“How’d you know?” he managed to say.
“Terence Jarrar,” I said. Greer turned his head to stare at me. “Or his poems,” I continued. “He wrote about you. ‘The steel wheels Turn and turn and turn In the night, Shining with light As if they burn.’ There was more, about burning wheels on the bricks and fate rolling toward him. Took me a while to get it.”
Greer closed his eyes, a look of disgust on his face. “Fucking chair,” he said. He opened his eyes and looked venomously, not at me, but at the wheelchair toppled over onto its side, a wheel still turning.
“So, when did you start selling to him?” I said. “He wrote about getting stoned, too. That part I got. I just didn’t connect it with you until later.”
Greer shut his eyes again.
“He was stoned the night he died,” I continued. “He and Paul Simmons. They were high, on pot or oxy or Vicodin, and they were fucking around with a shotgun by the river, and Terence shot himself. You were the one who sold to him. And when you got scared that I might figure that out, you planted those drugs in my desk. How’d you get a student to find them? You suggest that they look in there? Ask them to get you a piece of paper or something?”
Greer remained silent. Then, his eyes still closed, he said, “It was detention. I had a kid helping me clean desks, getting gum off the undersides. He ran out of paper towels, and I told him to look in your desk—sometimes teachers keep some in there.” He opened his eyes. “It was easy.” He said this without pride or scorn.
“And Terence?” I prodded him.
“Help me,” he said, struggling to sit up.
“What about Terence?”
He gave up and lay back, breathing hard. “Help me,” he spat.
“Tell me about Terence,” I said, insistent. “Did you sell to him?”
He lay there, staring at the ceiling. “Fuck you,” he rasped. “You have no idea.”
“Enlighten me.”
He turned his head to look at me, anger and disgust mingled in his face. “Enlighten you?” he said. “You see my legs?” He jabbed a hand toward them. “I got shot, in Kuwait. Sniper got me in the spine. Instant paraplegic.” His eyes burned into mine, furious. “Doctors saved my life, but they wouldn’t save my legs. I could have spinal surgery and get prosthetics. I could walk again, like a real man. But it costs fifty grand to get the surgery, and the VA won’t cover it. Instead, they gave me that fucking chair. Meanwhile, I get headaches like someone’s in my skull with a jackhammer trying to get out. And nothing touches the pain unless I take enough meds to start drooling on myself.”
“So you started smoking to manage the pain,” I said. Suddenly I felt very tired. “And then, what, you figured you’d start dealing to make a little money on the side? Save up for your surgery?”
He stared at me. “Except for the army, I’ve worked here my entire life,” he said. “Even when I was a kid, I worked here summers. And now people like you look at me like I’m some sort of sad, weird fucker who’s just good enough to pick up your trash. Grads come back and high-five me and shit, want to have a beer with the cripple to show they weren’t like that, they were decent human beings. You think one of them’s gonna pay for me to have surgery? You think I’d ask?”
In spite of everything, I burned with shame at the truth in his words. I recalled Porter Deems’s initial reaction to Greer at the faculty party back in August: Creepy dude in a wheelchair. I looked at Greer, lying on the floor with his useless legs splayed out in front of him. He would never walk again without a surgery he couldn’t afford. It was almost enough to make me reconsider everything. But then I thought of the Jarrars in Ren’s office, Mr. Jarrar’s sorrow so great he could not speak, Mrs. Jarrar’s grief so intense it broke my heart, and their son lying dead on a rock in the middle of the river. And if that sounds too noble, I admit I also thought about my own neck, about the county jail and the charges against me.
I pulled his wheelchair upright and pushed it over to him. “Come on,” I said.
Greer looked up at me. His eyes narrowed in suspicion, and for some reason this pissed me off. “You practically begged me to help you a few seconds ago,” I said. “So get up. You’ve got something to do for me.”
Greer hesitated, his hand already outstretched toward his chair. “Help you how?”
“Clear my name. By telling the cops what you did.”
Greer sneered. “I don’t need to tell them shit,” he said.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my iPhone. “That’s true,” I said. I touched the Play button on the sole recording in the Voice Memos app. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me!” Greer said from my iPhone.
“Good,” my voice replied.
Greer’s eyes had widened. I fast forwarded and touched Play again.
“You were the one who sold to him. And when you got scared that I might figure that out, you planted those drugs in my desk. How’d you get a student to find them? You suggest that they look in there? Ask them to get you a piece of paper or something?”
There was a pause, and then Greer’s voice, sounding tired, came out of my iPhone. “It was detention. I had a kid helping me clean desks —”
I paused it. Greer looked like he had forgotten how to breathe. Then his eyes flicked over toward the baton lying on the floor more than ten feet away.
“Not happening,” I said, stepping between him and the baton. He remained on the floor, watching me tap the screen on my phone. A few moments later, I finished e-mailing a copy of the recording to Briggs and then looked at Greer. “I’m thinking the cops might treat you a little better if you go ahead and confess.”
Greer looked up at me, loathing and despair warring in his face. Then something closed in his eyes—or maybe opened; I couldn’t tell. Greer raised himself slowly onto one elbow. “What if,” he said, “I could tell you something? Something you’d want to know?”
“Like what?” I said, putting my phone back into my pocket.
He lowered his head slightly, as if ashamed to say what he had to say. “Like I know where your friend Fritz is,” he said.
I froze, my hand in my pocket. Greer was looking up at me with a small, ingratiating smile.
“You son of a bitch,” I said.
Greer’s smile fell from his face.
I walked over to the baton and bent to pick it up, ignoring the sharp jab of pain in my side, and walked back toward Greer. He was looking at the baton, then at my face, then at the baton again. “Hey,” he began.