Blood Ties (38 page)

“Your case, your expense account,” she said. “Are you telling me to make myself scarce?”

“I'd suggest it. Meet me at the Galaxy Diner.”

“You want me to pick you up?”

“No, I'll walk. Sullivan seems to have given up on the idea of arresting me, for now.”

The police station wasn't far from the Galaxy; nothing in Warrenstown was all that far from anything else. The air held a fresh fall chill; I zipped my jacket and started over. Star-shaped maple leaves lay here and there on the slate sidewalk, their wine color bringing out the blue of the stone. The scent of cinnamon drifted through the air as I passed the bakery where I had sat with Helen; I glanced at the shop window and saw, through my own reflection, one of the grandmotherly ladies behind the counter taking a tray of cookies out of the oven, for afternoon snacks. Cars drove slowly down Main Street, people stopped on corners to talk to their neighbors, and everywhere golden sunlight draped Warrenstown like a protective blanket.

I stopped on the sidewalk, took out my cell phone, called my sister.

“Hello?” Again, the tentative voice, the one that asked,
Am I taking up too much room in the world?
Again, the tightening in my shoulders.

“It's Bill. Is Scott there, or can we talk?”

“He's not here, but Bill, he doesn't want me talking to you anymore. He says—”

“I don't give a damn what he says. Listen to me. Things are bad. The police think Gary's with this other boy, Paul Niebuhr, and they think Paul's dangerous.”

A little intake of breath. “Paul? Oh, God. Will he hurt Gary?”

“I don't think so. I'm not even sure they're together. But the police have a warrant and they're coming to search Gary's room. I think they're going to take his computer, and the one in the family room, as evidence.”

“Evidence?” It was almost a wail. “Evidence of what? Scott said the police have the whole wrong idea about Gary, because you—”

“I'm calling,” I cut her off, “same as before, just so you have some warning. I want you to cooperate with them, Helen. Tell them anything you know, anything they ask. No matter what Scott says. He thinks he can protect Gary his way, but he's wrong. Do you understand me?”

“I . . . but Gary . . .”

“Helen!
Do you understand me?
”

“Yes,” she whispered, a sound like the leaves skidding across the sidewalk.

“I'll talk to you later.” I snapped the phone shut, stuck it in my pocket. I turned up my collar; the wind had come up, and I was cold.

At the Galaxy I took a window booth, ordered coffee. I watched the Warrenstown traffic start and stop. When I was halfway through the cup I saw Lydia's Taurus pull into the lot, saw her get out, lock the car, head to the diner. She moved, as always, quickly, with an athlete's grace and sureness. Or maybe, I thought, sipping coffee, the grace was something she'd been born with, and the sureness had nothing to do with strength, with agility or endurance; maybe it was purely the certainty of youth, the confidence that comes from not yet knowing it's just not true that you can have whatever you want badly enough, whatever you work hard enough for.

I lost sight of her as she rounded the building to reach the door; then there she was inside, scanning the room for me, smiling when she found me. “What's up?” she asked as she kissed my cheek. She slid into the booth across from me. “You look worried.”

“I'm older than you are.”

“You just figured that out?”

“No, but I always saw it as a flaw in
you
before.”

“Clearly a mistake, since for one thing I have no flaws.”

“Right, now I remember,” I said, and then the waiter came by, refilled my cup and took Lydia's order: tea and one of the flaky crescents with almonds on top that she'd seen in the dessert case on her way in.

“You find out anything new?” I asked her.

“Nothing at all. No one I found had anything to add, about where Paul might be, or anything else.”

“That's strange.”

“Why?”

“All these kids,” I said. “These school shooters, Littleton, whatever. They all talked about it beforehand. It's one of the things they all have in common.”

“Then maybe it means Paul's not one. That that's not what's on his mind.”

“Maybe.”

She brushed hair from her forehead, said, “How was your visit to Sullivan and his chief?”

“I'm not sure I learned anything. They did, though, and they're moving on it. That's why they're talking to the kids. And they've got warrants for the Niebuhrs' house, and for Helen's.”

“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!”