Let's Play (Chapter Three)

Chapter Three

Lou’s Pub had been a Carlton establishment for almost 75 years. Kevin entered in front of Tully to a strong smell of stale beer and even staler cigarette smoke. The bar lined the right side of the room, stretching back twenty feet. Sitting at the end of the bar was an old man who may have been sitting in that spot since the day the bar opened for business with every drink he ever took etched into his face. For a moment, a shudder crosses through Kevin’s body with a feeling of looking into his future.

Lou DePano was working the bar. He bought the old tavern in the mid-nineties, taking over for a family who had owned the place for thirties years. It didn’t appear that he had spent one dime on improvements over the years except for a new dart board and a relatively clean pool table.

“Hey Lou, can we have a word?”; said Tully as they approached the far end of the bar.

Lou told them that Diane had worked the closing shift the night before, coming in at six pm and staying until just after two am. With the discovery of the crime scene at just after six am, that left about a four hour window of time for the crime to have occurred.

“It was a really quiet night for a Thursday, guys. At about two, we had about ten regulars in here that we had to chase out after last call. Nothing unusual at all.”

Kevin had kept his head on a swivel since he walked into the bar. He had been to Lou’s many times, but never with his mind in this mode, investigator mode. He was trying to visualize closing time. Diane would be cleaning glasses and the scarred top of the bar, patiently waiting for those hangers on to decide to finish their last drinks and find their way home. She would be thinking about having to get up in five hours to get he girls ready for the sitter and preparing for her long shift at the paper mill. She would have been tired. Maybe not as careful as usual.

“Lou, anything unusual when you came in this morning? Anything that seemed out of place or just not normal?”

“Nah, Kevin. I always come back in at eleven to help the night crew shut down. I made sure Diane got home. I walked her to the parking lot of her building and watched her go in. Didn’t see anyone hanging around out there, if that is what you are thinking.”

“What did you do after you saw her go into her building?”

“I went to my car and went home. You don’t think I had anything to do what whatever went on over there, do you?”

“What went on over there, Lou?”

“How the hell should I know? I walked outside after starting the grill and saw every damn cop in town in the street. Someone came in and said something happened to Diane. She is one of my dependable people. I don’t know what I am going to do without her.”

“Past tense, Lou? Who told you she was dead?”

Lou paused. His mind was slowly turning to the fact that he just revealed he knew more than he possibly could. And he didn’t like it.

“Kevin, honestly have no idea what happened over there, but with all you here, I know it has to be bad. Some guy came in as I was coming back in myself. He told me that Diane and her daughters had been butchered in their apartment. That’s all I know.”

“He said, ‘butchered’?”

“Yeah, the word he used. I never seen the guy before. He came in and had a cup of coffee with me while I watched the Sportscenter. He finished his cup and left. We didn’t say much of anything to each other after he came in.”

Kevin stared at Lou for a couple minutes. There was a question here, he just had to sort through what he heard to find it. Looking over his note pad, he found it.

“He said, ‘Diane and her daughters..’?”

“Yeah, like he knew her by name. Figured he had to be a evening customer that I just didn’t recognize.”

They had a few more questions for Lou, but he had very little more information. What he did give them was a suspect. They instructed him to make his way to the station as soon as he could to get with a sketch artist. They had to find this man who seemed to know way too much so soon after this crime.

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Kevin Orton’s college football career lasted exactly three games. In a mop up roll in a game that became a blow out by half time, Kevin went in to gain a little experience running the first team offense. Michigan State was down by four touchdowns by half time against Ohio State and the offense had sputtered all day. By the middle of the fourth quarter, he had helped to bring the score to within a single touchdown. With the offense holding on to the ball a little longer, the defense was allowed to rest more, fresh legs helping to shutdown the Buckeye attack. With just over a minute left, Kevin strolled to the huddle from the sidelines after a timeout to converse with his coach about no huddle offense play calling.

He could hear the hometown crowd cheering his name. It didn’t seem to effect him much. He could only think of what had to be done now. He knew that he was facing his future right in the face. He bent into the huddle and looked into each face. He had seen the trust in him grow over the course of the last two quarters. They were starting to believe in this freshman general and he started to believe in them.

“Look, we have a minute and thirty. We have forty five yards to make this a game. Throws to the outside and get out of bounds. You get open, I will find you. Line, just need you to hold your blocks a little longer. Just give me a couple of extra seconds to find the place to put the ball and we can tie this thing up and take it into overtime. Believe. Okay, gentleman…Let’s play.”

Taking the snap in the shotgun set, Kevin stepped back two steps and scanned the secondary. One receiver went down the line on the left and turned, looking back at his quarterback. Kevin scanned across the field to the other side and saw his tight end shake a linebacker and head for the ten yard line. He pulled back his right arm and started to let the ball go. Just as the ball left his fingers, he realized he was looking at the dirt through his facemask. And there was pain in his right leg.

The left tackle had done his best the with All-American defensive end that he was working against. A spin move to the inside brought the Ohio State lineman into the pocket, baring down on Kevin’s blind side. The left tackle reached out with one hand and caught the hip of the potential threat to their win. It was just enough to throw him off balance. That attempt to protect cost Kevin his football career, as the three hundred pound defender crashed into his right knee, shredding it and sending him to the turf.

He met Patricia on his third day in the hospital. She was working as a volunteer doing those jobs that freed up nurses for other more important duties. One of those duties being bathing patients who were immobile.

“So, you are a student at the college?”

“Yeah. A football player.”

“What are going to school for?”

“I am a football player.”

She laughed. He couldn’t figure out what was so funny.

“Well, it doesn’t appear that you are a football player right now and by the looks of that leg, you aren’t going to be one for a while. So, maybe you should have another reason to be sitting in those classes you take, don’t you think?”

He wasn’t sure how to take this. He had always made good grades, but never really focused on what it was he was studying. He didn’t mind class, he just looked at it as something he had to do until he could go to practice. It was actually the first time he thought they he may have to find something else to do with his life. Her honesty and bluntness was refreshing to him. After years of people wanting to take care of him and give him whatever they thought he wanted, here was someone unafraid to give him just what he needed…the truth.

“Is there something other than football that you are interested in?”

His mind swirled. He wasn’t sure if it was the question or the beauty of her smile that was doing it to him, but he felt a bit confused. His next thought went to his parents. They way they had died. The unanswered questions.

“I have always been interested in being a cop.”

“Really? So, you will trade in your leather ball for a steel firearm? There has to be some Freudian conjecture there.”

He didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t sure what she meant. He sat quietly while she gave him his sponge bath, trying desperately to keep his body from reacting to her touch. His brain, which had spent the last three days under a dark cloud of uncertainty and disappointment, found itself completely overtaken by this woman in sensible shoes and her white uniform. Her touch was soft, careful. And it was over much too soon.

“So, I assume you will be here for a while. I am sure I will be back. When I do, I hope you can tell me what you think your future holds.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, it’s my job to get you out of here…physically and mentally healthy as possible. And living in the past or in what you no longer have is not living healthy. So, until then, I won’t let you leave.”

“They give candy strippers that much power?”

“They no longer call us that. We are nursing assistants.”

“Oh, my apology. So, they give nursing assistants that much power?”

“You will find out, won’t you?”

She visited him every day for the week and a half that he spent in the hospital. By the last couple of days, she was making sure that she was in his room when his lunch and dinner would arrive so that she could sit and talk to him with the excuse that she was monitoring his food intake.

She told him that she was working her way through a local community college near the hospital. She wanted to be a nurse, but mostly she just wanted to get married and have a family. She said that her parents had both worked and had lived virtually separate lives and she knew that is not what she wanted for her life. She said that she looked at being a stay at home mother just as she did being a nurse. It was the job of caregiver. To be there to do those things that no one else wanted to do, and that she would never regret doing. When he asked her if there was a man selected for the role as husband and father, she told him that the search was still on. But, she said, she thought the search was narrowing.

Those last days seemed to fly by. He found himself searching for her every morning as soon as he woke up and regretting the passing hours as it came time for to leave for the day. She was there when the doctors had told him that his football career was probably over. The damage in his knee would never fully heal and he would always have some discomfort, especially when it rained. Early arthritis was in his future. She held his hand when he broke down after the doctors left the room. His future had just been rearranged for him by someone he didn’t know existed two weeks ago.

She stayed with him that night until he fell asleep. She had gone back to her apartment and got her books so that she could study for the next day. She told him that she would stay as long as he wanted her to. And he knew that he would never be able to tell her to leave. The disappointment in the day was only surpassed by the pain in her face for him. And he felt that he, for the first time since his parents died, needed someone near him. So, she stayed. And he stared. While she studied. And she smiled.

He knew he was in love with her before he left the hospital.

So did she.

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Kevin wasn’t in the station two minutes before was being called to his Captain’s office. He stopped by his desk, unlocked the bottom left hand drawer of his desk and reached into the back. Laying flat behind all the other hanging files was one file. “Property of Davison City Police Department” was stenciled across the front.

Captain Donald Baker is a short pug shaped man with a scruff of five o’clock shadow at nine am. He carried around an unlit cigarette twenty-four hours a day. He would tell you, if you asked, that he was trying to quit and this was his only way of feeling as if he could do it. He hadn’t lit one in the twelve years that Kevin had worked for the department.

“Kevin, you want to give me some idea what the hell I am supposed to tell the press and the mayor about that damn message on the door? Is that directed at you and if so, why? Did you know this woman? You piss off her ex?”

“No, Capt…I didn’t know her. Never met the woman that I am aware of. Was the message for me? Not sure, but it’s possible.”

“And what the hell makes it possible.”

“Capt., there is something I have to show you.”

Kevin handed the battered, well worn file to his captain. It was the very first time that he had done anything to share the horror of his past with anyone. The department knew that he was a widower due to a violent crime. He had been cleared by the interviewing shrinks when he applied to the department as patrolman twelve years ago. It was determined that he suffered “No ill effects from the incident in his past.” He isn’t sure just how he fooled them.

He sat quietly and watched as his Captain went through the file. He knew when he got the photo that would add the wrinkle to the Crowley case.

“Kevin, you have something to tell me?”

Kevin sat there for what seemed like an eternity. There was nothing he wanted more than to tell him that he knew exactly who did this and just where to find him. He wanted to tell him that he knew why it happened and that he was going to get to the bottom of it all.

“Captain, I wish I did. I know that I see what you see. I know that I have spent twelve and a half years running away from that first message. And now it’s back. I can’t believe it’s coincidence. There is something here that has me firmly in the middle of it. And I understand if you want to pull me off this. But, I hope you don’t. Because, if I can figure this out, I can figure out the past. And I really need the chance to do that, Captain. So, I am asking you to trust me. To give me a chance to try. Because, I have a feeling that he isn’t going to wait another decade to continue to play.”

“Why do you think he waited so long? Why do you think he picked this woman and her children? What the hell am I supposed to do with all this, Kevin? It’s going to get out. You are going to have the spotlight directly on you and if you misstep, we are both going to be looking for work. Tell me what I should do about this?”

Kevin studied his hands. The tremor just below the surface was really only known to him and right now it felt like the full blown shakes. He was always sure of himself. Always sure of what he was doing. And now, his world had been twisted just a bit. And he knew that some hidden scars were going to show. But, he couldn’t let them take this chance away.

“Captain, let me do my job. Let me catch this asshole.”

Captain Baker twisted in his desk chair for a few moments. He tossed the file back to Kevin and stood up.

“I want to meet with you three times a day. I want phone updates on the hour for the first week, if this takes that long. I want to know where you are twenty-four hours a day. If I had another detective I trusted more than you on this damn small town force, I would replace you. But, if we don’t put our best people on it, the state boys are going to take this from us. And I don’t want that. I don’t want it said I can’t protect our town. So, it’s yours…for now. But, the first crack I see…the first time I think you aren’t telling me everything…the first cowboy, bullshit move…and you out off this. You understand me?”

Kevin stood up and started for the door. He carried the file like it was the family Bible. He stared at the cover of the file and finally looked up at his captain.

“Yes, sir. I understand. And expect nothing less. I need to run out, got a stop to make. But, I will be back before the press conference.”

Kevin walked through the squad room and headed for his car. The press had already started to arrive and some who recognized him tried to stop him with questions about the Deacon Street crime scene. He just lowered his head and kept walking. Pulling out of the parking lot he headed to the one place he knew he could find just a moment of peace.