The Recruiter (A Thriller) (8 page)

Peter Forbes sits in his car in the driveway of Beth’s house. He looks up and sees the small window at the front of her house.

“Shit,” he says and pulls the letter from the inner pocket of his jacket. There’s a part of him—no, check that—one-hundred percent of him that wants to turn the key over, jam the car in gear, and hightail it out of there. Avoid Beth and those beautiful eyes of hers. He knows she’ll take it well, she always does. She’s smart, she’s strong, and she’s tough as hell. A person only had to watch her play basketball to know that.

But she is even more than that.

As invincible as she could seem on the court, he knows she is vulnerable off the court.

Will this crush her?

He hopes not.

He gets out of the car, rings the bell, and waits for Beth’s mom to answer the door. When she does, he says, “How is she?”

Anna shrugs her shoulders and steps back. She doesn’t need to tell Peter where Beth is.

Peter climbs the stairs, his stride easy and strong on the steps. He has to duck slightly when he gets to the top of the steps.

Beth is on the bed, a plastic water glass filled with coke and ice.
Is she drinking booze?
he asks himself.
Isn’t she on painkillers?

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey back.” He can tell by the lack of focus in her eyes, the smirk on her face, that there was booze in her glass, in her body, the hell with the painkillers.

“Well at least you’re not operating heavy machinery,” he says.

She raises her glass toward him. “I’ll drink to that.”

“Beth,” he says, his voice firm. He’s ready to scold her when he stops himself. What right does he have to scold her? Her fucking knee is blown to shit, she lost her scholarship, and she’s about to lose…

…me…

“Aw, come on, I’m just feeling sorry for myself,” Beth says. “I’m not getting drunk. Living with the eternal poster child for Teetotalers Anonymous will do that to you, you know.”

Peter responds by sitting down next to her. He has been in her bedroom many times, feels comfortable there, even though they’ve never slept together.

“You were great, you know.”

“Tell me.”

“The way you got your teammates involved, held back, and then let loose in the second half. You played that team, that coach, like a fiddle.”

Beth blushes at the praise. “Thanks,” she says.

They sit in silence, neither one of them wanting to say the next sentence, trying to figure out how to do it without starting it with the word “but.”

“I played them like a fiddle, but that last note was a doozy.”

“How is it? The knee.”

“About as strong as a wet pasta noodle.”

“And just as tasty?” Peter says, bending down to kiss her leg. Beth laughs. Peter straightens up suddenly, remembering why he’s here and what he has to do. He realizes, too late, that it isn’t the right time for a warm, fuzzy kind of moment.

“What’s wrong?” Beth asks.

Peter thinks of the time when he was a little boy in swim class and he had to practice a back dive. How he stood on the diving board with the instructor urging him on, but he couldn’t do it. The instructor wouldn’t let him off the board until he did it right. He’d felt like a pirate forced to walk the plank. Finally, he’d gotten so upset that he decided to do it. He’d put his hands over his head, sucked in air, and fallen backward. Now, he remembers how that felt, how it was like his stomach just dropped out of his body and where his guts should have been was nothing but an empty cold space, sucking his soul from the rest of his body.

Slowly, he pulls the letter from the inner pocket of his jacket.

“I’m sorry, Beth,” he says. “I saw her at the hospital; she thought it would be easier coming from me.”

Beth slowly puts down her drink, reaches for the letter. She rips open the envelope and scans the contents quickly. She sets it back down and reaches for her drink.

“I’m sorry, Beth.”

Peter watches Beth try to control her emotions, but he can see them racing across her eyes, trample her control until her face crumples and a tear rolls down her face. Suddenly, she leans back and hurls the glass full of coke and whiskey against the wall. Peter puts his arms around her as she sobs. “It’s going to be all right,” he says, trying to put comfort into his voice. “It’ll work out. We’ll make it work.”

From outside the door: “Beth?”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Fisher,” Peter says.

Hesitation, and then footsteps going back down the stairs.

Peter can feel the heat from Beth’s face. The moisture from her tears soaking through his shirt against his skin. Slowly, the crying ebbs. Peter stares at the wall. Above Beth’s bed, he sees a small crucifix.
Has that always been there
? he wonders.

“It’s not going to be okay,” Beth says, her voice muffled.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Peter says. “But it’ll be okay.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, Beth. I wish I did.”

She pulls away from him. “I’m going to be stuck in this shithole of a town. That scholarship was my ticket out.”

“A year’s worth of rehab—”

“I can’t take another year.”

“And maybe you’ll get another scholarship.”

“Big maybe. And another year of my life wasted.”

“Beth—”

“And you.” She looks close at his face. “You might get a ticket out of here.” Peter does his best to keep his face clear, but she knows him too well.

“You…already did?”

He knows that lying would be the worst thing to do, but he’s still tempted.

“Where?”

Peter sees the sadness, the self-pity leave Beth’s face. It’s replaced by something else. Something far more dangerous and potentially damaging.

Fear.

He takes a deep breath. “Marquette.”

“Milwaukee,” Beth says. Her voice sounds lost, like a little girl talking to herself. She snaps out of it and hugs him. “Congratulations. Full scholarship?”

He nods. Despite the situation, he can feel the pride in his belly. He made it out of Lake Orion. He worked hard, but he was given the height along with the speed. As hard as he tries to quench it, he feels proud of the fact that he made the most out of what he was given. Beth had worked hard too.
Poor Beth,
he thinks.

“Do you think we can…?” she falters, blushing.

He takes her hands in his. “I think we can make it work,” he says. “If that was what you were going to ask.”

She presses him to her.

The worst thing to do is lie
, he thinks. But sometimes, it’s necessary.

He puts his arms around Beth and hugs her back.

Deerfield High gymnasium. Pep band. Cheerleaders. The smell of popcorn and teen spirit.

Beth sits two rows behind her team, her left leg stuck out straight in front of her on the bleacher. When she first came to the gym, the crowd surrounded her, clapped her on the back, offered her encouragement. Her response was to tell them to encourage her teammates.

They had a game to win.

Now, Beth watches her team. She thinks they look strong and confident; at least they did during the pre-game warm up drills.

The other team looks awfully strong. They look big too. Their purple and yellow colors remind Beth of the Los Angeles Lakers. Two girls, sisters, both of them listed at six-four, and they move okay too. Beth scopes out the opponent’s point guard. Small and thin, but lightning quick with a sweet stroke.

I would’ve eaten her alive,
Beth thinks. She flushes at the bravado. She never bragged, never boasted. But suddenly, it’s eating her up that she can’t be out there. She feels like a parent who watches her child in a fight but can’t step in, needing the child to learn how to fight on his own. But no, that’s not fair. Her team’s not a child without her.
Wishful thinking, Beth.

Maybe I need to think that.

Beth is brought out of her contemplation by the buzzer. It’s tipoff, and the game starts quickly, or at least the other team does. Their passes are sharp and crisp. Their footwork is quick and precise. They take good shots and they make them.

Lake Orion crumbles before Beth’s eyes.

Before Beth’s coach can call a timeout, the score is 10-0.

Beth has never seen her team in such a daze. They’re out of sync. Their passes are tentative. They’re lagging on defense. Their shots are hesitant. They’re playing without an ounce of confidence.

In the huddle, Beth hears her coach lay into her teammates. Trying to fire them up. But Beth knows it’s not going to help.

By the end of the first half, the score is 38-18.

Deerfield North heads into the locker room with their heads high, smiles on their faces. Lake Orion walks slowly from the court, heads hanging. Silent.

In the locker room, Beth speaks to several of the players, offers advice, encouragement. She tries to help the coach rally the troops, but Beth has little hope for a turnaround in the second half. She seeks out her replacement, who is struggling, seven turnovers in the first half, not all of them her fault.

Lake Orion takes the court and finds out that the worst is yet to come. Deerfield turns it up a notch and by the end of the third quarter, Lake Orion is down 55 to 27. By the fourth, it’s a foregone conclusion. With five minutes left, Deerfield puts in the second string. Lake Orion does the same thing, and by the end, everyone but the Deerfield players are merely looking for the slaughter to end.

When the final buzzer sounds, the numbers on the scoreboard are pure humiliation for Lake Orion.

Beth shakes hands with the other team. They are happy, confident, and moving on to the next round of the tournament. She stands on her crutches and with her giant knee brace accepts well-wishes from them.

When the last of Deerfield’s players shakes her hand, Beth turns and looks at the crowd. Her last game in a sense. The faces look familiar to her. Parents of fellow teammates, a few teachers, a bunch of students.

She’s just about ready to head for the locker room when her eye is drawn to one face in particular. A face she hadn’t noticed.

The scout from Cal Tech.

And the girl she’s with.

The Tank.

Her scholarship.

At least now Beth knows where it’s gone.

She turns toward the locker room, her leg feeling heavy and cumbersome. Slowing her down. And suddenly, she knows exactly what it feels like.

A ball and chain.

Samuel doesn’t flinch under the gaze of the Navy’s Internal Affairs Officer, a man named Captain Purgitt. The man is tall and lanky, with a round face and an underbite. Samuel isn’t intimidated.

“Just following procedure here,” Purgitt says as he consults a list. “Ackerman?”

“Yes sir.”

“So it says here that you were working out at the time of Wilkins’ death?”

Samuel can barely contain his glee. He feels good. Confident. A deep blossom of self-assuredness is growing like an atomic mushroom cloud—at its base, the wonderfully executed Nevens murder. A masterpiece of high-quality strategic planning followed by fearless execution. In short, he is goddamn happy with himself. “Yes sir. My sixty minutes on the bike. I do it every day that I can. Gotta keep in shape, know what I mean?”

“Sure do, son. Sure do.”

Samuel knows Purgitt probably hasn’t seen the inside of a gym since he attended his teenage son’s last basketball game. He pauses as if the thought just came to him.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

Samuel makes his expression wide and open. The very picture of boyish innocence. “I heard what happened to Wilkins, that it was an accident. That’s what the guys were saying. Did someone…do this to my CO?” Samuel hopes he isn’t overplaying it. He’s got to keep his newfound confidence in check as much as he can—if he can.

The Internal Affairs officer shakes his head. “No, no. We’re simply double checking the whereabouts of his crew, of anyone he may have had…differences…with.”

“If I may ask, sir. Why are you talking to me? We got along fine.”

“Yes, well…”

Samuel can see he’s making Purgitt uncomfortable. Samuel wants to laugh. He knows that Wilkins had a file on him, that he probably had written down his negative comments. The fucker. He won’t be writing any of those anymore. His last paperwork will be his obituary, over which he’ll have no power.

“His preliminary review of your performance in ordnance, even though you’d just gotten started really, noted a need for…improvement.”

Samuel adopted a hangdog expression: the good sailor hurt that his best just wasn’t good enough. He held it for several seconds, then let a glint return to his eye, the kind that said,
goddamn, I’ll just try harder then
. These officious pricks ate it up.

Purgitt proved to be no exception. “Nothing to worry about, sailor. Your alibi checked out perfectly. You’re doing a good job and things are going to be back to normal in no time. Pretty soon you’ll be loadin’ bombs faster than the flyboys can drop ’em.”

“Glad to hear it, sir,” Samuel says and lets a carefully executed smile beam across his face. “I’ll do everything I can to make that happen.”

“I know you will. I got an eye for these things.”

The overworked and understaffed San Diego Police Department begins the Larry Nevens murder investigation with the steadfast routine in which they began all murder investigations since the Homicide Division was officially created back in 1956. The homicide chief checks the “board” and sees what team is up. Two detectives, Karl Markey and Florence Lavin, are assigned the case via a cell phone call from Giancarlo that alerts them to the location of an unidentified body. The body was discovered in the early morning hours of Tuesday by an elderly man and woman, who, on their regular walk, happened upon the remains.

The investigators arrive at the beach and examine the body of Larry Nevens.

Forensic work begins immediately, and by the third full day of their investigation, the SDPD homicide detectives are awash in information: Nevens was seen leaving a bar called The Outer Bank with one Rhonda McFarland the night of the murder. Miss McFarland is still missing. No one remembers seeing Nevens or the woman after they left the bar together. Nevens’ truck was found in the parking lot near the murder scene.

They have learned that the woman was a secretary at an accounting firm. Single, never married. An outgoing, sociable woman with a considerable appetite for men. A goodtime girl with a heart of gold and few qualms about one-night stands.

Nevens was a BUD/S instructor. He had a reputation for pushing weak recruits hard. The DNA tests came back on the semen found on the scene. There are two types: one is Nevens’ and the other is unknown.

Markey and Lavin seek cooperation from the Navy and get it. They speak to colleagues, friends, anyone having contact with Nevens. They request blood samples from all of the recent BUD/S recruits. Since all recruits must submit a blood sample once a year as part of a Navy physical, all recruits have blood samples on file. The samples are forwarded to the SDPD, and tests are run.

There are no matches.

They question Nevens’ colleagues in the BUD/S program but can find no evidence of ill will. They also find no evidence of recruits with a grudge against Nevens. They learn that most who drop out of the BUD/S program feel they are better for the experience.

Because of the lack of DNA matches, the detectives focus on Nevens’ personal life. They learn he is divorced, a hard drinker, and a womanizer. They interview friends and family members, but can establish no credible suspects. At a dead end, the team decides to wait for new information or for the body of Rhonda McFarland to show.

In the meantime, Homicide Chief Giancarlo has assigned the team two more homicide cases, and a week after being initially assigned the case, the Larry Nevens file is quickly shuttled to the bottom of their in-baskets.