by Baxter Clare
Kennedy had twisted onto her side and was studying Frank.
“Why are you so involved in this? Why can’t you just let RHD finish it?”
Frank sighed and sat back.
“Noah asked me the same thing. You know, usually, people kill each other because they’re pissed off, they’re angry, they got burned. Usually vies and perps have a relationship, they’re linked somehow. Sometimes it’s just accident and circumstance, there’s no relationship at all, but still you can see what set the perp off. Even if it’s totally ridiculous, they’ve got a reason. But this guy, I don’t know the reason. I can guess, but until I see him I won’t know why.”
“You might never know why,” Kennedy interjected. “Even if you do find him, he might never cop to any of it.”
“True. But I want to track him down. I want the satisfaction of finding him and looking him in the eye, even if he doesn’t say a word. Because I know him now. He’s part of me. If I know enough to find him, then I already have my answer, but right now he only exists in my head. I need to see him flesh and bone before me. It’s the only way I can get rid of him.”
Abashed at having said so much, Frank added dismissively, “Besides, he has to be picked up before he kills anyone else. I think I can get to him before RHD does.”
Kennedy regarded her curiously, and Frank steeled herself for another question.
“You want help shuffling through these records?”
“No. You don’t need to get involved in this.”
“I ain’t got nothin’ else to do. Why don’t we grab some sandwiches and I’ll go over to Dorsey with you and help you find your boy.”
Frank crossed her arms against the by-now familiar jumble of emotions: pleased that Kennedy was willing to help her, wanting her company, then kicking herself for being such a sap and squelching her pleasure.
“Why aren’t you out surfing or playing with your friends?”
“The surf’s too flat and I don’t have any friends.”
“Well, go out and make some. You’re young and…healthy,” Frank almost said beautiful, “and I know you can find something better to do than hang with me all night.”
Kennedy stood and said, “Well, I can’t think what that would be. Come on. Let’s go for sandwiches and get to work.”
Frank considered the offer, knowing she should tell Kennedy thanks and send her home. She surprised herself, though, saying, “Alright, but I’m buying.”
Now he saw girls everywhere. The city was full of them. Hundreds, thousands. If he was careful, maybe he could have them all. He couldn’t believe how lucky he’d been. No one had seen him or heard him. The girl never even saw him. No one knew it was him.
The last time he’d felt so good was after his last touchdown, and that was a very long time ago. He felt happy every time he remembered her. It was only his first time, and it had been good, but already he was thinking of ways to make it better the next time. His only regret was that his father couldn’t see him. He’d finally be proud of him.
29
Forty-five minutes later, a slender black man, his hair gray at the temples, met them in the high school parking lot. Conscious of how good it felt, Frank let Davidson carefully examine her ID. He blinked forcefully and often. She bet the kids had a field day with that. Leading them in through a back door to his small, vastly cluttered office, he explained he hadn’t been able to find the coach’s home number. He turned on the fluorescent overheads and fingered through a Rolodex until he located it. Handing Frank the card, he looked more pleased with himself than was necessary.
Coach Welsh was upset. He’d already talked to detectives this morning. He didn’t know what else he had to say. Frank explained she needed to go over some student records with him and that it would be easiest to do that at the school. Welsh grumbled he was busy, that it’d be at least an hour before he could get there.
“Fine. See you then,” Frank said, and hung up.
Next, Frank asked Davidson for the school’s personnel records, going back fifteen years.
“Oh, boy,” he said, blinking faster and harder. “I know where they are for the last four or five years, but I’ll have to call Carrie to find out where the older records are kept.”
“Set us up with what you’ve got, then call whoever you need to. And while you’re at it, I’d like yearbooks for the last fifteen years as well.”
Frank and Kennedy exchanged a grimace as Davidson pawed through metal filing cabinets, mumbling, “Oh boy,” and, “That’s not it.” Frank looked around the office for pictures of the staff or football team, but there weren’t any, just inspirational posters and corkboards tacked with sheaves of papers.
The assistant principal handed Frank a stack of manila folders, indicating another cluttered desk she could use. Producing two yearbooks, he explained apologetically that he’d have to ask Carrie where the rest of them were.
Kennedy dragged a chair next to Frank’s and said under her breath, “Whoever the hell she is, you should have had Carrie come in instead of this jerk.”
Frank slapped some of the folders in front of her.
“We’re looking for anyone who’s worked in any capacity in the athletic department. Names, dates, SS, driver’s license.”
“Oh boy,” Kennedy mumbled. “Oh boy.”
They were working their way through the Cs when John Welsh arrived.
Frank made quick introductions and asked, “How long have you been coaching here, Mr. Welsh?”
He thought a moment. “Since spring of ‘93.”
Frank asked to see all his rosters and followed him to the gym. She questioned Welsh about his players, but the coach was laconic and noncommittal. She tried softening him up, saying, “I’ll bet when you played you were a back.”
“That’s right.”
“Who’d you play for?”
“USC, then pro for a couple years with the Redskins.”
“No kidding? When were you with the Skins?”
“Eighty-one to eighty-three.”
He seemed bored until Frank said, “Wow, you must’ve played with, uh, let’s see, John Riggins and Joe Theismann. Art Monk, right?”
Welsh eyed Frank suspiciously.
“You been checking up on me?”
Frank looked sheepish. “Nah. I’ve been a Giants’ fan all my life,” and to Kennedy she explained, “They’re division rivals.”
“That was a long time ago. You’ve got a good memory.”
“Helps in this business. How come you left?”
“Bad neck,” he grimaced. “My wife and I decided I’d better get into teaching before I ended up in a wheelchair.”
Frank had relaxed Welsh. He told the detectives what he knew about his kids, their abilities and failings on the field, who got scholarships, who wound up where, but he offered nothing personal. They went through the rosters until eleven-thirty, producing a list of thirty-three white males who had played or tried out for football at Dorsey High since 1993. Davidson provided personnel records as far back as 1992. The rest were stored in the district office. Frank made a note to find out who could get her into those files over the weekend.
Davidson protested, but Frank and Kennedy remained behind after they cut the two men loose. The detectives spent the early morning searching through yearbooks for students who matched the perp’s physical description. They wrote down vitals and ranked them. Kids with no extracurricular or bio info got highest priority. Moderate bios were second priority, and kids with extensive activities were rated third. Frank felt their guy would be engrossed in football and somewhat of a loner. She wasn’t expecting him to be the homecoming king or class valedictorian.
Somewhere around two-thirty, Frank realized it had gotten awfully quiet. She looked up from her legal pad at Kennedy, asleep amid the wreckage of Davidson’s desk. Frank watched her for a moment, then returned to her yearbook.
Frank had crashed at Kennedy’s. After a three-hour nap and breakfast, Kennedy had insisted on he
lping Frank with the new leads. Driving to headquarters through a light rain, Frank tuned out Kennedy’s chatter.
She felt closer to him. He’d tipped his hand at Dorsey and shown so much more of himself. She wondered where he was right now. Regardless, Frank was certain he was happy. Posing the girl had been huge for him. He’d revel in that for quite a while. It might even slow his spree a bit. Unaware that she was doing it, Frank slipped into a dialogue with him.
Were you a star on the field, or a failure? Were you the coach’s golden boy? His whipping boy? Oh, I’ll bet you were a star. You’d do anything he asked, wouldn’t you? And you’re doing this for him now. What happened when you had to leave him? Who was there for you? Was there just a big, empty hole inside you? Does this fill it up for a while?
“Frank?”
Kennedy’s hand was on her arm as cars crept past the Honda. Frank gently pressed the accelerator, moving with the flow. Kennedy asked if she was alright.
“Yeah,” she answered, but Frank wasn’t sure. She felt as if she’d been dreaming and had just woken up. It was hard shaking the sensation. Even as she kept up with the traffic, she sensed herself slipping back toward him.
Where are you? Tell me about you. Help me find you. I know you’re close, I can feel you. I know you. Sometimes I think I am you.
“Frank?”
“What?” she snapped.
Startled, Kennedy snapped back, “Where the fuck are you?”
“What are you talking about?” Frank said irritably.
“You’re like a million miles away and you just about rear-ended that truck!”
Frank sucked in a breath. This wasn’t the time or place. She promised herself she’d come back to him later.
When they finally got to Parker, Frank was grateful the homicide room was empty. Kennedy started in with the computers, and Frank took the phone books, preferring their clumsy familiarity to the cold austerity of computer terminals. Frank was tracking down Dorsey’s previous coaches, and after a dozen calls she hit pay dirt. She hung up the receiver and slipped into her jacket, telling Kennedy she was going to Fontana.
“I wanna go.”
Frank knelt next to her, supplicating, “We’d get a lot more done if you stayed here and worked on these.”
Kennedy was running their list of highest-ranked students, searching for priors, and then possibly re-ranking them according to the offense involved. It was tedious work. “I know,” she said, reading the monitor. “I still wanna go.”
“It’ll be boring, probably pan out to nothing. I’d likely get you killed in a car accident.”
“Yeah,” Kennedy remembered. “You be careful out there. Don’t go zonin’ like you did this morning.”
“Hey.” When Frank had Kennedy’s full attention, she said, “I really appreciate this.”
“Sure. Surf still sucks. I should move up to Oregon, they’ve got more sun.”
“Can I bring you back anything?”
“A Coke.”
“Got it. See you in a while.”
The phone rang and rang. Eventually Kennedy picked up. “Where are you?” she whined. “It’s almost three and I’m starving. There’s nothing around here but empty junk machines.”
“Listen. Have you run a kid named Clancey Delamore yet?”
“Hang on.”
Kennedy banged the phone down and Frank could hear papers being shuffled.
“Yeah, he’s got nothing. So where are you? Christ, you better come back draggin’ that sum-bitch, you been gone long enough. I got carpel tunnel settin’ in.”
“Wha-wha-wha,” Frank said. “Hang tight. I’ll fill you in when I get there.”
Forty-five minutes later she and Kennedy were cruising through the rain to Clancey Delamore’s house. Frank talked animatedly behind the wheel.
“So our guy this morning, Miller, he coached Delamore for three years. Said he was a great player, a tight end, but that he was super aggressive. He didn’t seem to have any sense that it was just a game. Said a lot of his own teammates didn’t want to play with him. Evidently he was pretty rough. Miller would warn him to take it easy during practice, but I guess he was still way too rough. Like his old man, according to Miller.
“Then they’re in the middle of a conference game and Delamore goes ballistic on another player. He attacks him from behind after the ball is dead and just keeps ramming into him. Sound familiar? Now get this. As he’s beating this poor bastard senseless, he’s got a woody the size of a baseball bat. And later, when Miller’s dressing him down, he gets a hard-on all over again.
“It totally freaked Miller out. He kicked Delamore off the team.”
Frank paused to check Kennedy’s reaction. She was taking it all in. Then she asked cautiously, “So why are we going to his place?”
“I called after I got done with the coach. Turns out he lives with his mom. I gave her a big song and dance about burglaries in the area—told her we’re with Robbery. Told her we were tracking down a suspect known to habituate her neighborhood. Then I said that the department was offering to do free home security checks and we could come by if she liked. Check her locks, give her some safety tips and a sketch of the suspect, stuff like that.”
“And she believed you?”
“Hey. I was very convincing. One of my best roles to date.”
Kennedy asked, “Why don’t you just question him straight out?”
“One, we’ve got no real evidence that this is our guy. We’re running purely on bones and possibles right now. Two, I don’t want him to panic and start cleaning house. If he’s got evidence around, I don’t want him dumping it. And I don’t want him running. I want him confident. I want him to think he’s outsmarting us. Sooner or later it’ll make him trip. Three, even if I did want to move on him, it’s not my case anymore, remember.”
“So why are you tipping your hand at all?”
“I want to talk to Mom. Oh yeah, I left out another thing. One of the reasons she’s letting us in is because there is no Mr. Delamore and Clancey works nights. I said, ‘Oh, is he a cop, too?’ and she said, ‘No, he works at a bakery.’ So sonny should be sleeping even as we speak, but I want to see what we can pull from the old lady, take a look around. With this security gig we can go all over—”
Kennedy interrupted. “Except his bedroom, which is probably the best place to check.”
“I thought about that. I figure we can find out his work schedule and make up a reason to come back when he’s gone.”
“Okay, so here’s another question. Seeing as you’ve got no jurisdiction here, what the hell are you going to do if this kid does look good?”
Frank held up a pontifical finger. “That bridge I will cross, if and when I get there. All I know is this is the best lead we’ve had yet. You still up for it?”
“You betcha, but I sure hope this goes somewhere soon. You gotta get a life back, Lieutenant.”
Frank smiled happily, although her words were chillingly true. “This is my life.”
After the first couple of girls he’d bought a used camcorder so he could remember them better once they were gone. He watched the tapes in his bedroom, learning and studying, planning how to make it even better the next time. Over and over he watched, remembering, reliving, refueling. The tapes satisfied him for a while, but eventually their appeal faded. When that happened, it was time to make a new one.
30
“Well?” Frank asked over her shoulder, backing out of the Delamores’ driveway.
“I think you better feed me before I rip your head off and start suckin’ on your insides.”
“I saw a guy do that once,” Frank said, matter-of-factly. “Killed his mother and brother and an aunt. When we came in to arrest him he was sitting as calm as you please at the kitchen table with a big old pan of sauteed brains in front of him. Damned if they didn’t smelled good.”
“After tonight, I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”
“I was pretty good, huh?”
Kennedy had to laugh at Frank’s unusual lack of modesty.
“Damn good,” she agreed deferentially.
“Well, Detective, I think it’s been a very productive day. How about I buy you some sweetbreads so you don’t have to rip my head off?”
“Deal.”
They went to Frank’s favorite restaurant, where the waiter greeted her by name. Waiting for him to return with her wine, Frank took out her notebook.
“Okay. Tell me what you saw, what you thought, everything.”
Frank listened to the young detective, impressed by her observations. Mrs. Delamore had fallen easily for Frank’s ingratiating charm and generously shown them her immaculate house. About halfway through the detectives’ bogus inspection, Clancey had wandered downstairs, sleepy-eyed and bare-chested. They’d gone into his room, at his mother’s insistence, and it was a mess. As if he weren’t hulking behind her, she’d talked about what a slob her son was.
Kennedy asked, “You saw the pile of porno mags by the bed and the economy size bottle of lotion? What do you reckon Mrs. D. thinks Junior does with all that hand cream?”
“I’m sure she just thinks her boy’s got some mighty soft skin,” Frank smiled, borrowing Kennedy’s twang.
“How ‘bout the videos?”
Frank nodded. There had been no books or music in Clancey’s room, only a twenty-four inch television with a VCR perched precariously atop it. A shelf of neatly aligned videos above the television contradicted the room’s chaos. Frank had noticed that most of the titles on the spines were handwritten, and a brief scan of the commercial titles indicated most of them were skin flicks.
“And all those football trophies on the floor? I’ll bet they used to be on that shelf where the videos are. It’s the only shelf in the room. Now they’re just layin’ ‘round under his dirty clothes while the videos are carefully stacked up there. Like maybe he’s outgrown the trophies and they’re just down on the floor with all the rest of his crap.”