We stood and stared at him. Marlee’s chatter came to a halt. She had cat’s-eye glasses with pink rims, and behind them her eyes were wide and magnified.

The kid – he couldn’t have been more than six or seven – pooched up those red lips of his and made kissy-face noises. Then he put his hands on his butt and began to bump his hips at us.

GEORGE AND MARLEE, UP IN A TREE, F-U-C-K-I-N-G!

Braying just like a donkey. We stared, amazed.

You better wear a scumbag when you fuck her, he called over, smirking those red lips. Less you want to have a bunch of retards just like her.

You shut up your face, I said.

Or what? he said.

Or I’ll shut it up for you, I said.

I meant it, too. My father would have been mad if he knew I was threatening to beat up a kid who was younger and smaller, but he wasn’t right to be saying those things. He looked like a little kid, but those weren’t little-kid things he was saying.

Suck my dink, assface, he said, and then stepped behind the hackberry bush.

I thought about going over there, but Marlee was holding my hand so tight it almost hurt.

I don’t like that boy, she said.

I said I didn’t like him either, but to never mind. Let’s go home, I said.

But before we could start walking again, the kid came back out from behind the hackberry bush, and he had Marlee’s Steve Austin lunchbox in his hands. He held it up.

Lose something, fuckwit? he said, and laughed. Laughing wrinkled his face up and made it like a pig’s face. He sniffed at the box and said, I guess it must be yours, cause it smells like cunt. Like retarded cunt.

Give me that, it’s mine, Marlee yelled. She let go of my hand. I tried to hold it, but it greased out on the sweat of our palms.

Come and get it, he said, and held it out to her.

Before I tell you what happened next, I have to tell you about Mrs Peckham. She was the first-grade teacher at Mary Day. I didn’t have her, because I went to the first grade in New Mexico, but most of the kids in Talbot did – Marlee too – and they all loved her. I loved her, and I only had her for playground, when it was her turn to be monitor. If there was kickball, boys against the girls, she was always the pitcher for the girls’ team. Sometimes she’d whip one in from behind her back, and that made everyone laugh. She was the kind of teacher you remember forty years later, because she could be kind and jolly but still make even the antsy-pantsy kids mind.

She had a big old Buick Roadmaster, sky-blue, and we used to call her Pokey Peckham because she never drove it more than thirty miles an hour, always sitting bolt straight behind the wheel with her eyes squinted. Of course, we only saw her drive in the neighborhood, which was a school zone, but I bet she drove pretty much the same way when she was on 78. Even on the interstate. She was careful and cautious. She would never hurt a child. Not on purpose, she wouldn’t.

Marlee ran into the street to get her lunchbox. The bad little kid laughed and threw it at her. It hit the street and broke open. Her Thermos bottle fell out and rolled. I saw that sky-blue Roadmaster coming and yelled for Marlee to look out, but I wasn’t really worried because it was only Pokey Peckham, and she was still a block down, going slow as ever.

You let go of her hand, so now it’s your fault, the kid said. He was looking at me and grinning, his lips drawn back so I could see all his little teeth. He said, You can’t hold onto nothing, dink-sucker. He stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry at me. Then he stepped back behind the bush.

Mrs Peckham said her accelerator stuck. I don’t know if the police believed her or not. All I know is she never taught first grade at Mary Day again.

Marlee bent over, picked up her thermos, and shook it. I could hear the rattle it made. She said, It’s all broke inside, and started crying. She bent down again, to get her lunchbox, and that was when Mrs Peckham’s gas pedal must have stuck because the engine roared and her Buick just leaped down the road. Like a wolf on a rabbit. Marlee stood up with the lunchbox clutched to her chest in one hand and the broken thermos bottle in the other, and she saw the car coming, and she never moved.

Maybe I could have pushed her out of the way and saved her. Or maybe if I’d run out into the street, I would have gotten hit too. I don’t know, because I was as frozen as she was. I just stood there. I didn’t even move when the car hit her. Not even my head moved. I just followed her with my eyes when Marlee flew and then crashed down on her poor soft head. Pretty soon I heard screaming. That was Mrs Peckham. She got out of her car and fell down and got up with her knees bleeding and ran for where Marlee was lying in the street with blood coming out of her head. So I ran too. When I got a little ways, I turned my head. By then I was far enough so I could see behind the hackberry bush. There was no one there.

3

Hallas stopped and put his face in his hands. At last he lowered them.

‘Are you all right, George?’ Bradley asked.

‘Thirsty is all. I’m not used to talking so much. There’s very little call for conversation on Death Row.’

I waved my hand at McGregor. He took out his earbuds and stood up. ‘All finished, George?’

Hallas shook his head. ‘There’s a lot more.’

Bradley said, ‘My client would like a drink of water, Mr McGregor. Is that possible?’

McGregor went to the intercom by the door to the monitoring station and spoke into it briefly. Bradley took the opportunity to ask Hallas just how big Mary Day Grammar School had been.

He shrugged. ‘Small town, small school. There couldn’t have been more than a hundred and fifty kids, grades one to six.’

The door of the monitoring room opened. A hand appeared, holding a paper cup. McGregor took it and brought it over to Hallas. He drank greedily and said thank you.

‘Very welcome,’ McGregor said. He went back to his chair, replaced the earbuds, and once more lost himself in whatever he was listening to.

‘And this kid – the bad little kid – was a carrottop? A real carrottop?’

‘Hair like a neon sign.’

‘So if he’d gone to your school, you would have recognized him.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you didn’t, and he didn’t.’

‘No. I never saw him there before, and never afterward.’

‘So how did he get the Jacobs girl’s lunchbox?’

‘I don’t know. But there’s a better question.’

‘What would that be, George?’

‘How did he get away from that hackberry bush? There was nothing but lawn on either side. He was just gone.’

‘George?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you sure there really was a kid?’

‘Her lunchbox, Mr Bradley. It was in the street.’

I don’t doubt that, Bradley thought, tapping his Uniball on his legal pad. It would have been if she’d had it all along.

Or (here was a nasty thought, but nasty thoughts were par for the course when you were listening to the bullshit story of a child-killer) maybe you had her lunchbox, George. Maybe you took it from her and threw it into the street to tease her.

Bradley looked up from his pad and saw from his client’s expression that what he was thinking might as well have been on a Teletype strip going across his forehead. He felt his face warming up.

‘Do you want to hear the rest? Or have you already made up your mind?’

‘Not at all,’ Bradley said. ‘Continue. Please.’

Hallas drank the rest of his water, and took up his tale.

4

For five years or more I dreamed about that bad little kid with the carroty hair and the beanie cap, but eventually the dreams went away. Eventually I got to a place where I believed what you must believe, Mr Bradley: that it was just an accident, that Mrs Peckham’s accelerator really did stick, as they sometimes will, and if there was a kid over there, teasing her … well, kids do tease sometimes, don’t they?