The Prophet (13 page)

The facility had also been home, those years, to Gideon Pearce.

And, later, to Jason Bond.

Something began to tick inside Adam as he read through the arrest records and constructed his timeline. It wasn’t a bad feeling. Not at all. More like the application of a match to a part of him that longed for heat, ached for it.

He was lost in the web of overlapping names and dates and prisons when his phone began to ring, and he silenced it without a glance, didn’t look at the display until the second call, an immediate, impatient follow-up effort, and then it froze him.

Kent was calling.

Kent did not call.

Five rings before voicemail, and he let it get to four before he picked it up.

“Yeah.”

“It’s me.”

“I noticed that.”

Silence. Kent said, “We need to talk, Adam.”

“Do we?”

“Yes. I’d rather it be in person.” There was a hard edge to his younger brother’s voice. The coach’s tone, that’s what it was, the ruler of young men, captain of the ship, and it raised a bristle in Adam. Always did.
Coach your boys, Kent, don’t coach me,
he’d said more than a few times, back in the days when they spoke.

“I’m not at home.”

“That’s fine. Tell me where you are.”

“Busy.”

“That’s not a place, Adam.”

“It’s a condition, Kent. So you’re right. But it’s still true.”

“True for me, too. I’ve got a game tomorrow, I’ve got two kids and a wife at home, and I’ve got police calling me, looking for you. But I’m making time, and you will, too.”

Adam let a few seconds and a few responses float by, and while he did that, Kent said, “Tell me where I can find you, all right? Just do that much.”

“Let’s go to Haslem’s.” This was designed to get a rise out of him, just the sort of needle Adam couldn’t bring himself to put down with Kent, even when he tried.

“I’m not meeting you at a strip club.”

“The house, then.”

The only place that would appeal to Kent less than the titty bar was their childhood home. You could practically see his skin crawl when he crossed over the threshold. How long had it been since he was inside? Adam couldn’t remember.

“Okay,” Kent said after a pause, and then Adam pulled back on the offer, a poker player immediately regretting his bluff.

“Like I said, I’m not there. Tell you what, Coach, I’ll come out to the school. Meet you in your office. That way you can get some work done while you wait.”

“I don’t want to wait.”

“Then I’ll hustle right along,” Adam said, and hung up. He bounced the phone in his palm and stared at the wall and eventually he became aware of a pain in his jaw and realized how tightly he was clenching his teeth. He set the phone down and opened the refrigerator. There were five beers left in the twelve-pack he’d bought last night.

“See you in five, Franchise,” he said aloud, and then he opened one of the Coronas and took another in his free hand and walked outside to drink in the cold.

Kent was glad Adam had picked the school. He didn’t want to chase his brother through the town’s grunge bars and he certainly didn’t want to see him at either of the two places he called home: one that belonged to a married woman with an inmate husband, or one that belonged to bad memories. Carefully preserved bad memories.

He knew when he hung up that Adam would take his sweet
time appearing. He had to do that, had to try to establish the alpha status in whatever sad way possible. Kent had said he did not want to wait, and that meant he would be made to wait.

The coach’s office and locker rooms at Chambers were in a single-story concrete-block building behind the end zone. When he pulled in and parked in the empty lot he could see posters and silver and red streamers covering the walls, handiwork of the boosters and parents and cheerleaders.
PLAYOFFS: WIN OR GO HOME!
one of the signs shrieked.

He was so sick of going home with a loss he could hardly bear it, so sick of uttering the same damned reassurances of how he was proud of his kids and proud of their character and proud of the season, the season that had ended with his kids watching their opponents celebrate.

It wasn’t supposed to happen again this year. Not with this team. They were too good, they were too well prepared, they were too experienced. Every part was there, every element a championship squad needed was in place. They were the best this town had ever seen. Better than the ’89 team by a mile. But the ’89 team had put a trophy in the case, they had rings on their fingers. Their work was done. His was not.

He had one of those rings himself, but it didn’t count. He’d been a freshman that season, never took a snap in the playoffs, just stood on the sidelines with a clipboard and charted plays while Pete Underwood, the senior starter, ran the careful, plodding offense, the world’s most boring offense, a two-running-back set that asked very little of the quarterback beyond the ability to complete a handoff. It was tedious to watch, but Walter Ward was not interested in entertaining, he was interested in wins. They had a big bruising line and a committee of big bruising backs, and they just wore teams down. In the state championship they’d used fifteen straight running plays on their final
drive. Fifteen. The opposing defense had everyone down in the box, essentially ignoring the threat of a vertical passing route, committed to stopping Chambers up front, confident that if they did that, they’d win the game, because Underwood was not going to beat them with his arm. And Coach Ward had looked at that, at the way his team was being dared to pass, and he’d kept running the ball. All the way into the end zone.

Prophet right.

Prophet left.

Prophet right.

Prophet right.

Prophet right.

Never showing a trace of emotion, no hint of fear, not even when they got to fourth and two, just kept calling those plays in a flat, steady voice, everyone in the stadium knowing exactly what was coming, including the defense, all of it on Adam, who was the prophet, who was the telltale blocker out front, promising contact. Coach Ward just stood there with his arms folded across his chest and gave it to them again and again, relentless and confident—
You must stop this, and you will not be able to.

How the fans had loved that! You wanted to talk about smashmouth? Watch a fifteen-play drive against the state’s best defense in which the ball was never passed. Adam had been out in front of the ball carrier the whole way. He’d played every down of the state championship game, both sides of the ball, and somewhere in Ohio there were ex-linebackers with loose teeth who remembered him well. They used four different running backs on those fifteen handoffs, but just one lead blocker for all of them. It was the point of the play—promise package, they called it. When Adam came in on the offensive side of the ball,
you were going to get a run, and you were going to have him out front. Every time. Usually he rotated, usually Ward saved most of his strength for defense and short-yardage situations, but not that drive. Fifteen straight.

The way the crowd had roared after that drive… Kent hadn’t heard anything else like it in high school football. Doubted he ever would again. It had been ugly football, mean and nasty, but somehow it connected with hearts in the stands because of that. It took Kent a while to understand the reason exactly, and with it came a better understanding of the game, why it inspired such a fierce pride in towns like Cleveland and Green Bay and Pittsburgh. Like Massillon. Like Chambers.

The way they’d roared that night—people cried in the stands, he remembered that, would never forget it, people
cried—
wasn’t just because Chambers had won the game. At that point, in fact, victory had hardly been assured; there were three minutes left to play, and the top-ranked team in the state had the ball and a last chance to regain the lead. No, it was because they’d started with their backs against the wall, jammed against their own goal line with a deficit and a ticking clock and then lined up in a way that said,
We will have to take a beating with this approach, there is no other way,
and then they’d taken it, and taken it, and taken it, until suddenly they were administering it.

That was why people cried in the stands.

It had taken Kent a long time to understand it.

Tonight he was in the locker room alone, and when he flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights, the place picked up a white glow, and at the end of the locker room he could see the photograph of the 1989 team, the only team picture that he’d ever allowed to hang in the locker room. It was not all about wins and losses, he reminded his boys every day, but then there was just the one team picture hanging in the room.

Because they won. Right, Coach? Why else? And you’re in that picture but you don’t belong in it, and all of the pictures you
do
belong in, well, they don’t belong on the wall.

He went through the locker room and into his office, fired up the computer and projector and began to watch video. A little more than an hour passed before Adam arrived.

In through the locker room door without a knock, and then Kent could see him standing out there, gazing around. The door to the coach’s office was open and the lights from the video painted it and its lone occupant with that white glow, but Adam didn’t even glance that way, just stood with his back to the office and took in the rest of the room, and Kent knew he was both remembering old ghosts and assessing the ways in which it had changed since the days when they were not ghosts at all.

Kent rose from the chair and walked out to join him. Adam looked at him for a minute. “Not even a handshake, Franchise?”

They shook hands. Adam’s grip was stronger. One of the reasons he liked to shake hands. He enjoyed intimidation in all of its forms, brutal to subtle. Kent was not a small man—six-two and 190 pounds that still saw several hours a week in the weight room—but around Adam he was not just the little brother in terms of years. When he’d signed with Ohio State, Adam had stood six-four barefoot, with a forty-five-inch chest and thirty-one-inch waist. Ridiculous proportions. He ran the forty in 4.7 seconds, which wasn’t blazing speed, not Colin Mears speed, but was awfully damn fast. Twenty-two years had taken the speed from him, but it had hardly made a dent in the muscle, and somehow that annoyed Kent. Maybe his brother was always in a gym, and he just didn’t know it. He doubted it, though. So how did he do it? How could a man drink like that and live like that and still look like
that?

“How you doing?” Kent said, already awkward, the handshake
somehow removing the sense of focused control he’d had when he walked over to meet his brother.

“I’m all right. You?”

“Tired.”

“Going to get more tired, if you’re any good. Should have a few weeks left. Undefeated season’s never been done in this school. Going to get it for them?”

“We’ll try,” Kent said. “Listen, I didn’t bring you in here to talk football.”

“Should have. I could help your Pollyannas. Teach them how to play with blood in their eyes.”

“Adam, listen, we need to—”

“You remember the last time you called me?” Adam said. His dark blue eyes held a faraway sheen, and Kent could smell beer on his breath.

“You’ve been drinking tonight, haven’t you?”

“I drink every night. Now, do you remember the last time you called me?”

Kent thought about it, said, “Your birthday.”

“That doesn’t count. Remove the obligatory holiday calls and then tell me.”

They were obligatory only to Kent; he did not receive holiday calls from Adam. But his brother’s eyes had gone serious and for some reason he was compelled to go along with it, to try and remember. He couldn’t do it. Adam saw that in his face and smiled humorlessly.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I couldn’t recall it myself.”

Kent said, “A girl was murdered, Adam, and the police are calling me about it.”

“I’ve heard from them, too.”

“Apparently they don’t hear back.” Kent stepped forward, forced himself into Adam’s wandering gaze, and said, “Did you really tell some woman you were working for our
sister?
”

It went very quiet then. In his office the video played, and flickers of light and shadow bled out of the room and danced over Adam’s lean face as he looked down into Kent’s eyes.

“I said I was there on her behalf,” Adam said, and his voice was slow and cold. “That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant. Would you like to take issue with it?”

“Yes,” Kent said, not backing down, not on this point, not when Marie’s name had been invoked. “I take issue with it. I don’t know what sort of scheme you had in mind at the time, but it boils down to a lie, and you can’t tell me it doesn’t. You’re not a detective, and nobody’s hired you to do anything. So you’re out masquerading as one and telling people that
Marie
sent you? The first half is pathetic, the second I take personally.”

“You take it personally.” Adam’s voice had gone absolutely empty.

“That’s what I just said.”

Adam gave a small nod. “And you’re entitled to do that. Because she was your sister.”

“She was
our
sister. I don’t understand how you could use her name like that, how you can even suggest that, twist her into whatever lie—”

“Not a lie.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Keep calling it one, Kent. That’s fine, but it won’t become one. You say I’m not a detective? I’ve got a state license that says otherwise. You say I wasn’t there on Marie’s behalf? You better
believe
you’re wrong on that count. You better know that.”

Kent stepped back, put one hand on a locker, and leaned against it. Let a few seconds pass, trying to let the building anger ebb away. Then he said, “What are you doing, man? What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

Adam sat down on one of the long benches in front of the lockers, braced his forearms on his knees and looked at the floor
and took a deep breath. Kent could see his back muscles spread out under his T-shirt, could see his big shoulders rise.
Loading dock muscle,
Coach Ward had called it.
That’s the kind that moves freight, boys. That’s what we want. I don’t give a damn if you look pretty in the mirror, I want you to move freight.