by Sean Black
Before he made it into the room, he heard a car engine start outside, quickly followed by the squeal of rubber as the vehicle took off at speed. Malik changed direction, hurtling down the corridor, his long, lean, basketball-player legs eating up the distance to the side entrance door. He pushed it open just in time to see the lights of the grey sedan sweep past his truck, heading for the exit.
Turning back, he heard Flint barking from the locker room, a yelping sound, the kind he made when he’d cornered a squirrel up a tree and the terrified creature wouldn’t come down to resume the chase.
All of a sudden the realization of what was happening came to him. It was so obvious he felt like an idiot. He even laughed at his own stupidity. The car might have belonged to an alumnus, but Malik was pretty certain it was being driven by a couple of kids. Maybe the janitor had been in on the prank, hence the alarm being switched off, or maybe the kids had just gotten lucky or had found someone who knew the code to switch it off.
It was obvious now what was going on. The tip-off was the visitors’ locker room. Someone had probably snuck something in there to unsettle tomorrow’s opposition. A skunk, or a couple of rats stolen from one of the college labs, something like that.
Malik called the dog back to his side. Whatever was in there, he didn’t need the dog in the mix. He walked outside and put Flint back in the pick-up. Then he went back.
Bracing himself, he pushed open the door into the visitors’ locker room. He’d been partly right. Something was huddled in the far corner. Only it wasn’t a prank.
The small naked white figure of a young boy, aged no more than twelve, looked up at Malik, a long brown fringe masking tear-filled brown eyes.
Four
Once he had checked that the boy wasn’t injured, or not in any life-threatening way, Malik stepped out into the corridor and called the campus police, wishing now that he’d taken up the young security officer on his earlier offer. ‘This is Coach Shaw. I’m down at the stadium, and …’
And what? He didn’t know how to describe what he’d found, or what had just gone on while he was yards away. Worse, he didn’t want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t been there.
‘Listen, get someone down here. Now. We have a situation. I found … Just get someone down here, okay?’
He finished the call, and walked back into the locker room. The boy visibly flinched as Malik knelt down next to him.
‘It’s okay,’ Malik said. ‘You’re safe. The cops are on their way.’
There it was again. That tensing of the boy’s body, the squeezing shut of his eyes as he heard the word ‘cops’.
‘I’m Coach Shaw,’ said Malik, starting over, trying to find some point of contact. It was only now that he realized the kid was wet, and so were his clothes. He was small for his age, and skinny, the kind of kid you’d expect to see bullied in the schoolyard. Putting all that together just made it worse, as far as Malik was concerned. He got up and went to the shower stalls. One of the heads was still dripping from recent use. Lord help me, he said to himself, grateful for the first time that whoever had been with the boy had fled because he would have beaten them to death right there.
‘What’s your name, son?’ Malik asked. He couldn’t bring himself to ask what he really wanted to know. It wasn’t that he couldn’t form the words. It was more that he wasn’t sure he could live with hearing the answers.
The boy shook his head, eyes closed.
Malik tried another tack. ‘Who was here with you? I mean, I know someone was here. I saw their car.’
The boy’s eyes screwed up tighter until they were little more than two lines above his nose. He didn’t answer. Instead he shook his head. Some of the water from his hair splashed onto Malik’s polo shirt.
Malik let it go. He wasn’t a cop. There was a vending machine out in the hallway.
‘You want a Coke?’ he asked the boy.
A nod. Malik walked out into the hallway. He wanted to call Kim, his wife, but he didn’t like to wake her and the kids. He dug some change out of his pockets and got a Coke. He took it back into the locker room, and gave it to the boy.
The boy took a sip. ‘Am I in trouble?’ he asked Malik.
‘No, of course not.’
Malik glanced at his watch. Where the hell was security? Maybe he should have called the city cops, after all. Just then he heard someone calling from the area of the side entrance.
‘In here,’ Malik shouted, relieved not to be alone with the boy any longer.
The cop who showed up was the same kid he had seen earlier. Malik gave him the basic facts. He’d come to visit the stadium while it was quiet. He told him about the grey sedan, and about hearing a noise, then seeing someone flee and finding the boy in the locker room, all wet. The cop seemed even more freaked out by it than Malik had been.
As he talked to the boy, Malik stepped outside, and called Mike, one of his assistant coaches. It was a while before he answered. When he did, he sounded groggy.
‘Hey, Mike, it’s Malik. Did you text me earlier?’
‘Huh,’ said Mike. ‘Yeah, about the line-up. I thought we should maybe keep Darius on the bench for the first quarter.’
‘No,’ said Malik. ‘This was just before midnight. You texted me about a problem at the stadium.’
‘Not me, Coach,’ said Mike. ‘Why? What’s happened? You want me to come down there?’
‘No, it’s fine,’ said Malik. ‘Go back to sleep.’ He ended the call, and walked back inside the stadium to check on the boy.
Five minutes later, further reinforcements arrived in the shape of the five-foot-six-inches-tall, 250-pound head of campus police, Captain Keith Tromso. Malik had met him a couple of times, once to discuss a frat party attended by some of his senior players that had gotten a little rowdy, and again when a freshman had been pulled over for a DUI. The partygoers had been let off with warning, but the DUI had led Malik to end the freshman’s time at the college. Tromso hadn’t impressed him on either occasion.
The head of campus police seemed to have a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder. Maybe it was his height, or that he was head of a campus police force rather than state or federal, but he seemed to regard even the most insignificant discussion as some kind of pissing contest. When Malik had suggested that he talk to the players who had been at the party, Tromso had shot him down, making a big deal of how he was the law, not Malik. The guy was a grade-A asshole.
But all that said, Malik was still glad to see him, and he was impressed by Tromso’s reaction to the incident. For a start, he seemed to grasp the potential gravity of what Malik had found.
‘You said you got a picture of the car?’ Tromso asked, as the younger cop waited with the kid while a female officer was summoned.
Malik nodded and pulled out his cell phone. Tromso took it from him and studied the grainy image.
‘Outstanding, Coach! You got the plate and everything. Y’know, most people wouldn’t think to take a picture.’
‘You have any idea whose car it is?’ Malik asked.
‘No, but we’ll find them,’ said Tromso.
As he’d handed over his cell phone, Malik had caught sight of the time. It was after one in the morning. Kim would be worried if she had woken up and found him gone.
‘Listen, Chief, if you don’t mind, I have a game tomorrow.’
‘Right, of course. Go Wolves,’ said Tromso, in a way that undid whatever improved feelings Malik had for him. Tromso held up the cell. ‘I’m going to need to copy this. Do you mind if I keep a hold of it?’
Malik grimaced. ‘I kind of need it for work.’
‘I’ll drop it back first thing. You’re on Beech Avenue, right? I’ll be able to bring you up to speed on what we’ve found out too,’ Tromso said, with a nod to the locker room.
‘Sure,’ said Malik. ‘I guess that’s okay.’
‘Appreciate it,’ said Tromso, slapping Malik on the back. ‘Now, I know I probably don’t even ne
ed to mention this to a man like yourself, but don’t go talking to anyone about it. Y’know, live investigation and everything.’
From his brief time as a pro ball player, Malik had come to trust cops as much as reporters. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
Tromso smiled. ‘Knew I could count on you.’
Five
Malik didn’t get to sleep until sometime after four, and even then, he kept waking up. He was thinking about the boy he’d found in the visitors’ locker room, after midnight, soaking wet from the shower. More than anything he couldn’t shift from his mind the look on the boy’s face when he’d found him. A mixture of sadness, shame and fear.
He tried to tell himself that, while there might not be a completely innocent explanation for what he’d discovered, it wasn’t necessarily what he thought it was. But what else could it have been? If it had been innocent, why had whoever was with the boy, the person in the grey sedan, hightailed it out of there? If someone had been showing the kid around the stadium, or sneaking in to shoot some hoops, why had they fled? Running away was hardly the action of someone who had nothing to hide.
But, then, what if they had stuck around? Malik didn’t want to contemplate what might have happened. If someone had been messing with the kid, he already knew what he would have done. Right now, he wouldn’t be back home, lying in bed next to his wife. He’d be cooling his heels in a cell, waiting to see if he could make bail on a homicide charge.
Worse, he thought, what if he hadn’t walked in? What if he hadn’t gotten that text? What if he hadn’t seen it until the morning? And, while he was at it, who was to say that he’d just happened to stumble in on something that wasn’t a one-off? What if someone was using the locker rooms as— Well, he didn’t want to think about what they might have been using them for, but what if this was part of a pattern?
He tried to comfort himself with the fact that it had to be pretty easy for the cops to work out who had been there. He had given them a picture of the car, complete with the plate. There had been no sign of forced entry, so it had to have been someone who had access to the stadium after hours. That had to be a pretty short list.
It would all be fixed, he told himself. The cops would find whoever had been there with the boy and the system would swing into action. And maybe, just maybe, there was a reasonable explanation.
At six thirty, with less than ninety minutes’ sleep under his belt, Malik admitted defeat, threw back the sheets on his side of the bed and padded into the bathroom to take a leak. He closed the door so he wouldn’t wake Kim. Malik could get by on very little sleep, his wife not so much. She needed a solid eight hours – minimum.
He washed his hands and went into the hallway. Flint was lying next to the stairs, ostensibly on sentry duty, but in reality dead to the world. Malik crossed to the kids’ bedrooms and, ignoring the various signs warning parents and other adults to keep out, took a peek inside. Landon, the older of the two, was stretched out on his bed, his calves and legs hanging over the end. Like Malik, he was tall, and likely to end up taller than his dad. He played basketball for his local high school and was already drawing some serious college interest. He could empty a refrigerator in seconds flat, had a smart mouth, and didn’t much like being told what to do. Those were qualities Malik recognized in himself.
Malik closed Landon’s door, and went to check on Katy. In contrast to the bombsite that passed for Landon’s room, Katy’s was immaculate. She lay on her side in bed, wide awake and reading: the Kindle they had got her last Christmas was propped up on a pillow next to her. Boy, could that kid read. He and Kim weren’t wild about kids staring at screens all day, but the local library couldn’t keep up with Katy’s voracious habits so they had broken down and got the Kindle.
She looked up at him and yawned. He walked in and sat down on the edge of her bed. ‘You’re up early. You have a nightmare?’ he asked her.
‘Nope. Just wanted to finish this book. It’s so good.’
She put down the Kindle and sat up. ‘Big game tonight. We going to win?’
‘Hell, yeah. Why you even ask me a question like that, girl?’
She seemed to study him. ‘You look tired.’
‘Didn’t sleep too good. Big game. You know how it is. You go finish your book. I’m gonna let Flint out.’
‘Okay, Daddy,’ she said, rolling over onto her other side, Kindle in hand.
He walked back out onto the landing. He should have felt comforted by the kids, safe, warm and happy in the home he and Kim had made for them. But he wasn’t. It made him think about the boy he’d found last night. How had that happened? How could someone not know their child was out at that time of night?
He stopped himself right there. He knew the answer. He’d grown up in a place where lots of parents had no control over their children, and for the ones who did, keeping control was a constant battle. He guessed he hadn’t expected it to happen in small-town white Minnesota.
The dog studied him with one eye, slowly got to his feet, and padded after him down the stairs. Malik walked into the kitchen, and opened the door that led into the backyard. Damn, it was cold. Right now, back in California, it would still be in the low sixties, even with the time difference. The cold in Minnesota was the one thing he’d never get used to. It bordered on painful. You’d step out into it and the wind would be knocked from you.
Out front he heard a car drive down the street and stop. Weird. There was almost never any kind of traffic on the street before seven. He closed the back door and walked through to the front of the house.
He saw a college-security patrol car pull up right out front of the house. The driver’s door opened and Tromso levered his fat ass out. He waddled toward the front door.
Malik didn’t want the whole house woken. Not to mention the questions he’d have to answer about why the cops were there first thing in the morning. He opened the front door and, still in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, braved the cold in his bare feet, meeting Tromso halfway up the path.
Tromso greeted him affably enough. ‘Hey, Coach.’
Malik nodded toward the upstairs bedrooms at the front of the house, the drapes still closed. ‘Family are sleeping.’
Tromso lowered his voice. ‘Sorry. I just figured you’d need this.’ He dug into various pockets before coming up with Malik’s cell phone. He handed it to him.
Malik took it. ‘Thanks.’
Tromso about-turned and started back toward the cruiser. Malik called after him, forgetting that most of his family were still asleep,
‘Hey, wait up.’
He caught up to Tromso at the sidewalk.
‘You figure out what was going on last night?’
Tromso turned with a smile, and a gee-shucks shrug. ‘Crazy story. One of the trustees was showing his nephew around. Lost sight of the kid entirely. Freaked out when he couldn’t find him, went searching all over the place. Turned out the kid had been hiding where you found him.’
Ordinarily when someone was spinning a yarn, Malik would have greeted it with ‘Uh-huh,’ or ‘That so?’ But this was such an obvious bunch of lies that, before he’d even thought about what he was saying or who he was saying it to, never mind why they might be saying it, the first word out of his mouth was ‘Bullshit!’
Tromso’s smile fell away. ‘Excuse me?’
Malik didn’t know why the hell Tromso was feeding him this line, but he was insulted. ‘Come on, man. That’s the guy’s story and you believe him? You have to be kidding me, right? That kid wasn’t hiding. He was crying. Brother, you saw him.’
‘He was upset that he’d been caught. He thought he was in trouble when you showed up.’
Malik stared at Tromso. He was half expecting some cheesy-ass TV presenter to step out from behind a bush with a camera crew and tell him he’d been punked, only this was so far from funny that he couldn’t imagine even the TV dirtbags trying to squeeze a laugh out of it.
‘That’s not what was going on there last night,
and you know it.’
Tromso was pissed. His little piggy eyes were boring into Malik and his lips had all but disappeared. ‘So, what was going on, Coach?’ It wasn’t so much a question as a challenge.
‘Well, it sure as shit wasn’t hide-and-go-seek between some uncle and his nephew.’
He and Tromso were almost nose to nose now. Malik glanced down to see the chief’s left hand resting on his pepper spray. If he even thought of threatening to use it, Malik would kick his ass all over town, all day long, cop or no cop. Malik had never liked cops, and now he was remembering why.
‘So who was this trustee?’ Malik said, his voice calm. ‘You get a name?’
The question seemed to throw Tromso off. He backed up a little. ‘Take it easy, Coach. I looked into it. I can see how you might have got the wrong idea. Hell, I was thinking what you were when I arrived. But there’s no mystery. It was a misunderstanding.’
He was around the other side of the patrol car now.
‘I’m going to follow up on this,’ Malik told him.
‘Do yourself a favor, Coach. Just win that game for us tonight,’ said Tromso, clambering into the car, starting the engine and taking off before Malik could react.
Malik turned back to his house. His wife was at the bedroom window. She looked worried. He wondered how much she’d heard. Their elderly next-door neighbor was peering out too. Likely most of the street had woken up by now.
Malik headed back inside, his cell phone in his right hand.
Six
‘What was that about? One of your players in trouble?’ Kim asked, as he walked into the kitchen for a refill of coffee from the pot on the counter.
He put his arms around her, swept aside her long black hair, and kissed the back of her neck. Katy looked up from the library book she was reading at the kitchen table. ‘Gross, you guys.’
‘No,’ said Malik. ‘Something else. I’ll tell you about it later.’