The boys had been drinking for most of the evening. Two of them were underage which involved the others, for having supplied them with alcohol; the 7-Eleven storekeeper who’d sold them the six-packs was in trouble as well. They’d been driving around, at the mall, returned from the mall, drinking and tossing beer cans. Stopped at Friday’s, where there was a crowded bar scene, later at Cristo’s (which was taking a chance, our father sometimes dropped by Cristo’s on Friday night). Past Kerrigan Field. Past Patriot Park. Kirkland Avenue, Depot Street, Delahunt. Saw this guy in a hoodie riding a bicycle on Delahunt looking kind of suspicious to us like he didn’t belong in the neighborhood. Something in the bicycle basket looked like could be stolen goods. We did not see his face—we did not know who it was . . . If they’d shouted after him it was just a way of talking, scaring someone who (maybe) didn’t belong in the place he was in. If Jerr aimed the car at the bicyclist it was just to scare him not to run him down at the side of the road.

And the way he tried to escape crawling away, yelling to leave him alone. Like what a guilty person would do.

Like cops, they were. Neighborhood “vigilantes.” Keeping strangers from breaking into houses, stealing cars.

Their lawyers were suggesting this possibility. “Vigilantes”?—“fighting crime”? Like the possibility of self-defense.

Problem was, the boys weren’t in their own neighborhood. Hadrian Johnson happened to be in his neighborhood.

Yes but they hadn’t known. Like they hadn’t gotten a look at their victim’s face until—later.

Delahunt was a darkened road at this time of night. Strip mall, fast-food taco place, gas station. At Seventh Street there was a small trailer court with a string of unlit lights, from the previous Christmas. Beyond that a potholed street of small wood frame bungalows lacking a sidewalk, called Howard.

Following the bicyclist along Delahunt. For the hell of it.

Well—who rides a bicycle at night? Looked like a tall dude, not a kid. Not a young kid. And what was in the basket?

Reflectors on the back of the bike and the bike looked (they could see, squinting in headlights) like it might be pretty expensive. Stolen merchandise?

The bicyclist was acting guilty, they thought. Bumping along on the shoulder of the road. Knew they were there, and coming close to him. Maybe he thought they were cops. So he tried to pedal faster, fast as he could, intending to turn into a dirt lane opening ahead in a field, looking to escape. For whoever was in the car was coming close to him, honking his horn like machine-gun fire. Guys yelling out the windows.