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

by Mike Markel

  I looked at his earlobes, first one, then the other. They were both pierced, but there were no rings in them now. I glanced at Ryan, who nodded to tell me he caught that. Kendra said her dealer had pierced ears. Then again, so do a lot of guys in Cory’s line of work.

  His eyes were cloudy, but he seemed to be able to focus. He looked at me, then at Ryan. “Don’t know what happened.”

  “Do you know where you were when you got jumped?”

  “Downtown.”

  “Remember where?”

  He tried to shake his head, but even that small movement caused him to moan. “No.”

  “Was it a drug deal?”

  “I don’t deal.”

  “C’mon, Cory. You’ve got five convictions for distribution. You’re inside as much as you’re out.”

  He looked at me. “That’s why I don’t sell drugs anymore.”

  I nodded. “Did you see the guys who jumped you?”

  “No.” It was barely more than a whisper.

  “You can’t say how many guys?”

  “No.”

  “You got a customer named Kendra Crimmons? A woman, about forty. White.” I turned to Ryan. “You got her photo?” Ryan passed me a mug shot of Kendra, which I held up to Cory’s face.

  He closed his eyelids again, then opened them slowly. “No customers.”

  “I want to ask you a few questions about Lake Williams.” I think he looked a little surprised, but his face was so beat up and his range of expressions so limited, I couldn’t be sure. “Tell me about him.”

  “Good player. Blew out his knee.”

  “Good student?”

  “He tried, for a while, then he stopped. There were phony courses for the elite players. He got good grades.” Cory McDermott paused to catch his breath. “After his injury, they put him in regular courses. He couldn’t handle them.”

  “You mean he didn’t have the time?”

  “I mean he could barely read. Like most of the JUCOs.”

  “Did he take drugs?”

  “Weed, like everyone. And whatever the trainers gave him. That’s all I knew of.”

  “Cory, did you know about the rape charges against him?”

  “He didn’t have to rape anyone. He got more pussy than he knew what to do with.”

  “Yeah, I know the girls liked him. Did one of them charge him with rape?”

  Cory McDermott shrugged his shoulders, just a little, then winced in pain. “Light-brown hair, I think. A cheerleader. Don’t remember her name. She thought he was into her, but, like I said, he was all about pussy.”

  Various beeping sounds from the medical equipment in the ward filled the room. I glanced down the aisle at the other beds. Green and amber lights shone through the curtains, which were as thin as the gowns they give you where your ass hangs out.

  “Lake had a roommate, a guy named Max Thomas. You remember him?”

  “Yeah. Big, slow. A linebacker, I think.”

  “You think he knew about the rape charge?”

  “Wasn’t a secret. Coach didn’t name Lake, but we got all kinds of lectures about character. Shit like that. They even brought in the old man to tell us we represented the school. We had to act like gentlemen. Some woman from outside the program, too.”

  “Who was the old man?”

  “Mr. Davis.”

  “Was Lake close to Max?”

  “I don’t think Lake was close to any of the guys.”

  “But you’d see them together sometimes?”

  “Yeah. Lake was good with all the guys. On the field. I don’t know if they hung out off the field.”

  “You ever see them mix it up?”

  “Lake had a temper. He got into it with a lot of the guys. Later that day, they’d be laughing like it never happened.”

  “You got in a fight with Lake, both got arrested. What was that about?”

  “I’ve been in a lot of fights. It was years ago. I don’t remember.”

  “Was it about you and Lake competing for territory? You were both dealing in those days.”

  He started to laugh, then grimaced. “Lake knew how to do two things: play football and screw girls. That was it. He couldn’t even sell weed.”

  “Cory, Lake Williams died couple days ago.”

  He was silent a moment. “People die.”

  “People die?”

  “Half the people I know, they’re dead.”

  “You curious about how he died?”

  “Not really.”

  “Because you already know?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “He OD’ed.”

  “I believe it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I said, all he knew was football and pussy. I knew he was done with football, so I figured the pussy disappeared, too. But dope? There’s always dope. Dope is patient.”

  A nurse passed by. I waited a moment.

  “I’m gonna tell you what I think happened, Cory. I mean, with you getting this beatdown. This didn’t just happen to you. It wasn’t a robbery. Two or three guys jump you in the middle of the day—downtown?—for no reason? They were sending you a message. You know who did it, and you know why.”

  He raised his eyebrows, just a little, before a look of pain swept over his face.

  “Interested?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “You know Kendra. You’re her dealer. Somebody paid you serious money to get some uncut heroin. Told you to get her to deliver it to Lake, to kill him.”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “If you say so.”

  “Who was it, Cory? Who’d you order the heroin for?”

  “No fuckin’ idea what you’re talking about. I told you, I don’t deal anymore.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you told me. If you don’t deal, what do you live on?”

  “This and that. Not really your business.”

  “Where’d you get your hands on pure heroin?”

  “I didn’t. You don’t have a clue. There’s no pure shit in Rawlings. There never was. This ain’t Chicago, LA.”

  “Who jumped you, Cory? What were they telling you?”

  “You’re out of your mind. I want to go to sleep. Arrest me or go away.”

  “Was it a warning, Cory? Were they warning you what was gonna happen if you talked to us? Was it because Kendra told us someone hired her to bring the heroin to Lake? Did you screw this up? Were you supposed to get rid of Kendra so she couldn’t talk to us?”

  “Bye, bye.” He closed his eyes.

  “Because if you screwed something up, and that’s why you took this beatdown, what do you think’s gonna happen when you get out of here? They might come at you again. I’m not sure you can go another round with these guys. What if they decide it’s safer to just shut you up, since you’re the one who can lead us back to them?”

  Ryan tapped me on the arm. With his eyes, he gestured to the nurse, who was standing at the end of the bed.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, Detectives.”

  We thanked her and started heading down the stairs to the lobby.

  Ryan said, “Too bad we didn’t have a few more minutes.”

  “Well, he did tell us everyone in the football program—including Carl Davis—knew about Alicia’s rape allegation—”

  “Which means Max lied to us, too.”

  “Max said he didn’t know about it?” I don’t remember things as well as Ryan does. Or as well as I used to.

  “That’s what he said,” Ryan said.

  “Could be they’ve all been told to deny things like that. You know, for PR purposes.”

  “I guess. But Cory might have told us what really happened in the alley today.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think he was gonna fold. Hell, he could’ve been telling the truth: that the whole story of him supplying the dope could be crap.”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I like it.”

  “All we really have is Ke
ndra tells us her dealer is a thirty-year-old white guy with earrings, and he’s a thirty-year-old white guy with earrings.”

  “No, I think we have more than that,” Ryan said. “He was on the team. He knew all the guys. He got thrown off the team because he couldn’t pass his classes. He wasn’t a good enough player to get the special treatment—you know, the sham courses—”

  “Yeah, is that true? Only the best players get the phony courses?”

  “I don’t know. There weren’t any phony courses at BYU, I’m certain of that. But I could see why only the best players got to take the phony courses. They’re the players the program needs to protect. You can’t let the whole squad take the phony courses and get all A’s. Too many red flags.”

  “So after Lake blows out his knee and isn’t valuable anymore, they throw him into the regular courses—”

  “And since he can barely read, he flunks out,” Ryan said. “That frees up the scholarship for the next recruit.”

  “The scholarships are only year-by-year?”

  “Here. Not everywhere. But make no mistake about it: The players may be called student-athletes, but they’re putting in fifty hours a week on football. If they can’t cut it as athletes, they’re not going to be paid to be students.”

  “Even if they got hurt on the field?”

  “Especially if they got hurt on the field.”

  “All right, like I said, the only possible link to Kendra is that he’s a dealer and he used to be on the football team. But there’s gotta be a few dozen other guys who could be Kendra’s connection,” I said.

  We stopped when we reached the main floor.

  “True,” Ryan said, “but look how tight the pieces fit together. Cory knows Lake. That’s for sure. If he figures out Kendra lives out there in the camp with him—which he could learn if she mentions it when he’s selling her drugs one day—and he knows she has the conscience of a sheet of plywood—she’s the perfect courier to get the drugs to Lake.”

  “But why would the guys in the football program know Cory?”

  “Because he was on the team.”

  “Yeah, but that was years ago, and he didn’t exactly impress anyone as a student or an athlete.”

  “If the football guys are corrupt—and this whole thing doesn’t make any sense if they aren’t—if they’re corrupt, they might find it convenient to stay in touch with Cory.”

  “Why?”

  “Because corrupt football and basketball programs use drugs and prostitutes to recruit high-school kids.”

  “I thought they used shiny locker rooms and equipment, like the Carl Davis facility.”

  “And drugs and girls.”

  “Shit,” I said. “If they didn’t do this at BYU, how do you know about it?”

  “You don’t read sports magazines, do you?”

  A couple of nurses entered the stairwell and started walking up the stairs. We gave them a moment to get out of earshot.

  “Okay,” I said. “But the link between Kendra and Cory and the program is pretty thin.”

  “You know why I think it might be true? Because Cory made it clear he’d rather risk another beatdown than tell us who did it to him. If two junkies jumped him and stole fifty bucks, he would tell us their names and let us pick them up. But he’s scared. I don’t think he’s scared of Kendra. And we know he’s not scared of Lake. It’s someone in the football program. He’s scared of whoever’s running him.”

  Chapter 19

  The next morning, when I pulled in to work, Ryan was already at his desk. We said our good mornings. “I was thinking about your piss fight yesterday with Coach Baxter.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He nodded. “I was out of line. Now he knows we think someone from his program was involved in the murder.”

  “No, you got it backwards. The problem is we didn’t go far enough.”

  He tilted his head. “Go on.”

  “The other day, we gave the coach a theory of the case: that Lake was a threat to the program. We told him an associate delivered the heroin to Lake. But we never named Kendra.”

  “Why does that make a difference?”

  “He doesn’t know how much we’ve figured out. He might think we don’t like him because he’s not a good guy who watches out for his players.”

  “Which is true.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t give a shit if he’s not a good guy. All I care about is if he—or one of his people—killed Lake. Listen, all you told him is he didn’t watch out for Lake—”

  “I said he didn’t take care of Lake.”

  “Yeah, so he’s a shithead—”

  “So he should be ashamed.”

  “Same difference. Now, for a nice religious boy like you, that might be a first-rate insult, but if Coach Baxter is half the douchebag you said he was, maybe he’s not shitting bricks right now. He doesn’t know we’ve got a thread we can pull.”

  “Kendra?”

  “That’s right. With money changing hands, we’re talking felony. If he was involved in paying Kendra to kill Lake, that’s conspiracy to commit murder. If he knows we know about Kendra and the payoff, he’ll know she’s talking to us. That’ll get his attention.”

  “Okay, how do we tell him?”

  “I don’t want to go back to him so soon,” I said. “He’d just tell us to go screw ourselves, then he’d call in the university attorney. The attorney would phone the chief, and the whole thing would turn into a fight about two crazy cops who don’t like the football team.”

  “Carl Davis?”

  “I’m not sure what to make of Carl Davis. I mean, whether the word would get back to the coach.”

  “Davis told the coach that Lake was dead less than an hour after we told him.”

  “True, but I’m not sure how well the gears are turning in Carl Davis’s brain. He might space it all out or screw it up. Like you said, we can’t be sure Davis was lying to us when he said he didn’t remember the Alicia Weber rape charge.”

  “John Freedlander, the A.D.?”

  “No: too high up. He reports to the university president, right?”

  “Yeah, he does.”

  “So that’s what he would do: go to the president or the university attorney.”

  Ryan nodded. “How about Max, Lake’s former roommate? We know Max lied to us when he denied knowing about the rape allegation—at least, according to Cory McDermott he lied to us. That gives us an occasion to talk to him. Do you think we can count on Max telling the coach?”

  “Yeah, we can. Max is fully housebroken. His loyalty is to the program—he’s an employee now, as well as a student going for a degree. If he can figure out how to alert the boss to a threat, he’ll do it.”

  “We could tell him we want to ask him about some of the things Cory McDermott said—”

  “About how the coach and Carl Davis spoke to the team about the rape charges,” I said.

  “And then we can ask him about Cory getting beaten up but not telling us who did it. See how he reacts to the idea that the program keeps a drug dealer on retainer.” Ryan smiled. “Yes, I think our conversation with Max will get back to the coach.”

  “Call the program, will you? See if Max is available.”

  Ryan opened his notebook and found the number. He called, talked for a minute, and wrote something down. Then he hung up. “He’s not expected in until this afternoon, but Helen gave us his cell.”

  I signaled for Ryan to pass me the number and punched it in. Max Thomas picked up on the third ring. “Max, Detective Seagate. We need to talk to you again.” I hit Speaker.

  There was a pause. “Okay, what about?”

  “We’d rather do it in person. The football office told us you’re not coming in until this afternoon. You can come in to police headquarters, or we can come to wherever you are. Your choice.”

  “I just arrived at the dojo. I was going to work out.”

  “All right, we’ll stop by. We’ll just need a few minutes. What’s the address?”r />
  “It’s the Montana Taekwondo Training Center. On Sixth.”

  I looked at Ryan, who nodded. “We’ll be there in about ten minutes.” We ended the call.

  It took us twelve minutes to get downtown. I parked in a metered space right outside the address and flipped down my visor to show the Official Police Business card.

  The dojo was on the second floor of a seventies stucco building that housed a shoe store and a cigar and tobacco place on the street level. In the picture window on the second floor, a small neon sign identified the dojo. Heavy training bags hung by chains from the ceiling. We walked up the scuffed, poorly lit wooden stairs to the second floor. It smelled a little funky.

  At the little booth inside the door, the blond guy with tats on his arms and a silver nose ring seemed surprised to see me and Ryan. He started to ask if he could help us. I tapped on my detectives’ shield. I scanned the studio, which was just a big open space covered in industrial tile, with large mats strewn around.

  Max was the only person in the studio. Wearing a white gi with a black belt, he stood in front of a heavy bag. He crouched down into a defensive position, his forearms up. He swiveled counter-clockwise on his left leg and leaned his trunk to the left. His right knee came up, the leg parallel with the floor, the ankle pulled in tight against the thigh. He held that position a second. Then, in a blur, the leg extended, the top of his foot slapping against the heavy bag. The sound of his flesh on the leather bag echoed off the glass and the bare walls. He returned to the defensive position, then reeled off another one.

  We watched him do ten quick side kicks. His back was to us. “He any good?” I whispered to Ryan.

  Ryan is an expert in Krav Maga, an Israeli self-defense system they use in the police academy. “He’s excellent.”

  Max Thomas was breathing heavily from the kicks. He must have seen our reflection in the picture window. He turned and nodded to us. “Good morning, Detectives.”

  “Good morning, Max,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt your workout.”

  “Not a problem. Sorry there’s no place to sit down.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “We won’t be long.”

  He wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve.

  “We wanted to talk with you about one of your old teammates, Cory McDermott.”

  Max Thomas shook his head. “Long time since I thought about Cory. What’s he up to these days? He straightened himself out?”