by Mike Markel
Boys.
Sensing that he had just won this preliminary testosterone-spraying contest, Ryan put on a professional smile. “First, I want to thank you again for going to the trouble of putting the films on the stick for me. And for delivering it to police headquarters. You didn’t have to do that. I said we’d come get it.”
Coach Baxter looked like he couldn’t bring himself to respond. He nodded his head, almost imperceptibly. Then, he gathered himself. “No problem,” he said. “I hope you got what you needed.”
“Oh, I did. It was very helpful.”
Ryan’s right hand was on the mouse, under the glass tabletop. He turned to me. “Detective,” he said, “you might want to swivel around to see the screen.”
A burst of white light coming from behind me threw a silhouette of my body on the opposite wall. I hopped out of my chair and took a seat off to the side. The screen, a painfully bright white, must have been six feet by four.
“Coach Baxter,” Ryan said, “I’ve seen Lake Williams twice: once, dead, in his tent in the homeless camp in Ten Mile Park, and once on the autopsy table. Getting a chance to see him when he was young and healthy was really helpful.” A clip from a game film came up on the screen. Lake was running down the sidelines, a yard in front of the defender. At just the right time, he turned his body and leapt into the air. The pass traced an arc six inches beyond the defender’s outstretched hands. Without breaking stride, Lake pulled the ball in and raced down the sideline toward the end zone. Another defender was coming across from the other side of the field at an angle. Lake did a little head fake, sending the defender lunging in the wrong direction.
Lake swept into the end zone and headed toward the umpire, who had just raised his arms to call the touchdown. Lake handed the ball to the umpire and turned to accept the chest bumps and helmet slaps of his teammates.
I looked at Coach Baxter. I couldn’t be sure of his expression. It looked like a smile, but his dark eyes looked troubled.
“Do you remember this one, Coach Baxter?” It was a play from the opponent’s five-yard line. Lake was alone, off near the left sideline. The quarterback dropped back and looked at a wide receiver on the right, then pivoted and threw to Lake, who was covered by two defenders. The pass was a bullet, but it was off the mark, pulling Lake over toward the sideline. Somehow he grabbed it with one hand, pulled it in, and turned to step over the goal line. One of the defenders lowered his head and lunged at Lake, trying to push him out of bounds before he could cross the goal line. Lake transferred the ball into his right hand and reached over the edge of the foam pylon just before he took a vicious hit. The umpire raised his arms to signal the touchdown as the ball went flying out of Lake’s hand. Lake landed hard and lay on the turf, motionless.
With the bright, flickering lights from the video screen dominating the room, I couldn’t quite make out what Coach Baxter was doing. But he appeared to wipe a tear from his right eye. “Lake had all the tools.”
“He certainly did.” Ryan’s voice was steady. “But he paid a price.”
The next clip showed Lake taking a kickoff at the ten-yard line and heading for the right sideline. He saw three defenders closing in on him and pivoted to the left, crossing back into his own end zone and running all the way across the field to the left sideline, avoiding three more tackles. By the time he turned the corner to head down the field, four defenders converged on him. Two hit him below the waist, two above. He rose into the air and flew for a few seconds before landing, out of bounds, his head hitting the turf. The umpire called unnecessary roughness. Lake lay on the turf as the trainer rushed over to him. After the longest while, when Lake rolled onto his back and moved his legs, the crowd applauded that he was uninjured.
The next clip, which lasted only a few seconds, showed Lake catching a pass and taking a ferocious hit that left him motionless on the turf. Then another clip, and another, each one showing Lake Williams absorbing brutal hits to the head from an opponent’s helmet. Then a set of clips showing Lake’s head bouncing off the turf.
“This one is really interesting,” Ryan said. “I want you to look carefully.” The clip showed Lake getting laid out from a blind-side tackle and being helped off the field by two trainers. His legs were rubbery, his head lowered, bobbing as he walked. “Pay attention here,” Ryan said. It was a wide-angle shot showing another player coming in off the sidelines to replace Lake in the huddle. “Lake is number eighty-eight.” Lake was helped over to the bench, where he collapsed. Two guys were supporting him, while another man, presumably the team physician, knelt in front of him. Ryan stopped the clip. “Watch what happens next, Coach Baxter.”
The image of Lake Williams was fairly small and hard to make out, but he appeared to lean forward and vomit. The doctor stood and waved to someone else on the sidelines. The injury cart came wheeling over, and the assistants helped Lake onto it and lowered his body so that he was lying prone. The doctor climbed in the cart next to the driver, who steered it off the field and into the tunnel.
Coach Baxter said, “That’s protocol. The doctor was bringing him in to examine him, run the concussion tests on him.”
Ryan nodded. “Watch this next clip. You see the game clock? It says 3:19 left in the third quarter. That’s exactly two minutes and fourteen seconds after he was taken off the field on the cart.”
Coach Baxter said, “Well, that’s not two minutes and fourteen seconds later in real time—”
“That’s right, Coach.” Ryan looked at him. “I checked the real-time footage of this game. It was five minutes and eight seconds later. Watch what happens.”
The clip showed Lake walking slowly out of the tunnel, the two assistants flanking him. They were trying to hold onto his arms, to support him, but he shook them off. They kept their eyes fixed on him, as if they were trying to make sure he wouldn’t collapse. Lake pushed them away and walked slowly to the sidelines and up to the coach.
“There you are, Coach Baxter.”
The clip showed Coach Baxter slapping Lake Williams on the ass, then Lake trotting onto the field and joining the huddle. The crowd applauded. The quarterback clapped his hands, breaking the huddle, and Lake lined up on the left. The quarterback dropped back into the pocket and threw to Lake, but it was overthrown. Lake got his fingertips on it but couldn’t pull it in. The defender tackled him, cleanly, and he landed, his head bouncing on the turf. He lay there for a few seconds, then slowly lifted himself onto his hands and knees. A teammate came over and helped him up. Lake began to walk in the wrong direction; the teammate directed him back to the huddle, which had already formed.
“Why are you showing me this, Detective Miner?” He put his palms out in mock confusion. “You realize I was present during every one of those plays, don’t you, and that I called every play?”
“I am aware of that, Coach Baxter. I want to make the point that Lake Williams absorbed a very large number of violent hits—and I’ve shown you only a small fraction of them.”
“All due respect, Detective, I have devoted my life to college football. It’s what I do every day. It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing when I go to bed. Are you accusing me of doing something wrong? What exactly is your point?”
Ryan didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He stared at Coach Baxter.
Three seconds elapsed, five seconds, ten.
The coach ran his hand through his thick hair. “If you’re trying to show me that football is a violent sport—I’m well aware of that.”
Again, Ryan was silent.
“If you’re trying to make the point that I was negligent or didn’t follow NCAA protocol, you’re way out of line. The most important responsibility for every head football coach—and I assure you I take that responsibility very seriously—is the safety and well-being of my players. Nothing is more important than that.”
Ryan didn’t move, didn’t say anything. He was starting to creep the coach out. Me, too, a little bit.
> “You saw the films.” Coach Baxter was leaning in toward Ryan. “I followed the NCAA protocol to the letter. Me, my whole staff. From A.D. Freedlander down to the equipment guys. To the letter, we followed it. There’s nothing in those clips that violates a single sentence in the NCAA protocols. What do you want me to say, Detective?”
“I don’t want you to say anything, Coach Baxter. You’ve said enough. I want to say something to you. You didn’t take care of Lake Williams. You didn’t take care of him. You should have. And you should be ashamed.”
Coach Baxter shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know what’s happening here.” He turned to me. “Can you tell me what you and Detective Miner are doing?”
Even though I had no idea exactly what Ryan was doing, I trusted him. So I sat there and stared at him without opening my mouth.
Coach Baxter let out a forced laugh, like both Ryan and I were crazy. “I put the game films on a stick like you asked for, and you come in here and show me clips and tell me I should be ashamed. What are you doing? I said it once. I’ll say it again. Everything you’ve shown in these clips is clearly legitimate, according to the NCAA. How do I know? Because they haven’t called us on it. Not once. Not once.”
Ryan kept staring at him.
“Look,” Coach Baxter said, “I don’t know what you want me to do. You want to report me to the NCAA for something, you go ahead. But I doubt if they’re going to pay any attention to a police detective who doesn’t like how I run my program.”
“You’re right, Coach Baxter.” Ryan spoke slowly, with an even tone. “I’m just a police detective. But you don’t have to worry. I have no interest in reporting you to the NCAA. I just wanted you to know that I think you betrayed Lake Williams.”
“Well, you’ve made that point.” He nodded. “If you have any other opinions you’d like to share, take them to the university attorney, Tim Giraldi. If you have nothing else, I’ll ask you to excuse me—”
“I do have one more thing to show you. It won’t take but a few seconds.”
Coach Baxter sighed in exasperation.
The slide from Lake Williams’s brain scan appeared on the screen. Coach Baxter frowned, squinting. “What the hell is this?”
“This is a slice from Lake Williams’s brain. He had CTE. Stage 2. The dark spots on the nerve cells are the abnormal clumps of tau, which he got from the concussions and the sub-concussive head traumas. The CTE caused the symptoms he was already showing during his playing days: the anger, the violence, the confusion, the poor judgment. CTE was killing him a little bit every day, until Sunday night, when someone delivered some uncut heroin to him. Someone knew that he was a helpless junkie, that he would shoot it up immediately, and that he would die.
“I did a little arithmetic, Coach. In the eight years you’ve been employed at CMSU, you have been paid over four million dollars by the state of Montana. That’s not counting performance bonuses, the radio and TV shows, and the money you’ve gotten from various equipment pimps. That’s probably another two million. In that same eight-year period, John Freedlander, the athletic director, has earned one-point-seven million dollars. Each of your assistant coaches earns more than a hundred-thousand dollars per year. Lake Williams had no income, no health insurance. He died on a filthy foam pad in a camping tent in a public park.
“I’m here to deliver a very simple message. I think Lake Williams represented a threat to your program. I don’t know what the threat was. I don’t know whether it was Lake himself who was going to say or do something, or whether it was someone else. But I think someone associated with the football program decided to solve the problem by killing him. And I want to be very clear on this: If I find out that Lake was killed to prevent him from threatening the program, I will come at the killer hard, and I’ll keep coming. And I won’t stop until he is arrested and prosecuted.”
I heard my phone buzzing from inside my big leather bag. I pulled it out and read the text message. “Coach Baxter, we have to go.” I stood up. “Thanks for talking to us.”
Chapter 18
Ryan and I left the football complex and got in the Charger. I didn’t start the engine. “I sense you’re a little upset.”
Ryan looked at me. “When I learned that Coach Baxter played for John Freedlander, who was as dirty as they come, and they both ended up here, it fell into place. Baxter has spent his entire career working the system, one step at a time, each job bringing him more money and more power. And he’s done it on the backs of kids like Lake, who get nothing.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But he said he was always in compliance with NCAA regs. Like that clip you showed of Lake puking, then coming back into the game. Baxter said it was legal, that his guys were following the concussion protocols. Was he lying?”
“It’s impossible to know. We have no idea what his guys did in the locker room. But that’s not my point. I didn’t say he was in violation. I said he didn’t take care of Lake, and that he should be ashamed. The head coach tells his people how to behave—or at least sets the example. If his team physician saw the hit Lake took, saw him throwing up—there’s no way he should have let Lake come back out of that tunnel. Of course the physician should have run the protocol on him, but he should have done more than that: He should have looked out for him.”
“All right,” I said. “Things are gonna start to pop now—I mean, now that you reamed out the coach. He’s gonna be on the phone to Carl Davis and the rest of his senior staff to tell them there’s a crazy cop coming after them.”
“Fine. The programs and the NCAA exploit kids like Lake, then throw them away when they’re broken. Let’s see how they respond when they have to deal with the police.”
“Yeah, okay, but we don’t know they took out Lake. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just saying it could be Alicia or her father—or someone who had nothing to do with football.”
Ryan nodded. “And when we arrest Alicia or her father, I will personally apologize to Coach Baxter. But until then, I’m following the money. Someone paid five-hundred dollars to deliver the drugs that killed Lake. It’s not Alicia or her father. I know it.” He was silent for a moment. “That phone message you got when we were talking to Coach Baxter? Was that just you trying to get me out of there?”
“No, it was headquarters. Remember Cory McDermott, the dealer who was on the team with Lake?”
“Yeah, did we find him?”
“Sort of. He’s in the hospital. Someone beat the crap out of him.”
“Can he talk?” Ryan said.
“He can. No idea if he will.”
“So why aren’t you driving us there now?” He gave me a small smile, which I took to be a good sign. Our partnership works because of our opposite styles. Ryan is calm, rational, and thoughtful. I’m … not.
I started the engine and drove us to the Rawlings Regional Medical Center. We walked in to the big lobby and got his room number: 413.
“What exactly do we know about what happened to Cory McDermott?” Ryan said.
“Only that he’s in stable condition. He’s conscious. One of the responding officers is there to brief us.”
We rode the elevator to four and wound our way around the hallway to room 413. An officer was standing outside the room. His nametag said Stewart.
“What happened?”
“We got a call about two hours ago that a guy was beat up in the alley outside Johnny’s Lounge.”
“The caller leave a name?”
“No. Me and my partner went to the alley. He looked pretty bad, so we called for an ambulance.”
“Did he say anything when you were with him?”
“Nothing useful. We asked him who did it. Said he didn’t know. How did it happen? He got jumped.”
“During a drug deal?”
“No, he says he’s not a dealer.”
“So why did he get jumped?”
“‘Because shit happens.’”
“How’d you ID him? He hav
e a wallet?”
“He had a wallet but no ID in it. He told us his name. My partner remembered the name from the bulletin that you were looking for a Cory McDermott.”
“Okay, thanks, Stewart. Good work. Tell your partner thanks, too.”
He nodded and left.
We entered the room, which had a center aisle separating two rows of five beds each, the beds separated by thin cloth curtains on tracks. I approached a nurse, tapped my shield, and asked her to point us to Cory McDermott. She led us down the aisle and opened a curtain.
“Can you tell us his condition?”
She picked up the chart hanging on the end of his bed. “Couple fractured ribs and facial lacerations. Bruising all over his trunk suggests he was kicked around a lot. We’ve scanned him for organ damage, but we want to watch his blood and his vitals for a while.”
“Is he on pain meds?”
She looked down at the chart. “Acetaminophen and codeine phosphate. That’s Tylenol with codeine. He said he didn’t want anything major, but he’s had a pretty rough morning. The doc prescribed a fairly low dose.”
“Can we talk to him?”
“Just a few minutes. He might fade in and out.”
I thanked her, and Ryan and I walked up to his bedside. “Cory, my name is Detective Seagate. This is my partner, Detective Miner. Can we talk to you a few minutes about what happened?”
Cory McDermott had a bunch of tubes coming out of his arms and an oxygen tube hooked to his nose. The swelling beneath his eyes had already half-shut them. A set of butterfly bandages closed a one-inch gash on his forehead; stitches held together a longer, nastier laceration on his left cheek.