Snapper (16 page)

“I heard something,” said JJ. “But it was all crackly.”

“Well, it was Dr. Goode,” said Mary. “And she was calling you to her office.”

Mary suddenly lowered her voice and did her best imitation of Dr. Goode speaking through the P.A. system.

“Judd Clayton, Junior. Would you please report to the principal’s office immediately.”

“Well, I better go,” said JJ. “See ya!”

“Yeah,” said Mary. “See ya!”

*

“I’m sorry to have to call you down here again,” said Dr. Goode, as JJ walked into her office. “But there’s been another, um, incident. Police Chief Rudolph would like to see you again. There’s a patrol car waiting for you out front.”

JJ nodded and began to get up from his chair.

This was the second time Dr. Goode had called JJ to her office. She remembered studying his features closely the first time. He was a handsome boy, blonde haired, with beautiful pale green eyes. Yet he looked nothing like his father. She remembered thinking: he must take after his mother.

But now, as JJ turned to leave, something about his features struck her as strangely familiar. She knew this face – but from where? As unlikely as it seemed, could Deena have possibly crossed paths with – or even known – JJ’s mother – the woman who Judd said ran out one morning and never came back?

*

Deputy Rhodes drove JJ down to the boat basin. Chief Rudolph was waiting for them. Jack Sully’s canoe had been dragged up onto the dock, where its red metal hull was heating up in the warm autumnal sun.

Chief Rudolph greeted JJ with a nod.

“Thanks for coming, JJ. I’m sorry to have to drag you out of school, but there’s been another incident. There’s something we have to check out.”

“Sure,” said JJ. “What can I do?”

“If you’ll come over here, I’ll show you.”

Chief Rudolph took JJ by the elbow and led him over to Jack Sully’s canoe. They walked around to the side that JJ had been unable to see. There, on the port side, were jagged streaks: the canoe’s bright red paint had been scraped off down to the shiny metal beneath. The metal itself had been deeply gouged – almost scored all the way through.

“If you don’t mind, JJ,” said the Chief. “I’d like to ask you to lift up your shirt.”

“What for?” asked JJ.

“You’ll see,” said Chief Rudolph.

JJ pulled up his polo shirt. The claw marks that streaked across JJ’s abdomen had begun to scab over with dried blood, but they still looked nasty and painful.

“JJ, again, I hope you don’t mind, but I need to get photos of this. Could you please position yourself alongside the scratches on the canoe.”

JJ understood immediately. You didn’t need to be a forensics expert to see that the marks on the canoe and those on JJ’s torso were identical.

“Well,” said Chief Rudolph. “We’ve got ourselves a match.”

* * * *

It was strange being back. It was strange to be sleeping again in the cabin that his father and grandfather had built. And it was even stranger to think that the same monster that had mutilated his grandfather might still be alive and at large in Turtleback Lake.

Ever since he’d visited the cabin back in the summer, August had felt something pulling him back. And now, sure enough, here he was: back.

Back then – when was it – late June, early July? – August had let himself go too far with Deena. He should have left after their first bottle of wine. After their second, Deena had gone to the window and lowered the blinds, as if she didn’t want the moon to look in. Then she had gone to the couch and patted the cushion next to her seductively.

August had tried to resist. He wanted Deena, but he knew it wasn’t right. There had been times when, as a professor, he had felt similarly seduced by graduate or doctoral students. But he had always resisted. And now, maybe because Deena had shown him her dissertation, he viewed her as if she, too, were a student. It didn’t matter that she was more-than-of-age and more-than-consenting. She was offering herself to him for the wrong reasons – because of his credentials and because she’d drunk too much. The fact was they’d both drunk too much.

The whole thing made August recall another incident he deeply regretted. It was something so bizarre and so out of character that August often tried to convince himself that it had never really happened.

It had been a late summer afternoon, probably fourteen or fifteen years ago now, and August had fallen asleep after swimming out to the floating dock. Suddenly the dock was jarred. Something had rammed against it. August woke with a start and looked around. A small sailboat was rocking alongside.

“Hi!” said a woman in the boat. August looked at her. She was blonde and very pretty, but there was also something wild, even crazy, about her eyes. All she was wearing was a pair of white shorts and a pink bikini top.

“Can I join you on your little isle for awhile?” she asked, already climbing up onto the dock.

August was caught completely off guard.

“Sure,” he said, not knowing quite what to say. “Why not?”

Before August even knew what was happening, the woman had climbed on top of him and was straddling his hips. Then she began loosening her bikini top.

“Hey – wait a minute,” said August. “What are you doing?”

But before August could say another word, the woman’s mouth was on his. Her lips were sweet and wet. August sighed and surrendered.

A few minutes later, the woman rolled off him.

“Well,” she said. “I guess I can cross that off my list.”

“Your list?” said August.

“Yes,” she said. “My list. You mean you don’t have one?”

Then she turned and climbed back down into her boat. August didn’t know her name and she hadn’t asked for his. As she sailed away, she never once turned around.

August never mentioned the incident to anyone. He liked to pretend it had never happened. But he knew it had. Sometimes he even thought it was the reason he chose to stay away from Turtleback Lake.

His one night with Deena had brought back the whole memory. But what could he do or say? There was no turning back the clock. And in this case – with the wine, the moonlight, and Deena’s recumbent body laying on the couch with her half unbuttoned blouse – it all had been too much.

*

It was the middle of the night – the middle of August’s first night sleeping in the cabin. He had left his window open to let in the cool night air.

August wasn’t sure whether the loud crack he heard – the blast – was real or a dream. August always had vivid dreams when he slept somewhere new or different and the dream he’d been having was beyond vivid – it bordered on nightmarish.

August had been in a lab, strapped down to a cold examination table. Electrodes, taped to his abdomen, were connected to a monitor that August could see by raising his head. He watched a dome-shaped light move restlessly back and forth across the bottom of the screen, like a creature scavenging the seabed. As it moved, it blinked and beeped softly.

Then the dome-shaped light began to rise. It caromed from one side to the other, each ricochet sending it closer to the top of the monitor. As it rose, it began to flash brighter and beep louder. Now for the first time August could see there was another light on the screen, bobbing up near the top. Suddenly the dome-shaped light seemed to zero in on it. Beeping wildly, it shot like a heat-seeking missile straight toward the bobbing light. A second later it engulfed it and then burst with a blast into tiny sparks that rained slowly back down to the bottom of the screen.

At the sound of the blast, August awoke and sat straight up. The air coming through the window felt cool against the beads of sweat on his brow.

August threw off the covers and walked over to the window. Standing there, looking out at the moon-glazed lake, he almost imagined he could feel the last vibrations of an echo that had just died in the valley outside. Suddenly the surface of the lake went black. August looked up at the sky. An immense cloud was blotting out the moon.

August went back to bed. He reached over and turned off the alarm clock. He’d sleep in.

But at 7:00 a.m., a persistent ring awakened August. Forgetting that he had turned off the alarm clock during the night, he reached over to silence it. But the ringing didn’t stop. Then he realized it was the phone.

He lifted up the heavy black receiver, the one that Deena had used as a dumbbell.

“Hello,” he said.

“August!” said the voice on the other end. “This is Chief Rudolph. Sorry to spoil your first morning back in town, but if you don’t mind, there’s something I’d like you to come see.”

“Where?” asked August.

“Down at the town morgue,” answered Chief Rudolph.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” said August. Then he hung up the phone.

* * * *

“So, hot shot,” said Coach Lupo. “You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you?”

Coach Lupo’s face had never been this close to his before. Kenny wanted to pull his head back, but he didn’t dare. And Lupo’s piercing blue eyes wouldn’t let him look away. Kenny could see all the little red blood vessels branching across Coach Lupo’s eye whites. He could smell the stale coffee on his coach’s breath.

“It’s funny to mock the way a man walks behind his back, right Lubowsky?”

Lubowsky felt unable to speak. He could hardly believe what was happening. For three years, Coach Lupo had liked him.

“I said it’s funny to ridicule a cripple, am I right?”

Lubowsky tried to shake his head from side to side without taking his eyes off Coach Lupo’s.

“I want to tell you a little something you don’t know. You think you’re a pretty good halfback, right?”

Lubowsky said nothing.

“I said, you think you’re a pretty good halfback, right?”

Lubowsky made a sound that wasn’t quite a word.

“Well, let me tell you something. You’re not half the halfback Oscar Hall was when he was a young man. In fact, you’re not an eighth of the halfback he was. So what would that make you? A sixteenth? A thirty-second?”

Coach Lupo’s face was still too close to his. And now Kenny was having trouble following Coach Lupo’s math.

“When Oscar Hall was a boy,” continued the coach, “he was faster, stronger, and smarter than you’ll ever be. And he didn’t think he was God’s gift to the world every time he broke a few tackles and scored. He didn’t make a spectacle of himself with some look-at-me-I’m-the-man shimmy shimmy victory dance. He’d just flip the ball back to the ref, return to the huddle, and get ready to block for the kicker.”

Coach Lupo paused. Kenny hoped he was finished. But he wasn’t.

“You, young man, are never going to approach the player he was, let alone the man. So when I see someone like you making a mockery of a man whose shoes you’re not fit to shine, well, it kind of makes me want to puke. How about you, Lubowsky? Doesn’t it kind of make you want to puke, too?”

Suddenly, Kenny did feel like puking. And it was coming up from inside of him faster than he could stop it. For a brief instant, his cheeks bulged. Then the puke was all over. Kenny had had a big breakfast that morning. Now it was all over him, the floor, and Coach Lupo’s desk.

“For chrissakes, Lubowsky, go clean yourself up.”

Coach Lupo waited until Lubowsky was out of his sight. Then he let his mind drift back to a summer night almost a half-century earlier – a night when he had convinced Oscar to go out onto the lake with him. Their canoe had been swamped by something they never saw. They couldn’t get the canoe back upright, because something kept ramming it. They had started swimming to shore as fast as they could. When they were almost there, Oscar had screamed. Bill had never heard anything like that scream before. Something had bitten Oscar’s ankle – right through his Achilles to the bone. Oscar was never the same again, never scored another touchdown, never got the scholarship he surely would have gotten. Oscar had never blamed Bill for what had happened that night. He had never said a word about it.

Bill Lupo picked up the phone on his desk. He dialed the boiler room extension.

“Oscar, it’s me, Bill. I hate to ask you this, but some kid just puked his guts out in my office. Could you bring me up a mop and some ammonia? The joint stinks. Thanks.”

* * * *

Deena could hardly believe her eyes. Flipping through the pages of The Bergen Record, she spotted an ad for the house she thought had gotten away.

It was a “For Sale By Owner” ad. The Burts’ were going to try to sell their house by themselves. Deena called the number and said she’d like to stop by.

“It’s nice,” said Deena, after Shirley Burt had led her on a little tour of the bungalow and property. “Of course it needs a bit of work.”

Deena didn’t want to sound too enthusiastic. Though the Burts’ had already reduced their price dramatically, Deena thought she might be able to get them down even lower. While showing Deena around, Shirley had let it slip that she and her husband had already closed on a townhouse in a retirement community in North Carolina. They’d need the money from this house to help pay for that one.