
“Yes.”
Grier’s features sharpen. “Are you sure about that?”
I furrow my brow. “I…think so?”
“Wrong answer. The security footage has you arriving an hour later.”
“Arriving where?”
“Here,” he snaps, looking annoyed. “Your home has video surveillance, Reed, or have you forgotten?”
I glance at my father, who nods grimly. “We checked the tapes when you were at school,” he tells me. “The cameras show you coming home at ten p.m.”
“A full hour after you left the O’Halloran penthouse,” Grier points out.
I scan my brain again, trying to remember that night. “I drove around the city a bit,” I say slowly. “I was still pissed about that whole conversation with Brooke. I wanted to calm myself down before I—”
“No,” my dad interrupts.
“No what?” I’m so fucking confused right now.
“You don’t say stuff like that, you hear me? You cannot insinuate, even between us, that you were in a state that required ‘calming down’ that night. You fought with Brooke, but it was no big deal,” Dad says firmly. “You were calm when you went there and calm when you left.”
Frustration knots inside me. “What does it matter if I drove around for an hour or three or ten?” I burst out. “Their tapes show me leaving the penthouse twenty minutes after I got there. So what if I didn’t get home until an hour later?”
“They’re going to subpoena your security footage,” Grier tells my father, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“Again, what does it matter?” I press.
Grier points the pen at me. “It matters because you lied. If you lie once on the stand, they will crucify you there.”
“The stand? I’m going to have to testify?” A whirlwind of emotions forms one giant lump in my stomach. I’ve been telling myself all along that the police will find the real killer during the investigation, but it looks like they think I’m the real killer.
“The detectives noticed you touched your waist a few times and that bloodstains on your shirt developed throughout the interrogation.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. It feels like a rope just got wrapped around my neck.
“How did that happen?” Grier pushes.
“I don’t know. Maybe when I was driving? Or I reached for something?”
“And this injury was the one you sustained how?”
I don’t have to be a lawyer to know that my next admission is going to sound bad. “I got stabbed on the docks.”
“And you were down there why?”
“Fighting,” I mumble under my breath.
“What was that?”
“Fighting. I was fighting.”
“You were fighting?” he repeats.
“There’s no law against fighting.” One of the guys I fight at the docks is the son of an assistant AG. He claims that if we all agree to participate, we aren’t doing anything wrong. Wanting to get hit by someone else isn’t a prosecutable offense.
But I guess it can be evidence of someone who’s violent and possibly murderous.
“And no exchange of money? I have a Franklin Deutmeyer, otherwise known as Fat Deuce, who says that Easton Royal places bets with him for football games. You telling me he never bets on your fights?” Grier doesn’t wait for my lie. “We interviewed Justin Markowitz, who says that there is plenty of money exchanged.”
It doesn’t sound like he needs a response, and I’m right, because Grier barrels forward like he’s ready to give the closing argument to put me away.
“You fight for money. You fight because it makes you feel good. You put a kid in the hospital for no good reason—”
I do interrupt this time. “He insulted my mother.”
“Like this Richmond boy whose nose you broke today? He also insulted your mother?”
“Yes,” I say tightly.
“And what about Brooke? Did she insult your mother, too?”
“What are you saying?” my father growls.
“I’m saying your son has a temper,” Grier snaps. “You so much as breathe on his dead mother’s grave—”
Dad flinches.
“—and he loses control.” Grier tosses his pen on the desk and glares at me. “The DA has a real hard-on for this case. I don’t know why. They’ve got unsolved crimes up the wazoo, murders that happen regularly from the drug trade, bookies like Fat Deuce running around taking money from kids, but they like this case and they like you as the one who did it. Our investigators did a little digging and there are rumors that Dinah O’Halloran may have had a relationship with DA Pat Marolt.
This time it’s Dad who curses. “Goddammit.”
The rope gets tighter.
“They’re going to interview every single one of your classmates. If you’ve had problems with any of them, you’d better tell me about it now.”
“You’re supposed to be one of the best lawyers in the state,” Dad says testily.