Hold Tight

Betsy Hill used to be one of those mothers.

She had started as one of those mothers at the kindergarten drop-off at Hillside Elementary and then middle school at Mount Pleasant and finally here, just twenty yards from where she now stood. She remembered waiting for her beautiful Spencer, hearing the bell, peering out the windshield, watching the kids erupt-exit like ants scattering after a human boot toes their hill. She’d smile when she first laid eyes on him and most of the time, especially in the early days, Spencer would smile back.

She missed being that young mother, the naïveté you are granted with your firstborn. It was different now, with the twins, even before Spencer’s death. She looked back at those mothers, at the way they did it without a care or thought or fear, and she wanted to hate them.

The bell sounded. The doors opened. The students made their way out in giant waves.

And Betsy almost started looking for Spencer.

It was one of those brief moments when your brain just can’t go there anymore, and you forget how horrible everything is now, and you think, for just a brief second, that it was all a bad dream. Spencer would walk out, his backpack on one shoulder, his posture in teenage stoop, and Betsy would see him and think that he needed a hair-cut and looked pale.

People talk about the stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—but those stages tend to blend more in tragedy. You never stop denying. Part of you is always angry. And the whole idea of “acceptance” is obscene. Some shrinks prefer the word “resolution.” Semantically the notion was better, but it still made her want to scream.

What exactly was she doing here?

Her son was dead. Confronting one of his friends would not change that.

But for some reason it felt like it might.

So maybe Spencer hadn’t been alone that whole night. What did that change? Cliché, yes, but it wouldn’t bring him back. What was she hoping to find here?

Resolution?

And then she spotted Adam.

He was walking alone, the backpack weighing him down—weigh- ing them all down, when she thought about it. Betsy kept her eyes on Adam and moved right so that she would be in his path. Like most kids, Adam walked with his eyes down. She waited, adjusting her stance a little left or right, making sure that she stayed in front of him.

Finally, when he got close enough, she said, “Hi, Adam.”

He stopped and looked up. He was a nice-looking boy, she thought. They all were at this age. But Adam too had changed. They had all crossed some adolescent line. He was big now, tall with muscles, much more a man than a boy. She could still see the child in his face, but she could also see something like a challenge too.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi, Mrs. Hill.”

Adam started to walk away, now veering toward his left.

“Can I talk to you a moment?” Betsy called out.

He glided to a stop. “Uh, sure. Of course.”

Adam jogged toward her with athletic ease. Adam had always been a good athlete. Not Spencer. Had that been part of it? Life is so much easier in towns like this when you’re a good athlete.

He stopped maybe six feet in front of her. He couldn’t meet her eye, but few high school boys could. For a few seconds she did not say anything. She just looked at him.

“You wanted to talk to me?” Adam said.

“Yes.”

More silence. More staring. He squirmed.

“I’m really sorry,” he said.

“About?”

That answer surprised him.

“About Spencer.”

“Why?”

He didn’t reply, his eyes everywhere but on her.

“Adam, look at me.”

She was still the adult; he was still the kid. He obeyed.

“What happened that night?”

He swallowed and said, “Happened?”

“You were with Spencer.”

He shook his head. His face drained of color.

“What happened, Adam?”

“I wasn’t there.”

She held up the picture from the MySpace page, but his eyes were back on the ground.

“Adam.”

He looked up. She thrust the picture toward his face.

“That’s you, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, it might be.”

“This was taken the night he died.”

He shook his head.

"Adam?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. Hill. I didn’t see Spencer that night.”

“Look again—”

“I have to go.”

“Adam, please—”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hill.”

He ran away then. He ran back toward the brick edifice and around the back and out of sight.

9

CHIEF Investigator Loren Muse checked her watch. Meeting time.

“You got my goodies?” she asked.

Her assistant was a young woman named Chamique Johnson. Muse had met Chamique during a somewhat famous rape trial. After a rough start in the office, Chamique had made herself fairly indispensable.

“Right here,” Chamique said.

“This is big.”

“I know.”

Muse grabbed the envelope. “Everything in here?”

Chamique frowned. “Oh, no, you did not just ask me that.”

Muse apologized and headed across the hall to the office of the Essex County prosecutor—more specifically, the office of her boss, Paul Copeland.

The receptionist—someone new and Muse was terrible with names—greeted her with a smile. “They’re all waiting for you.”

“Who’s waiting for me?”

“Prosecutor Copeland.”

“You said, ‘they’re all.’ ”

“Pardon?”

“You said, ‘they’re all’ waiting for me. ‘They’re all’ suggests more than one. Probably more than two.”

The receptionist looked confused. “Oh, right. There must be four or five of them.”

“With Prosecutor Copeland?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

She shrugged. “Other investigators, I think.”

Muse was not sure what to make of this. She had asked for a private meeting to discuss the politically sensitive situation with Frank Tremont. She had no idea why there would be other investigators in his office.

She heard the laughter even before she got into the room. There were indeed six of them, including her boss, Paul Copeland. All men. Frank Tremont was there. So were three more of her investigators. The last man looked vaguely familiar. He held a notebook and pen and there was a tape recorder on the table in front of him.