Hangman's Game by Bill Syken Page A

about is a musician Anna had begun dating after she returned home from college with a sociology degree. He and Anna broke up and got back together again several times—even after she had, unbelievably, born this bum a son, whom she ended up raising on her own.
    â€œWho is it, then?” I ask.
    â€œRichard Wibb,” she says, giddy with her surprise.
    â€œWibb? Really?”
    â€œYes. Isn’t it amazing?”
    Richard Wibb was in my high school class, but I barely knew him. I remember him taking all the top-track classes, and also being very skinny and intensely shy. I never saw him out anywhere, at the diner or a football game or even the prom. I couldn’t remember seeing he and Anna talk to each other, though I think they both took French.
    â€œApparently he wrote Anna a note on that Facebook site,” my mother says. “They started seeing each other, now she and her boy are moving to New York City to live with him. Isn’t that something?”
    â€œWhat’s he do in New York?”
    â€œHe’s a lawyer,” my mother says. “A very successful one, from what I hear. And I’m told that Richard just dotes on the boy. Would you have ever guessed back in high school that those two would end up together? How many times have I said it to you, Nicky—there’s a lid for every a pot.”
    As she says this last part she casts a warm glance at Aaron and takes his hand underneath the table.
    Poor Dad.
    â€œTell me, Aaron,” I say. “Any thoughts about the murder?”
    Aaron, after pulling his hand back from my mother’s, offers a long series of qualifications, which establish that he is only engaging in speculation based on second-hand information. But then he says that he understands why the police are looking hard at Jai Carson. If this were his case, Jai would be his prime target.
    â€œThis crime feels like an angry one,” Aaron says. “A drive-by shooting, with two other people around—it’s just not smart. Wouldn’t it be better to go after your victim when he’s alone? And why leave a witness?”
    â€œSo if the killer knew what he was doing, I’d be dead?” I say.
    â€œWell,” says Aaron, blinking a couple of times. “Yes.”
    I am being a smart-ass, and I take no actual offense at Aaron’s analysis. His point is a good one. But still, I let my question hang there until it becomes uncomfortable.
    I plow through my breakfast, a spinach-and-egg-white omelet, and before too long I have Aaron and my mother on the road back upstate with a pledge that I will visit them some time after minicamp.
    *   *   *
    Soon after I am back at the Jefferson, I receive a text from an unexpected correspondent:
    Some guys are working out at my house today. Come on by!—JC
    My first question: how did Jai get my number? Then I remember the team distributes a contact list. I imagine Jai sitting with a newspaper in one hand, the phone list in the other, matching up my name and dialing the number.
    I guess he knows who I am now. And I can imagine why he wants me to come on by.
    According to the news, Jai was interviewed by police for five hours yesterday, then released without being charged. In the worlds of talk radio and online message boards, however, Jai has been all but convicted. The argument between Jai and Samuel is now public knowledge; today’s Inquirer re-creates the scene in startling detail, in a story that carried the bylines of five reporters.
    Jai’s alibi for the time of the murder is that he lingered with his friends in the Stark’s parking lot, drinking out of his car’s built-in cooler, and then they went to a club for several hours and then out to eat again, and then home, where Jai was collected by police. Jai, however, arrived at the club a decent interval after the shooting, and particularly damning is the fact that the crew traveled in two cars—with Jai and