If I hadn’t come in here, I probably wouldn’t have even remembered I was set to accept an award for my role in the school shooting.

“How’s your son?” I asked. Hope had a boy who was a local star in football. A two-way player, receiver and safety. An eighth grader.

“Good,” she said. “They’re getting ready for the Best of the Best State Championships. It’s over winter break at Georgia State.”

“Wow,” I said. “At fourteen? They play at the old Turner Field?”

“You should see the size of some of these fourteen-year-olds,” Hope said. “Damn near three hundred pounds and six foot in junior high.”

“You got recent pictures of Daniel?” I asked.

“In my pocketbook.” She shrugged. “Back in my locker.”

“Let’s see ’em,” I said. “I’ll cover the front.”

Hope got up and stretched her bad leg. “Take your time,” I said, and sat down in her chair.

As soon as she rounded the corner, I punched in John Adrian’s info.

There were six Adrians listed in Georgia, and three of them were in zip codes that placed the men within an hour of Mason Falls.

I pulled up the DMV photo of each one, quickly narrowing to the man I remembered from two Decembers ago.

John Vincent Adrian was five foot eight and white. Thirty-one, with black hair. An address listed him in Glubb County, south of Mason Falls, but his driver’s license was expired.

I selected Adrian’s DMV and criminal records and picked a printer upstairs. Hit Enter to print all current and past addresses.

The truth was that Adrian didn’t have much of a criminal record when I interviewed him back in December of ’17. So if I wanted to dig for dirt, I’d have to start as I would on any cold case. By gathering background info and a lot of it.

Knowing I was still under Hope’s I.D., I did a quick search on Lauten Hartley too. What the hell, right? I sent a list of his previous addresses to the printer. Information on some ticket Hartley had gotten in 2016. Even an altercation with a cop back in 2004.

I heard a noise in the stairwell and closed all the windows on the computer.

Hope swung open the door, her head turned down toward her cell.

She handed me the phone, and I got out of her chair.

“Oh, he’s bigger than when I saw him last,” I said, staring at the photo of her son, Daniel.

“Five foot nine,” she said. “Gonna be taller than me before he starts high school.”

“And how’s he playing?” I asked.

She took the phone and swiped left through her photos. There was a video of the team, breaking through a paper banner and rushing onto the field. The camera followed Daniel and zoomed in before cutting out.

“Six receptions,” she said. “And one pick six. Some guy from a Catholic high school in Atlanta talked to us in the parking lot. Asked us if we were tied to a high school in Mason Falls or would we consider commuting.”