“That’s right. You’re a senior, am I correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many times have you seen someone have luck arguing with me on my football field?” Voice rising now. Let them all feel this day was normal, from Colin to his teammates, let them find some familiarity in this practice so that they would not lose their heads.
“None, sir.”
“That’s right. It won’t start today. Go sit your ass down. I’ll tell you when you’re ready to go.”
Colin rose on wobbly legs and went to the sidelines. Kent stood and looked up and down the field, saw all the uneasy faces watching, and shouted, “That’s what we call effort, gentlemen. You might want to remember it. I suspect you’ll need it to win a few more football games.”
They got back to work, Colin sitting on the grass just off the field, his helmet still strapped tight. Kent walked to him and knelt, spoke out of the side of his mouth, his eyes still on the field.
“You tell me the truth, son. What helps you more—being here or being home?”
“Here, sir.”
“You know this doesn’t matter,” Kent said. He waved a hand at the field. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“It matters. I need it.”
Kent nodded. “I’ll be here, Colin. I can’t promise you anything that will help, but I can promise you I’ll be here. You have something you need to tell me, or want to tell me, do not hesitate.”
“Thank you, Coach.” He was crying now, and though Kent knew it he pretended otherwise.
“Whenever you feel like going,” he said, “you go.”
He stood up and began to walk away then. Colin Mears beat him back to midfield.
There were few things Kent imagined more unenviable than being a coach’s wife with two young children during the season. He tried hard to help, tried hard to ease the burden when he could, but the reality was that his evenings and nights were gone to the game for months at a time, and at this time, playoffs looming? The few hours became fewer.
It was past ten when he got home Tuesday, and that wasn’t anywhere near as late as many coaches would push it. Not as late as Kent was tempted to, either, but he’d built his program on regimented behavior, and that carried off the field and into the coach’s room. You did not waste minutes in Kent’s program, you did not waste even seconds. Focused attention, focused attention, focused attention. The kids heard it constantly, but what they did not realize was that the coaching staff heard it, too. Maybe more often. Other coaches could keep their staffs up into the wee hours watching game video with one eye, drinking beer and swapping jokes, but that would not happen at Chambers. Despite the even-keeled demeanor for which he was known, Kent had lost plenty of assistant coaches over the years because he wasn’t much fun. That was fine by him.
He came home, slipped into a dark house, kissed his sleeping son and daughter on the forehead, and went into the bedroom to have his wife tell him that Lisa had been hearing stories in school about her aunt.
“She asked me about Marie today,” Beth said. She was in bed with a Pat Conroy novel held against her chest and the TV on across the room. Something they bickered about with consistency and good nature. You can’t watch TV and read at the same time, Kent would say. It’s simply impossible. Pick one. Then she’d say, Funny, every now and then I’ll start doing other things with the TV still on and you never complain about that. And of course she had him there.
He sat on the bed beside her. “What did she say?”
“Some kids told her Marie was murdered. She wanted to know if it was true. Then she said that she’d heard it was in the newspaper. She wanted to read about it.”
Her voice was tired, and Kent laid a hand on her leg, sympathy and apology in the touch. It was an inevitable conversation that she’d had with their daughter, but it was also his to have, and she’d been forced to do it because he was gone. While he was demanding focused attention on videos of teenage boys playing a game, Beth had made dinner for two children and explained a homicide to one. There were times when his occupation felt almost foolish, when all of the We’re building character, we’re about more than the game, these kids are learning life lessons on the field felt absurd, and this was one of them.
“How’d she take it?” he asked, because he did not need to ask what Beth had told her. He knew there would have been neither coy games nor excessive detail, just gentle honesty.
“She wanted to know why you don’t talk about Marie. Why you never told her about it before. She seemed a little hurt by that.”
“Probably a fair response.”
“I told her that it hurts you to talk about it, and that a sister is a lot like a daughter and talking to her about it would probably hurt even worse because of that.”
He felt a thickening in his throat, looked away from her eyes and out to the dark window, bare limbs showing beyond the reflected light of the room. He let out a breath and swung himself onto the bed beside her, leaned his head against the pillow, and looked in her eyes. He could find peace in them, always had been able to, so many years of seeking things from within her now, so many years of having those things granted.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It might be best that I talked to her.”
“Did Andrew hear?”
“No.”
“Will she want to talk to me about it? Should I volunteer something?”
“You’ll need to talk to her. I don’t know if she’ll press it, but she’s curious. She was surprised she didn’t know. Thinks she’s far too old and mature to have it kept from her. I just said that it hurts you and that you’re very good at hiding the things that hurt you.”
When she said this, she reached out and squeezed his left knee, the bad one. He looked at her slender fingers working on the soft, damaged tissue below the kneecap.
“I’ll talk to her,” he said. “She thinks it’s unfair, and she’s probably right, and she deserves to understand her own family better than the kids at school do. I never wanted that.”
Beth said, “She’s also got another question I’ll let you field.”
“Yeah?”
“She wants to know if it has something to do with the reason we don’t like Uncle Adam.”
His gaze left her hand and returned to her eyes. “What?”
Beth nodded. “That’s exactly how she phrased it. We don’t like him. As if it’s something just understood. A family rule. We don’t like the Pittsburgh Steelers. We don’t like Uncle Adam. Casual.”
He passed a hand over his face, rubbed his forehead.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll talk with her.”
“Good,” Beth said. “What about Adam?”
“Huh?”
“Will you talk more with him?”
“No.”
“Really.”
“I said all I could say. You’re surprised? He and I don’t talk much, Beth.”
“I know that, Kent. I know that. All this, though?” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe one of you hasn’t picked up the phone.”
“To say what?”
“I have no idea. A girl’s murdered, you’re both talking to the police, you both knew her, and the whole town’s relating it to your sister. You’re right, Kent. Nothing to talk about.”
She released his knee, rolled over, and picked her book back up. He looked at her, frustrated, and said, “I’m trying to refocus and move forward, Beth. Trying to help my team do the same thing. Those are not Adam’s strengths. He circles, circles, circles. I can’t get caught up in that. I can’t.”
19
ADAM’S HOPE WAS THAT Rodney Bova did not live alone. That by evening someone else would join him in the house, someone who’d earned parole from Mansfield during the summer.
It wasn’t going to be that easy, though.
Bova was alone Tuesday night, and all day Wednesday and Thursday. He drove to work, parked in the hospital garage, logged his eight hours, then drove h
ome and turned on the TV. At peace and oblivious.
And wasting Adam’s hours.
Adam was violating his own protocol. His motion had stopped, he was stagnant now, waiting for Bova to take action instead of taking it himself. He couldn’t afford to do that, but he also didn’t want to initiate direct contact. Not yet. Finding out who the man had been sending money to for all those months was critical, but Adam couldn’t risk flushing his quarry. He had to find other ways to pursue the information—go to the prison, interview Jason Bond, try to find and bribe a source within the commissary, something. To do all of those things, though, he would have to leave the man untended.
There were ways around that, though.
In the state of Ohio, like most states, a bail bondsman holds unique authority. Adam could outfit skips with tracking devices, in the right circumstances he could perform warrantless searches, he could generally invade their lives and privacy in ways prohibited not just to the general public but to the police. You owned a piece of them once you held that bond, more than they realized in their frantic rush to sign whatever papers necessary to get the locks popped on the jailhouse doors.
He often considered the monetary value of the bond, but he’d rarely considered the power that came with the signature. I’m yours to watch, the offender was acknowledging. I’m yours.
On Thursday morning, exactly one week after he’d set out to look for him originally, Adam returned to searching for Jerry Norris, his outstanding skip.
The first two times Jerry Norris had skipped, he’d crashed at his cousin’s house, a pattern he’d given up since, but Adam knew damn well that Rick Tieken, the cousin, would know where he could be found. He’d tried bribes with Tieken in the past and had some success. Family mattered to Tieken, sure, but not as much as cash. Priorities.
Tieken worked for an auto parts store and was behind the register when Adam walked in. He looked up when the bell over the door rang, recognized Adam, and smirked. Probably had been waiting on him for days.
“How’s it going, Teek?”
“Just fine, man, just fine. The Jeep letting you down again?”
“Serpentine belt,” Adam said. “Got a feeling it’s about done. Got a match for me?”
“I’m sure we do. What’s the year on that?”
“Oh-four.”
Tieken clicked away on the computer, wrote down a number, and vanished into the back. Came back with a belt in a plastic bag.
“This should do the trick, chief.”
“Great. You mind coming out to take a look with me?” Adam said, taking a pointed glance at the other employee in the store. “Want to be sure I’m not wasting dollars. A professional opinion might help.”
Tieken’s smirk widened. He knew the drill.
“You seen your cousin recently?” Adam said as they walked around the corner of the store to the Jeep. It was parked behind the store’s van, out of sight from the road.
“Hillary? Yeah, we played cards just the other night.”
“Funny. But you know I mean Jerry. Where is he?”
“Oh, Jerry?” Tieken ran a hand through his red hair, pursed his lips, mock-thoughtful. “Man, I thought that old boy was in jail. You mean he’s not?”
“He needs to be,” Adam said. He opened the driver’s door, then popped the hood. “And I’ve got ten grand invested in seeing him back there. Think you can help?”
“Ten grand? Boy, that’s a lot.”
“It is.” Adam lifted the hood, set the brace. “And the thing is, Teek? I need this one settled fast. Like, today.”
What he needed settled had nothing to do with Jerry Norris, but Jerry was an important means to the end, and Adam could not afford to waste time getting there. He took the bag from Tieken’s hands, tore open the plastic, and slipped out the belt. A long loop of very strong rubber, V-ribbed. He pulled on the ends, felt the satisfying tension.
“You want to entertain yourself with this bullshit, or do you want to make a little money?” he said. “Pick fast, Teek. It’s two hundred dollars you won’t have in about thirty seconds. So pick fast.”
“Two hundred? I thought he was worth ten grand to you. I mean, if you spent five to get him back, just breaking even, that would help, wouldn’t it?”
Adam dropped the serpentine belt over Rick Tieken’s head, jerked it backward, and twisted. Tieken’s grunt of surprise was the last sound he got out before his air was gone. He fumbled at the belt and Adam twisted it again, cinching it tighter, and then slammed him forward, pressed his face down against the engine block, which was not hot enough to sear, but still hot enough to be awfully uncomfortable. Adam leaned down and spoke with his mouth close to Tieken’s ear.
“I do not have time to waste on you. Just don’t have it.”
He hit him again, and Tieken tried to let out a sob but couldn’t get enough air, just strangled a little more. Adam stepped back and loosened the belt. Tieken fought to clear it from his neck, and Adam obliged, slipping it back over his head, then coiling the belt in his hand. When Tieken fell, gasping, into the parking lot, Adam whipped the belt back and lashed it off his ribs, watched him double over and drop onto his face in the gravel.
“Son of a bitch.” Tieken wheezed. “I’m calling the cops, you piece of—”
“Do that and I’ll come back here and when I leave again you’ll be toothless. Now tell me where to find your brain-dead cousin. I promise you, if you see me again, it will not go well.”
Tieken looked up at him, and Adam smiled and looped one end of the belt tight in his fist, let the rest dangle in front of the man’s eyes.
“You want to have me arrested, you better believe I’m going to earn it.”
Tieken gave him an address through shaking breaths.
“That better be accurate,” Adam said.
“It is.”
“I’ll go find out.” Adam dropped the belt onto his chest in a loose tangle. “I don’t think I need that. Restock it, would you?”
The address checked out. Jerry Norris was lounging in a trailer on the south side of Chambers, watching SportsCenter and throwing Doritos at a fat pug who sat on the couch with him. He looked out the window when Adam knocked on it, made eye contact, and then abandoned the couch and sprinted down the hallway. The dog moved on the Doritos immediately, was face-first into the bag in under three seconds. On another day, Adam might have laughed. There were skips you actually worried about, guys you wanted off the street and in jail, and then there were skips like Jerry. Eating Doritos with a pug at nine in the morning.
“Jerry?” he called. “We just looked at each other. It’s safe to say I spotted you in there. I can wait outside and call the police, or you can open the damned door.”
Silence. The pug had fallen off the couch with the chip bag on his head. Adam squeezed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.
“Jerry. Come on.”
Now he heard the click of a door opening, and Jerry Norris came down the hall and back into the living room. He looked at Adam through the window, spread his hands, and gave an awkward smile.
“Instinct,” he said.
Adam nodded. Instinct.
“Let me in.”
Jerry unlocked the door and swung it open. Adam stepped inside, looked around the trailer, watching the pug push the chip bag out of the living room and into the kitchen, and said, “Whose place?”
“Girl’s name is Christine. Works on the turnpike. I met her at the tollbooth.”
Adam had to give Jerry a little credit here; picking someone up at a tollbooth was kind of impressive. He assumed it had been a light traffic day.
“She know you’re violating?”
Jerry shook his head.
“Good thing you’ve got going with her? Think you can stick it out if you’re not in jail?”
“Maybe.”
“Think you can stick it out if you are in jail?”
“Doubt it.”
“Well, then,” Adam said, “let’s talk.”
“You’ll do a minimum of ninety days if I bring you in,” Adam said. “Minimum. They might go for a year. No more Christine. Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?”
Jerry waited, curious or confused or both.
“I will drive away and leave you here,” Adam said, “if you can do me a favor. I would like some drugs.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I am not.”
Jerry laughed. “Oh, man. You got to be kidding me. What do you need?”
“Something in the heroin, meth, or coke families would be terrific,” Adam said. “But if that’s hard for you to come up with, I’d settle for OxyContin, provided the quantity is substantial.”
The smile left Jerry’s face and his eyes narrowed. “Screw this, man. Entrapment, that’s what this bullshit is.”
“Only police can entrap you, Jerry. And I’m quite serious. I would like whatever you can give me. Right now. Or we go to jail. Right now.”
There was a long pause while Jerry studied his face and SportsCenter ran and the pug wrestled with the chip bag somewhere out of sight in the kitchen.
“I can give you some OxyContin.”
“I’d like more than a hundred.”
“What? Why?”
“Jerry—again, we could be on our way to jail now. I’m frustrated by the need to continue to reiterate that idea. What I am telling you is this: I will officially lose interest in your bond if you make sure you give me at least 101 pills. Understand?”
Jerry understood perfectly. That extra pill was the difference between illegal possession charges and trafficking charges. Between jail time and prison time.
“No way,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not letting you trap me, man.”
“Trap you? Jerry, I’ve got you. What I’m offering is to release the trap. Your call.”
Jerry Norris sighed, looking unhappily at Adam, not liking the situation but not liking the certainty of several months in jail if he didn’t roll with it, and then he said, “Hang on,” and went down the hall and into a bedroom and closed the door. When he came back, he had four orange prescription bottles.
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