Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse
Author:Erika Krouse [Krouse, Erika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
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My nose was healing and the black eyes just looked like Iâd had a bad night, but reentry into the case still felt impossible. I searched my lost and broken leads, one âif onlyâ after another, straight out of The Wizard of Oz. If this player only had a brain. If that university employee only had a heart. If this or that witness only had some courage. Trudy, the sex worker Daisy used to service recruits, yielded nothingâshe refused to talk about it. She had moved on with her life and said her husband didnât know about her past. I called her back twelve times, leaving messages on her voicemail that were discreet enough to imply that I could stop being discreet anytime I wanted to. She still never called me back, and I ended up feeling exactly like what I had turned intoâa bully.
I had to bring Grayson something. I was like an addict milking the dregs of her previous high. I felt desperate, jittery. My teeth itched.
I decided to hit my list of players again. Just because I had asked them all my questions didnât mean they had given me all their answers. I would just ask again and again until I got better answers. Hammer hammer hammer. And I may not be smarter than Grayson, but I was smarter than those players, who didnât know how to lie about the truth because they didnât even know what they knew.
One night from the apartment JD and I now shared, I called a player named Gabriel. He hadnât been at the party so he was low on my list of priorities, and I had initially given up after leaving a few unreturned messages. Gabriel was a senior at the university, a lineman on the offensive team, so he didnât socialize much with the defensive backs. He had been friends with Simone and her friend Yvonne. Rumor was that Gabriel was injured and didnât like Coach Riggs. He came from a small soybean, barley, and potato farm in North Dakota run by his single mom.
I studied his picture in the football Media Guide. Gabrielâs eyes bore a shocked expression, cheeks splotched, as if someone had just told him bad news before clicking the shutter. His black hair was cropped, and he wore a blue suit jacket and a gold tie. His neck was wider than his head, and by the stiff way he posed, both looked like they hurt.
On the phone I introduced myself and had to repeat the introduction another two times before Gabriel said, âOh, okay, okay. Yeah. I know who you are. You work for that reporter Yvonne talked about.â
âLawyer.â
âThatâs what I said.â
I found myself puffing out my chest, matching the brusque texture of his voice, tough as a beef shank. âWe need to talk about Simoneâs party.â
âOkay,â Gabriel said obediently. It always amazed me how docile some of the players could be when you told them what to do. But you could never tell them what to think, and Gabriel said, âNo way that stuff happened.
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