by Alina Adams
Bex wondered if it would be ethical for her to... uh... borrow Craig's car. She wondered if she could be charged with grand theft auto for it. She wondered if it counted as grand theft auto if she only took the car as far as the police station and then left it there while she got her own. And then she wondered why she was still wondering these things since, the next thing Bex realized, she was behind the wheel and pulling Craig's car into a spot directly in front of the police station, so it was obviously too late to change her mind now.
Bex walked into the police station, asked politely for an envelope, dropped the keys inside with a note of explanation, sealed it, and wrote Gretchen's name on the front. She left the missive with a clerk and asked if there was a phone she could use. She was directed to a pay one down the hall, next to a military-tidy arrangement of four blue plastic chairs, none of which was, fortunately, occupied by a criminal at the moment.
Bex took a seat closest to the phone, plugged her cell into a nearby jack for recharging, and tried to think. She tried to think like both a researcher with more experience than she actually had, and also like a cop. Not to mention a possibly psychopathic ex-skater. Because Bex didn't just have to get to Robby anymore. She had to get to Robby first.
Bex guessed the police would have already done the obvious and sent a car to his apartment in New Jersey to ask about friends, acquaintances, business associates—any place he might go when he felt cornered. Because, Bex had to figure, for Robby to take Jeremy and run like this, he had to feel cornered. And desperate. Bex also assumed that the police had called his job and his parole officer for information, so all of those avenues were closed to her. Not to mention that it was the middle of the night, and sources like bosses and parole officers were probably unavailable until morning. Bex forced herself to think harder. Who in the world would Robby Sharpton know who was available in the middle of the night? Available, and packing relevant information?
Bex smiled.
The answer was so obvious, it was amazing she hadn't thought of it hours ago. Of course! The middle of the night and packing relevant information, to boot! It was a goldmine. And one she doubted the police would ever think of.
It took her a single phone call to Jersey City information, and Bex had the number for the ice rink closest to Robby's apartment. She dialed the main office and waited stubbornly through eighteen shrill rings before a male voice, sounding equal parts pissed and out of breath, picked up and demanded, "Yeah, what?"
Bex asked, "Is this the New Jersey broomball league?"
"Yeah. What?"
"I'm calling from the Poconos Pennsylvania Police Station," Bex recited efficiently. She didn't even feel vaguely guilty about the lie. Was it or was it not a fact that, at the moment, she most certainly was calling from the Poconos Pennsylvania Police Station? She was standing smack in the middle of it, wasn't she?
"Yeah?" A little more cautious now. "What?"
"Robert Sharpton plays in your league, does he not?"
"Robby's not here right now. Hasn't been around for a couple of nights, actually."
Bingo! (And not only because she'd gotten him to stop repeating the same thing over and over; that was just an added bonus.) "I know he's not there right now. I'm afraid Mr. Sharpton's been in an accident. We're trying to locate his next of kin."
"We're just some guys he plays broomball with." The belligerence was gone, replaced mostly with confusion. "We've got no next of kin here."
"Oh, I realize that, I realize that, I certainly do. But, you see, we found a punch-card in his wallet from your ice rink, and we thought, certainly he must have filled out a release form when he signed up to play. That usually has a person to contact in case of emergency on it, doesn't it?"
Bex held her breath. Any minute now, she expected the guy to ask how she knew it was broomball that Robby played, or why she assumed the rink would be open in the middle of the night, not to mention questioning her credentials to even be asking this. But, apparently, the siren song of the ongoing game was too strong, and her new friend just wanted to get this over with and head back to the ice. "Hold on," he said. "I'll check that for you."
In a few minutes, during which Bex fed several more coins into the phone and prayed that her emergency stash wouldn't run out before her time did, he was back. "Yeah. Yeah, I got it right here. Person to contact in case of emergency. Hey, let me ask you: Robby going to be okay?"
"I don't know," Bex told him honestly.
"That's a fucking shame. Guy's really got something on the ice, you know? Said he never even played hockey before he got here, but it's like he's a natural. Probably could have gone pro or something, if things had been a little different."
"Yeah," Bex agreed. "If things had been a little different."
"So, anyway. The name he put down here. Emergency contact, you know? Looks like—let's see if I can read it; his handwriting's kind of wonky. Oh, yeah, here we go, name he put down for emergency contact, it says, Mrs. Antonia Wright."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bex made him repeat the name. And then she pretended to be writing it down just so he would repeat it one more time. Mrs. Antonia Wright? Antonia Wright? Toni?
This didn't make any sense. Toni told Bex she hadn't had any contact with Robby since he was a child. Sure, she'd given Bex his home telephone number, but Toni had everybody's number in skating. And, if she didn't, she knew whom to call to get it. But, she'd claimed to know nothing about Robby beyond the perfunctory basics.
Bex mumbled a hurried thank you to her broomball-playing source. It wasn't until after she'd hung up that she even realized she hadn't asked him for Toni's phone number—a definite screwup if she wanted him to believe her story about needing to contact the next of kin. But, Bex was too distracted to care at this point.
Toni, of all people.
Toni!
She should probably call her. Who cared that it was the middle of the night? Bex needed answers and she needed them now. But, on the other hand, this wasn't the sort of conversation Bex wanted to have over the phone. And not only because she was afraid of tipping her hand.
And so, even though it was coming up on two thirty a.m., Bex got a cup of bitter coffee from the vending machine next to the pay phone, using it to both wake up her mind and warm her hands. And then she got in her own car, and started driving to Connecticut.
Bex turned into the driveway of Toni's suburban two-story home (all the while singing the My Fair Lady standard, "On the Street Where You Live," at the top of her lungs, to keep from slumping over into ZZZ-land) at a few minutes before five a.m. She'd been up now for exactly twenty-four hours. Luckily, Bex had almost a year of skating television coverage under her belt. In the world of skating television coverage, twenty-four hours without sleep was also known as "the first half of the day." So, while Bex was giddy and sleep deprived and lightheaded, she'd operated in such a state so many times before that it felt almost comfortable. If comfortable could be stretched to include headache, cotton stuffed behind both eyeballs, and an inability to connect nouns to verbs in any sort of coherent manner.
Yup, Bex was ready to play detective.
She parked her car across the street, and dialed Toni's number from her newly recharged cell phone. Were it anyone else, Bex might have worried that a five a.m. phone call would draw undue suspicion to itself. But a skating coach was always getting calls at five a.m., either from students needing to cancel an early morning lesson, or to beg for one. If anything, Bex was afraid she might be too late, and Toni had already left for the rink.
Bex watched the house while she listened to the phone ring. All of the windows were dark. Toni's husband had died a few years earlier, and her two sons were grown and living on their own, so Toni should have been the only one inside. And yet, when the phone first rang, was it Bex's imagination, or did she, in fact, spot movement in what should have been an empty guest room?
"Hello?" Toni didn't even sound groggy or curious. Bex guessed that a lifetime of early
morning phone calls had given her an algorithm for dealing.
“Toni? It's Bex Levy."
A pause. Bex got the feeling Toni was about to repeat her name, and so she rushed to intercept. "Don't say anything, please. Toni, I—" Bex took a deep breath. And then she took the biggest gamble of her career. Because, if her bluff failed, Bex would not only lose her last chance for an exclusive on the Robby Sharpton story. She would also lose her good friend.
“Toni," she said. "I know Robby Sharpton is there with you. And Jeremy Hunt, too."
Another pause. Bex wondered if her wild shot had hit its target, or whether Toni was just taking her edict to not say anything a little more seriously than Bex intended.
“Toni..."
"Yes." She could have meant, "Yes, this is Toni." She could have meant, "Yes, I'm still here." Or, she could have meant, "Yes, Robby and Jeremy are in my house as we speak."
Bex said, "I'm just outside, sitting in my car. Please come out and talk to me. Please."
Begging. It was Bex's other patented research trick.
This time, the pause seemed to stretch longer than the entire conversation that proceeded it.
Finally, Toni said, "Give me a few minutes. I'll be right there."
It took Toni almost ten minutes to exit out her front door. In that time, Bex entertained herself by desperately changing radio stations, looking for a ballad that didn't include the word betrayal. She opened the window, hoping the cool air would clear her head. And she wondered if Toni wasn't coming out because she was too busy tipping off Robby and Jeremy and hustling them out the back door. She also wondered if Toni's house had a back door. Bex was tempted to walk around and find out, but, in the end, she was too scared of missing Toni if/when she finally came out the front to budge.
At last, the older woman emerged. She wore baggy jeans and sneakers, a large, down-filled jacket with the OTC logo stitched over the breast pocket, and a gray, woolen hat pulled down low over her eyes and ears, her hair hastily tucked under the edges. Toni slid into the passenger seat next to Bex, studied her for a few minutes, and finally asked, "How?"
Bex said, "Robby listed you as his broomball league emergency contact. I called. I asked."
The shadows on Toni's face made her actual expression unreadable. "You're a bright girl, I always said that. Very, very bright."
"Why did you lie to me, Toni?"
"About what?"
"You said you hadn't had any contact with Robby since he was a little boy taking lessons from you. That's not exactly true, is it?"
Toni said, "I lied because it was none of your business."
"You were protecting him."
"Yes."
"Why?" Bex twisted uncomfortably, resting her left elbow on the steering wheel, wincing when she inadvertently brushed the horn and let a muffled bleat out onto the silent street. Good going, Bex. Why don't you tell Robby you're here, in Morse code? "I don't understand. I've seen you teach. You'd never let any of your students get away with the kind of abuse Robby heaped on his partners. How could you have wanted to protect someone like him?"
Toni looked out through the windshield. She rubbed the glove compartment with the tips of her fingers, brushing off dust Bex wished she could say was imaginary. She really didn't clean her car as often as she should. On the other hand, in this dusk, Toni couldn't possibly have been able to see it. Bex had to assume it was just a stalling tactic.
Toni said, "The first time I saw Robby, he was maybe six or seven years old. I was coming in to the rink to teach, and he was standing right in front of me, at the turnstile. He had to stand on the very tips of his toes just to get his nose over the counter, so he could see the girl selling tickets. I think I smelled him before I saw him. He smelled like neither he nor his clothes had been washed in weeks. He had an open scab on one knee and his nose was running. No, not running. There was just this crust above his upper lip. I think he ended up wiping it against the counter. He was telling the girl that he had been there the day before, with his first-grade class, and that he didn't have any money with him today for admission or skate rental, but, if she would just please, please, please let him in and let him skate again, he could maybe help out by cleaning up afterward or any other odd jobs we might have for him to do. He promised he wouldn't be any trouble."
There, Bex thought, was a promise Robby Sharpton definitely hadn't kept.
"And you know what the girl said to him? Do you know what she told that child?" Toni looked straight at Bex now. "She told him, 'No. No trash allowed.' "
The echo was unmistakable.
"No niggers allowed," they'd told Toni.
"I put him on the ice that same day," Toni said. Nearly thirty years later, Bex could hear the pride in her voice. "Right away, he was trying to jump and spin like he saw the other kids doing. He fell so many times that day, I was sure I'd never see him again. But, there he was, the next day and the next and the next. I finally gave him a little private lesson just so he'd stop hurting himself so badly."
"And was he good from the start?"
"He was determined. That made him good. And he loved it. That's what made him great. Finally, I realized I'd have to give him some serious training. I told Robby I was willing to do it for free, but we'd have to talk to his parents, get their permission. Frankly, I wondered where they thought their six-year-old son was all afternoon. He always came alone. I think he walked straight from school. Robby fought me on it, at first. He wouldn't give me his address—he wouldn't even tell me his last name!—until I threatened to stop teaching him. We went over to see his folks one afternoon. They lived in a trailer. And I don't mean one of the nice ones where everything is tidy and there are fresh flowers in the windows. Believe me, we saw plenty of those on the way, so it's not like there wasn't something to emulate. This place was a mess. It was, quite frankly, the trailer equivalent of what Robby looked like. Except that the aromas included cigarettes and booze and several less legal things. It was a cliché, that's what it was. Honestly, Bex, before I met the Sharptons, I truly didn't believe people actually lived like that. I thought it was something made up for the movies. These people didn't give a damn about Robby. They didn't care if he skated or if he sat in a ditch all day, as long as he didn't bother them. After that, I ended up taking him home with me most nights. Of course, when Lucian took over Robby's training, he got him a spot in one of the dorms—you know, the ones the foreign kids board in? My kids were rarely accepted there. Lucian had to pull some strings."
"Is that why you let Lucian take over teaching Robby? Because Lucian could do more for him?" In Bex's mind, she was already watching the skating version of Stella Dallas.
"I didn't let Lucian do anything. As soon as he saw how much potential Robby had, he swept in and took him. It was his center. It was his prerogative."
"And how old was Robby, then?"
"Oh, I don't know. Nine, maybe? Ten?"
"Did he want to go?"
Toni sighed. "I never knew what was going on in Robby's head. On the ice, he did exactly what he was told. He was incredible at following directions. You could make one suggestion, and he would implement it immediately. That's what made him so easy to teach. And he was the same off the ice. But off the ice, I don't know, it was kind of... odd. It was almost as if he had no idea how to behave, as if he had no instincts whatsoever. At least, none he was willing to follow. It was as if... sometimes I felt .. sometimes I felt like he was learning how to... how to b ... human. Or at least how to pass for one."
Okay... Cross Stella Dallas with Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
"He learned all the right things to say. He learned how to behave, so that he didn't draw undue attention to himself. But it never felt natural with him. It felt like it was all just another skill he had to perfect, like his triple Toe Loop."
"And the abuse? I know he hit Felicia Tufts when they were skating together. Was that something he learned, too? From Lucian, maybe?"
"No. No, Lucian isn't like tha
t. He may have looked the other way when Robby hit Felicia, but he certainly never told Robby to do it. Robby's hitting Felicia... he just... it was so difficult for him... self-control. He was in such tight control of himself all the time, always afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing without knowing it, that every once in a while, he just blew up. We would all see it coming, but there was nothing we could do."
"Did you try?" Bex demanded. "Did you at least try to talk to him, get him help, maybe?"
Toni said, "He was Lucian's student now. I couldn't interfere."
"I thought you cared about him!"
"I couldn't get personally involved with every student, Bex. Do you know how many of the kids I see every day could use therapy? I'm a coach, not a social worker. Besides, I'd had my own children by then. They were my priority."
"So you just cut Robby loose?"
"He had Lucian. He had people to look out for him. I thought he was in good hands."
"Did you know that Robby raped Rachel Rose?"
"Lucian told me that—"
"I can guess what Lucian told you. Did you know?"
"No. Not until recently."
"How recently?"
"Last night," Toni said.
"Robby told you last night that he raped Rachel?"
"He... no... He just told me that he and Rachel... He told me everything. At least, I think it was everything. About Jeremy and Felicia and Craig and..."
"If you didn't have anything to do with him while he was skating with Rachel and Lucian, when did you two reconnect again?"
"It was after Robby went to prison. Maybe a year later. He sent me a letter. He told me he'd been doing a lot of thinking. He told me he needed to talk. He asked me for help."
"What kind of help?"
"He wanted to get his life in order. He knew he'd made a lot of mistakes and he wanted to start... fixing them. He just didn't know how."
"And you helped him?"
"I tried." Toni shrugged. "I visited him, I called him, I wrote him. I don't think anyone else ever did. He was all alone in the world."