I never saw a fight. I never saw a truck. The lot was dark on the east side because two of the lights were out, and I had my head down because it was raining, and I was twenty-four and thinking about nothing at all.
But my receipt put me there. The cashier remembered me because I was the only customer in twenty minutes.
And I had a record. One count of simple assault from when I was twenty, a bar on Fulton Street, a guy who swung first and a bouncer who told the cops the wrong order of events. Thirty days suspended. Nothing. But it was there, in a drawer, with my face on it.
Detectives work the way water works. They go downhill. They found the easy shape first and then they went looking for things to fit inside it.
Four days after Tommy died, Earl Rooker walked into the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office with his daughter and said she had seen the whole thing.
