“Quantity? Oh, you must mean the double showers.” Cobb grinned. “The Hun led an … uh … an active social life. He wanted to. . uh. . smell nice for the ladies. So, particularly after a game and the crowd in here and the TV lights, he figured he needed more help than he got here in the locker room.”
“Was this common knowledge? I mean, it sounds kind of personal.”
“Yeah, well, you see, a team gets closer, maybe, than any other group. We get to depend on each other. So we get to know a bit more about each other than you might expect. Besides, there are those who prefer to keep some personal secrets and those who like to brag. The Hun was a talker.”
“Were you aware,” Harris took over, “that Hunsinger had a vision problem?”
Both officers studied Cobb’s reaction to the question. They detected nothing out of the ordinary.
“Shit, yes-sorry, Father-I mean, I used to spend enough time on my hands and knees down on the turf looking for his damn contacts. That was before he got the soft lenses. The hard lenses used to pop out a lot.”
“Again, common knowledge?”
“The team almost took up a collection so he would get the soft lenses. We all spent time lookin’ for his lenses.”
“Were you aware Hunsinger kept a strong poison at his apartment?”
“You mean the strychnine. Sure. Like I said, the Hun was a talker. He blurted it out when we had a meeting of the discussion group at his place.”
The sound of many male voices talking loudly and simultaneously interrupted the interrogation. The team had finished viewing the films of yesterday’s game. Now they filed through the locker room.
“Show’s over,” Cobb observed. “Are we just about done?”
“Just about. What happens now with the team?”
“The coaches’ll run us for a while. . just to loosen up after yesterday’s battering.”
“One last question then,” said Harris. “Can you account for your time yesterday?”
“Let’s see. .” Cobb nibbled on a knuckle. “I got up about seven, kind of overslept and then started running behind.”
“You were late getting to the Pontiac Inn,” Harris stated.
Cobb looked at him sharply. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“How late?”
“Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.”
“Isn’t that kind of late for rising at seven? The brunch meeting didn’t begin till eight.”
“I had a flat on the way to the stadium.”
Harris looked skeptical. “Did you call anyone? Triple-A?”
Cobb shook his head. “Happened at an empty stretch of I-75.”
“Anybody stop to help you?”
Again he shook his head. “Ever see I-75 early on a Sunday morning?”
“Was your family awake before you left for the stadium?”
“No. They usually sleep in till about ten.”
“So no one would be able to attest to your whereabouts until you arrived at the inn at eight-forty-five or nine?”
“What are you getting at?” Almost from the beginning of this interrogation, Cobb had understood its purpose. Now that the intent had become so obvious, he thought it best to get the cards on the table.
“Nothing, Bobby.” Ewing was conciliatory. “But Hank Hunsinger is dead and we have to find a murderer. And to do that, we’ve got to ask questions. As, for example, what does Hunsinger’s death mean to you?”
Cobb glanced pointedly at Harris and hesitated, as if refusing to answer any more questions. But finally he spoke. “Nothing. Hun’s death means nothing to me. By a series of coincidences we happened to be on the same team. That was the end of it. No, I’ll take that back: You saw it for yourselves up there,” he gestured toward the field. “I’ll be throwing to a better player. And if you want to know whether I knew Hoffer was that good, the answer is no. I’ve had practically no time with him since he joined the club this season.
“Now, is there anything more?”
“Not now, Bobby. We may want to talk to you again,” said Ewing in parting.
Cobb lightly jogged out of the locker room and headed up the ramp to join his teammates in their running exercises.
“That’s a lot of time unaccounted for at the beginning of his day yesterday, isn’t it?” Koesler asked.
“Yup,” said Ewing. “Since Hunsinger arrived at the inn on time, he would have had to leave his apartment by about seven. If Cobb went there, he could have gotten there anytime between, say, seven and eight, and still have had plenty of time to get out to the inn by nine. It would take only seconds to switch containers and pour the strychnine into the DMSO.” Ewing paused and reflected.
“But have you noticed?” Ewing continued. “So far, everyone we’ve talked to has an unaccounted-for gap in yesterday’s schedule. And in each case, the missing time is sufficient for the person to have gone to Hunsinger’s apartment and made the switch.”
Harris shrugged. “Sometimes you can’t raise a suspect. And sometimes there’s too many.”
“Who’s next?” asked Ewing.
“We’d better grab that kicker before he gets away. But first, I want to call headquarters.”
While Harris was gone, Koesler studied the locker room. Just a series of open wire cages, each containing a set of shoulder pads on a shelf topped by a helmet. Wide open. No privacy. He could imagine Cobb studying Hunsinger indulging in one obsessive compulsion after another. It would be hard to hide anything in this setting. Not that Hunsinger had tried to hide anything, from all they’d been told. Perhaps he should have tried to be more secretive.
Harris returned. “There are prints all over the apartment. But then a lot of people had been there lately. However, only Hunsinger’s prints on both shampoo and DMSO containers. And another thing. Hunsinger’s latest girlfriend, that Jan Taylor who found his body. Jackson checked her out. She’s got a roommate who testifies that they were together all day Sunday until Taylor left to join Hunsinger. The timing checks out. She’s clean.”
“It figures,” Ewing commented, then turned to Koesler and smiled. “Father, you’re not holding up your end.”
“What’s that?”
“Praying for success.”
They offered him a contract guaranteeing a salary of $35,000 and containing a health-care package and litle else. He thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Of course, it meant that he might never return to Dunderry, at least not to work there. That was the best part.
Dunderry was an estate of approximately a hundred acres. It had been taken from its native Irish owners in 1573 and settled by a transplanted English landlord. Though the property had been passed down through generations of the Birmingham family, the present Georgian mansion had not been built until the late nineteenth century.
At about the time of the official establishment of the Republic of Ireland in 1949, the then Lord Birmingham lost interest in Dunderry. He became an absentee landlord. The Murray family became his tenants.
The Murrays came from Gurteen, less than ten miles south of Ballymote. Dunderry stood at the outskirts of Ballymote. Both Gurteen and Ballymote were in County Sligo.
Three of the seven Murray brothers pooled all their resources and entered into a mortgage on Dunderry, much to the relief of Lord Birmingham. The Murray brothers moved their considerable families into Dunderry. Space was not a problem; the mansion was huge.
The Murray plan was to make of Dunderry a sheep farm. The secondary plan was to make of the mansion a bed-and-breakfast establishment. The combined plans put food on the table. And that was about all it did. That the sheep were sheared, the once magnificent gardens maintained at least to a minimal degree, and the occasional overnight guests satisfied was a tribute to the industriousness of the Murray families and all their many children.
Into the large family, in 1965, was born Niall, fourth son and seventh child of Liam and Meg Murray.
Niall learned the rudiments of farm life not long after he learned to walk. He was given responsibility for a list of chores as soon as he was physically able to carry them out. The list of chores grew right along with Niall. As a side effect of all this work, Niall was building a strong body. He would not become a huge adult, but he would be
