Team Mom (10 page)

Coach went through all the evidence he could at the crime scene. There wasn't much. Not enough to tell who the hell was acting so ill-bred and foul. He had to get over to the school next.

He parked the Chevy in the school parking lot thirty minutes before the students were scheduled to be dismissed. He hadn't heard much about the shooting in Connecticut, so on the way over to the school, he listened to the radio dispatcher relay constant updates to the troops patrolling the streets. There was an announcement over the air to expect higher than normal traffic at the schools, as parents would want to pick up their children on such a terrible day. The quiet time Coach had in the car was good, because it gave him the chance to go over his crime-scene notes and try to get some type of lead on the asshole that went ballistic on Lois.

The back patio door of her home was open when Lois was discovered. Coach figured that was probably the way the punks left, because the neighbors who were outside during the time of the assault didn't see anyone leave through the front door. There were also footprints in the dirt leading from the patio all the way to a fence in the yard, which they must have jumped over to leave unnoticed. The food left on the table and the spilled beer were obvious signs that they had been in the house awhile, and the fact that the bed linens in both bedrooms had been pulled back suggested that they had been there overnight. Coach was hoping that DNA in the beds would tell them what they needed to know to make an arrest. Coach could hardly stand the fact that they could have been in her home at the same time he was sitting in her driveway.

It was clear from the jump that the guys he was dealing with were a bunch of nasty punks who would get meaner and meaner by the day if they were not stopped. Where they would strike next was a major concern. The fact that they had slept in a house that they did not have keys to and had occupied the home as if it were their own were clear signs of a sense of entitlement and a lack of respect for the law, or for anything else, for that matter. Coach felt the deep distain he had within him for those walking through life with entitlement issues. He was convinced the bastard who had killed his wife and twins was all about that.This was his first case. He had to bring it home. Not many cases that detectives stepped into, especially right off the bat, had a personal connection. He wanted to go into the streets and find the assholes who had a fetish for beating up defenseless women and put them in jail. He knew they were black. He got that much from Mr. Tall the night he rolled up on them in front of Lois's house. He couldn't let that fact hamper his search for them. Or mess with his mind, since he was well aware of the disproportionate number of young black males who were locked up. These bastards without a doubt needed to be locked up, and he was going to do it.

Coach didn't know what to expect as he ventured down the hallway of the hospital to see Lois. He'd talked to Mr. Tall a few times since finding out about the crime, but now it was later in the day. It had been hours since he'd heard anything. Mr. Tall had let him know that he was spending most of his time in the sitting area on her floor. When Coach finally reached him, he found him sitting up straight, arms locked together, and sleeping.

As quietly as he possibly could, because there were others in the sitting area, he called out, “Tall.” When Mr. Tall didn't stir, Coach repeated himself two or three times.

Mr. Tall finally opened his eyes slowly. He had missed his two afternoon naps and tried to shake off sleep.

“Tall, you all right?” Coach said.

“Yeah, yeah.” Then Mr. Tall tried to get up quickly, like he used to. You could hear him grunt too, but of course, he couldn't get up on his feet. “Lois all right?” She had stayed on his mind even in sleep.

Coach put his hand on Mr. Tall's shoulder so he wouldn't try to get up from the couch again. “I'm here to check on her. How long you been out here?”

Mr. Tall said, “Time is it?”

“Close to seven.”

“Seven? You should still be at practice.”

“Canceled. I'm on the job.”

“Last time I checked on her, she was asleep. Nurse told me that they wanted to run some test.” He sat up so far that he was leaning forward with his hands folded. “So, that coffee for me, or you drinking both of 'em?”

Coach had almost forgotten about the coffees as he stood with them in a carrier in his left hand. He looked at them. “One or two sugars?”

Mr. Tall thought for a moment. “Fuck it. Give me two. The way things are going, maybe I'll pass out and die then I won't have to worry about all this shit.”

Coach extended the coffee with two sugars, then changed his mind and gave him the cup with one. “Here. Drink this. It'll be okay.”

They sat for a while, putting the coffee down when news of the school shooting in Connecticut played on the TV, catching their attention.

“What the hell is going on?” Mr. Tall said. “People today have lost it, Coach, lost all their marbles, man, every last one.”

Coach understood well enough. It was hard to stomach. He had noticed the looks on the parents' faces when they picked up their kids at the school today. They had all looked so frightened, as though the shooting had taken place at their school.

“It's just these past twenty years or so, right?” Mr. Tall tried to remember when school shootings became commonplace as he went back into his coffee. “I mean, this here . . .” He pointed to the television screen. “It's too sick for even a sick person to think of. Kids stabbing babies and thugs beating seventy-year-old women without blinking. Real animals must be looking at us, stumped out of their fuckin' minds.”

Mr. Tall was right. Things were getting out of hand. They both sat there quietly for a time. A nurse sitting on the other side of the room, watching the television, started crying uncontrollably, giving voice to what they were feeling inside.

“So how is Lois?” Coach said.

Mr. Tall shook his head, looking down at his coffee. “She's bad, man. I don't know how that little, precious woman took all that.”

“Talking any?”

“Broken jaw. But she's writing some.”

Coach was very interested in that bit of information. He sat up a bit. Hoping. “Did she see who it was?”

“They had on masks, but she says it was them.”

“How?”

“They admitted it while they beat her.”

“How?”

“Told her, ‘Didn't I tell you, I would beat you like a slave?'”

After a twenty-minute solemn, glum visit with Lois, Coach and Mr. Tall left her room. There wasn't much to say after seeing her like that. Mr. Tall stood in the hallway, searching for an understanding of her condition. Coach leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

Coach said, “Strong woman in there, man.” He thought about all the pounding and pain she had endured. “Strong all the way through, Tall,” he added. Coach had been staring at the hospital floor, and when he looked up, he saw that Mr. Tall was in a daze. “Tall?”

Mr. Tall looked up. Coach sensed that Mr. Tall had aged another ten years with all the lack of sleep and worry.

“You know, I've never been married,” Mr. Tall said.

Coach listened, without saying a word.

“Sometimes it takes people a little longer to do things than most.” Mr. Tall tried to chuckle at his thoughts and did barely.

“Yeah . . .” Coach cosigned, not knowing where the conversation was going.

“I really like that woman in there, Coach. Have for a long time now. You know, sometimes things grow on you and you begin to get used to them, and that's how me and Lois are.”

Coach smiled.

“She wasn't married, either, and I would see her sometimes coming home from work, right after I would return from work. She'd either be doing some yard work or sipping on something ice cold right on her porch, watching all the little kids play on our street. Sometimes, she would have the kids from her class over on the weekends to give the parents a break because she could only imagine how hard it was to bring kids up while being married. People need to spend time with one another. She did that, you know?”

Coach said, “That's nice, Tall. I bet it was appreciated.”

He thought for a moment. “Yeah, it was. It was. But not enough, not enough to where they would come back a few times or even once a year after the kids had grown and gone to college just to say, ‘Thank you' and ‘I'm thinking about you.'”

“People not people anymore,” Coach mused.

“You're right. They're not like people should be.” Mr. Tall paused, then added, “I'm saying all this because I would thank Lois all the time.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. Thank her for what she did, 'cause I could see it from afar. Thank her for being the type of woman who I never, ever seen have a bunch of mess around her—what you youngins call drama—all around her home. She didn't want any of that.” Mr. Tall managed a brief smile. “I'd thank her for dealing with those kids every day and treating every last one like they were her own. I would even stop her car when she was on her way home if I'd see her while checking my mail, and I'd just thank her for always smiling when she saw me—every time, Coach. Every time.”

“Yeah, that's real people right there,” Coach said.

Mr. Tall looked into her room. “She was so real that I was going to ask her to marry me.”

“Marry?”

“Sure was. During that barbecue we were about to have. I don't have much to lose at this stage in the game. Think it could have worked too. You know why, Coach?”

Coach shook his head no. “Uh-uh. Tell me.”

“'Cause we like each other. We genuinely like each other, and when you do that, there are endless opportunities, way beyond the imagination, that can join people together.”

Mr. Tall was not hesitant when he informed Coach that he planned on finding out if Lois wanted to marry him. Mr. Tall said he felt bad that he didn't go down to the house with her to get the food out the freezer. He said he felt even worse that while she took that beating, there was nothing he could do for her. He said that he realized he could be there for her now and that he was going to stay next to her side as long as it took. Mr. Tall gave Coach the key to his home and asked if he could go to his house and turn on his porch lights.

 

 

It took Coach only a few minutes to go inside Mr. Tall's home to turn on the lights for him. On the way out he noticed a police cruiser sitting in Lois's driveway. He drove down there and found a cop leaning back on the hood of his car.

“Craft,” Coach called out when he recognized the officer.

“What's up, Coach?” the officer shot back. “I heard this was your case.”

“Yeah, all mine, bruh. Quiet around here or what?”

Craft looked around. “No doubt. I had a few lookyloos come by before darkness because they heard about what happened. But other than that, nobody better bring they ass over here tonight, because I'm not asking any questions, only talking with this sidearm,” he replied.

“Yeah . . .” Coach agreed.

“Some things you just don't do, man,” Craft said. “This right here is why I am police. I'm telling you, I hope I don't run into who did this, and I'm not alone. Everyone in this sector is pissed. Let me put it like this. Whoever did it better be living in a fuckin' cave, man.”

Coach looked toward the house. “Look, I'm going to go in. See if I missed anything earlier.”

“Take your time. I'm here all night,” Craft told him.

The door was unlocked. Coach walked in. He paused for a brief second when he first heard the fragments of broken glass and other items cracking and popping under his shoes. What a mess. So many broken items lay on the floor in the house. Shit had been thrown everywhere. Coach estimated that Lois had lain just a half inch from where the huge 100 percent oak cabinet that stood along the length of her wall had been thrown to the floor. Those bastards really did try to kill her. He could see blood from one end of the room to the spot where she was found. They had dragged her there, hoping the cabinet would fall on top of her.

Coach had to take a deep breath to prevent himself from getting too emotional while he tried to piece together in his mind what had taken place here. He had a seat in the same chair that one of the punks had sat in when Lois encountered them. He wondered if they had sat there. Coach looked around and remembered he had had the entire kitchen table checked for fingerprints. He took out his phone and called the lab and learned that so far, no prints had come back that identified who the bastards were. This wasn't going to be easy.

Coach sat still for almost an hour, scanning every bit of the room, looking for something, anything, until his eyes focused on a picture that had fallen to the floor. The picture was in a broken glass frame. It was so close to the chair that all he had to do was reach down and pick it up. The picture was titled “Third Grade Class.” All the children in the photo were standing and had bright smiles on their faces. They had no idea of their future, but they looked happy, as though recess was next on the agenda for them all. A little girl with pigtails stood out to him. It was her smile. She was holding Lois's hand. In a million years Coach would never forget this smile. It had followed her throughout her life. He searched for her name in the list below the photo to make sure. It was her. The smiling child happened to be his wife as a little girl.

Coach didn't have the courage to even attempt to be alone that night. It had been an up-and-down day, one that had started on a good note with getting suits with Jarques but had devolved into finding out Lois had been beaten, visiting her in the hospital, witnessing Mr. Tall's pain, and seeing his dead wife as a little girl with the same smile she would show him every day that he knew her.

Shonda picked up her cell phone on the first ring, and she told Coach that she had been sitting there waiting for his call.

“I can't be alone tonight,” Coach told her.

Shonda said, “Bad day, huh?”

“One like never before.”

“Wish I could come over to keep you company,” she said. “No way I can leave Jarques here alone, though.”

“And I would never ask you to,” he said back. “By the way, I'm in your driveway.”

“Are you serious?”

“I have my things. I need to be with you tonight.”

Within seconds, Shonda flicked on the porch light, opened the front door, and said into the phone while looking directly at Coach, who was still sitting in his car, “Well, c'mon in. You're always welcome here.”

Coach climbed out of the car and followed Shonda inside the house.

Shonda sat down on the couch with Coach and poured two glasses of wine. “Believe it or not, this is a three-dollar bottle of wine,” she said.

Coach looked at the bottle, then took a sip. “Um, pretty good. Thanks. I really need it.”

“I got you, old man. . . .”

“We're not that much older than one another. Fourteen years apart.”

“Believe me, fourteen years is a long time.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” Then she kissed him on the cheek.

He looked around. “J asleep?”

“He should be. Said he was tired. I had him put on those shirts you got him. I think he really likes them.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he even showed me how to tie his tie.”

Coach smiled. “That's good. I learned something today too.”

She said, “From Jarques?”

“Yeah. He told me all about the True Religion brand.”

She laughed at the thought.

“Sure did. Told me it's what he needs to look good.”

“These kids have been brainwashed. I'm glad you didn't bring any True Religion up in here. What he has is just fine.” Shonda observed Coach for a moment. “First day on the job and you're already bringing it home with you, aren't you?”

Coach said, “Can't help it on this one. Too personal.”

“Remember, we can only control ourselves, so try not to let it get you down, okay?”

“Thank you,” he said. “Always good to hear someone with a level head.”

Shonda smiled at him. “I'm here.”

“Mean that?”

She nodded her head yes.

Coach said, “Well, if that's the case, we need to make it official.”

“Make
what
official?”

He pointed at her, then back at himself. This . . . you, me . . . as in one.”

“Are you serious?”

“I mean, only if you want to. I don't want to have to twist your arm to be with a brother.”

“Twist my arm? You would never have to do that.”

“Okay, cool, then. We're going to do this. We are officially dating.”

Shonda hit him on the leg. “See? You are an old man, with all this official stuff.”