'Yeah. Melissa. Tell me about her.'
'Nothing to tell. We dated a few times. Then she got killed.'
'Don't you hate when that happens,' I said.
He shrugged.
'How many times?' I said.
'How many times what?'
'How many times did you date her.'
'How the hell would I know? I go out with a lot of girls. I don't keep track of every date.'
'More than five times?' I said.
He shrugged again.
'Yeah, I imagine.'
'More than ten?'
'For crissake,' he said. 'I told you I don't keep fucking track.'
He rolled a yellow tennis ball up onto his racquet and began to bounce it on the racquet, studying the bounce as if it was important.
'You got a girlfriend?' I said.
'What are you, Ricki Lake? Yeah, I got a girl I'm going with.'
'Who?'
'None of your goddamned business.'
'You give her your letter sweater?'
'No. What the hell are you asking all this crap for?'
'You gave Melissa Henderson your letter sweater.'
'How the hell do you know?'
'I am wise far beyond my years,' I said.
'Yeah?' he said. 'Well, bullshit.'
I had no idea where I was going. There was something phony about him. I didn't believe a kid would give away his letter sweater to someone he dated casually. And I wanted to keep him talking and see what came out.
'So how come you gave Melissa your letter sweater?' He continued to watch the tennis ball bounce rapidly on the racquet face. Then he gave it a little sharper bounce and it went up in the air. As it started down he whanged the ball across the length of the tennis facility and watched it burrow into the netting that hung around the outside of the courts.
'I'm sick of you, pal,' he said. 'I got better things to do than hang around here and talk shit with you.'
'Good for you,' I said. 'You know a State Police Detective named Miller?'
'Never heard of him,' Stapleton said.
He zipped his racquet up in its case.
'Talk to any cops at all about this case?' I said.
'Hell, no,' he said.
He put his racquet under his arm and walked away across the courts toward the exit, leaving the court area littered with yellow tennis balls. I wanted to tell him that it was bad form not to pick up the balls. I wanted to scuttle alongside him and ask more questions. But his legs were longer than mine and I decided to work on dignity. I'd already been compared to Ricki Lake. So I went looking for the Sports Information Office, instead, and found it in a wing attached to the field house.
'My name is Peter Parker, the photographer,' I said to the young woman at the reception desk. 'We're publishing a photo essay on Clint Stapleton, and I need some bio.'
The receptionist was clearly a student, probably a cheerleader in her other life, cuter than the Easter Bunny, but nowhere near as smart.
'Could you spell the last name, sir?'
I spelled it. She wrote it down on a piece of note paper. I could see the tip of her tongue resting tentatively on her lower lip as she wrote.
She read it aloud when she'd finished writing it down. 'Stapleton, yes, sir. Now what did you want about him?'
'Biographical material,' I said.
She looked a little uncertain.
I said, 'A press kit maybe?'
She smiled with relief.
'Yes, sir. I'll get you a press kit on Mr. Stapleton, sir.'
