Winter and Night (41 page)

"You searched him?" Sullivan asked, surprising me.

"Searched everyone, everywhere. Fuck me if there's a cap gun in this camp. Excuse me, ma'am."

"No sign of those kids? You've been through the woods?"

"With the dogs. It's not really woods back here, y'know, more like a fucking swamp. Excuse—"

"Oh, forget it," Lydia said.

Sullivan headed around the back, to the football stadium, and Lydia and I went with him, all of us silent. We stopped to survey the field, white lines freshly painted, goalposts pale against the darkening sky.

"Will they play in the rain?" Lydia asked.

Sullivan said, "Warrenstown?"

As we circled along the track to the bleachers, Sullivan said, "Got the coroner's report on Tory Wesley."

"And?" I said.

"Ready for this? Kid died of a stroke."

"What?"

"Crystal meth. It can happen, you snort too much."

"But the bruises—"

"Oh, someone beat on her, all right. Someone was pissed, or maybe it really was rough sex, like the Macpherson kid said. That's why the report took so long. I wanted everything checked, and they checked everything. But she died of a stroke. So the thing is," he said, "no one killed her."

"Then…" I stopped, not knowing what this meant. "Gary?" I said. "Paul?"

Sullivan shrugged.

I looked at the heavy black clouds and didn't know why they didn't break under their own weight, send the rain crashing down. I didn't know why the lines on the field glowed so white when there was no sun to shine on them.

We walked the area under under the bleachers, then along the length of the fence on that side that separated the field from the marshy woods behind it.

"You think he's planning to come from there, shoot through the fence?" I asked.

"There's nowhere else."

I peered through the trees, nearly leafless now, and the shadowy scrub. Dark clouds pushed across the sky, a wet wind gusted, and deep in the undergrowth something moved. "Sullivan, there." I reached into my jacket for my .38.

Sullivan stayed completely still except for the hand that flashed out to clamp onto my wrist. "A Plaindale cop," he said calmly. "In plain-clothes, with one of the dogs. He'll be working the area all day. I assume you two have permits for those?"

Lydia's gun was already in her hand. I could see the two figures now, man and dog. "Yes," I said.

"Good. If I see them again I'll take them anyway."

"Aren't you out of your jurisdiction?"

"Joe McFall deputized me, to act for Plaindale."

"I must've missed it."

"Yeah," Sullivan said, "you missed it."

The sky lowered and the wind blew more steadily but still the rain held off. Cars started to arrive and park on the stubbly field. These were parents from Warrenstown come all this way to watch their sons play, and other people too, local football fans coming early for a good seat. The Saturday games at Hamlin's were one of the few times the public was allowed into camp, and the Warrenstown game seemed to be legendary. The scouts would come later, Sullivan told us, closer to game time. Their seats were reserved.

The mothers and fathers of the Warrenstown seniors needled the underclassmen's parents, and the juniors' and sophomores' parents warned them to look out, this was going to be the first year in Warrenstown history when the underclass team won— and big, too. Parents with sons on both teams walked around with shamefaced smiles. They had no team to root for, only individual kids, and their cheering would be an affront to Hamlin's, and Warrenstown's, fiction that it was the team that mattered, that we don't do this for ourselves, but for each other.

Tailgate parties started, coffee and sandwiches, burgers and franks on portable grills that emerged from SUVs, and, even though it was long before noon, six-packs and whiskey flasks. Noon was when the bus was expected, and the game was set for one.

Cops in street clothes wandered among the crowd, along the fences, by the road, looking for two faces, two teenage boys far from welcome here, at this place where people lined up to send their teenage boys. According to Sullivan, Plaindale cops and state police were working the town, showing photos of Paul and of Gary, hoping to locate them and head off whatever "bigger and better" meant.

Lydia and I walked the grounds, too, with Sullivan's and McFall's permission. "He'll recognize Gary Russell," Sullivan said. "And she'll keep him from shooting anyone." About eleven we saw Macpherson's Mercedes SUV drive up. He ignored the cop directing traffic, swerved into a prime space by the edge of the drive, a place where cars coming later would have to maneuver around him, but he'd have an easy time getting out when he wanted to leave. The cop shouted to him to move the car, but Macpherson strode off toward Hamlin's door as though no one else were here.

"Where was Macpherson going?" I asked Sullivan when we ran into him again. "He went inside."

"Coffee and doughnuts in one of the trainer's rooms. Hamlin's answer to skyboxes. For the VIPs."

"Last time I saw Macpherson here he was about to strangle Hamlin."

"They made up since Hamlin took the boys back."

"The ones you arrested?"

"Had to. Without them, even with the fill-ins from Westbury, the seniors might actually have lost."

Another arrival, a few minutes later, was my brother-in-law. He parked where he was told, slammed his door when he got out of the car, but made no move to go anywhere, just stood and looked.

"Why is he here?" Lydia asked. We were a hundred yards away across a crowded parking lot; Scott hadn't seen us, and maybe he wouldn't.

"I'd have come," I said. "If it were my son. Gary was excited about this game."

"He can't be thinking Gary might just walk in, ready to play? As though everything was okay?"

"He's thinking he's got nothing else."

A little later I saw Sullivan heading in our direction, his eyes moving, scanning the crowd, but his path straight. We stopped, waited for him to reach us.

"Looks like you might be right," he said to me.

"You realize you said that in front of a witness?" I said. "Right about what?"

"The steroids. I just got a call. We found clembuterol, Primobolan, and Anavar in Ryder's office, in quantity, in zip-lock bags."

I stared. "You picked him up? Before this game?"

"No," Sullivan said easily. "The bus left Warrenstown at ten. I had a search warrant and a team waiting to go in as soon as he was gone."

"There's a judge in Warrenstown who'd give you a search warrant for the coach's office?"

"Judge Wright," he said. "Three daughters, no sons."

"I thought you said forget it, you can't touch Ryder at all until tomorrow."

"No, I said I couldn't pick him up unless I had something solid. I said I'd investigate."

Our eyes met, his cool and steady. I said, "I'm sorry."

He looked out over the parking lot. "I'll take him aside when the bus gets here, but I'm telling you now I won't be able to arrest him, I'll have to let him coach the game. But I'll try your ecstasy theory on him, see where it gets me. Tonight, when he gets back to Warrenstown, I'll arrest him. Then," he said, a corner of his mouth turning up, "I think I'll retire."

The Warrenstown bus rolled in, to cheers from the crowd. The seniors were already here, of course, had been here all week, but this was Hamlin's and they'd see their parents later, when their week was over. Right now they were in the field house running sprints, loosening up, going over new formations, plays they'd just learned. Some of them might have been wondering why they were inside, not out on the field under the weighted sky, but they were football players and they did what their coaches told them to do.

Coach Ryder climbed down off the bus, shouted for the boys to move it. The juniors and sophomores, tough-faced and serious, filed off. The crowd, though still applauding, knew not to approach its sons, who pulled their gear from the baggage hold without looking around. They headed, for their first time, through Hamlin's doors.

"Do you think," Lydia asked, watching them, "that Hamlin could be right? That once these people know who he is, they'll still send their kids?"

I thought of the skateboarder at the bottom of the ramp, last night. "Yes," I said.

The sky began to spit rain. Slickers and ponchos came out, men held umbrellas over sizzling grills, people shrieked and ducked with their sandwiches into their cars, and the party went on. Lydia and I zipped our jackets; she pulled a baseball cap out of a pocket, gray with red Chinese characters on it.

"What does it say?" I asked.

" 'Truth is one, paths are many,' " she told me. "My cousin Doreen makes them."

At noon one of Hamlin's trainers opened the chain-link gates to the stadium, and the crowd lined up. The stands filled more slowly than usual, because Plaindale police were checking hampers, coolers, and backpacks as people carried them in. The fans kidded the cops, rolled their eyes at each other, said, well, but security's high everywhere these days, and Hamlin, you know, sure, maybe the guy could lighten up a little, but a hell of a coach, right? Finally inside the gates, they settled, bright with rain-slick umbrellas and ponchos, to see what their sons could do.

And when Paul Niebuhr was finally found, it was, as it had always been for him, far from the center of things, and in a place where he could see no help, no way out.

Twenty-Seven

About twenty minutes after the gates were opened, I felt Lydia's light touch on my arm. "Something's happened," she said. I followed her eyes. Three cops were converging on Joe McFall, the Plaindale chief. He spoke into his radio, then to them; one of them stayed with him and the other two jogged back through the worsening rain to their cars.

"Sullivan," I said, pointing. He had pushed through Hamlin's doors, shouted something to McFall from thirty feet away. He got an answer, waved and headed at a rapid walk to the Caprice. Reaching it, he stopped briefly to talk to a Plaindale cop, then yanked open the car door.

Lydia and I, running across the muddy lot, had reached him by then.

Sullivan slid into the car, started it up. I put my hand on the door, didn't let him close it. He looked up at me. After a beat he said, "They're together. Will he talk to you?"

"What?"

"Gary and Paul. They're together. Will he talk to you?"

"Yes."

"Get in."

* * *

The sirens howled on the Plaindale cars and their lights spun, white and red. Sullivan wedged the Caprice between a squad car in front and McFall behind us, sped with them through the streets. "A motel," he said. "Two miles."

The miles were dreary, especially in the rain: an aging strip mall, a vocational training center, a plumbing supply yard. Wooden houses that had needed a coat of paint for too long. I said to Sullivan, "You get this from Coach Ryder?"

"Ryder? What, you mean just now? No, Ryder told me to go to hell. Doesn't know anything about the steroids, the ecstasy, Paul and Gary. All he knows is that if I think I can get him rattled so he can't coach, I'd better think again, and however much money I have on the seniors today, I can kiss it good-bye."

"How much of that is true?"

Sullivan glanced into the mirror. "My money's on the underclass team. The odds were longer."

The Halfmoon Motel, when we got there, showed itself to be at home in the neighborhood around it: two dozen shabby rooms on three sides of a cracked asphalt parking lot; a one-story concrete office; pink neon buzzing from a dented sign. Two Plaindale cars were already in the lot, cops with guns drawn crouching behind them. Another car stood sideways, blocking the driveway. Three or four civilian cars were there also, parked at concrete bumpers in front of white-painted, numbered doors.

Sullivan pulled onto the sidewalk, next to the Plaindale car we'd been trailing. Red and white lights pulsed from all the Plaindale cars, and I heard the distant sirens of more approaching fast. McFall left his car on the street, climbed out. A short, dark woman in a navy slicker with POLICE in white across the back approached him.

"Unit Six, Chief," we heard her say as we joined them. Rain dripped from the bill of her cap as she nodded at one of the rooms across the way. "Niebuhr's been here for two days. Went out early this morning. Came back about an hour ago with the other kid."

"Who saw?"

"The manager. Spano was showing the pictures around. He thought this place was a long shot, but the manager recognized Niebuhr right away."

"Any contact?"

"No, sir. Secured the area per your orders."

"Other units all evacuated?"

The cop allowed herself a small smile. "Not that many of them were occupied, sir."

"Good work, Hayden. Sure they're still in there? The room's dark."

"Someone keeps moving the curtain aside, sir."

McFall moved his gaze to the pink-painted concrete building. "Who's in the office?"

"Gardino. The manager showed him how everything worked, then beat it."

McFall nodded. He looked at Lydia and me, pointed a thumb at us, said to Sullivan, "You want them here?"

"He's Russell's uncle. The kid might talk to him."

"Didn't you say the father's at Hamlin's?"

"We're finding him. He'll be here."

"Niebuhr's folks?"

"In Warrenstown. I sent somebody over."

"Can we get them on the phone if we need them?"

Sullivan shrugged. "We'll set it up."

"Where's your chief?"

"He was in the stands. He's on his way."

I wiped water from my face as Hayden pointed to the street behind. "Tech van's coming, sir."

An anonymous blue Econoline pulled up hard beside us. Before it stopped the back doors flew open. A blond young man in a Hawaiian shirt sat back there, surrounded by shelves of electronic equipment. Cords draped over boxes and speakers and screens. Red numbers glowed on dials and buttons.

"Chief." The man grinned at McFall. "What'll you have?"

"Phone hookup. Tape. Speaker in the van."

The young man jumped from the van with a handful of cords, crouched his way behind patrol cars to the office. He came back dripping wet, which he seemed not to notice. Back in the van, he turned some dials, punched some buttons. McFall asked, "Jesus, Hamilton, you got anything in there that can turn that shirt off?"