Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) (5 page)

The murder weapon was enough.

Had he not blundered and forgotten about the
murder weapon, Derrick would have pulled off one amazingly clean
murder. I’ve now had a chance to see the crime scene photos. The
murder was definitely not clean.

Derrick, of course, claimed he was at the
school weight room until 7:30 p.m. that night, like he was every
night. A routine that anyone could have caught onto and used
against him.

No one believed Derrick’s story. Except his
defense attorney Charlie Brown, although he was being paid
handsomely to believe his story.

And me. But I was not being handsomely paid.
I hate it when that happens.

I moved beyond the hallway, beyond the brick
walled central quad, beyond what was probably the school cafeteria,
beyond the gym, and toward the athletic department.

It was spring, and so there was no football
to be practiced, which was why Derrick had been lifting weights
after school, rather than working out with his team. Instead, it
was baseball and track season. Beyond a chain-linked fence I could
see a varsity baseball game getting under way. Parents and some
students filled the small bleachers. To the north of the baseball
field was a track field, and it was a beehive of activity. I
watched a young girl sprint for about thirty yards and leap through
the air, landing gracelessly in a cloud of dirt. She dusted herself
off, and then headed back for another leap.

I followed a paved pathway, bigger than a
sidewalk, but not big enough to be called a road. The pathway
skirted the softball field and headed toward a group of buildings
lined with doors. One of the doors was open, and inside I could see
shining new gym equipment.

My old high school did not have shining new
gym equipment. It had well-used and badly damaged gym equipment. In
fact, we just had free weights and a few squat racks, come to think
of it.

But it had been enough, if used correctly and
religiously. Both of which I had done.

I stepped into the doorway and peaked in,
almost expecting to see a membership desk. What a spread. Gleaming
chrome equipment covered the entire room. Mirrors were everywhere.
Techno rock pumped through loud speakers situated in every corner.
Boys and a handful of girls were in there, all taking their
workouts very seriously. I was completely ignored. In fact, there
seemed to be a melancholy mood to the place, despite the rhythmic
pounding of the dance music.

I spied some offices in the back and headed
that way, passing two kids lifting an impressive amount on the
bench. I calculated the weight. They were benching almost three
hundred pounds.

Not bad for a kid.

I came to the first office and knew I had hit
the jackpot. The sign on the closed door said Coach.

Only the egocentricity of a football coach,
in an entire department of other coaches, went by Coach alone.

I knocked on the closed door. Doing so, the
door creaked open, and immediately I sensed something wrong. Very
wrong.

Coach was a big man, and from what I could
tell he had taken a bullet to the side of the head. Blood and brain
matter sprayed the east side of his office. A revolver was still in
his hands. The blood had not congealed, and was dripping steadily
from the wound in his open head. His eyes were wide with the shock
and horror of what he had done to himself.

Music thumped loudly into the office.

No one had even heard the shot.

11.

Sanchez and I were working out at a 24 Hour
Fitness in Huntington Beach. It was mid-day, and the gym was quiet.
I had worked up a hell of a sweat, and was dripping all over the
place. Sanchez didn’t sweat; at least not like a real man. And I
let him know it again.

“I save the sweating for the bedroom,” he
said, finishing off his third and final set of military presses.
“Women like that.”

“You married your high school sweetheart. You
don’t know shit about what women want.”

“Fine,” he said, wiping down the machine.
“Danielle likes it when I sweat. Shows her I take my lovemaking
seriously. Besides, Danielle is a lot of woman.”

“Yes,” I said, “she is.”

We moved over to the incline presses.
Together we added weight until we ran out of plates.

“Place is going to hell,” said Sanchez,
looking around, then swiping two forty-fives from another
bench.

“Yes, but it’s cheap. And apparently open
twenty-four hours.”

“You sound like a goddamn commercial.” He
handed me one of the plates and we pushed each into place. The bar
looked very unstable and heavily overloaded. “We’re attracting
attention again.”

I had eased down onto the incline bench. In
the mirror I could see that two or three young guys, including some
gym trainers, were now watching us. I ignored them. So did Sanchez,
who spotted me by standing on a steel platform. The forty-five
pound bar was sagging. Weight clanked as I went through my twelve
reps. I focused on the Chargers training camp, which was coming up
soon. This motivated me, pushed me to lift more and work harder. I
focused on looking good for Cindy. This motivated me as well. Only
on the last rep did Sanchez lend some help. Then he guided the
barbell into place.

“Didn’t need your help on the twelfth,” I
said.

“Sure you didn’t,” he said.

A voice said: “Hey, man, how much weight is
that?”

We both turned. He was a surfer. Bleached
hair and some minor muscle tone. He had a piercing in his nose, and
some idiotic Chinese pictographs up and down his arm.

“You too stupid to do the math?” asked
Sanchez. He turned to me. “Kids nowadays.”

“Kids nowadays,” I added sagely.

The surfer looked at the weight we were
hefting and decided that he would not take offense. He left. Good
decision.

Sanchez did his twelve reps, and to be a dick
I helped him with the last two. After two more sets each, we sat
down on opposing benches and sipped from our water bottles.

“He leave a suicide note?” asked Sanchez.

“Nothing,” I said. “But he had been fired
earlier that day.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “He’d been taking a lot of shit
about leaving Derrick alone on the night of the murder.”

“Hell of a thing to be fired over.”

“Uh huh.”

“Papers say he was a hell of a coach,” said
Sanchez.

“Three CIF championships.”

“Why do you think he popped himself?”

“Hard to say,” I said. “Detective Hanson
tells me the man was divorced earlier in the year. They say
divorced men are the highest risk for suicide.”

“Thank you for that useless bit of fucking
trivia.”

I ignored him, and continued.

“Add to that your best athlete being accused
of a heinous murder, and compound it with losing your job....”

I shrugged again.

“You shrug a lot for a detective,” said
Sanchez.

“I know. It’s part of the job
description.”

We moved over to the squat rack. We slammed
on as many forty-fives as we could find, then some
thirty-fives.

“You know,” said Sanchez, “people here think
we’re freaks. Maybe we should go to a real gym.”

“I like it here,” I said, hunkering down
under the bar and placing my feet exactly the width of my
shoulders. “Besides, it’s open twenty-four hours.”

Sanchez shook his head.

12.

He was watching me knowingly with those
nondescript eyes. Nondescript only in color, that is. Everything
else about them was, well, very non-nondescript.

He knows what you’re thinking.

The words flashed across my mind, along with
the popular Christmas tune, and a chill went through me.

I was having another Big Mac. Or three. He
was drinking another coffee. Lukewarm and black. Just like I like
my women. Kidding.

“So have you told anyone about me?” he
asked.

“That I speak to God in a McDonald’s?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone I know. Hell, even people I don’t
know. In fact, I just told the sixteen-year-old gal working behind
the counter that I was meeting with God in a few minutes and could
she hurry.”

“And what did she say?”

“Said she was going to call the cops.”

Jack shook his head and sipped some more of
his coffee. I noticed he still had the same streaks of dirt along
his forehead.

“So your answer is no,” he said.

“Of course it’s no, and if you were God you
would know that.”

He said nothing; I said nothing. A very old
man had sat in a booth next to us. The old man smiled at Jack, and
Jack smiled back. The man leaned over and spoke to us.

“I’m coming home soon,” he said.

“Yes,” said Jack. “You are.”

“I’m ready,” said the old man, and sat back
in his seat and proceeded to consume a gooey cinnamon roll.

“What was that about?” I asked Jack, not
bothering to lower my voice. Hell, the man was as old as the hills,
no way he could overhear us.

“He’s going to die tonight,” said Jack,
rather nonchalantly, I thought.

“Well,” I said after a moment, “his heart
could only take so many cinnamon rolls.”

Jack looked at me and sipped his coffee
carefully, cradling the paper cup in both hands. He said
nothing.

“Why do you drink with both hands?” I finally
asked.

“I enjoy the feel of the warm cup.”

“And why do you look at me so closely?”

“I enjoy soaking in the details of a
moment.”

We had gone over this before.

“Live in the moment,” I repeated. “And all
that other bullshit.”

“Yes,” he said. “And all that other
bullshit.”

“There is no past and there is no future,” I
continued, on a holy roll.

“Exactly.”

“Only the moment,” I said.

“You’re getting it, Jim. Good.”

“No, I’m not, actually. You see, Jack, I know
for a fact that there is a past because a young girl got
slaughtered outside her house. In the past.”

“You have taken a personal interest in the
case, I see.”

“And now someone has killed themselves. A
coach at the same high school—but, of course, you know all of
this.”

Jack sat unmovingly, watching me closely.

“I saw his brains on the wall and I saw the
hole in his head,” I continued. “Damn straight this case has gotten
personal.”

We were silent. I could hear myself
breathing, my breath running ragged in my throat. I had gotten
worked up.

“You know, it’s damn hard having a
conversation with someone who claims to know everything,” I said,
concluding.

“I never claimed to know everything. You
assume I know everything.”

“Well, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, fuck me. There you go.”

“But you’re forgetting something,” said Jack
patiently. He was always patient, whoever the hell he was.

“No,” I said. “Don’t tell me.”

“Yes,” he said, telling me anyway. “You, too,
know everything.”

We had gone over this before, dozens of
times.

“The answers are always within you,” he
said.

“Would have been nice to know during algebra
tests.”

“You knew the answers then, just as you know
them now.”

“Bullshit.”

He smiled serenely.

“If you say so,” he said.

“Fine,” I said, “So how is it that I know
everything, when, in fact, I don’t feel like I know shit?”

“First of all, you know everything because
you are a part of me,” he said.

“Part of a bum?”

“Sure,” he said. “We are all one. You, me and
everyone you see.”

“So I know the answers because you know the
answers,” I said.

“Something like that,” he said. “Mostly, you
know the answers because the answers have already been revealed to
you. Would you like an example?”

“Please.”

“What’s the Atomic symbol for gold?”

“Wait, I know this one.” I rubbed my head.
“Fuck. I don’t remember. Wait, I’ll take a stab at it: G-O?”

“No, it’s A-U.”

“At least I was close.”

“What’s the Atomic symbol for gold?” he asked
again.

“A-U,” I said without thinking. “Wait, I only
know that because you just told me.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, I didn’t know a few seconds ago.”

“Are you living now, or are you living a few
seconds ago?”

“I’m living now, of course, but if I didn’t
have you here to give me the answer—and by the way, I’m not
convinced A-U is the right answer—I still wouldn’t know the
answer.”

“Shall we try another example?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “but this time don’t give me
the freakin’ answer.”

“What’s the Atomic symbol for Mercury?”

“No idea,” I said.

“None?”

“Nope. M-E?”

“No.”

“See, told you I didn’t know the answer.”

“You were right,” he said. “And I was wrong,
apparently.”

“Fuck. I’m going to go look it up tonight on
the internet, aren’t I?”

He shrugged.

“And then when I do, I’ll have the
answer.”

He took a sip from his coffee.

“But I still don’t have the answer now, but I
will soon,” I said.

He yawned a little.

“And since time doesn’t exist, that means I
always had the answer.”

He shrugged again and drank the rest of his
coffee.

“I’m still not buying any of this shit,” I
said.

13.

According to homicide investigators, Amanda
Peterson had been returning home from a high school party on the
night of her murder.

Returning home at 7:30 p.m.

Isn’t that about the time most parties get
started? Perhaps she was going home to fetch something she had
forgotten. Perhaps not. Either way, I sniffed a clue here.