“Pete won’t play again this year,” Sam observes quietly. “Maybe never. If Mr. Michaud was right, that’s not exactly an eye for an eye but it’s close.”
Sergeant Woods rises from the table. “Vengeance is a natural human instinct, Sam, but generations of experience have assigned it to God and the Law. Which sounds pompous as hell and I know the system sucks but it’s the best one we’ve ever been able to devise. Don’t you be getting any ideas from Dale Michaud. Whether Deanie ever gives us enough to act on against Lord, you stay clear of him. Understand me?”
Sam slumps in his chair. “Yessir.”
“Thanks for your help. If either you or Deanie wants to tell me anything, you know how to reach me.”
Cop, lawyer and mechanic loiter next to the cruiser, reflexively stomping down the snow as they make their farewells in the cold quiet country dark. Behind the house, the apple trees in the orchard sough and rattle nakedly in a passing wind.
“Get what you need?” Reuben asks Lonnie.
“No. Didn’t get what I wanted, either,” Woods returns, and the three men share a brief laugh. The cop addresses Reuben bluntly. “You got any sense of what the hell is going on? All I got is a lot of questions nobody wants to answer. If Dale Michaud had it straight, Pete and Chapin had unlawful sexual contact with Lexie and maybe some other guys did too. Sam knows something, Reuben. His words were ‘I wasn’t there.’ But he wouldn’t tell me where, or when, or who was there, never mind any of what might have gone down.
“What if other kids on the team are involved?” Woods blurts, regretting it instantly.
Freddy Cape winces.
Reuben drops a hand on Woods’s shoulder. “If they are, Lonnie, it’s too late to do anything but deal with whatever’s going to happen.”
The cop nods, shakes hands with Reuben and Freddy and ducks into his cruiser.
The lawyer and the mechanic watch his lights slither and hop down the drive.
“At least he didn’t say it out loud that Sam is covering for somebody,” Freddy says. “Think it’s Rick?”
Reuben grimaces. Stuffing his hands in his jacket, he shakes his head. “Rick’s no angel but I don’t think he’d do something like that. Why should he? He’s going steady with Sarah Kendall.”
“I saw them at the movies once,” Freddy admits. “Looked to me like she had him thoroughly pussydazed.”
Reuben laughs. “Poor Rick.”
“Poor Rick nothing,” Freddy objects. “All these goddamn kids not only get more than I did at their age, they’re getting more than I do now.”
Lonnie Woods finds Rick on his bed with the phone at his ear and signals him to cut off the call. Another time, he would step back out into the hall and let the boy say goodnight to Sarah in privacy, but he’s in uniform, on duty and not happy about having to extract information from his own kid. Lonnie takes Rick’s desk chair and spins it around on one leg to straddle it. Rick cradles the receiver.
“Spill it,” Woods demands. “Everything you know.”
Rick groans. “I don’t know shit, Dad.”
The cop grins without humor. “Lemme get that on tape for the next time you’re mouthing off.”
Rick flops back and stares at the ceiling. “I don’t know anything. I saw Dale Michaud smash Pete’s knee. Sam tackled Michaud and probably kept him from bashing Pete’s brains out. Michaud took off and Sam followed him. It was Gauthier’s idea Michaud might be headed for Chapin’s.”
“Why? Did she say?”
“No. She didn’t have to. Everybody knows Chapin’s been balling Lexie.”
“Michaud right about Pete too?”
“Well, I’ve seen Lexie crawl all over Pete at the Corner, but shit, that’s her hobby, sitting in guys’ laps. Class A cocktease, you really want to know. Pete and J.C. don’t party together though.”
“So Sam saved Pete from maybe getting killed? I had an idea you two don’t have much use for Pete.”
“We don’t,” Rick admits. “If you think Sambo’s got no use for Pete—he loathes Chapin, on account of you-know-who.”
“All right,” Lonnie sighs, meaning just the opposite. Everything about this business is all wrong.
A few minutes later, he finds himself rummaging under the seat of the cruiser for a stale cigarette. Locating a half pack, he taps the bottom with more force than he intends and the contents rocket out, spilling onto the wet muddy floor of the cruiser. Frustrated, he crushes the empty pack in one fist.
37
The bat swings him or so it feels, the tug of its savage passage pulling the muscles across his back with it. He hears the crunch of the kneecap under it. Hears the sounds of glass breaking, metal shearing, the whicker of chains slicing the air and the meaty explosion of fluid metal into flesh. With a sensation of reaching, stretching for the last handhold on a rockface, and not finding it, he falls into the sound of the fist impacting on Deanie’s face, driving her chains into her cheek. He feels it, the shock of the blunt force of a man’s fist driving at full strength, the chewing metal like teeth before it, destroying the silken texture of skin, biting into the thin mask
