Hangman's Game (31 page)

*   *   *

Minicamp is done and we are off for more than a month, until full camp begins at the end of July. But I wake up the next morning feeling like I need to work out. Between the trip to Alabama and then minicamp itself, my muscles feel antsy. They are telling me that I have fallen off my fitness routine.

I begin in my apartment, doing two hundred squats with my twenty-two-pound weight bar yoked across my shoulders for added resistance. Then I do two hundred push-ups and another three hundred squats, and then go down to the lobby and run up seventeen flights of Jefferson stairwell.

I finish in just under an hour. I shower and poach myself an egg, and then I check my phone to see if Freddie has gotten back to me. It's coming up on 9:00
A.M.
, and he is surely not even in the office yet.

I think of what else I might do today. My agenda is suddenly empty. I could visit my mother, as I had promised, but I don't want to leave town. My loose plan for these days had been to spend them at Freddie's beach house. But Freddie is working, so that is out.

After these camps are over, or especially after a season is over, I often go through a down period that I would compare to postpartum depression, except that I don't want to analogize between bringing a new life into the world and a three-day minicamp.

The red light on my phone blinks. A message, from Aaron.

Take a look. I'm sure there have been more embarrassing police investigations but I can't think of one.

The document is too big to download on my phone, so I boot up my laptop and open the report on the Winking Oyster. I scan for Melody's name, but I do not see it anywhere. If the report doesn't mention her at all, this is going to blow my theory about her criminal past, and it certainly won't arm with any piece of information that I can use to get her to talk.

I go back to the top and read more thoroughly, and I soon find the reason for Aaron's disdain. Vice police worked the strip club for ten months before they moved in for what seemed like a small number of arrests.

The police did nab five dancers for offering sex services and two bouncers for dealing in ecstasy, amphetamines, and marijuana, but no bosses were arrested. The operation must have gone on for so long that its main targets got wind of what was happening and beat their way out of town. Then the cops realized the big fish had gotten away, collected whatever they could, and shut down the club, just so they would have something to show for all their drooling recon. A single sentence tucked meekly at the bottom of the report told the story: “The club's co-owner, VAUGHN PENDERS, and a bartender, ALICE PENDERS, disappeared on December 9. They are believed to have been key figures in these operations and are actively being sought.”

Vaughn
. If Melody's uncle worked at the Winking Oyster, that would explain how she ended up there. But who was Alice and how did she fit in?

And then it clicks. I search the New Hampshire Class A semifinalist soccer rosters, the ones I had examined days ago looking for Melody. There I find her, on the roster of Bonner High: Alice Penders. With a little Googling, I find a brief story on their semifinal win, mentioning that Alice scored the winning goal.

She wasn't lying about her athletic exploits. She was lying about her name.

I shut down the computer and throw on jeans and a T-shirt and I drive to Melody's—Alice's—home.

*   *   *

When I pull up the first thing I notice is that the F-150 is gone. I knock on the door. No answer. I pull open the screen door and turn the handle. The place is unlocked. I step in and call out “Melody?” but hear only a slow drip from the kitchen.

In the kitchen the cabinets are open, and nearly empty. I see a quarter-full box of pasta, a jar of peanut butter with a few scrapings left, and an open bag of marshmallows with ants crawling through. The refrigerator is equally barren, with just a jar of Hellman's and a drained bottle of Heinz ketchup in the door.

I climb upstairs and find two uncarpeted bedrooms, furnished only with mattresses on the floor, each stained with its own brown watermarks. One room smells overwhelmingly of smoke. The other has, in the corner, a white candle mounted in the top of a bottle of champagne, with wax drippings running down the side. I pick up the bottle and examine it by the window. The champagne is Cristal, and I can see my phone number on the label, partially obscured by the drippings. I open the closet of that room—just a dozen wire hangers, all pushed off to one side.

Melody has become Alice, and she has disappeared.

*   *   *

I drive back home with my radio off. I am in no mood to listen to anything. Back at the Jefferson, I breathe deeply and dial her number. Maybe if I tell Melody I know everything, that will put the fear of capture into her, and she will do the right thing.

Beep-beep-beep
.
This number is no longer in service
.

I hold the phone straight out with my right arm, and I take a step-step-step across my living room and drop it, ready to boot the phone up into the ceiling in frustration. But I stop myself in mid-kick, letting the phone fall harmlessly onto the beige carpet.

When I apply the brakes, I feel pain rifle up the back of my right leg. The hamstring again. The hamstring was fine all through camp, but now it is back again, reminding me it is still my master. Tend to me, or suffer.

I slowly unbutton my jeans and slide them off, preparing to stretch yet again. Unbelievable. I will spend much of my summer on my back, nursing this stupid tendon.

It is a disheartening prospect. Before I begin, I decide to watch the
SportsCenter
highlight clip of my hit on Dez Wheeler, which I haven't looked at in a few weeks. I grab the remote and with a couple of boings I am in my DVR's memory banks.

But the clip is gone. I find no
SportsCenter
in the archives at all. I turn the DVR on and off again and begin the search anew, but it doesn't help. My greatest moment as a competitive athlete is gone.

And I had that clip protected every way I could to make sure the machine didn't erase it by accident. That digital file is my greatest treasure.

It couldn't have just vanished.

Right then I knew who broke into my apartment, because I have told only one person about the clip. Only one person was ever invited to sit with me and worship at the shrine. She didn't worship, actually, she entered the church and then scoffed. It didn't matter than I replayed the clip again and again for Jessica, attempting to convince her of the moment's perfection, pointing out my aggressive approach on the tackle, the way my hit sent Wheeler flying in one direction and the ball in the other. I explained to her how you couldn't cast a better villain than Dez Wheeler, a showboating egomaniac.…

“‘Egomaniac'?” Jessica cackled. “Can you really call someone else an egomaniac after you've just shown me this clip for the eleventh time? You bow down to a false idol, Nick, and it's called You Winning.”

I think back to the day after the shooting. Jessica had invited me over, and I told her I wanted to be alone. And then Melody invited me on a champagne picnic and I went. Jessica must have seen the photo of Melody and me in the news and figured that she had been lied to. So she came in here and trashed my treasure. Here's to my health indeed.

For some reason, I laugh.

 

CHAPTER 25

A
T LEAST
F
REDDIE
is happy. So I learn when he finally calls in the late afternoon.

“They've given me my own office!” he exclaims. “We're on the twenty-third floor. I can see the statue of William Penn from my window. And I discovered where they keep all the pastries.”

That is nice.

“Tell me, Freddie, after you finished sucking the filling out of the jelly doughnuts, did you find out anything about the case?”

“Now that you mention it, I have,” Freddie says. “I had a secretary print me out my own copy of the case file. First off, your little detail. The gun used in the shooting was a .308, not a .270.” So Uncle Frank and his rifle are in the clear. Which is good. “Also, if you're interested, I saw reports from Alabama police about the alibis of Kaylee Wise and her brothers and cousins. They were all accounted for on the night of the shooting.”

That crossed more dark-horse candidates off the list. Although the Wises could know people in Philadelphia who could have acted by proxy, especially with the prospect of Samuel's money in front of them.

“Do you have any idea what Jai's defense strategy is going to be?”

“From what they tell me, until any better ideas come along, their plan is to go after Rizotti. They're going to try to prove that the rifle isn't Jai's and make it seem like Rizotti planted the evidence. You aren't the only one he's told about his admiration for Mark Fuhrman, apparently. They'll try to do to Rizotti what O.J.'s guys did to him.”

The plan sounds perfectly ugly. I have known about it for ten seconds, and already I am sick from it. Not that I wouldn't put the worst of human impulses past Rizotti, but it doesn't track as the answer. It seems like the greater motive for planting the rifle in Jai's car belongs to the actual shooter.

I ask Freddie, “Do his lawyers have some list of people who might have a grudge against Jai?”

As I utter the words, I realize that compiling a list of Jai's enemies might take weeks, if not months or years. His personality is such that he can outrage hundreds of people casually, and without knowing it.

For instance, ever since Jai was taken in by police, the cable channel that aired his reality dating show
Give It Up for JC
has been running its eleven hour-long episodes on a never-ending loop. I watched some of it, and the show is even more tasteless than I might have guessed. The topper was the elimination sequence at the end of each episode. The remaining “virgins” competing for Jai's affection—and I agree with Freddie's analysis that the women seemed far more experienced than they claimed to be—all gather in Jai's bedroom, where, clad in bikinis, they await their fate. Jai then selects one of the girls and leads her out onto the balcony. He tells her how beautiful and special she is, and that one day she is going to make some man—perhaps many men—very happy. But not Jai. Not tonight, anyway.

Then Jai ushers the woman to the far side of the balcony and sends her down the waterslide. With a
whoosh
and a splash, her TV moment comes to a close.

I wonder if a woman could get so upset over such humiliation that she would seek revenge. Or maybe an angry dad would—that feels more right. But still, murdering Samuel for the sole purpose of setting up Jai is too extreme to make sense. If you're going to kill someone, why not just go directly after Jai?

And these women knew what they were getting into when they agreed to be on Jai's reality show. Although it's true that most people, when they enter a contest, only imagine themselves winning; the pain of losing can be a complete surprise.

My phone buzzes. I have a new message—from Jessica's husband Dan, of all people. Even though I never answered his first e-mail from days ago.

Nick, I've been reading about what happened, and I hope you are doing OK. I am still abroad but I will be home soon. I understand this might not be a great time to have dinner, but if there is anything Jessica and I can do to help you in this difficult time, please let us know. Dan.

There is a guy who has a finger on the pulse of his marriage.

I walk to the window, which offers a view of Center City's office buildings at dusk, and try with my fingernail to pick at the residue of
HERE'S TO YOUR HEALTH
. The words, spelled in syrup, have congealed to the point of intransigence. They seem to have grafted completely onto the glass.

Maybe I should just find someplace else to live. Maybe it is time for me to move out of the Jefferson, superstition be damned.

As soon as I think of moving out, I know I should do it. I will wait until after I have beaten back Woodward and my next season is secure. But then I will go. I imagine seeing apartments with a real estate agent, buying my own furniture, and I know that I should have done all that a long time ago.

Speaking of things I should have done a long time ago: I need to pay Jessica a visit.

 

CHAPTER 26

T
HE
S
TEAGALLS LIVE
in Society Hill, a section of the city well-preserved from the days when Philadelphia was the center of a young and growing country. Many of the brick-facade homes date to the 1800s or even the 1700s and feature signs in their windows boasting of their historical lineage, noting that the original owner was a sailmaker or a merchant or a signer of the Constitution or the engraver of the first U.S. currency.

Jessica's place, which stands on a corner, is a three-story town house with a checkerboard pattern of red and black bricks. It is wider than the other homes on its block, occupying a double plot. Near the curb stands an iron post once used to hitch horses, and rooted by the front steps is a metal wedge for scraping mud from the soles of your boots.

On my first visit here, years ago, Jessica told me that her home had its own storied past. During the Revolutionary era, she said, it was the residence of an early feminist named Joyce DeWitt, who competed with Betsy Ross to create the first American flag. DeWitt's design, a field of bright green surrounded by pink fringe, was rejected by the founding fathers in favor of Ross's stars and stripes. DeWitt was so angry that in her pique she attempted to form an opposition government to carry her flag. In her government, only women would be allowed to vote, hold political office, own property, captain ships, and consume alcohol. DeWitt called her political movement Green Day, Jessica said, which is where the rock band took its name from.