Blood Ties (12 page)

I waited. If news of Tory Wesley's, death had gotten this far, my name might have too, and Sullivan's order, and Ryder might tell me to go to hell. He didn't. What he said, nodding toward the field, was, “Russell. He's supposed to be here.”

I looked over the field, too, the kids on their backs doing sit-ups now. “This is your juniors, your sophomores?”

“Except for Russell and Reed. Russell fucking takes off, Reed's mother grounds him. How the hell am I supposed to build a football team here if people do whatever they goddamn want?”

I had no answer to that question and I wasn't sure there was one. “I just need to find Gary Russell,” I said. “Can you tell me anything about him, anything that might have been on his mind lately?”

“Anything's on their minds besides football, I don't want to hear about it,” Ryder said. He blew his whistle once more and the sit-ups ended. He gave them thirty seconds, not quite enough to recover, and blew again. The kids strapped on their helmets. One group trotted down to run plays at the far end of the field under the eye of another guy dressed, like Ryder, in Warrenstown sweats. The rest stayed up here, lined up in groups of two and seven at the blocking sled. On an assistant coach's, “Down! Set!” followed by a whistle, the kids crashed the sled, pounding, thumping into it, imagining the enemy there. Ryder watched for a while, then stepped forward.

“Gelson!” he yelled in a voice that probably shook coffee cups down at the Galaxy Diner. “Goddammit, Gelson, your sister show you that? Go play with her, you want to play like a pussy! Take a lap, then get your fat ass back here and hit that fucking thing like you mean it!” A big kid close to us broke away from the others, headed around the dusty track; the others charged harder when the whistle blew for them.

“Gary Russell,” I said.

Ryder turned to me for the first time. “I got practice going here.”

“The kid is missing. He's fifteen.”

“Missing, hell. He ran away from home. I hear he even left a note so his mommy wouldn't worry. Mommy's boys, how the hell am I supposed to work with that? What the hell you asking me for?”

“You're his coach. Coaches sometimes know what's going on with the kids on the team.”

“Russell's new, I hardly know him. And like I said, if it's not football, I don't want to hear it. Ask me, I'll tell you during the season I don't want them thinking about anything but Friday's game. If they're JV, Saturday afternoon's, same thing. When Russell comes back, I'm not so sure I'll let him play.”

Two boys crashed the sled together. The groups of seven were the offensive and defensive lines; the groups of two, backs and receivers. This wasn't really their job, and in most places coaches didn't expect as much from them on a drill like this; but Ryder, watching these two, scowled.

“Grades?” I asked Ryder. “Girls?”

“Grades—if they gave a shit they'd be bookworms, they wouldn't be playing football to start with. Girls you can't stop them from thinking about,” Ryder snorted. “Especially here. Warrenstown High girls, cockteasing little bitches.” The bitterness in Ryder's voice surprised me, and I wondered if he knew what had happened in Warrenstown, over the weekend.

“Coach,” I said, “I don't know if you heard about this, but there was a wild party Saturday night, out at a girl named Tory Wesley's house. Detective Sullivan found her this morning; she's dead.”

Ryder looked out over the field again, said, “I heard.”

“Did you know her?”

Silence. Then a cold smile, and he said, “Tory Wesley. Warrenstown High girl.”

Ryder started striding downfield, toward the red-shirted quarterback, who was firing passes at a receiver cutting fast.

“Davis!” Ryder shouted. The quarterback dropped his arm, waited. “Davis, if Reed doesn't play Saturday, you're all we have. You want that asshole Hamlin to let those seniors piss all over us?”

The kid shook his head. “No, coach.”

“Then you have to be a lot better than that! We're playing fucking seniors, Davis!
Watch
your receiver! Throw where he is, not where you wish he was!”

I kept up with Ryder, stopped beside him. Davis threw another pass and Ryder cursed under his breath. He said nothing else to Davis, though, so I started again.

“Sullivan thinks most of these kids were probably at Tory Wesley's, Coach. Your seniors, too.”

“Varsity had a ten o'clock curfew Saturday night, seniors going to camp Sunday morning. JV has curfew whenever varsity does.”

“Kids in Warrenstown never break curfew?”

He turned to me with narrowed eyes. “These are good kids—Smith, you said your name was? These are good kids, Smith. They're boys; they're high-spirited. Look at them: They're working their asses off to play this game at a Warrenstown level. Sometimes they need to cut loose, blow off a little steam. Doesn't matter, as long as they can play on Friday night.”

“Doesn't matter? Ryder, that house is wrecked and that girl is dead.”

“These kids had nothing to do with that.”

“You know that for a fact? You talked to them?”

“No, I didn't goddamn talk to them. Sullivan's going to come out here soon as practice is over, take their minds way the hell off their game. I got to get some work out of them before he fucks everything up.”

Gary, I reminded myself, as I felt my jaw tighten. Don't go up against this guy; he's Sullivan's problem. Your problem is Gary.

“I think the reason Gary Russell left town is because of something that happened at that party,” I said. Gelson finished his lap, ran back off the track, took his position. I could see his chest rising and falling as he waited for the whistle. When it blew he crashed the sled with a new viciousness, but his timing was still off, when to plant his foot, when to throw his shoulder. For his size, he didn't have the power he should have had. I said, “I think more than one of these kids probably knows what happened there.”

“No idea,” Ryder said.

“Who're Gary's friends on the team?”

“I don't know.”

“I hear he's a buddy of Randy Macpherson's.”

“I wouldn't know about that.”

“Christ, Ryder, what's your problem? I need your help here. I'm looking for a kid.”

Ryder turned his hard face to me. “I've been coaching here for thirty-three years, Smith. Kids come and go. You try your best to make men out of them. Sometimes you get pussies like Gelson over there and you can't, but mostly these are good kids. But guys like you, you just want to make trouble. Leave these kids alone.”

“Thirty-three years? Then you were here when that other thing happened. The rape, and the suicide.” Touchy, Sullivan had said. People around here were touchy. “That why you won't talk to me? I'm from outside, and this is too much like that?”

Ryder stepped forward, blew his whistle, two short blasts. Instantly everyone stopped what they were doing, began jogging in place. Ryder turned back to me.

“Get the fuck off my field.”

He marched forward, shouting commands, and the boys scrambled to do as he said.

I didn't go back through the building, walked around it instead to get to my car. Way to go, Smith, I congratulated myself. Bring up something they don't want to hear about: a great persuasive technique for use on people reluctant to talk.

I was unlocking the car when my cell phone rang. I leaned against the door in the sunshine and answered it.

“Smith.”

“You son of a bitch.” It was Scott, the rage in his voice hemmed in by a hard, tight control. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“Looking for your son.”

“Where are you?”

“Warrenstown,” I said. “The high school. Where are you?”

“I'm in New York, you fucker! Goddammit, I told you to leave it alone!”

“You getting anywhere?”

“Fuck you! I can handle this.”

“Christ, Scott, will you let it go?” I switched phone hands, pulled a cigarette from my pocket. “You can't stand me, fine. We find Gary, you don't ever have to see me again. Meanwhile, let me help.”

“Oh, you're a big fucking help. The cops think Gary killed some girl, thanks to you.”

“That's not how it happened.”

“It's what they told me.”

“Sullivan said that?”

“Fuck Sullivan, I called the chief. He said you were at that girl's house looking for Gary when she turned up dead. You weren't there, they'd never have connected him.”

“Every kid at that party's a suspect right now.”

“Other kids have private eyes calling the cops on them? Ratting out your family, nothing new there for you. But this is
my
family, Smith. Get the hell out of Warrenstown and keep away from my wife.”

I felt hot blood flash into my face. I said, “My sister.”

“She gave a damn she was your sister, she'd call you sometimes. She doesn't want to talk to you. We don't want you around, Smith, not my family.”

“Gary gave the cops my name last night,” I said. “Not yours.”

“Oh, man!” Scott exploded. “Oh, you cocksucker! You're fucked now, man. I'm telling you, you're fucked.”

Three boys came around the building to the lot, pushing and shoving each other, laughing. I almost said something more to Scott, but I stopped myself, lowered the phone, thumbed it off. I forced my grip on it to loosen; I was surprised I hadn't broken it. I turned the ringer off, slipped the phone back in my pocket, left my brother-in-law in New York wanting me out of his town, his problem, his life.

I smoked another cigarette as I drove across town. I wanted another one after that, but I didn't light it. Screw Scott, screw his accusations, his threats and his anger. I parked in front of Helen's, slammed the car door, headed up the walk. Helen pulled the front door open before I go to it.

“Scott's mad,” was the first thing she said.

I nodded. “He called me.”

“I gave him your number. I—”

“Forget it. It doesn't matter. Sullivan was here?”

“Yes.” She said that in the small voice, looked down, said nothing else. My shoulders, already locked after Scott's call, tightened some more.

“What the hell's going on, Helen?”

She flinched; I realized how loud that had been, lowered my voice. “Was Gary at that party?”

“I don't know.” As I got louder she got softer. “He had curfew. I thought—we thought—he was upstairs in bed.”

“He snuck out?”

“It's not like him.”

“Stop saying that! You don't know what's like him, do you?”

“Don't yell at me!” Her face flushed and she thrust out her small jaw. “You can't tell me what my son is like! You don't know us!”

“Whose choice was that?” I said quietly.

In our silence, the dog came to the open door, stood behind Helen, stuck her face against Helen's hand. Helen scratched the dog's ears while the dog peered around her at me, wagged her tail once or twice, stopped.

“It doesn't matter,” Helen said. “It doesn't matter anymore. Maybe you'd better go.”

“What I did,” I said, my voice suddenly as quiet as her own. “Back then. When I was Gary's age. You know why that was.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said again, and though it did, very much, I turned and left.

seven

I drove through town, headed east, toward the highway. It was all right with me, this business of leaving Warrenstown. If I were looking for Tory Wesley's killer, I'd feel differently; and maybe I was, but not from that direction. What I needed now was to move, to keep going, to stay a step ahead of Sullivan and stop him from shutting me down.

Or maybe I just wanted to think that my need to move had a connection to the pattern of the case. That it was what I'd feel if it hadn't been Gary standing in my living room last night, asking me for help. That it had nothing to do with my sister and what I saw in her eyes when she looked at me, or the slump in her shoulders when she thought I wasn't looking at her.

I tried the Bach in the CD player again; again, as it had that morning, it only irritated me and I turned it off.

I took out the cell phone, flipped it open, thumbed the first number on the speed-dial.

“Lydia Chin. Chin Ling Wan-ju.” Lydia always answered in both her languages; you never knew who might be calling.

“It's me. Anything up?”

“No. I'm headed to that camp. How about you?”

“Me, too, but you'll get there first.”

“Don't I always?”

“And when you don't, you still deserve to.” I told her about the coach, about Scott's phone call.

“Nice guys,” was her comment.

“A matched set. Who's your cousin who was kicked out of school and arrested for computer hacking?”

“Oh, right, throw my criminal relatives up in my face.”

“I love your criminal relatives. Kwong, his name was.”

“Linus Kwong. He's really the son of my mother's second cousin's brother-in-law.”

She waited, but I couldn't dig out from under.

“And he wasn't kicked out of school, only suspended,” she said.

“For, if I remember, the whole semester.”

“And those charges were dismissed,” she went on. “He was found innocent.”

“That's ‘not guilty.' No one's ever found innocent. And if the charges were dismissed, he wasn't found anything.”