Hangman's Game (4 page)

I look up and see Cecil stumbling toward me. “Drop, drop!” he shouts to me as he falls against the fence. I lower myself to the ground as a burning smell penetrates my nostrils. I see a car's red taillights already fifty yards gone and speeding away. The car has a bumper sticker with a quarter moon. The moon seemed to be grinning.

My hearing is muffled by the blasts, but I can make out a guttural groan from Cecil, who is on the ground, propped up against the chain-link fence. He is holding his wrist and his yellow shirt is darkening across the bottom. Samuel lays motionless on his back with his head turned to the side and a puddle expanding rapidly around his body. A gush of blood seeps down the sidewalk, over the curb and into the street. The flow is torrential; it is like a main has broken. Samuel's broad mouth is open, as are his eyes, as if he can't believe it either.

I step close, into the river of blood. The warm liquid soaks through my shoes. “Samuel?” I say. His head is tilted more over to the side than it should be, with his cheek resting flush against the sidewalk.

He doesn't answer, and he won't. Samuel's head seems unnaturally angled, I now realize, because it is no longer completely attached to his neck.

I have spent so much of my life training; for this I am completely unprepared.

 

CHAPTER 2

“
S
O WHAT HAPPENED
here?”

The police officer has a pudgy face and a buzz cut, and he is a good six inches shorter than me. We are twenty yards down the block from the crime scene, where other officers are at work. This guy has a pad out and is ready to write.

The real answer to his question is that I have no idea at all what happened here. I am completely disoriented, and I keep forgetting to breathe. I feel like I have been simultaneously sat on and flung through the air.

But I need to be helpful, so I begin to put words together, enumerating what facts I can: a driver came out of nowhere and fired at us, twice. My name is Nick Gallow, and I live here in Philadelphia. The man who was taken away in the ambulance just a few moments ago is Cecil Wilson of Massillon, Ohio, and the person being zipped into a body bag is Samuel Sault.…

“Samuel Sault the football player?” the officer asks, his voice squeaking high for a moment. I would bet this night-shifter is not even twenty-five years old. “He just signed his contract, right?”

“Yes.”

“Damn,” the officer says. “We can't catch a break.”

It takes me a moment to comprehend that the “we” he is referring to is the Sentinels.

“How many people were in the shooter's car?” he asks.

“I didn't really see.”

“How about the car? Can you tell me anything about that?”

“It was a four-door, dark-colored,” I say. “Black, I think.”

“You think?” the officer asks, concerned.

“Could have been dark blue,” I say. “Or maybe even dark green.”

The officer sighs. “So all you know is it's dark. Did you get the make?”

I search my memory for any kind of brand emblem or signature. “No.”

The officer's brown eyes flare with exasperation. “Anything distinguishing about the car? Anything at all? Please. This is important.”

“There was a bumper sticker with a quarter moon on it,” I say. “The moon looked like it was grinning.”

“Grinning?” the officer asks dubiously. “How can a moon grin?”

“I don't know, but that's what it looked like.” I feel like I am failing, useless. I inhale deeply, hoping to steady my nerves.

“How about the license plate? Did you get a look at that?”

“No,” I say, cringing inwardly. “No license plate.” How is it that I noticed the bumper sticker but not the license plate right next to it? It is an obvious mistake. The killer is going to get away, all because of me.

The officer flips a page on his book. “Okay, let's move on. Where were you guys before you came here?”

“Dinner,” I say. “At Stark's.”

“Anything happen there that was out of the ordinary?”

I hesitate, thinking about Jai. However angry he was at Samuel, I can't believe that had anything to do with the shooting, and I don't want to point the police toward a teammate simply for the sake of full disclosure.

“Nothing that would lead to murder,” I say.

The officer narrows his eyes. He says nothing, probably hoping that I will rush to fill the empty air, and blurt out whatever I am holding back. But I maintain my silence.

“You'll have to go to the station,” he says finally. “I'm sure the chief detective will want to do a more formal interview.”

Soon another officer drives me to a district police station ten minutes away. In my twenty-eight years, I have never been inside one of these places. As I am led inside, I know that I will have to do a better job of explaining what has happened—to this chief detective, and also to myself.

*   *   *

The district police station in South Philadelphia is depressingly municipal. Men sit too close to one another, behind low cubicle walls that offer only the illusion of personal space. Old metal desks squeak with each opened drawer. From the pantry comes the smell of burnt coffee. These people have such important work to do, and such an awful place to do it in. I can't help but compare it to my workplace, where I stride on plush carpet, fresh towels are always at the ready, and I can drink complimentary protein shakes from an always-stocked refrigerator.

I sit at an unoccupied desk, on a square-backed wooden chair, where I have been told to wait. After a couple of minutes a detective, a tired-looking older man with thin brown hair and a gray front tooth, walks over to me.

“I'm Detective Senecker,” he says. “Can I get you anything?”

“Have you heard anything about how Cecil Wilson is doing?” I say. “Any update from the hospital?”

“Let me see what I can find out,” Senecker says, removing his phone from a holder on his belt. He turns his back and steps away from me as he dials.

Cecil cannot die on me. Three years ago I lost my father, who had been my high school coach. My dad and Cecil are the two people who both understood what I do and looked after my interests as if they were their own. The two of them would sit next to each other at games, and my dad made a point of paying for the peanuts and the beers. He'd tell Cecil, “After what you've done for my son, your money's no good with me.” Whenever the two of them got together they referred to it as a meeting of the Board of Directors. It used to be one of my routines that before I would leave the house or hotel for a game, I would speak to my dad on the phone, and he would talk me through various coaching points. I didn't really need the instruction, but I found reassurance in the ritual. After my dad died, it was Cecil who took on those Sunday morning phone calls. Cecil didn't bother to talk to me about my drops or my kicking motion, just general chatter about the game plan and the mood of the team and so forth. But he was always ready when I needed him. I think of Cecil dropping to his knees on the sidewalk, one hand on his perforated stomach, yelling at me to get down, still trying to protect me.

“He's being operated on. That's all they're saying,” says Senecker, turning back to me. He asks if I want some coffee, or a Coke.

“Water would be fine,” I say. He brings me a bottle of water from a vending machine, and then he starts talking to me about the shooting and our conversation veers between an interview and an informal talk. He is no more impressed with my level of detail about the shooter and his car than the young officer on the scene.

“So the bumper sticker had a quarter moon on it, huh?” Senecker says, underwhelmed. “What do you think that might mean—maybe the shooter's in an astronomer's club? Maybe he eats at a restaurant called the Moonbeam Diner.”

“I wish I knew,” I say.

He looks at me blankly, and I feel even more useless.

The conversation soon peters out, and Senecker returns to his desk. I drink my water and close my eyes. I keep seeing the shooting, and the bodies on the ground, all that blood pouring out of Samuel. I wish I had seen that license plate. I wish I hadn't been texting Jessica. Then maybe I would have noticed the car coming, and had a better look at everything. Maybe I would have been aware enough to run after the car, sprinting as hard as I could. I could have been hit, too, but maybe I would have been able to catch up with the shooter. Then I would have reached into the car and wrestled the rifle away. I would have grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out through the open window and onto the street, threw him to the ground and climbed on top of him. I would have punched him hard in the bridge of the nose. And then I would have punched him again, and again, and again. He would have been the one spurting blood.…

“Mr. Gallow?”

“Yes?” I open my eyes and see Senecker standing over me, and he looks taken aback. I don't think I barked my answer, but perhaps the anger of my fantasy seeped into my voice.

“Ah, just a couple things,” says Senecker. “First, Detective Rizotti—he's the lead investigator on this case—is on his way in, and he's going to want to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

“Also, I need your suit jacket, if you don't mind,” he says. “We have to test it for gunshot residue. Just so we can rule out that you didn't fire the gun.”

I am surprised—don't they believe my story? But I understand the need to be thorough in one's work. I stand up, slip off my jacket, and hand it to him.

“When will I get it back?” I ask. I have the disconcerting thought that if Cecil dies and I need to attend a funeral, this is my only suit.

“Tomorrow,” Senecker says. “Or the next day, at the latest. I'm sure with a Sentinel involved, you'll go to the front of the line.”

The detective's comments jolt me to another reality—how huge a news story these shootings will be.

I look at my phone and see dozens of texts and e-mails piled up. Teammates, friends, and my brother, Doug, have all tried to reach me. I quickly reply to Doug, telling him where I am and that I'm okay, and that Cecil is being worked on. I also sent a note to Freddie Gladstone, who is a team vice president and my best friend, telling him that I am okay and that I am at the police station awaiting questioning.

I look for, but do not see, a message from my mother. I suppose I should not be surprised. Her longtime boyfriend, Aaron Handley, the man she left my father for years ago, owns a cabin in the northern Pennsylvania woods, about a half hour south of Elmira, and the two of them retreat there whenever they can. The cabin has no television or Internet service, and cell phones are all but useless.

I send my mother a text message telling her I am doing fine, so that she will see it when she reconnects to the outside world.

*   *   *

It is nearly 4:00
A.M.
when Detective Rizotti finally arrives. It may be a further indication of my tiredness and my mood that upon meeting him, I cannot get past how physically repellant he is.

He is short, in his mid-forties, with wiry black hair and an aquiline nose that dives low on his face, as if it is taking a peek at his nicotine-stained teeth. All this perched atop a body that resembles a bag of garbage sagging on the curb. I cannot believe a person so little in command of his appearance is directing a major murder investigation.

Rizotti asks me to come with him into a small conference room. There, we sit on the opposite sides of a plain green table. He rests his hands on the table, looks directly at me, and makes an obvious effort to smile.

“Nick Gallow, age twenty-eight, born in Waverly, New York, and a resident of Philadelphia for the past five years,” he says. “Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“I understand that you're the punter for the Sentinels?” he says, sounding skeptical.

“That's right,” I say.

“Funny,” he says. “I usually go to one or two Sentinels games a year, and I catch the rest on TV. Your name doesn't ring a bell with me.” He says this as if it is my fault.

“I suppose that's good, in a way,” I answer, straining to be polite. “It means I didn't screw anything up too memorably.”

Rizotti nods in appreciation. “It's the same with cops, they always remember your mistakes. Name me a police officer from the last twenty-five years more well-known to the man on the street than Mark Fuhrman.”

“Yes,” I say. “He lives in infamy.”

“The thing is, Mark got a bum deal,” Rizotti says. “I know him a little bit. Good guy, good cop. Great cop, actually. And that O.J. is guilty as sin. Don't you think? You guys must know. Even a punter must hear stuff.”

Even a punter.

“I don't have any good O.J. gossip,” I say patiently. I have a hard time believing this is what he has kept me around to ask me.

“What's it like being a punter, Mr. Gallow?” he says. “Is it like you're part of the regular team? Do you get to talk to the other players much?”

These are the kinds of questions I get from the most ignorant fans. Rizotti's little nudges feel intentional, like he is trying to rile me up.

“We players all talk to each other,” I say. “Some more than others, of course.”

“How about Jai Carson?” Rizotti says. “You talk to JC much? You guys pals?”

Rizotti has only one reason to bring up Jai. He has heard about the Stark's incident. Which is natural enough, given that it took place in full view of the hostess as well as the bar patrons. And everyone in the place had to have heard Jai's parting shouts.

I realize I have to choose my words precisely. Anything I say about our team's biggest star could end up on the ESPN news crawl. I consider whether I should ask for a lawyer, but I decide that I can handle myself for now.

“Jai and I have been teammates for five years,” I say.