County Line (25 page)

Grabel pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. After a long silence, the cassette recorder clicked off with a loud pop. Grabel flipped the tape over. Ninety minutes a side, TDK C180. Jimmie preferred Memorex, C90s. He said the tape on the C180s were too thin to hold a clean signal for mix tapes. She supposed they were fine for voice recordings. Grabel looked at his watch. “Ruby Jane Whittaker interview continues, April 18, 1989, Eleven hundred hours. Tape one, side two.”

Eleven hundred hours
. What a fraud.

She stretched her arms, fought back a yawn. “I have to use the bathroom.”

He put his glasses back on. “It’s time for you to be honest with me.”

“I’m being honest about needing to use the bathroom.”

“I can’t help you if you won’t tell me the truth.”

“No one helps anyone but themselves.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“It’s not a matter of belief. It’s axiomatic.”

“Big words for such a young girl.”

“Even bigger for a dumb ass cop who couldn’t hack it in the city.”

“I’d love to get into a debate about who can hack what with the girl who tossed up a brick in the regional tournament when she had her center open under the basket.”

“She’s not my center.”

“Of course not. She’s just a girl you sent to the hospital yesterday.”

She deserved to end up in the morgue
. But Ruby Jane knew better than to give voice to such a thought. “You don’t know shit about it.”

He smiled and looked over at Nash. “When they start cursing you know you’re making progress.”

Nash had been at that game. Ruby Jane remembered seeing him in the crowd shortly after the buzzer as the girls from Massillon celebrated at center court, swarmed by hundreds of their fans. Coach had rested a consoling hand on her shoulder, but her focus was on Nash. He smiled sadly, like he understood what she must be feeling. Other Spartan boosters were more grim, their disappointment as raw as an exposed nerve. After a moment Nash gave her a little wave. Then he was gone and she was pushing through the crowd to the locker room. In the shower, alone and still dressed, she let hot water run over her until at last Gabi brought a towel, helped her strip down and dry off. She was on the bus before the others had a chance to dress. When the team filed aboard and found their seats, Coach stood up at the front.

“Tough night tonight, ladies.” He sounded like he was talking under water. “You have nothing to be ashamed of here. Not one of you.” Ruby Jane stole a glance around the bus, but no one was looking at her. “Massillon is a great team. We are a great team too, and we played a great game. But tonight, they were a little better than us. And that’s okay.” He exhaled slowly. “That’s okay.”

A couple of seats ahead, Clarice stirred and got to her feet. She looked around the bus, and for a moment her eyes lingered on Ruby Jane. She wore an uncertain expression, a mixture of anger and loss. “Coach is right.” Clarice’s voice was stronger than his, as if she was more sure of herself. “We played a great game, and whatever happened you know what we are? We’re champions.”

Others lifted their heads.

“First, we’re league champions. The Lady Spartans are league champions.”

Someone else found their voice, tentative at first. “Spartans!”

“Second, we’re district champions. Am I right?”

“Lady Spartans!”

“In the whole state of Ohio, there are only sixteen district champs. Two hundred and seventy-one schools started this season, and we stand among the elite! Am I right?”

“
Lady Spartans
!”

“We came this far together, and we’re going home together, as champions.”

She sat down suddenly. Ruby Jane looked at Coach. Despite the dim light in the bus she could see the shine on his cheeks. He nodded, pride tempered by sorrow in his smile. “Thank you, Clarice. Thank you.” He turned to the bus driver. “Let’s go home.”

As the bus pulled out, Ruby Jane leaned back in her seat. She was tired, and sore, and sad, but Clarice was right. For the first time in her life, she found herself agreeing with Clarice Moody, for feeling good because Clarice was her captain, the team’s captain. Their Femzilla.

But as the bus turned on to the on ramp to I-75, Moira stuck her head over the seat back behind her. “Clarice can say what she wants. We all know who blew that shot.”

— + —

Grabel wouldn’t care about any of that. Background was good, but only when it served the narrative he’d already chosen: angry, self-involved girl lets her team down in the big game. She refuses to accept her failure, so she takes out her frustration on her teammates.

History of violence and irrational behavior, your honor
.

“Let’s get back to your father’s disappearance.”

“Do we have to call him that?”

Emotionally detached from family and friends
.

He switched from the folder to a notebook taken from his shirt pocket. He flipped through the pages, tilting his head back to read through the lenses of his reading glasses. “Your mother told us you took her car the night your father went missing.”

“I doubt she could recall something so specific. She can barely remember her own name when she’s been drinking.”

“Where did you go?”

Nash knew. One item on a long checklist of things Nash knew. Dale’s rages, Bella’s drunken manipulations. If he found his voice now—shared what he knew about that night and Bella’s car—

“Ruby?”

Nash had his eyes fixed on the swamp green floor.

“I went out for a drive.”

“You didn’t have your license yet.” She still didn’t. Bella refused to take her to the BMV for her driver’s test. “Was anyone with you?”

Her heart rate jumped. She gripped her wrist and felt her pulse race. Inhaled through her nose. Her mind jumped to the night on Preble County Line Road, the darkness, the rolling clouds and rain. Jimmie with the gun. She took another deep breath. If she could hold herself together then, Grabel should be a snap now. He looked at her over the top of his glasses.

“You have no clue what it’s like in my house. Sometimes I have to get out of there, any way I can.”

“And you didn’t see your father that night?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. “No one even knows he left that night. I hadn’t seen him in days.”

“But you remember the night I’m referring to.”

She would never forget. “It’s the only time I ever took my mother’s car.”

“She told us you took it yesterday.”

“The only time before yesterday.”

“Did you see your father that night?”

“I never even wanted to see him.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

There was no easy answer. Anything she said might awaken Nash.
I saw you on the road not far from Dale’s truck that night
. Nash knew enough—if little else—to make trouble for her. But he only brooded against the wall, mouth twisted and frowning.

“Let’s set your father aside for a moment. Tell me about your brother.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again.

“We haven’t really talked about him. What can you tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you get along with him?”

“Sure.”

“No sibling rivalry?”

“Not really. We’re in to different things.”

“You’re both athletes.”

“Wrestling and basketball aren’t quite the same thing.”

“No, of course not.” Back to the goddamn folder. “When did you last see him?”

She shrugged.

“Not recently?”

Grabel’s hands rested on the table. He waited. Overhead she heard a sudden scrabbling. A moment later, dozens of starlings descended past the window. Their strange, boiling motion and frantic screeching sent a trill of anxiety through her. Something about them was like Grabel, the ice in his voice, the liquid movement of the flesh hanging beneath his chin. His impenetrable indifference to anything except his own foreordained trajectory. She wanted to shout at him to read his fucking file, to listen to his own fucking officer.

Nash already told the dried-up fucker Jimmie was in Bowling Green.

Or was he?

The thought hit her like a brick.

Tell me about your family, grandmother, grandparents. How did you parents meet?
A line of questions all leading to Dale, sure. She understood that. But then, just as they were getting to the heart of her father’s disappearance, Grabel shifts to Jimmie. She sat up, tried to read Grabel’s thoughts in the tracery of capillaries and crevices on his face.

Even now, Jimmie might be in a room nearby, awaiting his turn to tell Grabel the story of his life. Or perhaps Grabel had already taken a run at him, badgered him, tricked him, broken him down.

Jimmie wasn’t as strong as she was. He’d crumble at the first hint of pressure. They wouldn’t even have to play it heavy, simply insinuate she’d already given him up. Separate rooms, separate lies. Manipulate both until one confessed.

Jimmie may have watched all those cop shows, didn’t mean he’d learned anything.

She was almost disappointed they hadn’t tried the same stunt on her.
We’ve already talked to James. He said you did it
.

Did what, Detective Pervert?

That’s where she had them. Jimmie didn’t know.

Even if he was sitting next door, even if he was babbling and crying and laying bare his soul, it didn’t matter. Because whatever he thought he knew was wrong.

“Nothing to say?”

All this effort, but break it down and what did anyone know? Clarice had a barrel of pissed off and some drunk talk. Bella could say only so much before she incriminated herself. And Jimmie, whatever he thought he remembered ended before the night was finished.

All she had to do was wait them out. She smiled at him.

But then he smiled back. “Fine. In that case, why don’t you tell me about your grandmother’s missing emerald ring?”

- 29 -

Stormy Night, August 1988

The rain soaked her clothes and her scream died in thunder rolling across the fields. A memory surfaced like a bubble of gas in an overgrown pond. September or October—burnished leaves still clung to the sugar maple in the backyard—a Saturday morning. The dishwasher had broken again, and the dishes had piled high enough she was forced to eat her Cheerios from the one-quart liquid measure. After she ate, she started washing, the only one who would. Whittaker tolerance for mushrooming disorder was legendary.

She stared out the window over the sink while she scrubbed, the peeling olive paint on the garage a reflection of her thoughts. She hummed tuneless renditions of Q-102’s latest obsessions: Madonna, Gloria Estefan, “Man in the Mirror” so many times in involuntary repetition she wanted to shove Michael Jackson off a cliff. As the soapsuds died she tried to force her attention onto something—
anything
—else. The cough of the fridge’s dying compressor, the scent of lemon Joy, the advance of mildew along the baseboards. Bella on the phone.

It was a typical call: town gossip, her unappreciated art. Ruby Jane half-listened, grateful for something to combat pop earworms but otherwise disinterested in Bella’s prattling. When she mentioned Jimmie, Ruby Jane’s ears perked up. The phone cord stretched from its wall mount below the stairs to one end of the house or the other. Bella walked a circuit, phone tucked between jaw and shoulder as she gesticulated in unseen emphasis to her confederate in gossip. Bella avoided the kitchen, but as Ruby Jane’s hands pruned she picked up snippets of conversation on her mother’s loop through the dining room.

“Tell me about it … James, yes, both these goddamn kids, but especially James …”

Ruby Jane rinsed a plate, scraped at the scummed surface of another with her fingernail.