At the Edge (10 page)

He laid his hand flat on his brother's headstone. “There was a neighbor out with his dog. If he hadn't come along when he did, Greg would have drowned. But this man saved him. He brought him out, did CPR on him, and rushed him up to the house. When Richard—my dad—found out what had happened, he hit me. My mother was screaming. She had to pull him off me.”

“You must have been terrified,” I said.

James stared at the stone.

“I shouldn't have turned my head,” he said. “But Greg—” He shook his head. “He could be such a pain. My dad let him do whatever he wanted. Greg could get away with murder, and he knew it. I got in trouble all the time because of him. But he was smart, too. And funny. He could really make me laugh. Whenever my dad got mad at me, Greg would always come up to my room and clown around until he got me to laugh.”

He smiled at the thought, but a moment later his smile faded. “Anyway, we moved back to the city again a few years later. The night we went to the movies, my dad went into the store, and Greg and I went across the street to the car. There were all these garbage cans in the alley. They were smelly, and I was afraid there might be rats. I told Greg we should wait on the street. But he was fooling around, and he didn't listen to me. He ran into the alley. I couldn't let him go in there alone. I went in after him to get him. There was a man in the alley. He shot Greg.”

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep, shuddery breath.

“Greg was lying on the ground. There was blood all over the front of his shirt, and he had a surprised look on his face, like he couldn't believe what happened. He was looking right at me, trying to say something, but he couldn't get the words out. I ran to where he was and knelt down beside him and held his hand.” James swallowed hard. “I held his hand. And he went still and quiet. He died.”

A tear trickled down his cheek. He rubbed fiercely at it.

“My dad said he was coming out of the store when he heard a big bang. He said his first thought was that it was a car backfiring. Then he heard me. I was screaming for him. He started to run to where the car was parked. He said other people must have heard, too, because they were moving toward the alley—all except this one man who was hurrying away from the sound instead of toward it. My dad told me later that he should have realized, but that he wasn't thinking.”

“Realized?”

“Who the guy was,” James said. “He said he wished he had taken a good look at him—if he'd known what was going to happen ... But by then it was too late.”

He pulled his hand away from the headstone.

“I was kneeling on the ground, holding Greg's hand. I remember my dad showing up. I remember him talking to me. Then the cops arrived, and an ambulance, but that part's all kind of a blur. My dad told me later that I wouldn't let go even when the paramedics arrived. He said he had to pry me loose from Greg. The cops were there, too. They kept asking me questions—what did I see, where did the man go, what did he look like? But I just kept seeing Greg lying on the ground, covered in blood, staring up at me with that surprised look on his face.”

“Did you see the guy who did it?”

A faraway look came into his eyes.

“He had dark eyes—I couldn't tell what color exactly—a long, thin nose, ears that stuck out, shaggy brown hair, a small mouth, and a scar on his chin, right here.” He pointed. “And he had a gun. I got a good look at it. It looked huge. Later—I think at the police station—I told a cop how I had stared at that gun. He must have written down what I said or told someone about it, because it came up at the trial.”

He stepped away from the grave and looked down at the ground.

“The cops thought maybe the guy was trying to break into my dad's car or steal it. I described him to them. They showed me some pictures, and I picked him out. Then they showed the pictures around, and they found a man who said he'd seen the same guy in the area maybe a half hour before the movie ended. They found someone else who had seen him even earlier. The cops found the guy and brought him in. They put him in a lineup and asked me if I would see if I recognized him. I was terrified. What if he saw me? What if he had friends who would try to kill me?” He looked sheepishly at me. “Pretty selfish of me, huh?”

“You were just a kid, James.”

“I didn't want to do it. I was crying. Can you believe it? My little brother had been shot dead, and I was crying because I was scared of what would happen to me.” He shook his head. “If they hadn't let my dad stay with me, I don't think I could have done it.” His eyes skipped back to the gravestone.

“I picked him out. He had a record. He had a drug problem, he'd stolen stuff before and had done some muggings, stuff like that. The police arrested him. I remember how happy my parents were when they heard. My dad said they would get him for sure. They said the guy would pay for what he did to Greg. I thought it was all over. But it didn't turn out that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought it would be like TV. I thought once they arrested him, they would make him confess. But he didn't confess. Then I thought, okay, so then I'll go to court and tell everyone exactly what had happened, and they'll know he's guilty, and he'll go to prison for the rest of his life. But it wasn't like that. The cops didn't find the guy's fingerprints on the car or even in the alley. They never found the gun that he'd used to shoot Greg. They didn't find any of Greg's blood on the guy's clothes. Basically, it came down to what I had seen. I thought everyone would believe me, but they didn't.”

That was no surprise, either. How many times had I heard my parents talk about eyewitness evidence—from opposite sides? They both agreed that eyewitness evidence is the least reliable type of evidence there is. What eyewitness see—or think they see—can be influenced by the weather or lighting or faulty memories. In a case like the one James was describing, where there was only one witness to the actual crime—and where the whole case hinged on what that one witness, a kid, said—a good defense attorney would go after that witness. A good defense attorney would shake that eyewitness up and do his best to get the witness to admit he wasn't one hundred percent positive. It's up to the prosecutor to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. All the defense has to do is create that doubt.

“It took forever until the trial happened,” James said. “Months and months.” His voice started to quaver.

“James, you don't have to—”

His expression was fierce when he turned to look at me.

“I do,” he said. “I do.”

I nodded.

“Finally the trial happened,” he continued. “The prosecutor explained to me how I should answer the questions—I should be truthful. If I wasn't sure, I should say so. If I needed a minute to think, I should take it. I shouldn't be nervous. And that's what I did when I got to court. The prosecutor asked if the person I'd seen in the alley was in court and I said yes. I pointed to him. My parents were watching me the whole time. My mom looked proud.”

I tried to imagine what it must have been like to be Greg Johnson's parents, sitting there in court, watching their other son testify. All those hopes pinned on one boy.

“Then the guy's lawyer started asking questions,” James said. “They seemed so easy—what did Greg and I do when the movie was over? Where did I go? Where did he go? What made me go into the alley? The lawyer seemed nice, and I answered the questions. But then ...”

He looked at the headstone again. “There were more questions. They got more detailed. What did I remember about the person I said I had seen in the alley? Was it light or dark in the alley? How far away was the person I said I had seen? Was it true that I told the police that when I saw the gun, I was scared the guy was going to shoot me? Did I also tell the police that the gun looked huge, bigger than anything I had ever seen? Did I know that according to some expert, the gun that shot Greg was actually a small gun—a .22? Would I like to see how big a .22 actually is?”

His voice grew bitter.

“The way it went,” he said, “was that if I was wrong about the gun, then maybe I was wrong about the man I'd seen. Didn't I tell the police that he was really tall? I did. I did say that. But it turned out he was just average. I said I thought he was holding the gun in his right hand, but the guy turned out to be left-handed. The lawyer got me all confused. I could tell by the way the jury was looking at me that they thought I was just some confused kid. I remember that lawyer saying, ‘Maybe you made a mistake. If you did, nobody will blame you for that.' After all, my brother was lying on the ground, I was terrified. It was perfectly understandable if I got confused about who I said I had seen. And then, of course, there was no physical evidence.”

My dad always says that physical evidence is the best kind of evidence—it never lies, never changes, never makes mistakes. A case with solid physical evidence, he says, is the kind that's most likely to stand up in court.

“You know what happened?” James said. “You want to guess how it turned out?”

“T

he guy got off,” James said. “He got off. And you know what? When the verdict came in, when they said not guilty, the guy turned and looked right at me. He looked like he wanted to kill me. He came up to me after it was all over—I was really scared. He said because of me, he'd lost his little girl. He said he was going to get me for that.”

“What did he mean?”

James shook his head. “I don't know. My dad told me not to listen to him. He took me out of there. But the guy called our house. He said he was going to get me. I had nightmares about him every night.”

“That's awful,” I said.

“My parents took the verdict hard. My mom said it wasn't my fault, but that didn't stop her from crying and crying. My dad didn't say anything. If my mom or I ever mentioned Greg, he got up and left the room. And school?” He shook his head. “I couldn't stand to go there anymore. I felt like everyone was staring at me, everyone was saying, ‘That's the guy who screwed up and let his brother's killer go free.'”

“I'm sure nobody really thought that.”

“I should have told them that I wasn't confused. I should have said I knew exactly who killed my brother—I would have recognized him anywhere. He was sitting right there in that courtroom. It was him. We moved after that. We all just wanted to get away. But it didn't help. Six months after we left, my mom died.”

Oh.

“It was what they call a ‘single-vehicle accident,'” James said. “It happened on a hill near our new house. She smashed into a pole. Car was totaled. The cops said she must have been going 35 miles an hour when she hit that pole. They said there were no skid marks—it looked like she didn't even try to stop.”

I felt sick for him. I thought about the so-called accident he and his father had been in. That had happened a year ago—almost exactly two years after James's mother had died, according to his dad. Mr. Derrick had said that he was in the car with James—the way he'd said it, it was obvious that James had been driving. Had James been so filled with guilt that he had tried to end it all? I remembered the scars on his body. I couldn't begin to imagine how he must have felt as tragedy piled up on tragedy. It seemed like far too much for one person to bear.

“Why did you move back here, James?”

“My dad wanted to come back. He thought it would help. And after everything he'd been through ...”

After everything he'd been through?

“I didn't want to come,” James said. “I didn't want to have anything to do with this place or with anyone who knew me. I didn't want to be that kid again—the one who had let his brother's killer walk free. So ... I changed my name,” he said. “My real name is David James Johnson.” So that was why his dad called him Dee. “I changed it so no one would know it was me. But you know what? It didn't help. I still know I'm me.”

“It's not your fault, James,” I said again.

“Then why does it feel like it is? He was my brother, Robyn, and I let him down. I let my parents down too. My mom never recovered. Even before the ... the accident, she wasn't the same person. She cried every night for Greg. Every night. And my dad blames me for everything.”

“I'm sure he doesn't.”

James looked deep into my eyes, and in that moment I saw years of grief and regret.

“Yes, he does, Robyn. He does.”

  .    .    .

We drove home in silence. I had no idea what to say, and James seemed lost in bitter memories. When he finally pulled up in front of my dad's building, he said, “I'll understand if you don't want to tutor me anymore.”

“Of course I want to tutor you,” I said. “Why wouldn't I?”

“After everything I told you?”

“I still want to tutor you, James. Really.” Did he seriously think that I would drop him over something that he wasn't responsible for? I put a hand over his to reassure him. “We'll get together tomorrow after school, okay?”