A Hopeless Game

by Daniel Carson

  Hanging from a rope, dangling from the joists above, was a body.

  Randall Mossback, the greatest football coach the state had ever seen, was dead.

  Chapter 7

  When Sheriff Kramer arrived five minutes later, Coach Duncan and I were sitting on the front steps getting some fresh air.

  Alex looked at me with disappointment and gave me a slight shake of his head.

  I stared daggers back at him. “How about we skip the spiel where you get all over my case about finding dead bodies, and we get right to the part about how horrible this all is.”

  “You’re right, it is horrible,” he said. “And it’s not going to take long for the neighbors to figure out something’s wrong. So let’s talk inside.”

  We strode into the kitchen, and Alex turned to Coach Duncan. “Does he have family? Who do we need to tell?”

  “I guess his wife. Susan,” said Coach Duncan soberly.

  The sheriff and I exchanged a look. “He’s married?” Alex said.

  “Sure,” said Coach Duncan, staring blankly ahead.

  “Then why isn’t she here?” I asked.

  “Randall puts her up in a hotel every weekend during the season.”

  “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said.

  Coach Duncan nodded, then gave a resigned sigh. “I guess you don’t get to be as good as Coach Mossback by being normal. Everything he does… or did… was calculated. It was all part of the Mossback Method. When he was working on the game plan, he wanted no distractions. From Friday night to Sunday morning, it was all work.”

  “And his wife was a distraction?”

  “Yep.”

  “Any idea how to get ahold of her?” Alex asked.

  The coach nodded. “I think I have her number somewhere.” He scrolled through his phone, then turned it around. Alex dialed the number, stepped to the side, had a short conversation, then ended the call.

  “How’d she take it?” I asked.

  “Stoic. Matter of fact.”

  “Like she already knew?” I asked.

  Sheriff Kramer rolled his eyes. “No, Hope. Like she wasn’t expecting to hear her husband was dead and she didn’t know how to react.” He turned to Coach Duncan. “Arnie, you can contact the other coaches now. And before news of this gets out, I’m sure you’ll want to meet with the players.”

  Coach Duncan said nothing, just kept staring blankly into nowhere.

  “Coach Duncan?” said Alex. “Your players?”

  The man shook his head, as if rejoining the present. “Oh, um, yeah. Our regular team meeting starts in a few minutes.”

  “Then go, be with your team. I’ll let you know if I need anything from you.”

  While Coach Duncan walked off in a daze, Alex made a quick call to Dr. Bridges. Then he ended the call and handed me a pair of latex gloves. “Unless you’ve already contaminated the crime scene?”

  “Would you consider rubbing my sweaty hands on everything I could see ‘contaminating the crime scene’?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Is it your mission in life to be a pain in the rear?”

  “No. That’s just an enjoyable side benefit.”

  We walked downstairs, through the man cave, and into the mechanical room. Alex’s face was remarkably impassive as he surveyed Randall Mossback hanging from a noose.

  “That’s a perfectly tied noose,” Alex pointed out. “Took some effort to make that.”

  I agreed. “By all accounts, Coach Mossback was a pretty thorough guy.”

  Alex followed the noose with his finger. “Look like it’s strung through a hole in the floor joists that was cut to make room for electrical conduit.”

  He continued to slowly examine the scene from top to bottom. When he got to the chair tipped over on its back, he walked around it, his piercing green eyes intense. Then he knelt down and examined a wet spot on the floor under the body. He bent down and smelled it.

  “He urinated right here.”

  “It really is horrible,” I said.

  He nodded toward the body. “I take it you saw the handcuffs?”

  “Kind of hard to miss,” I said. “Does that strike you as odd?”

  Alex studied them some more, then put his hands on his hips and looked at me. “I don’t know… but let’s walk it through.” He pointed at the ceiling. “So Coach Mossback makes a noose. He strings it through a hole in the floor joists above. He puts a chair under the noose. He stands on the chair, puts his head into the noose. And then…” He turned toward me. “I guess he puts his hands into handcuffs so that he can’t chicken out once he’s started.”

  I nodded along. “The handcuffs would guarantee it.”

  Alex frowned. “Then once he’s cuffed, he kicks out the chair, and that’s it.”

  “Like I said, horrible.”

  We walked out of the mechanical room.

  “You ever heard of anything like this in your life?” I asked.

  “A famous guy killing himself? Plenty of times.”

  “But like this?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” asked Alex.

  “Coach Mossback is on the eve of playing for a state championship. A championship that would cement his legacy as the best coach the state of Idaho has ever seen. A legacy that would put him up there with any high school football coach in America. Even if he’s going to do this… why do it now?”

  “We may never have those answers. For a person to do something like this, they’ve got to feel pretty tortured. We can’t possibly know what’s going on inside their heads.”

  “Granted,” I said. “But you agree that it doesn’t make sense, right? Have you ever heard of a nominated actor killing themselves a few days before the Oscars? Or an athlete right before the Superbowl? Or the Olympics?”

  “Now that I think about it, no. But perhaps there’s a suicide note that will explain why he did it.”

  I looked away sheepishly.

  “Seriously, Hope?”

  “I swear I didn’t touch it.”

  I led Alex to the coffee table in the man cave. A single piece of paper, folded in half, lay on the keyboard of Coach Mossback’s laptop.

  “You haven’t looked at it?” Alex asked.

  “I may have used a pencil to pick it up ever so slightly and peek… but that’s it.”

  Alex shook his head, which had become his standard operating procedure when conducting investigations with me.

  He picked up the letter and unfolded it. It wasn’t a handwritten note, but a printout. And in large letters, using a big blocky font, were five simple words.

  I AM A BAD MAN

  Sheriff Kramer looked at me, then looked back at the note and studied it. Finally, he set it down and shook his head.

  “I take it you’ve seen your share of suicides through the years?” I asked.

  He took off his cowboy hat and ran his hand through his hair. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “And…? Does this look like a suicide to you?”

  Alex puts his hands on his hips and spun around. “Yeah, I think it looks like a suicide.”

  “What about the note?” I said. “Kind of simple.”

  “I’ve seen long notes, short notes, no notes.”

  “But it’s printed,” I said. “Not written in his own handwriting.”

  “That could mean something or nothing. My handwriting’s terrible, so I type out everything. Maybe he was the same way.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And the handcuffs? If I didn’t want someone to free themselves from hanging, that’s what I’d do.”

  “Me too. But remember all those suicides I’ve seen? I actually saw one where the victim handcuffed themselves, just like here. Like you said, once you do that, there’s no way to back out.”

  “Okay, then how about this? I talked to Coach Mossback Friday night after the game. He was happy, charming, and frankly, he was hitting on me. He was eager to get home so he could start preparations for the stat
e championship game. One of the biggest games of his career. And you’re telling me that’s when he decides to kill himself?”

  “I’m not telling you anything, Hope,” Alex said. “The evidence is. If you think a suicide under those circumstances is unlikely, consider the alternative. You’re telling me someone comes into his house while he’s busy preparing for the biggest game of his life. Somehow, they put his head in a noose and hoist him up in the air and make it look like it was suicide? Coach Mossback is a big guy. A tough guy. I’m not buying that. Remember Occam’s razor—you know, the thing you like to remind me of?”

  “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

  “I know not everything about this makes sense,” Alex said, “but suicide so often doesn’t make sense. It’s horrible, it’s tragic, and it’s often unexplainable. And whether we like it or not, this time, I think that’s exactly what we have.”

  While Alex and Dr. Bridges were in the mechanical room examining the body, I was left alone to do what I do best: snoop. And just so that Sheriff Kramer wouldn’t get his knickers in a bunch, I kept my gloves on.

  I started by getting a general impression of the basement. It was fully finished, and except for the area where Coach Mossback had been working, everything was clean and tidy. There were footprints in the carpet from the mechanical room to the coffee table, but otherwise the carpet had nice vacuum lines. The furniture was in good shape and it seemed that everything was in its place. It looked exactly how you’d expect a finished basement to look in a modern American suburb, except cleaner.

  Next I examined the area near the coffee table more closely. This was the only part of the room that wasn’t straightened up. Coach Mossback’s laptop was open, and the cord was plugged in, but the screen was dark. Around it, spread across the table, were dozens of sheets of paper—white computer papers and some from a yellow legal pad. Most of them were covered with scribbled football formations, plays, and notes. A full legal pad sat directly next to the laptop, and at the top of the first page, written in black ink in all capital letters, were the words Game Plan For Mound City. The words were underlined, and underneath that was written a number 1 with a period next to it.

  But there was nothing more after that. The rest of the legal pad was blank.

  Coach Mossback had not gotten very far with his game plan.

  On the floor beside the coffee table were four empty beer cans. The Hopeless ball cap I’d seen him wearing Friday night was lying next to them.

  I’d noticed the big-screen TV before, but I hadn’t looked at it. Now I did. It was turned on, paused on a shot of what looked like game film. I found the remote in between two couch cushions and pressed play.

  The teams were Mound City and Crete Falls. After running it for a minute I figured out it was a recent game, Mound City’s quarterfinal win. I rewound it to the spot where it had been initially, paused it again, then carefully returned the remote control to the couch.

  I looked more carefully through the papers on the coffee table. Looking for anything there other than football. Something that might explain what had happened here. Something that might explain what I AM A BAD MAN meant. But I found nothing.

  I turned next to the bookshelves that lined the walls. Most of them were filled with binders, each one labeled on the spine. Choosing at random, I pulled out the one labeled October 14, 2009 — Game Plan vs Murdoch, and thumbed through. Page after typed-out page of plays and instructions and stuff that I’d probably need a PhD in football to understand. I put it back and picked up another. Same thing.

  I stepped back. There were hundreds of binders just like this. The Mossback Method. Incredible. The discipline to do something like this… no wonder he was so successful.

  The only books he had that weren’t binders were yearbooks. One shelf of them. They went all the way back to the early nineties, and covered four different schools: Pleasant View, Eden Park, Crete City, and Hopeless. The final bookcase held his trophies and plaques from his state championships. Nine in total. There was an empty space where I was sure he was hoping to put his tenth.

  The only other piece of furniture was a wooden bar typical of basement man caves. Beneath it was a mini-fridge stocked with beer. Beside that were a few bottles of whiskey and a single bottle of vodka.

  A side door led to a tiny bedroom. The bed was made. Pillows arranged just so. A guest room, by the looks of it. But the kind of guest room that never had guests.

  Feeling like I’d seen everything there was to see on the basement level, I moved upstairs to the main floor. The kitchen and living room were merged together into an open-concept great room featuring a large gray sectional, an upright piano, and a large flat-screen TV. One wall was adorned with framed black-and-white nature pictures, plus one photo, an old wedding photo, of Coach Mossback and his wife. She looked gorgeous, and he was legitimately hunky—tanned with sandy-blond hair. But there were no other pictures of the two of them, and no pictures of children.

  I had just moved to go investigate the bedrooms when I found myself face to face with a middle-aged woman. Blond, average height, wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket. The stress of the intervening years had changed her, but I recognized the bride from that wedding photo. Except that right now she wasn’t smiling, and she didn’t look so gorgeous.

  “Who are you?” Susan Mossback growled. “And what the hell are you doing in my house?”

  Chapter 8

  Susan Mossback was in the middle of a string of obscenities when Sheriff Kramer came upstairs and explained that I was with him. Seems Susan Mossback was a feisty one, with the mouth of a sailor.

  “Sorry,” she said to me. “I’m obviously a little on edge.” She turned to Alex. “Sheriff, I’d like to see him.”

  I followed them downstairs but kept my distance. I wanted to watch her. Also, I was a little worried she might turn around and smack me. She slowed as they approached the mechanical room. Her chest rose as she took in a big breath, like she was steeling herself for what was to come. Sheriff Kramer moved out of the way, and Susan Mossback walked through the door.

  Even from the other room, I heard her intake of breath.

  I walked in to see her standing with her hands over her face, her entire body shaking.

  The sheriff and Dr. Bridges had taken Coach Mossback down and had laid him out on the floor. When Mrs. Mossback pulled herself together enough, she knelt down next to him and shook her head back and forth. Then she looked up at the rafters, at the noose hanging there. She just stared at it for a good long while. And then, abruptly, she stood up, stomped her foot, and let out a torrent of obscenities. Thankfully, not at me this time. These were directed at Coach Mossback himself.

  Finally, she wiped a tear from her cheek and turned to Alex.

  “He really hanged himself?”

  “That’s where we found him, ma’am, yes,” said Sheriff Kramer.

  She knelt back down and planted an awkward kiss on Coach Mossback’s forehead, then she walked back to the man cave, went straight to the mini-fridge, pulled out a beer, and took a long drink.

  “In a million years I didn’t see this happening,” she said. Then a small smile crossed her face and she let out a breath. “I can’t believe he’s really gone.”

  Alex and I exchanged a look.

  “Mrs. Mossback,” said Sheriff Kramer. “I know this is a very difficult time, but we do need to ask you some questions.”

  She took another drink and shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Can you think of any reason why Coach Mossback would do this?”

  She stared blankly at the bookcase with all his state championship trophies. “Kill himself the week of the state finals? None whatsoever.”

  “Was he suffering from depression?” I asked.

  Mrs. Mossback looked at me like I was an idiot. “He was suffering from being a gigantic turdball. But it was a chronic condition. Dealt with it for years. I don’t know what was so special about
this week.”

  “He left a note behind,” said Sheriff Kramer. He unfolded the note and held it up for her to see. “Any idea what it might mean?”

  “I am a bad man,” she read. “Well, he certainly wasn’t a very good man. And that SOB could find a flaw in anything. Opposing teams. His own teams. But look inside himself and find a flaw? That surprises me. He thought of himself as tough. Successful. Willing to do what it takes. It was everyone else who was flawed.”

  “So what changed?” I said. “Because it seems that this weekend, he determined he was a flawed man—a bad man—so much so that he took his own life.”

  She took another sip and looked again at that wall of trophies. Then finally she fixed her eyes on me. “I can’t think of anything that changed.”

  “Anything else you can think of?” Sheriff Kramer asked. “Anything at all that might help us understand this?”

  “I’d tell you if there was something.”

  “What about your marriage?” I asked. “We understand you weren’t here this weekend because Coach Mossback puts you up in a hotel during game weekends.”

  “Is that a question?”

  “Mrs. Mossback, were you and Coach Mossback having trouble in your marriage?”

  “No,” she said plainly.

  “And you don’t think it’s weird that he makes you leave for the weekend just so he can concentrate better on a football game?”

  “I never gave it one thought.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” I said.

  “Well, believe it. Listen, you’ve got that young-and-not-married look about you. I bet you think marriage is all about love and lollipops and rainbows. Truth is, marriage is about compromise and hard work. Randy and I, we had an arrangement. I did the cooking and the cleaning. I paid the bills and kept the lawn mowed. I took care of our home. And what did he do? He worked. He worked his tail off. He made us look good. He provided for us. So yes, we had an understanding. Maybe you find that hard to believe.” She walked past me, looked at a vacuum sitting at the bottom of the stairs and shook her head. She grabbed the vacuum cord and started wrapping it around the handle of the vacuum. “But it works for us.” She paused. “Or rather, it did.”