Racing the Rain (38 page)

He stood, huge grin on his face, and gave Cassidy a bear hug.

“Didn't think I was serious, did you?”

“How in the world . . .”

“I brought something for you,” he said, handing him the morning edition of the
Kernsville Sun.
“I wasn't sure if it would make the papers up here, but it did.”

The headline read, “Trio Arrested in Chillingworth Case.” Stunned, he read on:

By Ron Wiggins

Special from the
Palm Beach Post

West Palm Beach, FL—A former West Palm Beach city judge and two Riviera Beach men were arrested yesterday and charged with the kidnapping and murder of Circuit Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth, 58, and his wife, Margorie, 56, from their Manalapan beach home earlier this year.

The former judge, Joe Peel, 36, of West Palm Beach, was arrested at his downtown law office. Floyd “Lucky” Holzapfel, 36, of Riviera Beach, was arrested without incident at a West Palm Beach motel. Bobby Lincoln, 35, was arrested at a cabstand he owns in Riviera Beach, where he also resides. Only hours earlier the two had been released on bail from the Palm Beach County jail in connection with other charges. According to sources close to the case, Peel was not present at the scene of the kidnapping but was charged with conspiracy and first degree murder. Peel had a pending disciplinary hearing before Chillingworth and feared disbarment. He had had several grievances filed against him while practicing law.

State Attorney Phillip O'Connell said the trio was indicted by a direct information filed by his office, bypassing the grand jury. O'Connell said little else at a hastily convened press conference at the Palm Beach County Courthouse.

Police sources close to the case who asked not to be identified said one of the men had divulged details of the crime in a police sting operation involving a confidential informant.

Cassidy sat across the table—mouth agape—and looked at Trapper Nelson, who couldn't suppress a grin.

“Phil O'Connell may refuse to say who snitched on them, but I won't. It was me!” said Trapper.

“I gathered that,” said Cassidy.

“It was Peel behind it all along,” Trapper said. He took a deep breath. “But I knew the other two were involved. I knew it in my bones.”

“I never thought for a second that you—”

“I know, but lots of people were ready to believe I was a real bad guy, including those two. There were plenty of people years ago who thought I had something to do with shooting Dykas, too. That's why it wasn't such a far-fetched scheme Phil came up with after I told him what you saw that night on the bridge.”

“Wow. You mean I actually started this whole thing?”

“Well, actually they suspected Peel from the first, but they didn't have a scintilla of evidence against him, and he had set up an ironclad alibi. They also figured Lucky and Bobby were involved somehow, but they had to figure out a way to get me close to them in some way that wouldn't arouse suspicion. Then I'd make friendly with them and supposedly get Joe to help them with their bail situation. They made sure it was late at night when we got out, so I proposed that we get a motel and celebrate being at large. Lucky's a talker anyway, and a bottle and a half of bourbon does wonders for a fella's sociability. I'm still a little hungover, but we got them, Quenton, we got them on tape! It's open and shut.”

Cassidy felt light as a puff of down.

“But why did you put yourself on the line like that?” Cassidy said.

Trapper swallowed. “Curtis was my friend. He helped me get my original property on the river. Then he showed me how to get the rest of the land by buying default tax deeds. Even before that, he kept Charlie, Dykas, and me from starving when we first jumped off the train in Jupiter with no money and no prospects.” Trapper swallowed again and looked off down 441.

Cassidy didn't say anything.

“I still can't believe what those animals did to Curtis and Marjorie,” Trapper said.

They sat in silence for a while, Cassidy reading the newspaper story over again.

“Come on, let's go roust Ed out,” said Trapper finally. “We're due at the Flying Biscuit, and your whole cheering section is there!”

T
he grandstands at the Percy Beard track stadium held several thousand people. Cassidy had never seen anything like it. Nor had he seen so many hundreds of athletes in uniforms of every description, stretching, jogging on the outside of the track, or doing run-ups at the jump pits. Cassidy's race wasn't until three o'clock, and he knew he had to get out of the place for his own good. It was nerve-racking in there.

He followed some other runners who seemed to know their way around. They jogged by the varsity tennis courts and the law school, then entered a little path through some woods that came out in a married students housing area. From there they skirted a small body of water marked by signs that said
LAKE ALICE—DO NOT FEED THE ALLIGATORS
. Cassidy wasn't sure if they had gators this far north and thought the sign might be some sort of college prank.

Cassidy kept trying to figure out how he felt but finally gave up. He felt restless but blah. He knew that he was truly well rested for the first time in months, but he'd had trouble sleeping for several nights now and didn't feel particularly spry. All the time they had been “running through” races, he had assumed that when he really cut back and tapered for a big race he would have a hard time stopping himself from turning cartwheels.

But he didn't feel that way at all. He felt perfectly fine, but not like he could leap tall buildings in a single bound. He had almost started feeling better during his prelim race the day before, but Mr. Kamrad told him to run only as hard as he needed to safely qualify. He finished well back in third place, thirty yards behind the Nubbins kid from Orlando Evans, who set a PR.

“Maybe he d-doesn't understand that you don't get extra credit for winning a p-p-prelim,” said Demski.

So Cassidy had coasted in with a surprisingly easy 4:35, feeling like he hadn't really even loosened up.

“Don't worry about how you feel,” Mr. San Romani had told him on the phone last night. “You might be all over the place. Some of my best races came on days I felt really unexceptional. Just get your usual good hard warm-up and don't worry about it. Halfway through the race is when you want to be feeling good.”

So he quit trying to gauge his internal workings and concentrated on the race. He knew Mizner and Hosford were the runners to watch out for. He had thought Nubbins, though just a freshman, might be pretty tough, too, but he probably had taken himself out of it with his crazy prelim race.

Cassidy had almost reached the turnaround point at the end of Lake Alice when he heard a familiar voice.

“I'd recognize that red-and-white flying eagle anywhere,” said Jerry Mizner, running toward him, big smile on his face.

“That tornado is hard to miss, too. I wondered where you were hiding.”

“Isn't this just the most amazing place?” said Mizner, gesturing around at the campus.

“Yeah, it's kinda overwhelming. I can't really imagine what it would be like to go here,” said Cassidy.

“I can. Fortunately, I don't have to worry about it for a while,” said Mizner.

“What do you mean?”

“I'm only a junior.”

“Holy crap. You've been drubbing me all this time and you're a junior? I didn't need to hear that right now.”

Mizner laughed. “Hey, that Nubbins kid is only a freshman!”

“Yeah, and he sure ran like one yesterday.”

“Yeah, but he's getting damn tough all the same. I heard he was telling someone he was putting in fifteen miles a day.”

“That doesn't sound possible,” Cassidy said.

Mizner shrugged. “Well, I need to keep moving. If you're looking for a place to do striders, there's a nice grass field over behind the tennis courts.”

“Thanks. Maybe I'll see you over there.”

Cassidy watched Mizner's stride as he moved around Lake Alice. It was so silky smooth that it was intimidating just to watch. Cassidy turned and headed back up through the little trail to the law school, passing more and more runners warming up.
So much to be intimidated by,
Cassidy thought. An enormous university with tens of thousands of students, a huge track meet with thousands of athletes. And Mizner with that effortless stride, and him not even a senior yet. And to top it off, a freshman who's in such good shape he can PR in the prelims like it was nothing.

Well, I've got one thing going for me
, he thought.
Sure as hell nobody in this race is worried about
me.

* * *

Nubbins really was a character. Cassidy heard him cutting up and joking around on the starting line, normally a place of utter solemnity. Cassidy figured he was trying to psych everyone out. From the look of some of the other runners, it was working. Mizner was paying him no attention at all, jiggling his thighs in the second slot in lane one, staring straight ahead. Hosford, a pale, studious-looking fellow, was two runners over, likewise ignoring everything around him, staring into the middle distance. Cassidy had one of the slowest qualifying times and was thus in the inside slot in lane seven. He was most concerned about getting to the rail in one piece as quickly as he could.

The official starter, Walter Welch, wearing an official's striped shirt and a removable fluorescent orange sleeve over his right arm, walked onto the track carrying his starting pistol. He spoke in soft, empathetic tones, trying to soothe anxious runners he knew had been preparing for this race for months. He knew even milers would false-start if they were too tense.

“All right, gentlemen, stand tall . . .” the starter said.

He gave them a few seconds to stop fidgeting and settle down.

“Gentlemen, stand tall while I give you the starting instructions. There will be a three-command start: ‘Runners take your marks, set,' and then the gun. All right, is everyone ready? Judges and timers ready?”

After he glanced at all the toes on the curved starting line to make sure no one was actually stepping on it, he began backing away from the starting line and off the track as he raised his pistol arm straight overhead. He looked over to the timers' stand to make sure they were actually paying attention, and said, “Runners,
tuh-ake
your marks . . .”

Cassidy's head was roaring. He looked down at the toe of his white kangaroo-skin racing shoe and thought,
I can't believe this moment has finally come.
It seemed to take a small forever before he heard the second command.

“Get suh-
ehhht
 . . .”

Then the gun went off with a loud crack.

Nubbins may have just been clowning around on the starting line, but after the first lap, it was clear he was serious now. He went through in sixty seconds flat.

The heretofore complacent crowd erupted when the split was announced; were they going to get to see the miracle of a high school four-minute mile?

Mizner and Hosford struggled behind gamely and went through in sixty-two, with Cassidy another two seconds back, so far out of it he felt like he was in a completely different race. The rest of the field had already blown up. Anyone whose strategy had been to run off the leaders' shoulders was in total confusion.

But Cassidy wasn't entirely despondent. He had seen plenty of races where the leaders went through the first lap in a split that was way out of line with their final times. Lots of 4:40 milers would blast out a sixty-three-second first lap, then follow it with a string of seventy-pluses. But Mr. San Romani had been very clear about it from Cassidy's first mile race on the track: run as close to even splits as you can. That's the way you run your best performance, and in high school running your best possible time is the surest way to win races.

“Tactical races might be important later on, but for now the key is maximum efficiency,” he had told Cassidy in their last phone call. “There is no way to ‘hurry' your way to a good time by getting ahead in the first lap and then hanging on. It's not an efficient way to run.”

Cassidy believed him, but here he was after one lap, wondering if he was out of this race already.

Cassidy knew he was not going to run a 4:12 mile. That was nuts. So even his sixty-three was too fast. What he was hoping for in this race was the mid- to low 4:20s. That would mean a PR by several seconds and should put him in contention for a medal.

So he stifled the panic that he would have otherwise felt contemplating the three runners strung out far in front of him. If he was too fast at sixty-three, then these other guys were even more off base. That is, unless they were just that much better than him.

Mr. Kamrad, Trapper Nelson, Randleman, and the girls were situated in the corner of the grandstands just past the finish line so that Trapper, who had the loudest voice, could yell out accurate splits. As he started around the first turn, Cassidy heard his voice booming over the crowd: “Sixty-three four, Cass, sixty-three four!”

Cassidy expected Nubbins to start fading right away, but it didn't happen. All around the first turn he kept up a four-minute-mile pace. Even Mizner and Hosford fell farther behind, though Cassidy didn't lose any more to them.

Now his thinking turned fatalistic:
Maybe this crazy kid is some prodigy like the Ryun guy in Kansas; maybe he is damn near a four-minute miler and we're just the unlucky saps who get to be the also-rans in his coming-out race
.

If that's the case, there was nothing in the world to be done about it but go after Mizner and Hosford and make it a race with them. Let Nubbins run on off and do what he was going to do.

But as they approached the 220 post at the end of the far straightaway, Nubbins began to show he was human after all. Mizner and Hosford began to make up ground on him, and Cassidy—ten yards behind them—went along with them. By the time they got to the starting post at the end of the second lap, the other two had all but caught Nubbins, and all three of them went through in around 2:08. Nubbins had slowed to a sixty-eight, the other two had held on with sixty-fives. Cassidy went through in 2:10, which gave him a sixty-seven for the second lap.