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I waited until she’d calmed down and then said, “Tell me about Rashawn Turnbull and Stefan.”
“They were connected, right from the start,” she said as she poured me coffee. “And I admit that it bothered me because our relationship was just blossoming and Stefan seemed to give as much time to Rashawn and the other students he took an interest in as he did to me.”
On the third or fourth day of the school year, Patty said, Stefan found Rashawn sitting in the locker room, refusing to change for gym class. The boy was small for his age, and withdrawn. Both the black boys and the whites picked on him because his mother was white and a recovering addict while his father was African American and a crook.
“Rashawn felt alone, like he didn’t fit in anywhere,” she said. “Stefan said he’d felt similarly when he was young, you know?”
“Sure,” I said. “Stefan ever use drugs in your presence?”
“Never. He knew I wouldn’t stand for it.”
“But you knew about his past?”
She nodded. “He would never deal drugs. He hates what drugs stole from him and feared what it could steal from kids.”
“Did you ever find drugs in the house?”
“Never.”
“Did Stefan ever just disappear for hours at a time without telling you where he was going?”
She looked at something in her lap, said, “We love each other, but we’re not attached at the hip.”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said, agitated. “Yes. Sometimes he’d go off, said he had things to do.”
“When Stefan came back, where did he tell you he’d gone?”
She thought about that. “Usually for hikes or runs. There’s a path that parallels the train tracks that he likes. Too noisy for me. Other times he was staking out places in town where kids gathered.”
“Why would he do that?”
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Patty said that toward the end of last year, there’d been a rash of incidents involving heroin and meth at the Starksville high school, including the two overdoses mentioned in the grand jury indictment.
“There was real pressure from the principal and school board to identify the source of the drugs,” she went on. “I don’t think any teacher took that more seriously than Stefan. He became obsessed with finding the source.”
“He says he was out looking for Rashawn the night he was killed.”
Patty nodded. “Rashawn’s mother, Cece, called us around eight, said he wasn’t home and asked if he was here.”
Naomi said, “Stefan said he was upset about many things that night, picked up a bottle for the first time in years, went down by the tracks, drank it, and passed out.”
My cousin’s fiancée nodded, said, “He said he was frustrated that he wasn’t finding the source of the drugs and shocked that Rashawn had told him earlier in the day that he didn’t want him as a friend anymore. So he got drunk.”
“Why didn’t Rashawn want to be Stefan’s friend anymore?” I asked.
“Rashawn wouldn’t say, and Stefan was—”
Somewhere out front I heard a door slam and then a male shout, “Killer-lovin’ bitch! Nigger-lovin’ bitch. I hope you rot in hell!”
Two shots from a high-powered rifle ripped through the night.
I was up and moving at the first shot, digging out the Glock in my holster. Three more quick shots blew out the living-room windows, showering me with glass.
As tires squealed, I yanked open the front door and went out in a crouch onto the front porch. The car lights were off, but I could tell it was old, a beater Impala, white, with horrible mufflers. A figure in a black hood, coat, and gloves hung out the window, aiming a scoped hunting rifle at me. He fired.
