Players: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 7)

by Mike Markel

  I thanked her and turned toward the elevator.

  Ryan followed reluctantly. “We could’ve taken the stairs, you know.”

  “You see the way that girl looked at me? Like I was pushing a walker?”

  We walked past a large glass display case full of trophies and footballs and championship rings. Widescreen TV sets on kiosks showed game films, a graduation ceremony with the seniors in caps and gowns under a goal post in the stadium, and videos of players doing charitable events at hospitals and football camps for handicapped kids.

  “This whole building is about football?” I said. “If I’m captain of the field-hockey team, I don’t see the inside of this building, right?”

  “I’m sure they give public tours.”

  At the main office, the forty-something woman at the desk looked up at us. Her name tag read Helen. She took in the detectives’ shields around our necks. “Good morning. Can I help you?”

  Ryan said, “Is Coach Baxter available? We’d like to speak with him for a few minutes.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her expression showed just the right amount of disappointment. “He’s not available at the moment.”

  “Is he around?” I said. “I mean, here on campus? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “No, actually, he’s not.” That was all Helen said. Apparently, it was none of our damn business where the boss was, and she wasn’t going to tell us. She looked at her screen and hit a few keys. “He’s expected back around one this afternoon. I think he could work you in then.” She lifted her eyebrows so I would know she was making a significant concession.

  “How about you tell me where he is right—”

  Ryan touched my arm. “One o’clock would be great,” he said to Helen. “We’d appreciate that.”

  She nodded and smiled at Ryan, then typed something. She looked up at Ryan. “Could you tell me your names, please?”

  Ryan told her. She typed. I couldn’t see her screen. I imagine she entered “Detective Ryan Miner and Obnoxious Bitch.” She smiled at him again.

  Ryan pointed to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that overlooked the practice facility. “This is incredible. Do you mind?”

  Helen almost hopped out of her chair. “Not at all.” She led him over to the glass. I drifted over, hanging back just enough to not get in Ryan’s way. He had begun to work her.

  Through the glass I could see a full-size football field inside a metal building that looked like an airplane hangar. Sunlight filtered through the frosted windows, which extended from just above the artificial turf all the way up to the ceiling, at least fifty feet in the center. Around the perimeter of the building, about twenty feet above the turf, was a catwalk. Six observation decks, each big enough to hold three or four people, jutted out from the catwalk.

  Ryan spoke to Helen. “On the ceiling—are those cameras?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Ten of them. The video coordinator can sit in his suite down the hall and swivel them with joysticks. The goal is to capture the video and get it to the coaching staff before the players leave the field.”

  “This is an incredible setup.” He shook his head in disbelief, his grin set at ten.

  I started to worry he was laying it on too thick. But since he was always been very good at figuring out which button to push—and how hard to push it—I hung back.

  Although the players wouldn’t arrive for practice for a few hours, the field was full of activity. Six young guys were setting up equipment: sleds to push across the field, rope ladders to hop-scotch through, cones to slalom around, and chutes to duck beneath. Hurdles of all shapes and sizes to jump over, and mats for players to fall onto. Along the sidelines, guys were wheeling out nets for quarterbacks to throw balls into and nets for kickers to kick into. They were attaching battle ropes to brackets on the walls.

  On the wall beyond the west end zone, past the goal posts suspended from the ceiling, a couple of workmen were installing a video screen as wide as my living room. An older guy in a sport jacket and slacks and carrying a cane was talking with one of the workers. I said to Helen, “What’s going on down there?”

  As she turned to answer me, I caught a flash of annoyance on her face, as if in talking to me she might slip out of the orbit of Planet Ryan. But she recovered quickly and offered an official smile. “We’re installing a video setup like the ones in the stadium.”

  “Can you tell me who the guy is? In the sport jacket?”

  “That’s Mr. Davis.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ryan turned to the woman. “This is an unbelievable facility you’ve got here.”

  She brightened. “Did you play?”

  Ryan said, “Not here. BYU. We had an indoor facility, but nothing like this.”

  “If you’ve got a minute, I’m sure Mr. Davis would love to chat with you.”

  Ryan broke out his kid smile. “You don’t think he’d mind?”

  She nodded confidently. “Trust me, Mr. Davis will talk football with anybody, anywhere.”

  Ryan turned to me. “That okay with you?”

  “Sure.” I put on an indulgent smile for Helen’s sake, but I liked Ryan’s decision to talk with the booster, as long as he was right here and we had time.

  Ryan turned to Helen. “We’d love to talk to Mr. Davis—just for a minute.”

  She smiled and headed back to her desk. “I’ll call the student at Reception. She’ll let you in.”

  “This is terrific. Thanks so much,” Ryan said. “And we’ll come back at one to talk to the coach.”

  The woman gave him a warm smile and bowed her head slightly.

  When we got back downstairs to Reception, the young woman greeted us and led us down the hall to a set of double doors that opened onto the indoor facility. I closed my jacket in the chill. The air had a vague smell of engine fluids, plastics, and sweat.

  The guys setting up the equipment glanced up at Ryan and me as we walked past them, but they took no particular notice. They must see a lot of guests walking through the facility.

  As we approached Mr. Davis and the electrical guy, Ryan said, “You mind if I lead?”

  “You better. Only question I got is, ‘You kill Lake Williams?’”

  Carl Davis didn’t see us approaching as he talked with the electrician. When the electrician stopped and turned to us, Davis turned, too. “Hello,” he said, “I’m Carl Davis.” He presented a warm, slightly crooked smile that crinkled up his eyes, which were cloudy and veiny with age. He had a half-dozen liver spots on his comfortably wrinkled face. His teeth, a little misaligned and discolored, were original equipment. I didn’t see too many rich, successful eighty-year-old guys with the self-confidence to walk around looking like they’re eighty. He tilted his head, a welcoming gesture that said, I bet we’re going to be friends.

  “Mr. Davis.” I extended my hand. “I’m Detective Karen Seagate. Rawlings Police Department. This is my partner, Detective Ryan Miner.”

  Carl Davis made good eye contact, first with me, then with Ryan. He took a quick glance at Ryan’s physique and outfit, then seemed to straighten up a little bit. It was like Carl Davis was looking at himself from fifty years ago. Ryan was wearing his usual shareholders-meeting outfit: tailored blue suit, crisp white shirt, maroon tie with a gold tack. Carl Davis looked ready for a photo at a dedication ceremony for the new building at a hospital or on campus he had endowed: a navy sport coat, pale blue shirt with a buttoned-down collar, a CMSU tie with the cougar logo on it, and grey wool slacks. He wore a black fedora, tilted a little, which matched the shiny black wooden cane with a silver handle. These two guys were cut from the same cloth.

  “I’m very pleased to meet both of you,” Carl Davis said.

  “We’re sorry to interrupt you.” Ryan gestured to the electrician.

  “Not at all,” Carl Davis said. “They’ll be glad to get away from an old man asking a lot of fool questions.”

  The electrician smiled indulgently and turned to go back to
his job. “I’ll catch up to you later, Mr. Davis.” His name, Dave, was stitched on his navy blue work shirt, on the right chest. Over the pocket, on the left side, was the logo of Weber Electric.

  Chapter 9

  I was planning to let Ryan work Carl Davis, the head of the Cougar Athletic Association, right here on the shiny green artificial turf inside the practice facility at Central Montana State University. But then I noticed that the company installing the expensive scoreboard in the practice facility was Weber Electric. That’s the company owned by Ronald Weber, the father of Alicia Templeton, the former cheerleader. She’s the one who might have been raped by Lake Williams but who definitely had his child, which she immediately gave up for adoption.

  Because Rawlings is so small, most of the major tradesmen contract with the university, which has the biggest physical plant in the city. So the link between Weber Electric and the university was probably perfectly legit. But I did want to hear what Carl Davis had to say about the relationship. I decided to let Ryan talk football with Carl Davis for a minute or two before butting in.

  Turns out—no big surprise—that Carl Davis was a college football player sixty years ago at the University of Montana. When Ryan started troweling on the compliments about the facility Carl Davis had built, Davis smiled his crooked smile and did some humble-bragging about how Central Montana wouldn’t do too well on the field against BYU but that was no reason that his boys couldn’t have facilities as good as the big boys had in Provo, Utah. The two men joked about the little Cougars and the big Cougars—apparently the two schools share a mascot.

  It all reminded me of how my ex-husband used to spend autumn weekends: making stupid, boring conversation with other guys about football as I pretended in my half-assed way to look interested. I won’t blame football talk for me becoming a drunk, but it didn’t help.

  I could see, however, that Ryan and this old guy were building a bond, and I knew it might turn out to be useful. They seemed to go on forever about schedules, conferences, rules changes, and players to watch, but when I snuck a look at my watch, it was only four minutes. I stood there, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, resisting the urge to curl up on one of the mats and take a nap. In Carl Davis’s defense, however, he never made any sexist comments, and he glanced at me occasionally so I wouldn’t feel completely left out after he’d given up trying to involve me in the conversation.

  Finally, I had to jump in. “Mr. Davis, I notice Weber Electric is doing the scoreboard.”

  He brightened and nodded his head, not because this was a fascinating insight but because he wanted to encourage me. “That’s right, Detective. Weber does a lot of the work for the athletics department.”

  “Could you tell us a little about your relationship with the company?” Sometimes I like to use open-ended questions and watch how the person responds. If the university’s relationship with the company was innocent, I expected Davis might ask me to clarify the question. But if the relationship was a little sketchy, he might get all defensive, unintentionally telling me what he didn’t want me to know.

  He pulled back a little. I couldn’t tell if the question rattled him, or if it was the change in tone: how two guys chewing the fat about football somehow turned into a police interview. “Weber Electric?” His eyes drifted up to the criss-crossing tangle of steel beams holding the roof up. “Well, we’ve been using them—let me think—it must be close to thirty years, back when it was Ron’s dad running the business. They’ve done a terrific job with all the electronics here and in the renovation of the complex. In the stadium, itself, too. It’s quite complicated stuff—the lights, the electronics for the scoreboard. And all the gear for the locker rooms, the training rooms. Everything’s electronic these days. I’ll be happy to show you around if you’d like.” He nodded and smiled, urging me to jump on his happy train.

  “Did Weber do all the electrical work for the practice field? For the renovation of the complex? That must have been a tremendous project.”

  “I imagine they subbed out some of the work, but they’ve been our main contractor for a long time. Like this project here: the scoreboard. Weber did the scoreboard in the stadium, a really bang-up job. So when we decided to put one up in the practice facility, Weber was the obvious choice. We let them know what we wanted. Now, I’m not really up to speed on the details of the state contracting system; I’m more about fundraising and donating the money to the university. But I know they have to submit a bid just like everybody else.”

  Okay: Something about the bidding process was squirrelly. I don’t know anything about how bidding works, but I figured the problem had to do with the university—or Carl Davis himself—steering the job to Weber Electric. It could be that Davis gave Weber special information that helped them write the proposal to beat out other electrical contractors.

  Then it hit me: Davis’s booster organization is about raising money, funneling it through the university to pay for athletics projects. If the organization was cheating somehow, it would be about pricing the bid. Maybe the Weber bids were too high, and Weber and Davis were skimming. But I realized that wasn’t it: If another company found out that Weber got the job even though their bid was higher, they could complain, and the whole scheme would blow up. No, it was the opposite: The Weber bids were too low. That way, Weber got all the jobs and all the good publicity. That theory felt right.

  “Does Weber undercut the other contractors?”

  Carl Davis’s expression turned cloudy for a moment. “You know, Detective, I really have no idea. My business expertise is personal financial planning; I don’t know anything about this kind of contracting. But I do know that Ron Weber is a good friend of the program—he’s a lifetime member of the Cougar Athletic Association. If he bids low on one of our projects—and takes a loss here and there—I’d see that as a contribution to the community.”

  Davis had just confirmed my guess. It was my turn to look puzzled. “How’s that?”

  “You have to understand the role of football and basketball in the community. If you want to see a live professional sporting event, you have to travel six hundred miles. Our two revenue sports—football, especially, but basketball, too—are the heartbeat of Rawlings for a lot of people. College athletics are a big part of what makes it so special to live here in God’s country. The tailgating in the fall? That really brings us together, as a community. If Ron bids a little low, that’s a donation to the university. It means we can build better facilities, which means we can attract better student-athletes. And that means more people in the stands. These two revenue sports subsidize all the other sports—and pay for a number of academic scholarships, too.” He paused. “I see it as a win for everyone.”

  I caught a glimpse of Ryan out of the side of my eye. He looked a little concerned, as if he didn’t want to piss Carl Davis off so soon. But I knew he understood what I was doing. And the fact that he didn’t interrupt me to re-direct the conversation meant he was willing to let me keep going. “Do you know Ron Weber? I mean, socially?”

  “I do. And I consider him a friend—not only a friend of Cougar athletics, but a personal friend. And, I might add, he and his wife, Jill, were friends with my late wife, as well.”

  I moved a few inches toward him. “About seven or eight years ago, did Ron Weber tell you about his daughter getting raped by one of the football players?”

  “My lord, no, he did not tell me any such thing.” Carl Davis’s right hand began to shake. He transferred his cane to his left hand and put his right hand in his pants pocket. “No, ma’am, he never told me anything about that.” He swallowed hard. “That is very disturbing. Terrible.”

  “The player was named LaKadrian Williams. Do you have any memory of him?”

  “You say seven or eight years ago?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He was a four-year scholarship player? Five years?”

  Ryan said, “He was a junior-college transfer, but he lost his scholar
ship in the third year, left the university.”

  Carl Davis nodded his appreciation to Ryan for the information, then turned back to me. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’m eighty-four years old. I’ve met thousands of players over the decades, and my memory just isn’t what it used to be.” He paused. “Can I ask you why you’re asking about this incident now?”

  “LaKadrian Williams died yesterday. We think it was a drug overdose. He was living in a homeless camp out in Ten Mile Park. We just wanted to know if you could fill in any background on him.”

  Carl Davis’s eyes began to glisten with tears. He wiped at them with his thumb and forefinger. The tremor in his right hand had become more pronounced. “When I hear about these boys getting themselves in trouble … I just don’t know.” He shook his head. “It seems like it’s every year now. They get arrested, beat up their girlfriends. And drugs. So many drugs.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. “I don’t remember this boy. But raping Alicia? Ending up homeless? A drug addict? Don’t get me wrong: I love what I do here—building these facilities. Like I said, I see it as a way to contribute to the community. But I work hard—and I know all the boosters do. Ron Weber does. I know that for a fact. Year after year. We work damn hard to give them every opportunity to make something of themselves. A lot of these boys, they don’t have that much to begin with—except for their God-given talent. When I hear about a boy going wrong like that, throwing it all away … it gives me a real hollow feeling inside.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I get that. I absolutely do. I’m sorry to upset you like this.”

  Carl Davis waved it away. “Not your fault, of course. But hearing about the rape … I know Coach Baxter, consider him a friend. And like I said, Ron Weber as well. To think that one of the boys did that to her. I’ve known Alicia since the Webers brought her home from the hospital.” He shook his head. “It shakes you, it really does. But I have to tell you, I never heard word one about a rape. You know, a lot of things have changed over the time I’ve been associated with Cougar football. But I swear to you, on my wife’s grave, all the athletics staff, from the equipment manager up to the A.D., and the university administration, right up to and including the president, I can tell you honestly, they have never tolerated sexual assault. Never. So when you tell me Alicia was raped by one of the players—I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened. But the fact that Ron and Jill never mentioned it to me or my late wife …” He tapped his chest with a fist. “It hurts me. It hurts me more than you know.”