A man wearing chinos and a Sportsman’s embroidered collared shirt stepped out from behind one of the aisles. He held an old-fashioned clipboard in his hand and a pencil tucked behind his ear. “Hi there, welcome to Sportsman’s. Can I help you find something?”
Yes, I’m looking for something that’s been killing off your town’s football players. Something from the supernatural line, probably. Not very flashy, but gets the job done.
Lance smiled and nodded toward the racks of clothes near the wall of shoes. “Need some new outfits. I think I see where I need to look.”
“Be sure and let us know if you need any help.” The man flashed a quick smile and then disappeared back into his aisle.
Lance found a clearance rack of t-shirts and managed to find three in his size. Then he did the same with basketball shorts. In the hunting and fishing section, he found a pair of brown-and-green camo shorts.
At the checkout counter, the man in the chinos rang up Lance’s purchases and the total exceeded the amount of cash Lance was carrying. He slid his debit card from his wallet, wondering for the first time just how far his money would stretch. He’d saved up a decent amount from part-time work back home, odd jobs here and there. But he’d never held a full-time position anywhere, and sooner or later, he was going to run out of money. He’d have to find work. Or play the lotto.
His mother would scowl at him for that joke. The lotto was for the unambitious.
The transaction was approved, and Lance asked the man if he’d mind terribly if he used one of the fitting rooms to change. The man gave him a quick glance up and down, as if his question had suddenly provoked concern, but then smiled and nodded and said that was no problem at all. As Lance thanked him and began walking toward the fitting rooms the man called out, “Did you buy that backpack from us?”
Lance turned and smiled. “No, sir. It was a gift from a friend.”
The man nodded. “I didn’t think I’d seen you in here before. You new in town?”
“Just passing through,” Lance said, then wondered just how true of a statement that was. His thoughts of the future were too overwhelming to dwell on. He had to focus on the task at hand.
Lance changed his clothes, pushing his two-day-old t-shirt and cargo shorts into the bottom of his backpack and pulling on one of the new shirts and pair of basketball shorts. He instantly felt better, almost reenergized, and as he was walking back down the center aisle of the store to make his exit, he caught himself whistling along with the tune playing overhead.
Then he saw the pictures and stopped.
To his left, the wall next to the exit door was a collage of photographs of local sports teams and athletes and newspaper clippings of exciting headlines, some framed, some not. The wall was meant to look causal, haphazard, abstract, but Lance knew that somebody in the store had taken great pains to make it only appear this way. This was somebody’s baby, a side project that was fueled with passion.
Here was a shot of a basketball player shooting a three, a defender’s outstretched arm desperately trying to prevent the shot.
There was a team photo of the Westhaven 2011 women’s tennis team. A small group of young girls wearing white skirts and matching red sleeveless tops, their rackets all held sideways across their bodies like they were posing with a trophy.
Below this was a framed front page of the Westhaven Journal’s sports section, the headline screaming: WESTHAVEN WINS FIRST EVER STATE TITLE!
And next to this, large and framed and clearly meant to stand out, was a team photograph of the Westhaven football team. They were in celebration in the end zone of the field they’d just played on, organized but excited and jubilant in their victory. There were three rows, the rearmost row standing while the middle row knelt and the front row sat on the ground. Some boys held their helmets high in the air, cheers frozen on their faces. Others had tossed their helmets to the ground, dotting the green of the field with their discarded armor and making it look like a ravaged battlefield. There was a large—insanely large—trophy on the ground between the middle boys in the front row. It towered up and gleamed in the sunlight, a lens flare popping from one side. The boys’ faces were sweaty and dirty and tired, but they were clearly living in one of the best moments of their lives.
The frame was a dark polished wood without a speck of dust, and there was a large gold placard in the center of the bottom panel. The engraving read:
WESTHAVEN HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM
2012 VIRGINIA STATE AA CHAMPIONS
FINAL SCORE: 28–7
Below the header in a much smaller script were the names of the players and coaches. Lance scanned the names, recognized Coach McGuire and Chuck Goodman and Martin Brownlee. He didn’t see Leah’s brother Samuel’s name. This would have been Samuel’s team, the year he’d disappeared. The lack of even an honorable mention or in memoriam side note was more unsettling than Lance cared to admit.
He looked at the photo, with no way of knowing which boy was which, as the names on the placard were simply alphabetical. Then he moved on to the two smaller framed shots to the right of this large one, each one inching folks closer to the door. They were the team pictures for each of the following two state titles Westhaven had won. Chuck Goodman was not listed on the second picture. And on the third and final photograph, showing last year's team once again celebrating with another large trophy and more large smiles, Martin Brownlee’s name was nowhere to be found.
Something else caught Lance’s attention, and he went back down the row of photographs to take a second look. The rear row of boys in each picture was bookended by coaches and staff, clearly recognizable by the headsets and ball caps and khaki pants and shirts and playbooks and Gatorade-soaked shirts. Kenny McGuire, Lance knew because of the picture he had seen in the newspaper Leah had shown him, but the other men’s faces were anonymous to him.
But it wasn’t the coaches who caught Lance’s eye. In each picture, starting with Westhaven’s first state title, there was another man with the group. He was tall and broad-shouldered and clearly built like a player past his prime. His hair was peppered with gray, but his face appeared younger than the rest of him. In the first picture he was standing by the coaches, a small gap between himself and coach McGuire. He wore a dark blue sweater and crisply pressed jeans with loafers. The second and third picture, he was kneeling on the grass with the middle row, beaming just as big and bright as the players. And in the last picture, the man was again adorned in a sweater and loafers, only he’d decided to casual it up some with a Westhaven ball cap. This time, he was seated on the grass next to the front row, his arm draped around the player to his left.
There was a clear resemblance between the man and the boy, and before Lance’s mind fully made the connection, a voice next to him said, “Never seen anything like it in all my years.”
Lance, startled, turned and found the man with the chinos and clipboard next to him. “What haven’t you seen?” Lance asked.
“That team.” The man pointed to the picture of the first title team. “They were about the sorriest group of ball players I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness. And then”—he snapped his fingers—“state title the very next year, and every year since.” He shook his head. “If I was a betting man, I’d have lost big-time. Hell, the whole town would have lost. Don’t get me wrong, we’d support those boys and cheer and holler ’til our throats went raw, but we knew they stunk up the place.”
Lance nodded and asked the same question he had asked Leah last night. “What changed?”
The man shrugged. “Got to be the coach. McGuire doesn’t look like much, but he’s whipped those kids into shape. Can’t deny it, right?”
Lance didn’t answer. He wasn’t so sure. Instead, he pointed to the man in the picture, the outlier. “Who’s that? He doesn’t look like a coach.”
Chino man leaned forward for a better look, then his eyes brightened and he smiled like he’d just found twenty bucks in his pocket. “Oh, that’
s another blessing our poor team received. Glenn Strang has given those kids every advantage he possibly can. Don’t know what we’d do without him”—then, in a whisper—“or his money.” Chino man laughed, and Lance went along with it. The connection his brain had started before was finalized. The boy Glenn Strang had his arm around in the last picture was his son, Bobby.
“Yeah,” Chino man said, “McGuire and Strang—those guys really turned it all around. Thank God they showed up when they did.”
Lance thanked the man and left the store, wondering just what else had shown up in town the day Kenny McGuire or Glenn Strang had ridden in.
14
Lance walked away from downtown, intent on dropping his purchases off at his motel room—now that he was clearly staying another day, at the least—and then deciding where he should go. If Leah had done as he’d asked, then hopefully she’d be well on her way to trying to dig up any info she could about whether either of the other two missing boys had had girlfriends at the time they’d disappeared.
Ordinarily, a high school boy having a girlfriend wouldn’t be enough to set off the alarm bells in Lance’s head. But it was the fact that Samuel had hidden his relationship from Leah that made Lance suspicious. He knew she wasn’t the type of person who would exaggerate the closeness she shared with her brother. If she said they were thick as thieves, Lance believed her. Plus, in a town this small, Lance had a hard time understanding just how a member of the football team, an active member of the town social circle, could even manage to keep something as significant as a girlfriend a secret. It seemed fairly impossible for Samuel and his girl to go out to dinner, a movie, a walk in the park, anything, without eyeballs noticing and word of mouth traveling.
There was, of course, the possibility that Bobby Strang was not being honest. Leah hadn’t mentioned whether Bobby’s statement about Samuel needing to go see his girlfriend had been given to her straight from the horse’s mouth, or passed on via the police during the investigation. Either way, if Bobby Strang had made the girlfriend thing up, that meant he was either covering for Samuel, or for somebody else. Maybe even himself?
By the time Lance made it back to the motel, he’d all but decided he’d like to have a chat with Bobby Strang, and he hoped he didn’t have Leah out chasing a red herring. But there was nothing wrong with leaving no stone unturned. Her brother had been missing for years now. His case wasn’t going to be solved instantly, no matter if Lance was helping or not. His gifts helped with things like this, sure. But life wasn’t an episode of Murder, She Wrote. Jessica Fletcher, he was not.
The Jeep with Garfield as a passenger was gone from the lot, as were all other cars except a dirty early-model Honda Civic with an Obama bumper sticker from his first campaign. There was a long scratch along the passenger-side door, and as he walked past, Lance saw a tattered copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins lying on the floorboard and thought the car seemed entirely too Democratic for a town like Westhaven. The car was parked directly outside the door to the office, and Lance figured it must belong to Renee, the woman Leah had watching over things. He contemplated poking his head inside to say hello but thought better of it. Enough folks around Westhaven had already pegged him as a suspicious weirdo. No sense adding to the list. He’d keep his attempts at making friends to a rule of necessity.
He approached his door and saw that somebody—Leah, more than likely—had swept up the broken bits of plastic and glass. He looked up and found that she’d replaced the lightbulb as well.
Who needs Martin the handyman?
Lance slid his key into the lock and opened the door.
He stopped.
His bed had been made, and fresh tracks on the carpet showed that it’d been vacuumed since he’d left. Leah? he wondered. Or was it Renee, or somebody else—a housekeeper? Does a place like this even have housekeepers?
Even though he’d had zero personal belongings in the room at the time it’d been straightened up, his stomach still did an uneasy twirl at the thought of Leah poking around in here while he was gone. Not that he didn’t trust the girl, and not that he possessed anything physical that would unravel his secrets, but it was the age-old tale of guy-meets-girl self-consciousness that even Lance himself was not immune to.
He liked Leah. Even at this disastrous, tragic, and earth-shattering moment of sadness and confusion in his life, human nature and biology and a human’s desire to find love and companionship refused to take a backseat.
He pushed the thoughts away. He couldn’t ignore what he was feeling, but nothing said he had to accept it.
He wasn’t ready. It was too soon.
He didn’t even have all the details of exactly what had happened after he had left town, after the night when—
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, a hard vibration that caused his heart to lurch and snapped him back from his thoughts. He dropped his backpack onto the bed and fumbled with his phone, flipping it open. He’d received a text from Leah: Working on more, but Chuck Goodman’s sister is meeting me for lunch. 1 @ Frank’s Pizza. Can you come?
Lance studied the message, first impressed with how quickly Leah had managed to drum up a potential lead for information, but also concerned that his presence would make Chuck Goodman’s sister uncomfortable, especially when dealing with what was already sure to be an uncomfortable subject. But again, he was going to trust his new friend. He convinced himself that Leah would not have invited him if she felt Chuck’s sister would not be okay with it.
He began thumbing his worn and faded keys and texted back: See you there.
He had no idea where Frank’s Pizza was located, but he usually had a way of finding things.
He went to the restroom and relieved himself and washed his hands. There was a freshly wrapped bar of soap at the sink, and clean towels hung from the rack next to the shower. He glanced back at the toilet bowl to make sure he hadn’t dribbled or dripped any on the visible surface. He’d probably die if he ever knew Leah had wiped up his dried urine.
Back by the bed, he unzipped his backpack and separated his dirty clothes from his new purchases. He stuffed all the dirty items into one of the Sportsman’s bags and then placed his new items in the other bag. He left his toiletries in the CVS bag and walked to set it and the bag of dirties in the bathroom. Back in the bedroom, he checked his phone once more for new messages, found none, and then left.
Outside, the sun was at its peak, and Lance was glad it was fall and not summer. Otherwise he’d bake to a crisp having to walk everywhere. He kicked himself for not buying a cheap pair of sunglasses at CVS. He didn’t particularly care for sunglasses, or the way he looked in them, but they sure would help right about now. He squinted his eyes against the brightness and headed across the parking lot, a soft breeze helping to push him along and making the air feel crisper than it looked.
He had about forty-five minutes before he had to find Frank’s Pizza and meet Leah and Chuck Goodman’s sister, so he figured he had enough time to see Westhaven High School.
He couldn’t say exactly why, and he didn’t know exactly what it was he planned on learning during the middle of a school day. With times the way they were, you couldn’t hang around near a school for long without somebody calling the police. Whether you were wielding a candy cane or an AK-47, somebody would notice, and the repercussions would be just as swift either way.
Still, he walked.
He headed back toward town, but at an intersection he usually continued straight through, he stopped, closed his eyes for a moment, and then turned left, heading down another rural route that seemed nearly as desolate as the previous. The sidewalk vanished, and he was forced to walk on a grassy shoulder, the blades growing high enough in some spots to reach above his sneakers and tease his shins. Far off to his left he could still see the black plume of smoke rising above an expanding tree line, only now he could begin to make out the top of the smoke stack that spewed it. There was no doubt it was the paper mill.
; The Strang family was another oddity in Lance’s mind. On the surface, they seemed harmless, maybe even the good guys. Glenn Strang was an ex-player who still loved the game, loved his son, and used his fortunate financial means to help provide for an underfunded athletic program at a small-town high school. Admirable. Bobby Strang, from what Lance had heard from Leah, was probably the placekicker because he didn’t have the skill or talent to play other positions. This could have been a point of discontent for Glenn Strang, but the man seemed to be taking it all in stride, being just as enthusiastic about his son and the team’s accomplishments as he would if Bobby had been the quarterback. Aside from this, all Lance knew was that Bobby and Samuel had become close friends. And if Samuel was anything like Leah, that meant that Bobby couldn’t be too bad a character. Lance still wanted to talk to him.
It was Mrs. Strang that Lance knew nothing about. Leah had told him that she stayed at home and cooked meals for the boys and probably played team mom more than other actual mothers liked, but she hadn’t factored into the story much at this point.
Before Lance could think about her any further, Westhaven High School began to grow out of the weeds ahead on the right like a desert mirage.
The school had a larger campus than Lance had expected, with three one-story buildings separated by covered sidewalks, giving the appearance of an eagle spreading its wings. The architecture was dated—fifties or sixties most likely—with weathered brick walls and peeling white paint on the overhangs covering the sidewalks. In front of the center building, which Lance assumed to be the office, a wide traffic lane looped across the buildings and connected on each end to the main road. There was a single bus parked here, along with several cars that probably belonged to office staff. A larger parking lot flooded out from the side of the right-most building, and it looked like a used-car lot where the dealings were in cash only and warranty was a foreign word. There were more pickup trucks and mud-splattered SUVs than Lance could count.
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