Winter and Night (35 page)

"Helen's? Oh, Bill. Did you speak to her?"

"I called." I sipped my coffee.

"Was Scott there?"

"No. But he told her not to talk to me anymore."

Lydia's eyes met mine, held them for a moment. "You know," she said, "I don't get any of this."

"Any of what?"

"The stuff between you and Helen. Why she can't get past what you did and see why you did it. Why you didn't try harder to keep in touch with them, and to prove you were different from what they thought."

"I don't have to prove anything to them."

"No, you don't have to," she said. "But they're all the family you've got."

I had nothing to say to that, nothing to say at all, and I looked out the window, watched the light change over and over. I was barely aware when the waiter came back with Lydia's tea and pastry, went away again.

"If you break that cup," Lydia's voice came softly, "they probably won't give you any more coffee."

I looked down, saw white knuckles gripping my coffee cup. I forced them open, forced myself to breathe, forced myself to look at her. The same dark eyes, the same still mouth, short hair so black its highlights glinted blue. Waiters and customers moved around us in the diner and a sappy love ballad threaded through the air, sometimes heard, sometimes lost in the sounds of people getting on with it.

"Yeah," I said. "And God knows that would be a disaster, me without caffeine." I drank down some of that caffeine as she gave me a soft smile. I asked, "Can I tell you about the chief?"

She nodded. I told her Letourneau's story, partly because as my partner she needed to know, and partly just to be talking to her.

"Let me get this straight," she said, nibbling on an almond she peeled off her pastry. "Scott changed his story for a chance to play in the Homecoming game? And don't tell me 'This is Warrenstown, this is football.' "

"Okay," I said, "but it is. And if he wasn't sure what he saw in the first place—"

"Yeah," she said, "but what if he was?"

"This is Warrenstown," I said. "This is football."

She didn't answer that, just looked at me. She shook her head, sipped her tea. "What are they going to do if they don't find Paul by Monday?"

"They'll secure the school." I told her what Sullivan had told me. "They'll call out the state police and the National Guard if they have to."

"They can't do that forever."

"No."

"You know," she said, "they may be wrong about him. We may be wrong about him. He may show up on Sunday just like he told his mom, say, gee, it was a little cold for camping, but I had a great time."

"He may."

"He might have bought that gun just to see if he could. He might actually be at Bear Mountain now. Meditating."

"Possible."

"We might just all be spooked, by Littleton and things like that."

"We might."

"But," she said, "it would be insane to wait and see, wouldn't it?"

That didn't need an answer. Lydia ate another forkful of almond crescent— I have never in my life eaten a diner pastry with a knife and fork— as the Muzak shifted into Randy Newman's "Short People." I smiled at Lydia. "I'll bet you hate this song."

"On the contrary. It's stereotypes like this that enable people like me to sneak unseen right up into the faces of people like you, and clobber you."

"You think so?"

A forkload of pastry stopped halfway to her mouth. "Who says who plays?"

"Who plays the music? I don't know, probably there's a tape player—"

"No! Who plays football."

"What?"

"Letourneau and Macpherson were co-captains, okay, but it's not the captains who make the decision about who goes in, is it?"

I stared at her for a moment. "No," I said. I reached for my wallet, dropped bills on the table. We both stood. I said, "It's the coach."

* * *

My car was still in the hospital lot in Greenmeadow, so Lydia drove us out to the high school through the fading autumn afternoon. We found the doors unlocked, the halls nearly empty. Linoleum gleamed and the lockers lining the corridor stood to attention as we passed by. We headed toward the gym, found the coach's office. The furniture was new and the office spacious; I wondered briefly if the English department had facilities like this. Two desks, along with file cabinets, took up the outer room and a desk sat facing us from the inner, with a crowded trophy case in each room. Ranks of framed photos, championship teams, covered the walls, here and there basketball or softball, but mostly football, through the years. The outer room was empty, the inner one dark. A faint blue glow filled the darkness as, seated in an easy chair in front of a large TV, Coach Ryder reviewed Warrenstown Warrior game tapes.

We reached the inner doorway. The coach's eyes remained glued to the screen.

"JV practice over, Coach?" I asked.

Ryder glanced up, looked back to the TV. "Busy," he grunted. "Go away."

"I need to talk to you, Coach."

"You speak English? Go away."

"It's about Bethany Victor."

"I don't coach the girls. Your kid got a problem, talk to Tina Meyerhoff Monday morning. She's girls' head coach." Not looking at me, he clicked the remote, rewound, and watched a second time as an opposing back, his timing perfect, soared into the air and intercepted a pass meant for a Warrenstown receiver. "Asshole," he muttered, scrawled something on the clipboard on his lap. "Fucking candy-ass. You see that?" He raised his voice, asking the question of me. "That kid, Chambers. Best hands I've seen in years. Can catch anything he can touch. But fuck if I know how to teach the asshole to come back to the ball."

"He needs to stop thinking about the guy who's covering him," Lydia said from beside me. "And about the guy who threw the pass. It needs to be just him and the ball, on the field alone."

Ryder turned now, to stare at her. "Well, is that a fact?"

"Yes," Lydia said.

"And just who exactly the hell are you?"

I took it. "I'm Bill Smith. I was here Wednesday, at JV practice. This is my partner, Lydia Chin."

"Your partner?" He flicked his eyes over Lydia, asked me, "Is that some politically correct way of saying you're shacking up?"

"No, it's a way of saying we're in business together. We're investigators."

On the screen, a new play started. Ryder clicked the remote to pause, stared at me from his chair. "Oh, you. You wanted to know where Russell was. You're a pain in the ass. You a pain in the ass, too?" He gestured the remote at Lydia.

"Yes," Lydia said.

Ryder gave that a razor-edged smile. "You find that asshole?" he asked me. "Because if you did or not, I'm not letting him play at Hamlin's tomorrow. That why you're here?"

"No, I just told you, I'm here about Beth Victor."

Ryder's face darkened, as though hearing me for the first time; but all he said was, "Who the fuck is Beth Victor?"

"Warrenstown High girl," I said, and even in the blue-lit dimness I could see Ryder's eyes narrow, considering me. "Ryder, she was raped in Warrentown twenty-three years ago, and you know who she is."

Ryder lumbered out of his chair. "Don't take that fucking tone with me."

"I'm not a kid you can browbeat or a parent you can intimidate, Ryder. I'm an investigator trying to do my job. Bethany Victor was raped, Al Macpherson was arrested, and the only real witness was Scott Russell, who changed his story so he could play in the Homecoming game. Was that your idea, or Letourneau's? Or Macpherson's?"

He planted his feet, faced me square-on. "In case you didn't hear, some other pervert shot himself over that. A little asshole who'd been stalking her."

"I did hear, and I don't know why he did that, but I don't think he ever stalked her and I don't think he raped her. He had an alibi."

"Yeah, his buddy tried to say they were together."

"And kept saying it, even after the suicide."

Ryder shrugged. "Candy-ass like Nicky the Nerd, who'd've figured him for a stand-up guy? Tell me this, big shot: What the hell do you care? About this old shit?"

"I care because people keep telling me I don't."

"Like who?"

"Al Macpherson, for one. I thought I was looking for Gary Russell; next thing I know, Macpherson's offering to shove my license down my throat."

"Why are you looking for Russell? His father says he told you to back off."

"Scott told you that? He talked to Macpherson about it, too. Cozy little town you have here."

"Answer the question!"

I held myself back from telling him not to take that fucking tone with me. "I'm looking for Gary because he asked me for help. Not your business, Coach. Except there's this: Someone beat the crap out of a Warrenstown High girl yesterday, and I think it's all connected, all goes back twenty-three years, all has to do with me. See, I think people are getting the idea I was hired by the kids to look into this old shit. The kids, you know: Stacie Phillips, Tory Wesley, Gary Russell, Paul Niebuhr. And it's interesting: One of them's dead, one hospitalized, two are missing."

"Two?" Ryder frowned. "Russell and who else? Niebuhr?"

"I know he doesn't register on you because he's not a jock, but he's been gone for days."

All I needed now was a fishing pole, I thought, and one of those vests with a million pockets to hold things that, in the end, you never find a use for. But I kept silent, feeding out the line.

"What the fuck is going on?" Ryder asked. "Little snot-nosed shits, what do they want to know?"

"Not them," I said. "Me. None of those kids has anything to do with it. And what I want to know is: What happened back then, Ryder? What's Al Macpherson hiding, and what are you hiding?"

Ryder gave me a long, calculating look. A good coach is flexible: He can alter his strategy, play to other strengths if he sees trouble with the game plan he originally set out.

So Ryder shrugged his shoulders, rubbed his neck, projected the air of a man giving in. "Macpherson was in trouble," he said. "I didn't know if he did it or not and I really didn't give a shit."

"I'm not sure I believe that. You were his coach. If you'd asked him, Macpherson would've told you. You'd have been the one person he'd have told."

"Believe what you want." He shrugged. "Warrenstown High girl," he said. "Flashing her tits at a party. What's the difference who it was? She probably enjoyed it."

Beside me, Lydia stood still, as unmoving as the kids on the TV screen. I knew that was because if she let herself, she'd break Ryder's neck.

"So you had a talk with Scott Russell?" I said.

"Just to make sure he was absolutely positive, what he saw. Because if he wasn't, we had a really big game coming up."

"And the team needed both what Al Macpherson could contribute, and what Scott could. Is that what you told him, Ryder? Is that how you put it?"

The razor-edge smile again. "He'd improved a lot, Russell had. He was ready to start."

"Jesus." I looked into Ryder's eyes, and he into mine. Behind him, a play was frozen on the TV screen, home team and visitors straining after the ball.

"That's all," Ryder said. "That's all there was, a talk with one of my players. Nothing illegal, maybe a little bad judgment, I'd rather it didn't get out, that's all. Now excuse me. I have work to do."

"So do I," I said. I stayed where I was.

"What does that mean?"

"The kid who killed himself. The story is, it was a teacher who came forward with the stalking thing. I just talked to John Letourneau, and he said he didn't know anything about it until the story started going around, just before the kid was arrested."

Ryder shrugged. "Tunnel vision, Letourneau. All his life, something didn't happen right under his nose, he didn't know about it."

Lydia spoke. "Even now, as police chief?" she said. "Like the fact that all your boys are on steroids? That's right under his nose. You think he knows about that?"

Ryder stared at her as though he'd forgotten she could talk. "Oh, Jesus God. What the fuck is this? The guys buy this shit, Andro, whatever the hell, at the health food store. It bulks them up, I'm all for it."

"What I heard is, they get prescription drugs illegally, from a dealer," Lydia answered.

"What you heard, toots, is crap. And if it was true, you think anyone in Warrenstown would give a shit? It makes them big. It makes them win."

"What happened to Nicky Dalton?" I said.

"Dalton? Mommy's boy. Who the hell cares what happened to Dalton?"

"He joined the army right after graduation, and disappeared the day he came out. Nobody's heard anything about him since."

"So?"

"Maybe he disappeared because he was afraid."

"Of what?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe, whatever it was that made Jared Beltran kill himself."

"That little perv killed himself because they were going to put him away for a long, long time. In a place where I promise you he'd have been a receiver, not a quarterback." He smiled a nasty smile. It faded, and he said, "And about Dalton, when you find him, don't call me, because I don't give a flying fuck."

He turned back to his TV screen, clicked the remote. The frozen play took up motion again: The guy the pass had been intended for caught it, hugged the ball to his chest, was immediately smashed and smothered by half a dozen opposing players, even more teammates. "Now," said Ryder, settling into his armchair, absorbed in the action once more, "get the hell out."

Lydia looked at me; I nodded. We turned, walked back down the silent hall. A janitor pushed a mop bucket along the corridor; the fumes of lemon-scented detergent filled the air.

"Alone with the ball, huh?" I said.

"I hope you're filled with admiration for my restraint."

"I'm filled with admiration for everything about you, as always."

"Did we accomplish anything, besides raising my blood pressure?"

"For one thing, I wanted to get across the point that if what I'm doing is what's getting everybody's back up, the kids aren't involved in it. I'm not sure Ryder's the guy to say that to, but I'm hoping it'll get around."

"Are you sure it's true?"