Grier looks up from the sheet of paper. “You do know him then.”
I nod. “Harvey and I fought a couple times a while back.”
What could Harvey say? He was involved in this up to his tiny ears.
“Harvey says that you fight on a fairly regular basis down in the warehouse district, usually between Docks Eight and Nine. That’s your preferred space because one of the fighters’ fathers is the dock manager.”
“Will Kendall’s dad is the dock foreman,” I confirm, feeling a bit more confident. Every guy down there is fighting because he wants to. Mutually agreed upon beatings are not illegal. “He doesn’t care that we use it.”
Grier plucks his shiny pen off the table. “When did you start fighting?”
“Two years ago.” Before my mom died, when her depression was spiraling out of control and I needed an outlet that didn’t include being pissed off at her.
He jots something down. “How did you hear about it?”
“I don’t know. In the locker room?”
“And how often do you go there now?”
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. “I thought we went over this before.” The fight thing came up the first time Grier and I met over this murder mess—the one I’d wrongly thought would go away because I didn’t do it.
“Then you won’t mind going over it again,” Grier says implacably. His pen is poised, waiting for me.
Dully, I recite the answers. “We usually go after football games. We fight and then go to a party.”
“Harvey says you were one of the more regular participants. You would fight two or three males a night. These fights never lasted more than approximately ten minutes each. Usually you came with your brother Easton. ‘Easton is a real dick,’ according to Harvey. And you are ‘a smug asshole.’” Grier pulls down his eyeglasses and peers over the top of the lenses. “His words, not mine.”
“Harvey’s a narc, and he cries if you so much as glare in his general direction,” I say tersely.
Grier arches his eyebrows for a second and then resettles his glasses. “Question: ‘How did Mr. Royal appear during fights?’ Answer: ‘Usually he pretended to be calm.’”
“Pretended? I was calm. It was a dock fight. Nothing was on the line. There wasn’t anything to be excited about.”
Grier keeps reading. “‘Usually he pretended to be calm, but if you said anything bad about his mom, he’d go ballistic. About a year ago, some guy called his mom a whore. He beat that kid so hard the poor shit had to go to the hospital. Royal was banned after that. He broke this kid’s jaw and his eye socket.’ Question: ‘So he never fought again?’ Answer. ‘No. He came back about six weeks later. Will Kendall controlled dock access and said Royal could come back. The rest of us went along with it. I think he paid Kendall off.’”
I stare at my feet so Greer doesn’t see the guilt in my eyes. I did pay off Kendall. The kid wanted a new engine for his GTO, which would’ve set him back two grand. I gave him the money, and I was back in the fights.
“Nothing to say?” Grier prompts.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I try to shrug carelessly. “Yeah, that’s all true.”
Grier makes another note. “Speaking of fights over your mother…” He pauses and picks up another stapled document. “Jaw breaking appears to be a particularly favorite pastime of yours.”
I clench my own jaw and stare stonily back at the lawyer. I know what’s coming next.
“Austin McCord, age nineteen, still reports problems with his jaw. He was forced to eat soft foods for six months while his jaw was wired shut. He required two teeth implants and to this day has difficulty eating solid foods. When asked about the cause of his injury, Mr. McCord was”—Grier shakes the document a little—“pardon the pun, closemouthed, but at least one friend of McCord’s explained that McCord had been in an altercation with Reed Royal, which resulted in serious injuries to his face.”
“Why are you reading that? You made that deal with the McCords and you said it was confidential.” As per the deal, Dad set up a trust to fund McCord’s four-year tuition costs at Duke. A gaze in my father’s direction reveals his own distress. His mouth is a thin line and his eyes are red-rimmed, as if he hasn’t slept for days.
“Confidentiality of those deals are meaningless in a criminal case. Eventually McCord’s testimony can be subpoenaed and used against you.”
Grier’s words pull my attention back to him. “He had it coming.”
“Again, because he called your mother a bad name.”
This is bullshit. As if Grier would ever stand for his momma being badmouthed.
“You’re telling me that a man isn’t going to stand up for the women of his household? Every juror would excuse that.” No southern male would ever allow that kind of insult to pass unchecked.