Tell No One

by Taylor Sissel, Barbara

  “Well, since he’d just left me, he’d have had to find somebody else pretty damn quick. Did anyone call the police?”

  “Lanie did, around the same time she called Julia, sometime in early 1990, I guess, but when she spoke to them, they dismissed her concern because of how much Dad traveled.” And his reputation for being a womanizer. Caroline kept that bit to herself. “Lanie doesn’t think they even filled out any paperwork.”

  “Now all these years have gone by.” Tricia sounded aghast. “Have you spoken to the police?”

  Caroline shook her head.

  “My God, you’re his daughter. Why are you talking to me and not to them?”

  8

  Harris—Wednesday, January 10

  Harris’s mom has worked as a guidance counselor at Wyatt High since Harris was in third grade. Before that she taught algebra. The kids love her. The times he caught her in deep conversation, maybe with her hand on some kid’s shoulder, looking at them as if they were the focus of her world, it made him so jealous. He got over it, though. Anyone can see she’s got a gift, the way she relates to the students. Harris has tried to emulate her. He once thought he was doing a pretty good job of it, too, but that was before Gee and the dope.

  He’s the damn dope.

  And he’s made one hell of a mess.

  Harris swallows the last two of the Oxy he got off Gee on Tuesday morning, dry, and gets out of his truck. He’s arrived at school early, got some half-baked plan to see his mom even though he realizes where they work is not the best place for it. It being whatever he plans to do. Does he mean to confess? Tell her that Gee supplies him with drugs and robs houses in his spare time?

  He knows what she’ll say. After she has a nervous breakdown, she’ll tell him to go to the cops. She’ll tell Harris to get his ass into a rehab program. That is, if he doesn’t end up getting arrested along with Gee. Harris knows enough about the law that he figures he’s an accessory. He’s witnessed a crime and has knowledge of other crimes that he hasn’t reported. That’s all it takes, he thinks.

  He crosses the deserted atrium and turns down the corridor that leads to his mom’s office. He knows she’s here. He parked next to her car. The hood was cold under his hand. He just hopes she’s alone. His footsteps are muffled for the most part by the rubber soles of his Nikes, which is good, because in the moment he spots the cops—Clint Mackie and Ken Carter—he’s able to backpedal and get himself out of the hallway unseen by them. At least they don’t acknowledge it if they notice him.

  Six long, fast strides get him across the atrium. He’s out the door and down the steps when a kid, John Hooper, calls out, “Hey, Coach.”

  “Hey, Hoop,” he calls back.

  He exchanges greetings with other students, a few teachers, but on the fly, desperate to get away. He wonders how far would be far enough. The athletic building that houses his office and several others as well as the weight room is on the other side of the employee parking lot adjacent to the baseball diamond and the football field. The fields are used for practice now, but when Harris was a student back in the eighties, the Warriors hosted games on these fields. Now they have a new sports complex off campus, a bigger, more modern facility five miles north of town. Local folks will say Harris is responsible in part for the upgrade. Under his guidance, both the football and baseball teams have kept up an impressive win/loss record.

  The baseball team has made it to the playoffs twelve seasons out of his now sixteen-season tenure. They’ve brought the state championship home four of those years. The football team has done nearly as well, competing for the state championship four times and winning it twice. The players make their grades, too, for the most part.

  He passes the entry door of the athletic building and walks out onto the deserted football field, stops on the fifty-yard line. He played his first real game of football here. He was six, in a peewee league, a quarterback even then. His coach and other men who knew this kind of thing said he had talent, an innate sense of the game. They talked about the size of his hands and feet and what was likely to happen once he grew into them.

  But it was Hoff who showed Harris what it was going to take. They worked out here on this field, or rather Harris worked out, according to the routine Hoff designed for him. Hoff timed Harris’s wind sprints, barked at him when he slacked off running the bleachers. He caught Harris’s endless passes. When Harris turned ten, Hoff started him on free weights. Harris’s mom thought he was too young, but Hoff showed her research that said the idea that weight training adversely affected growth was a myth, that in fact it promoted strength that in turn might prevent injury later on. Hoff believed a kid couldn’t be too strong, mentally or physically. Harris hammered his mom until she gave in and agreed to the weight training. He and Hoff did it together, and that pleased her. Even though Hoff was on the road a lot as a college recruiter, when he was home, they were a family.

  Hoff was Harris’s dad.

  Harris misses him. He misses him like hell to this day. He’d never have ended up coaching baseball if Hoff were here. He’d never have left the game of football. He’d have gone pro. He’d have made Hoff proud. But once Hoff was gone, the game lost its meaning. Harris quit the team; he quit the sport cold turkey.

  He tips his head back now, eyes on fire, blinks at the sky, unseeing. It’s useless thinking about the past, what could have been.

  The knock on his office door makes him jump. He says, “Come in,” but his impulse is to dive under his desk. Ken Carter enters first, followed by Clint Mackie. Harris has been expecting them ever since seeing them in the corridor earlier. He stands as the uniformed men enter. They shake hands across Harris’s paper-strewn desk.

  Clint says, “I hope we aren’t interrupting anything.”

  Ken says, “It’s been a while.”

  Harris says no in answer to Clint’s question, and he nods at Ken. He isn’t sure what Carter means. Been a while since what? They don’t run in the same circles. Harris invites the men to sit down and sits himself, randomly shifting piles of paper. He’s sweating and shaky despite having taken the Oxy. He hasn’t done a damn thing, he tells himself. Not that they know about, anyway. You say anything, you’ll go down too. Gee’s warning drifts through his mind. He was gloating when he said it, had that manic look in his eyes. Harris wonders if he’s the only one who’s noticed that there’s something off with Gee, something wound too tight in the kid. Harris has considered talking to Gee’s cousin to see if he can get a handle on the situation. But Harris has no idea where the cousin lives, and for all he knows the cousin is as messed up as Gee. He could be an even bigger punk.

  Clint is talking Warrior football. “What are the chances for the team next year, do you think?” he wants to know. “With Gee and your son leaving.”

  Harris wonders if he’ll even be here next season. He shoves a hand over his head, leans back, loose and easy, as if the answer to that million-dollar question is all that he and the two law officers have got on their minds. “I can’t lie,” he says. “It’s going to leave a hole.” Harris goes on talking about the possibilities. “We’ve got Bo Nichols,” he says. “He’s a junior this year. He subbed in for Gee a few times and did a good job. He looks good in practice too.”

  A beat.

  “We’re working with him.”

  Another beat.

  “We’ll see.” Harris is compelled by the silence, the men’s bland stares, to keep talking. He feels like he looks as guilty as he is. He opens his desk drawer, closes it.

  “You’ve heard about the home invasions,” Clint begins.

  “Yeah. A lot of people are nervous,” Harris says.

  “Eight houses have been robbed so far,” Ken says.

  “But not since Thanksgiving, right?” Harris asks, and he’s relieved when Mackie confirms the fact.

  The captain goes on. “We’re not pulling the plug on the investigation, though, not by any means. We’re working a number of leads.”

  There is
a sound of feet shuffling and leather creaking when Clint shifts a bit in his chair. “We think there are two or three people involved. We’re not ruling out that it could be kids. So far, they haven’t gone into a house when anyone is home, which suggests they’ve been watching their targets, learning the homeowners’ habits.”

  “They don’t use force either,” Ken says. “No broken windows or kicked-in doors. At least one of them is good at picking locks.”

  “Huh.” Harris unfolds his arms across the top of his desk. He could say who it is—should say who it is right now. His jaw feels screwed shut. His blood hammers his temples.

  “Doesn’t take much,” Ken goes on. “You could use a paper clip, if you can believe that. I watched a YouTube video, showed the step-by-step. There’s any number of videos and instructions online that show how to break in to just about anything. It’s amazing.” He shakes his head. “You just need the right set of tools.”

  Clint looks at Ken. “You can get those online too. Amazon probably sells them.”

  The cops laugh.

  Harris says, “Do you have any idea who it is? Which kids? They from around here?”

  Clint looks at Harris. “We’re hoping somebody here on campus can help us with that. We’re pretty sure they’re local, probably students here, yeah. They know the area, know when folks are going to be away. They go in when the house is empty, come out with all kinds of stuff. Small, mostly, easy to handle.”

  “They took a doll from one house,” Ken says. “I still can’t figure it out, what they’re going to do with it.”

  “It was an antique,” Clint explains as if Harris has asked or even cares. “Had a porcelain head. Made in Germany. Cricket says they’re valuable to collectors.”

  Cricket is Clint’s wife. She runs the café by the same name on the town square, where Kyle has just gotten a job. It’s open for breakfast and lunch only. Like all the rest of the school personnel, Harris often eats a meal there. Everybody in town dines there at one time or another.

  Ken’s hooting, saying he has trouble imagining a kid would know anything about an antique doll.

  Harris knows Gee’s cousin took the doll for his five-year-old daughter. The cousin stole a pair of diamond stud earrings from the same house for the kid’s mother. Gee said the cousin was from his dad’s side of the family. The poor relations, Gee calls them. Mom’s people are the ones with all the money, Gee has told Harris. He was named after them, Gee said, the Gander family. Regardless of how they came by their fortune, the family is one of the richest in the county. Gee’s dad runs an oil company and an investment firm. They’ve got an eleven-hundred-acre ranch, the Double G, outside town that’s been in Gee’s mother’s family for generations. Drakes have got more money than God. That’s what folks in town say.

  “We’ve been talking to the students and some of the teachers,” Clint says. “We spoke with your mom earlier. We’re hoping someone will talk to her. All the kids seem to,” he adds.

  Harris runs a fingertip along the edge of his desk blotter.

  “What about you?” the police captain asks. “Any of your players talking in the locker room? Maybe you, or one of the other coaches, have heard something?”

  “I’ll ask around,” Harris says. “If they had heard anything, though, I’m sure they’d have called you guys.”

  Clint nods. The men get up. If they noticed Harris didn’t include himself with those who would report knowledge of criminal activity, they give no sign.

  The morning passes. Harris tries to concentrate on work, but it’s impossible. He paces behind his desk, weighing his options, knowing there’s only one that’s right, that if he had any guts at all, he’d come clean, tell what he knows, take whatever punishment is coming, and get it over with. What’s stopping him—what he tells himself is stopping him—is that he knows Holly and his kids will be in for it, too, the backlash that will result once the news is out that he’s been covering for Gee, the local football legend, hometown hero, robber, and drug pusher rolled into one.

  Harris’s drug pusher.

  Dope is for dopes.

  That’s what Harris preaches to Connor and Kyle. He doesn’t want to see the looks on their faces if they learn the truth. His throat is tight when his cell phone rings. He picks it up, studies the caller ID window. Mom. He answers, needing to hear the reassurance of her voice. Somehow he manages to sound normal.

  “The police were here earlier,” she says.

  “Yeah. They came to my office too.”

  “Do you know who’s behind the break-ins?”

  “No. Why would you think—”

  “This morning, before classes started, I was outside my office, talking to Clint and Ken. I saw you. You came into the corridor, and then suddenly you were gone, as if you didn’t want them seeing you.”

  “Oh yeah. I remembered I was supposed to meet with Tim first thing.” Tim Connolly is the assistant baseball coach.

  His mom’s silence is considering. She’s not buying it. She knows him, knows his heart and mind as well as her own, and he knows every permutation of her thoughts and emotions too. They have the kind of bond that only shared adversity creates. Except for the horrible Oklahoma years and the brief time when Hoff joined their family, Harris and his mom have only ever had each other. Harris has felt at times as if they are knit from the same cloth. He has felt stifled by their closeness, and he’s resented it. And during the troubled times in his life, he has relied on his mother’s love, her fierce loyalty to him, as if it were his only refuge.

  “Harris,” she says, “what is going on with you? Don’t say nothing.”

  “Nothing.” He says it anyway. “Mom, I’m sorry, but I was just on my way to lunch—”

  “Holly’s worried. She says you’re taking something for your back again.”

  “She talked to you?” That surprises Harris. Holly and his mother are cordial but nothing more. It has to do with their kids, Harris thinks. Holly perennially will complain that Harris’s mom makes her feel as if her mothering skills are inadequate. Harris doesn’t disagree that his mom can be a bit opinionated when it comes to the kids. But he’s not getting in the middle of it. His mom is a worrier, that’s all.

  “You told Holly you saw Dr. Cooper as recently as two weeks ago.”

  “I don’t really have time for this conversation right now, Mom.” Harris is tight jawed. He’s got no intention of ever going back to Cooper.

  “She called his office, Harris. You haven’t been there since last June. If you’re on pain meds, you aren’t getting them from him.”

  A beat.

  “Are you taking medication? Oxy or something worse?” Doubt, possibly even the taint of disgust, crimps his mother’s voice.

  Harris rubs his eyes.

  “Is Zeke giving it to you?”

  “He’s a doctor.”

  “He’s retired. It’s not the same. He’s not performing an examination, taking x-rays. He doesn’t know your situation.”

  “He was there when it happened.”

  “A sports injury from years ago isn’t pertinent to your situation now, Harris.”

  “Let it go, Mom, okay?” he asks.

  “You can’t keep taking narcotics. Holly thinks—we both think—you’re relying too much on them.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “They’re dangerous, especially when taken long term. I’m—Holly and I are both worried for you.”

  He doesn’t answer. He’s out of excuses, tired of coming to his own defense, tired of his lies.

  “Holly mentioned something else, Harris.”

  “Since when do y’all talk so much?”

  “I guess she’s talking to me because she’s not getting anywhere with you.”

  “Christ,” he mutters.

  “She said you’re stressed about a student, a football player, that you mentioned a scholarship is at risk. That sounds to me as if this young man is into something very serious—like the recent rash of r
obberies.”

  Harris doesn’t deny it.

  “Is there a connection? If you know the player who’s involved, Harris, scholarship or not, you’re duty bound to report it to the authorities.”

  Harris stares at nothing.

  His mother waits. For confirmation. Reassurance.

  “Do you ever think about him?” he says finally.

  The silence following his query rings with his mother’s astonishment.

  Her response, when it comes, is cautious. “Do you mean Hoff?”

  “Yeah. I still think about him. I still wish he was here.”

  “Oh, Harris, he’s been gone from our lives a long time now.”

  He sits at his desk, a folder containing team stats open in front of him, but his mind is on Holly. He can’t stop thinking about it, that she spoke to his mother about him. It pisses him off; it scares him. He thinks of calling her, of saying, Talk to me, not my mother. But he knows she’ll say she’s tried talking to him.

  He glances at his watch. Baseball practice starts in half an hour. But his nerves are shot. He can’t face it. Can’t do anyone any good, the shape he’s in. He calls Tim, asks if Tim will cover for him, and he’s brutally aware even before Tim reminds him that it’s the fourth time since school resumed after the Christmas break that he’s had to take over practice. Tim reminds Harris they have a preseason game coming up. “Next Friday,” he says, as if Harris doesn’t know the schedule. “We need to settle on a starting lineup,” Tim says. “What’s going on with you, anyway? Is it your back again? You need to get that shit straightened out. Did you make an appointment with the chiropractor I told you about?”

  “I’m going to,” Harris says, and the lie is like dirt in his mouth. Tim seems to know it too.

  He says, “You need to get off the meds, man, that’s all I’m saying,” and he hangs up.

  Harris pulls his cell off his ear and stares at it. Fucking Tim! What does he know? What is he suggesting? You need to get off the meds. Does he think Harris is addicted? Does everyone? Grabbing his jacket, Harris leaves the building. He’s not an addict. He can kick the dope anytime he likes, and he likes right now. He doesn’t know why in the hell he or anybody’s made such a big deal out of it. Slamming his truck door, he keys the ignition, trying not to think of the other times he’s tried to quit.