It’s not his history. He doesn’t share a last name with either Ricky or his stepfather, but it doesn’t matter. Cortaca’s too small a town for people to stay out of each other’s business.
The whole thing played in the papers and on television. Not just local, either. Story was national. Jessup doesn’t talk about it, and his friends know to steer clear of the question. Not that he has that many friends aside from Wyatt. Teammates, sure. Football in the fall, wrestling in the winter, runs the one hundred and two hundred in track and field in the spring. Buddies, really, which is different from friends. Plus, now, Deanne. And she’s never asked him about what happened with David John and Ricky in the alley. It’s a hole they could fall into. They both know that.
Jessup’s just glad it never went to trial. That would have been an even bigger circus.
An emergency job on the pedestrian mall. Saturday night turned Sunday morning, closing in on two o’clock. Ricky’s nineteen at this point. Out of high school and officially apprenticing with David John. During the days they both wear Dickies short-sleeve shirts, a DJM Plumbing patch above where their names are embroidered. David John liked to say you could charge an extra ten bucks an hour if you looked like you were a real business instead of just some idiot with a truck. He has tattoos himself, but they were out of sight: back, shoulders, chest. He made it clear to Ricky that if he got ink where you could see it while he was working, Ricky would spend his days wearing long-sleeved shirts.
But emergency job, and Ricky coming from his girlfriend’s house. Stacey and her parents congregants at Blessed Church of the White America themselves. So Ricky wearing jeans and a tank top, heading to the van, parked in the alley behind the pedestrian mall, near the back door of the restaurant. The van, “DJM Plumbing” a phone number, and “On call, on time. Your local plumber” stenciled on the side. David John’s text to Ricky:
already inside. Uniform on front seat.
It’s a warm night. Early in September. A few days before the full moon, so even if the alley wasn’t lit, and the interior dome light from the van didn’t spill out over him from the open passenger side door, it would have been plenty bright enough to see Ricky pull off his tank top. He’s shirtless, holding his work shirt and ready to slip it on as the boys walk by.
Two of them. Both Cortaca University students, cutting through the alley on the way home from a bar. Black kids. One from Atlanta, the other from Buffalo, both seniors, both twenty-one. Jermane Holmes and Blake Liveson. They’d both snuck their beers out of the bar with them. Bottles of Yuengling, TopFloor Bar running a special.
Right there on Ricky’s back, “Blessed Church of the White America” circling a flaming cross, the whole thing about the size of a sheet of printer paper, six hundred bucks’ worth of tattoo. On his right shoulder, “eighty-eight” and on his left shoulder, “pure blood.” Impossible for Holmes and Liveson to miss.
Sometimes Jessup wonders what would have happened if it had been him standing in the alley instead of Ricky. At seventeen, Jessup is six foot two and weighs in at 240. He’s chiseled. His face shows his age, but he’s got a man’s body, and all you have to do is see him walk to understand that Jessup is built for certain kinds of violence. But two different dads mean two different boys, two different bodies. Ricky thought of himself as lean—even though he played football—but he looked scrawny, like his dad. He was strong and never had trouble keeping up with David John at work, but when they arrested him, he was five eight and a buck sixty. Not imposing. Holmes and Liveson weren’t particularly big themselves, and they might have kept walking if they’d seen somebody Jessup’s size. But it wasn’t Jessup. It was Ricky.
The black kids come at him. Ricky said he told them he didn’t want trouble, was just there to do a job, but words were exchanged. Names called. Liveson, the bigger of the two black students, hits Ricky with his bottle of Yeungling—the booking photos show a deep bruise seeping down from Ricky’s eye and a cut across his cheek, could have lost an eye—and according to Ricky, the other one, Holmes, the one from Atlanta, has a knife. Ricky reaches through the open passenger-side door, grabs a loose pipe wrench from the floor.
Self-defense, Ricky said.
Eighteen inches and five and a half pounds of steel. Swings the pipe wrench as hard as he can. Takes the jaw off Liveson. Kid spins and flops to the asphalt. By this time, the yelling’s brought David John out into the alley. He’s grabbing the back of the second black kid’s shirt, Holmes, the one Ricky claims has the knife, when Ricky swings the wrench a second time. Connects right on Holmes’s temple. Staves his head in. Dead before he hits the ground.
The bar has a video camera on the back entrance, but it’s low quality and doesn’t capture everything. Jerky, shooting at 7.5 frames per second, and grainy. The whole fight captured. Liveson twitches for thirty, forty seconds before going still, but it’s not clear when he actually dies. As for Holmes, only his body from the knees down are in the frame, and his legs don’t move at all. There’s no sound, but you can see Ricky sit down and lean against the front wheel of the van. He drops the wrench and slumps over, rests his head on his hands. He’s still shirtless. David John stands in front of Ricky for a full minute, his back to the camera. Then he turns and looks around. After a few seconds, it’s clear that he spots the camera. He stares at it, and then David John is in and out of the van—you can’t see what he’s doing, no way to prove he’s grabbing a knife, wiping it clean of prints—and walks past Holmes’s body. There’s a herky-jerky movement, shadow falling into the frame, and then Holmes is rolled over, still only his lower legs in the frame, his sneakers now turned so that he’s on his back. Another minute, and then David John comes back into the frame. He says something to Ricky and pulls his phone out of his pocket. Calls the cops and then sits down next to Ricky.