“Tim is such an asshole,” Davis said as he caught up with his friend Greg. The two walked home from school together almost every day. They lived on the same street and had been friends most of their lives. “What happened to you?” Greg asked, noticing the cut on the left side of his friend’s lower lip. “Timmy,” he responded. “He fucking sucker-punched me.” “Timmy Watkins? But, he’s such a nice guy. Plus, you two have been friends since you were, what, seven?” “Yeah. That was until he started talking shit about kicking J.D.’s ass. I went to settle things and he sucker-punched me.” “I’m confused, what’s his beef with J.D.?” “I don’t know. Travis told me Tim was mad at J.D. for something and he was saying he was going to kick his ass when he saw him. So, I found Tim and asked him what his deal was.” “And he just punched you?” “No, he backed down and pretended to not know what I was talking about. I might’ve pushed him, but then he sucker-punched me. I was about to hit him back, but someone saw Mr. Smith coming and we had to scatter.” “Tim Watkins?” Greg asked again, incredulously. “I know, right?” “Uhhh,” Greg stopped walking and looked at his friend. “What’s wrong?” “Yeah, I don’t think that was Tim Watkins. I think that was Tim Reynolds. T.R. was pissed that your brother was bothering his girlfriend. J.D. was kind of a dick about it, but Tim got pissed.” “Reynolds? Really?” “I think so. I heard J.D. talking about it at lunch. He was going to stop bothering Courtney and avoid T.R. for a few days.” Davis got a sick look on his face. “Shit. I feel bad now. I wouldn’t have bothered T.R. It sounds like he’s got a point. Before they started dating, J.D. thought Courtney was into him, and he’s been a bit jealous. And, well, he can be a dick.” Davis was visibly bothered. He was walking slowly with his hands on his hips, muttering under his breath. “Are you okay, dude? You look like you’re going to throw up.” “I really feel terrible. Timmy never gets into fights. I’ve been friends with him almost as long as you and me. Fuuuuuuuck.” “Nothing you can do now. Tell him you’re sorry tomorrow.” “No, man. I gotta go now.” He took his backpack off and held it to Greg. “Can you drop this at my house?” “Sure.” “Thanks.” With that, Davis backtracked a block and headed west towards Tim’s house. He lived with his mom and stepfather, Craig. Craig was their little league coach. He knew enough about baseball to coach 13-year-olds, but he yelled a lot. He acted like they were the Mariners or something. He followed his usual route of shortcuts to his friend’s house. A weight was starting to lift as he got closer. He was glad that Tim busted his lip and not the other way around. The direct route employed by everyone going to Tim's house led them to his backyard. They emerged from some hedges that lined the perimeter of the yard and usually called on Tim at the back door. As he approached the hedges, Davis heard some arguing. “I’m sorry. It was an accident,” it sounded as if Tim was saying. “Don’t lie to me, you fucking brat,” replied a deeper, older voice. “I’m not lying,” Tim cried. There was a pair of slapping sounds and some rustling. Davis couldn’t tell what was happening because he hadn’t come through the hedges yet. The shrubs were dense. He could not look through without making noises or otherwise broadcasting his location. “I told you I don’t want you playing with my shit. That thing you broke was fucking expensive.” “It was an accident,” Tim screamed, continuing to cry. “It was on the table and I, I bumped it when I walked by. I wasn’t playing with it.” “I don’t fucking believe you,” yelled the man Davis now recognized as Coach Anderson. There was another slapping sound and moments later, Tim was crying for Craig to stop. Davis edged closer to the corner of the hedge to see what was happening. As he finally got a sight of his friend, he saw Craig twisting his arm. He then gave the boy a heave to the ground. “If I fucking see you touching any of my shit again…” he paused, looking concerned. Davis could not believe what he was witnessing. Transfixed, he slowly drifted into the open and became more visible around the hedge. He was staring at Tim laying motionless on the ground. Without realizing it, he then started approaching the boy slowly and was now fully in the yard. Craig had not noticed Davis and he walked over to Tim with a look of anger slowly dissipating. “Get up. You’re not getting out of trouble by pretending to be hurt.” He was now standing over Tim when his expression turned to concern. Meanwhile, Davis was standing in the yard willing Tim to move with his mind. “Fuck,” Craig growled to himself. He ran into the house. With the coast clear, Davis went to check on Tim. He approached swiftly, but with his eyes fixed on the back door. When he reached the boy, he knelt down and nudged his friend. “Tim? Timmy? Are you okay? He’s in the house.” He continued to nudge his friend, now devoting all his focus to getting Tim to wake up. “Get up.” He started to cry. “C’mon, you can come to my house,” he pleaded. The tears started to flow freely now. “My parents will protect you. My mom will call your mom. Everything will be okay.” He was now right over Tim and noticed the blood for the first time. It was flowing from the back of his head. When he fell, he must’ve hit his head, Davis thought. Without realizing it, he grabbed his friend’s head, getting blood on his hands and shirt. He then noticed a bloody rock underneath that he must have hit. The realization that Tim could be dead was too much to bear. He leaned upright on his knees, continuing to cry, but now rocking in place. His eyes did not leave the first dead body he’d seen until he was jerked to his feet. He was now face-to-face with Coach Anderson. “What happened?!?” he screamed at the shocked boy. “I, I,” Davis started to stammer, “I think he h-h-hit his h-h-h-head on a rock when you pushed him.” “When I pushed him?” Coach Anderson replied angrily. He emphasized the "I" in that statement, incredulous at the accusation. “Yeah, I saw,” he stopped talking immediately. “What did you see?” Coach Anderson was gripping Davis’ shoulders tightly, but the boy would not talk. He just sobbed. Coach Anderson slapped his face, but that did little to help the situation. He shook him once more and repeated his question. “What did you see?” “Nothing,” Davis cried back. “Tim fell, that’s all.” “You didn’t see a fucking thing,” Coach Anderson demanded. Davis did everything he could to avoid looking at him in the face. “Look at me,” Coach Anderson yelled, grabbing Davis’ face and bringing it around to meet his. “You didn’t see a fucking thing. If you say anything to anyone, I’ll fucking kill you.” Davis was paralyzed with fear and could not even muster a nod of his head. Coach Anderson slapped him across the face again to yield a response. “This was an accident. If you tell anyone what you think you saw, what happens to you won’t be.” “Yeah,” Davis mumbled softly. It was all he could muster hoping to please the enraged adult. Coach Anderson released Davis, who crumpled to the ground and resumed crying. Moments later, two paramedics came around the house. The whole scene played out silently to him. One EMT checked Tim’s vitals, while the other stood by with his hands in a bag of supplies. As time passed, the night sky rolled in, and the yard became more populated with people. There were police, several neighbors on the perimeter, and, finally, Tim’s mom. She looked upset and Craig was consoling her. Davis still heard nothing and, when he saw her, it was the first time he looked away from Tim in almost 30 minutes. Eventually, a younger policewoman took Davis from the scene. He was led to a car and driven to the police station. Davis thought he had muttered some words in the car but could not remember. His memories jumped from Tim’s body, then the look on Tim’s mother’s face. The next thing he remembered, he was sitting in a room when a pair of detectives in suits entered and sat down. There was an older detective, a stern-looking man with more salt than pepper in his crew cut. The wrinkles lining his face looked carved from stone. He did the talking. He snapped his fingers in Davis' face to break his traumatized trance. “Son, I’m Detective Leonard. Can you tell me what happened?” he asked for a fifth time, but it was the first time Davis heard him. Davis gave an almost imperceptible head shake. “Well, here’s what the boy’s stepfather told us. He says he heard arguing and, by the time he got outside, you were kneeling by Tim’s body covered in blood and crying. It looks to us like you two were fighting and, maybe, it was an accident? Is this what happened?” The young boy looked up at the detective with wide eyes and a confused look on his face. He started shaking his head ‘no,’ it was a slow nod at first and then became emphatic by the time he started to speak. “No,” he said, starting to cry again. “That’s not what happened. I didn’t, no, I didn’t.” Davis stopped. He didn’t know what to say next. He shifted his looks from one detective to the other. “Was someone else there?” Detective Leonard asked. Now, he froze. Thoughts of what Tim’s stepfather had said flooded his mind and he didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t want to lie, but he couldn’t say what he saw. “Well,” the detective started, but his silent partner put his hand on his shoulder. This detective didn’t look new, but he did look young enough to be well-versed in the protocols. These protocols were what some older colleagues may gloss over in the moment and patch later. He had dark brown hair parted to the side and a clean thirty-something face. The only thing Davis could think when looking at him was that he looked like his brother A.J., but about 10 years older. “We need to shore everything up first,” Detective Tinsley said to his partner. These were his first words since entering. “He’s a minor. We need to get his parents in here, an advocate, lawyer. I don’t want this going sideways.” With that, the two detectives left. What happened next was surreal in that so many people talked about him, but rarely to him. He couldn’t keep his story straight without telling exactly what happened. Any time he felt like being killed would be preferable to this hell, he’d encounter Coach Craig. First, it was in a hallway at the station when he whispered a repeat of his threat. Then, when the trial began, they crossed paths. As if the adult could read his mind, he expanded on the threat. He added indiscriminate harm to his family. He assured Davis that he had friends that would finish what he couldn’t. Finally, there was a much-publicized meeting between the “victim" and the accused. Craig used this private meeting to double down on everything. The indiscriminate harm became very focused. If Davis had a change of heart, Jenna, his eight-year-old sister, would feel the brunt of the retribution. Craig emerged from the meeting spouting forgiveness and Davis’ fate seemed sealed. Mary Watkins had met Craig Anderson shortly after her husband, Andrew, passed away. They were married eight months later. Her son Tim was 10. Craig seemed like an ordinary guy. He was unexceptional in most ways save for the universal dislike many people felt for him. He was aggressive and a narcissist. Even coaching little league was not altruistic. He took the opportunity to act out some unfulfilled baseball fantasies. His personality was passable for the grief-stricken Mary. As long as he got what he wanted, he treated her well and her son well enough. Nothing in his past would’ve put him on anyone’s radar as an abuser. Any abuse Craid administered was verbal mixed with an "acceptable" amount of discipline. Craig basked in the attention his stepson's death afforded him as someone victim-adjacent. To some extent, he also relished getting away with what happened to Tim. He played the role of the dutiful husband and “spared” Mary the pain of the spotlight. This allowed her to slip into a fog of antidepressants and alcohol to numb the pain. She took an indefinite leave from work and became reclusive. Friends and neighbors chalked it up to grief piled upon grief. The marriage became superficial at best. Craig did little to support her emotionally and instead made sure she was pacified. When the circus around the trial ended, the trajectory of Craig’s life returned to where it had been. Mary was eventually coaxed from her grief coma by her family. Her sister and Andrew’s parents staged an intervention that helped. Over time, she started to recognize her relationship with Craig was an empty husk of a marriage. It was likely that way from the start. She started preliminary work to get a divorce and move closer to family outside of Everett. This was 15 months after Tim’s death. The night before Mary was to visit a divorce attorney, Craig was killed in a one-car accident. It was an ordinary night for him, one of three or four per week that he spent at a bar. It was not one of the increasingly more common nights he left with another woman. He had gotten behind the wheel and, police believe, fell asleep as he was approaching the highway. His car hit a pillar and he died on impact. His blood-alcohol level was 0.18, more than twice the state of Washington’s legal limit. The incident became a cautionary tale for drunk driving. It was one of many, and everyone moved on rather quickly. Davis heard about the death on the news the next day and greeted it with relief. His sister was safe, and Tim’s killer was dead. It was a short-sighted victory, he realized, one that 15-year-olds are happy to claim. It would take several weeks for him to come to terms with the fact that he could never prove his innocence. Craig Anderson’s passing was as unremarkable he was. The only shame is that when he was gone, so was the truth about what happened to Tim Watkins.