Thread of Hope jt-1

by Jeff Shelby

  I slowed, relieved that he wasn’t looking for a ride and watched him stop as he came up behind the Harbor House.

  He was joined by another kid about his age, shorter, with a baseball cap on backwards, shorts hanging below his knees and a bright blue T-shirt that had “Coronado Wrestling” written in white letters across the front. The shirt looked two sizes too small across the kid’s broad chest.

  They both sort of shrugged and turned, heading for the park.

  I’d used up my patience.

  I angled back, still on the opposite side of the road, then slid in behind a group of college students and crossed the street, about ten feet in front of my followers as we headed right for them. I separated from the group just as we all hit the sidewalk and stepped out in front of my two new friends. Their eyes went wide.

  “Hey guys,” I said. “Looking for me?”

  EIGHT

  The one that had been following me looked at his friend, then back to me. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What’s your deal, mister?” the shorter one said, his face screwing up with agitation.

  “My deal is your pal was following me.”

  “Get out of our way,” the shorter one said.

  I stood there. They stood there.

  “Here’s the way it’s gonna go, guys.” I stepped in closer, looking at the taller one because he seemed less sure of their position. “All three of us know you were following me. I have no problem with that. As long as you tell me why. If you wanna act like nothing happened, that’s fine too. We can keep walking until we find a nice quiet spot and then I’ll make you tell me.

  “We weren’t following you,” the tall one said, unconvincingly.

  “I saw you with a beer in your hand in the bar,” I said. “That’s illegal.”

  The tall one’s face pinched together, looking at me like I was crazy.

  “Bullshit,” the short one said. “He didn’t drink anything.”

  “See? I can lie too.”

  Their faces reddened and I tried to seize the moment. “Right now. One of you starts talking or I’m gonna kick both your asses. Right now.”

  The taller one took a step back, clearly the weaker of the two. “Okay, okay.”

  “Jesus, Matt,” the other one said.

  “Hey, this was your idea, Derek,” Matt fired back at his friend.

  “Now I got names,” I said. “Derek and Matt. We’re off to a good start.” I looked at Matt. “You were following me. Why?”

  “We saw you outside the gates at Meredith’s house,” Matt said.

  Derek winced, shaking his head.

  I knew my way around San Diego. It wasn’t like going to a city I was unfamiliar with. I didn’t have to think about where I was going. Apparently, I’d been too comfortable navigating the streets of the city to pay attention to the rearview mirror.

  “We wanted to see where you were going,” Matt said, then pointed at Derek. “He wanted to see.”

  Derek scowled again, then looked at me. “You’re friends with him, right?”

  “With who?”

  “With that asshole that fucked Meredith,” he spat. “He fucked her and then he fucked her up so she wouldn’t tell.”

  His words were like a kick to my shins. Chuck slept with Meredith? No way in hell did I believe that. Derek’s anger was real, though, and his statement bothered me.

  “Yeah, he’s my friend,” I said. “I’m an investigator.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Derek said. “We heard that when you were talking with Mr. Jordan’s security chick. And you’re working for Coach Winslow.”

  I blinked my eyes a couple of times, clearing my head, making sure I’d heard him right. “Coach Winslow?”

  His face tightened again, irritated. “Yeah. He never should’ve come to our school.”

  I pointed at Derek’s T-shirt. “He coaches at Coronado?”

  Matt nodded, just wanting the interrogation to end. But Derek cocked his head at me, unsure of me now. “I thought you were friends with him?”

  “I am.”

  He nodded, a sly grin creeping onto his face. “Well, for a friend, you don’t seem to know shit.”

  Couldn’t argue with that.

  Derek lifted his chin at Matt. “Come on.”

  Matt stood still, not sure what to do.

  “He’s not gonna do anything,” Derek said, turning back to me. “You’re not gonna do a thing.”

  “Sure about that?”

  He nodded, confident. “Yeah, I am. Go ahead. Start kicking our asses, like you said. Let’s see what happens.” His eyes swept the area. “Lotta people around here right now.”

  He was right. I wasn’t going to start smacking around a couple of high school kids in the middle of a crowd, particularly when they hadn’t done anything really wrong.

  “Why were you following me?” I asked again, bringing the conversation full circle.

  Derek grabbed Matt by the arm and pulled him past me. Matt looked down at the ground, refusing to meet my eyes. Derek, on the other hand, was happy to sneer at me as they went past me. I did nothing.

  NINE

  I went back to my hotel room for an uneasy night of sleep, my mind bouncing from Chuck lying in a hospital bed, to two punk kids tailing me, to the phrase “Coach Winslow,” to knowing I was going to have cross back over to the island the next morning.

  Chuck always did his own thing and had ever since I’d known him in high school. We were as close as friends could be, but not in a dependent way. And while there was now a fracture in our relationship, I still felt like I had a good handle on who he was. Hearing that he was a coach struck me as odd, but hearing that he slept with a teenage girl struck me as flat out fiction.

  I had zero doubt the charges against him were crap. He did a lot of stupid things but he wouldn’t sleep with an underage kid. Not in a million years. But the fact that he now seemed to be doing other things that I wouldn’t have expected had my mind spinning.

  I got up the following morning and, after a light breakfast, headed back over the bridge to the island.

  There is nothing spectacular looking about Coronado High School. Originally built in 1912, it still occupies the same location off of D Avenue where it was initially established. It had slowly grown to a four-block campus extending west toward H Avenue, a neat rectangle of small two-story Spanish style stucco buildings dotted with palm trees and striped with long medians of green grass. I knew that the school had undergone some capital improvements-refurbished classrooms, a new library, an entirely separate arts center-but from the exterior, it was the same school I’d attended nearly twenty-five years earlier.

  There was no school parking lot and cars ringed the streets around the campus. It was like a convention of expensive cars. BMWs, Land Rovers, Saabs and a few Porsches lined the curbs. Even though most of the students lived within walking distance, the kids at Coronado knew how to get to school.

  Students were hanging around aimlessly on the shallow steps in front of the administrative building. They didn’t seem to notice that I was there, that I was older than they were and that I wasn’t dressed as well. It was Abercrombie and Fitch everywhere, like the catalog had come to life, complete with the models. Tan skin, shiny hair, expensive jewelry, boys and girls who looked twenty-five rather than seventeen.

  As old as the school was, Lana McCauley seemed nearly as old. She’d been there when I was a student and she was still there when I walked in that morning.

  “Joseph Tyler,” she said, smiling. “Class of ’88.”

  Despite my conflicted feelings about why I was back on campus, I smiled. It was what Lana was famous for. Within one month of your freshman year, she knew your name and never forgot it. Ever.

  “Hello, Mrs. McCauley,” I said. “How are you?”

  She spread her arms across the desk in front of her. “Just making sure things stay on track, as always.”

  “As always.”

  Her ph
one beeped and she held up a finger. She answered the phone, transferred the call and focused on me again. “I’m surprised to see you here, Joseph.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She tented her fingers. “I didn’t know you were back on Coronado.”

  “Just got back yesterday.”

  She studied me for a moment. “Well, it’s a pleasure to see you. How can I help you?”

  I knew she must’ve had a hundred different questions, like everyone else I used to know would. The difference was that Lana had the dignity not to blurt them out.

  There were several different things I could’ve told her. But these days in a school, it was best not to mess around. And I didn’t want to insult Lana.

  “I’m investigating an incident with a current student here,” I said. “Meredith Jordan.”

  Lana McCauley’s smile thinned. “I cannot allow you to speak with a student on the campus, Joseph, unless you are accompanied by the parents of that student. I’m sorry.” She said it with a tone that implied she knew I wasn’t there with the girl’s parents.

  “Certainly, I understand,” I said, anticipating her response. “Could I ask you a question or two?”

  “It’s not my place, Joseph.”

  “Nothing too hard, I promise.”

  “It’s not the difficulty that would be the problem.”

  I smiled. Only a fool would attempt to fool Lana. “Was Chuck Winslow employed here?”

  “I cannot comment on that,” she said. “You’ll have to inquire at the district offices. I can give you their contact information.”

  The Coronado Unified School District office was about a block away from where I was standing, housed on the same campus. But I was trying to be agreeable.

  “That’d be fine,” I said.

  She sat up straighter in her chair and quickly began scribbling on a piece of paper.

  “Is Mr. Willis still the Athletic Director here?” I asked.

  She shook her hand and handed me the piece of paper. “No. He retired three years ago and moved to Phoenix.”

  “Who replaced him?”

  “Mr. Stricker is our Athletic Director now.”

  “Is he available?”

  The wheels were turning in Lana’s head, wondering if I was trying to trick her into something she wasn’t supposed to do. I wasn’t. Both Matt and Derek had referred to Chuck as “Coach Winslow” which I assumed meant he was connected to the athletic department. And if Lana didn’t want to call him directly, I could walk outside, dial the school from my cell and ask to speak to him. He wasn’t off-limits.

  After a moment of thought, she picked up the phone, turned away and spoke quietly into it, then hung up. “Mr. Stricker will be with you shortly, Joseph.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  She nodded, smiling, happy to oblige.

  “Chuck was coaching swimming, right?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips. “I’m sure Mr. Stricker will be able to answer your questions.”

  Worth the shot, but I should’ve known better.

  Five minutes later, a man the size of a garage door came walking down the hallway. Dressed in a golf shirt with the Coronado tiki emblem over the chest and khaki slacks with creases sharp enough to cut, he smiled at me from a distance. Square head, blond hair cut short and going gray, a neck as thick as my thigh. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him.

  He reached me and extended his big bear paw of a hand. “Robert Stricker.”

  The name hit another bell and suddenly I saw him on my television on Sunday afternoons.

  I shook his hand. “Joe Tyler. Linebacker for the Chargers, right?”

  He smiled politely, indicating he’d heard it plenty of times before. “A long time ago.”

  “I enjoyed watching you play.”

  “Thank you,” he said, graciously taking a compliment he probably got once a week. “Why don’t you come down to my office?”

  He was only an inch or two taller than me but his girth made it seem like the difference was a foot. It felt like he was looming over me as we walked.

  “You’ve been here since Willis left?” I asked.

  “Yes. Did you know him?”

  “I graduated from here in ‘84.”

  “I came in a year before he left,” Stricker said. “Got my feet wet, learned what I could. Just trying not to screw things up now.”

  He guided me toward the entrance to the gymnasium. He held open one of the large doors so I could pass. As soon as I got inside, I stopped.

  The gymnasium had always been the one piece of the campus that linked to its earlier days, remaining unchanged for decades. The seats were up above, suspended above the court. The playing floor had gone from tan to dark brown, dead spots hiding everywhere. There had been no scoreboard, just a flip rack on a table on the opposite side of the bleachers.

  But it had undergone significant changes since I’d last set foot in it.

  The seats were still suspended above, but a bank of bleachers had been put in below them, doubling the seating capacity. The seemingly brand new floor gleamed with polish, the smell of varnish heavy in the air. A massive scoreboard was mounted on the far wall.

  I looked at Stricker. “This is all new.”

  Stricker led me around the baseline, behind the cushioned chairs that the teams sat in. “Thing was falling down around us. Parents stepped up and got us some money. It’s still small compared to some of the other gyms we play in, but at least we aren’t taping it together to hold it up.” He pointed across the gym floor to a bank of windows. “My office is there now and we’ve got office space for all of the coaches on campus. Makes a big difference.”

  I remembered Mr. Willis’ office as being a table set up outside the locker room. I imagined it did indeed make a big difference.

  Stricker’s office was a perfect square with a big window looking back toward the gym. Nothing in the office indicated he’d been a star professional athlete. A couple of certificates, a degree from UNLV and pictures of Coronado’s teams adorned the walls.

  He gestured at the chair across from his desk as he lowered himself into an oversized leather desk chair. It squawked beneath his weight. He folded his hands across his chest and stared at me, his look having subtly changed from when he came out to get me. He’d gone from friendly officer of the school to linebacker looking to smash a quarterback in the face.

  “Two ways we can go about this,” he said. “We can dance around or we can cut to the chase. I’ll leave it to you to choose.”

  “I prefer cutting.”

  “Good. Saves us both time.” He paused. “I can’t tell you shit.”

  “About what?”

  “Thought we weren’t going to dance.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Stricker sighed. “Lana told me you were here looking for info on the Jordan and Winslow thing. And I can’t tell you shit.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Same result either way.”

  “I’m not looking for info on Meredith Jordan,” I said.

  “Yeah, you are,” he said, smiling. “But let’s pretend that’s true and we skip to the next item on your list.”

  If he’d taken shots to the head during his career, it didn’t show. He was sharp and all business.

  “Whatever she says Chuck Winslow did to her isn’t true,” I said.

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  “Think about whoever your closest teammate was,” I said. “The one single guy you would’ve picked every week to go to battle with because you trusted him so completely.”

  Something shifted through his eyes, then he nodded.

  “Chuck’s like that times ten in my life,” I said. “I know what he’s capable of and this isn’t it.”

  Stricker let that settle in his thoughts for a moment. Then he leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk.
“I can appreciate that. But as a school administrator, I’m going to come down on the side of the student. Every time, until I hear otherwise.”

  “Then why are you even talking to me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the A.D. Why not pawn me off on the principal or some other administrator?” I asked. “If you aren’t going to talk to me and you aren’t interested in what I have to say about Chuck, why see me? What do you care?”

  He grunted, the corners of his mouth twitching like small electrical currents. Finally he said, “Because I’m the one who okay’d hiring Winslow.”

  TEN

  “Hired him?” I asked.

  Stricker leaned back in his chair, like he was trying to create more distance between us. “Technically, we didn’t hire him. But I signed off on his involvement with the girls basketball program. He was a volunteer coach for the last month.”

  The whole concept of Chuck as coach just didn’t sit right in my head. He’d never showed any inclination to coach and seemed to have had as much use for high school kids as he did used cigarette butts. Maybe it was a secret ambition he’d kept hidden from me. Or maybe things had changed more than I knew since I’d last seen him.

  “He was straight with me from the day I met him,” Stricker said. “He told me he didn’t have a degree, that he hadn’t worked in a school before, that he hadn’t coached before. He'd played basketball in high school here and that was about the only qualification he had.”

  That sounded right to me. We’d played together at Coronado, in the older version of the gym directly behind me. Chuck was a brute, using his size to make himself into a player. He was athletic enough to use finesse to score, but he preferred banging into people. And he was talented enough to attract some college interest but he blew it off, despising the thought of spending any more time in school, even if it meant a free ride and playing ball.

  “So he was here for a month?” I asked.