The Snap, page 14
The detectives looked less like detectives than I’d expected.
I’d seen them coming and going as players and coaches shuffled in and out, so I knew what the two men physically looked like. But when my turn came on Friday and I was sitting across from them in the conference room, they were oddly less than what I thought they would be. Smaller.
“Thanks for meeting with us, Ms. Benjamin,” said Detective Andrews. He was old enough to be my grown son or inappropriately young boyfriend, with dark hair and a face he couldn’t quite make look serious.
“Poppy, please.”
The other man, Detective Prager, was closer to my own age, not heavyset but husky, like he enjoyed both eating and working out. His brown hair was thinning, with a yarmulke-sized bald patch I could see only when he sat down. “We were hoping to be done by now,” he said, then added with a wry smile, “we didn’t know there were a million of you.”
My smile back was tight. I wasn’t afraid of them—I didn’t kill Red—but I didn’t want to be in here for long.
Detective Prager produced a list of questions and proceeded to walk me through them in a voice that implied he was getting sick of asking them.
“Are you aware of anyone who may have wanted to hurt Red Guillory?”
“Only about thirty-one other head coaches.” Seeing the look Detective Prager shot me, I hastily added, “No, I’m not.”
“Are you aware of anyone who made threats against Red Guillory?”
“No.”
“Can you think of any reason why someone would have wanted to hurt Red Guillory?”
“No.”
Here Prager paused. He slowed way down, letting the silence stretch until it marched around with jazz hands before saying softly, “Is there anything…you’d like to tell us about the night Red was killed?”
I shifted in my seat. “Well, he called me, as I’m sure you know.” I gestured toward a pile of papers on the table. “And I didn’t pick up. I assume you can tell that, too.”
Prager nodded and pulled out a sheet of paper that I’d bet anything was filled with gibberish. “Yeah, we’ve checked out the call logs. Mrs. Benjamin—”
“It’s Ms.”
“Right, Ms. Benjamin. Did Coach Guillory call you often like that? Late at night?”
He arched an obnoxious little eyebrow at the subtext, and I chose my next words with intention, looking him straight in the eye. “He did. A lot of the players do too.”
Detective Andrews choked on his coffee, and I relished the look of shock on Prager’s face. Mrs. Benjamin. Ask me whatever you want, but don’t play stupid games.
“I’m a contact for them when there’s some kind of trouble—not this kind, obviously, but something that might embarrass them or embarrass the Bobcats. In the pre-Uber days I’d pick up drunk players so they weren’t driving home, that kind of thing.”
In reality it was much more likely that they’d call after they’d already done something stupid, like the time I swooped in to get a heavily inebriated linebacker who’d rolled his truck, created a cover story that he had epilepsy, and worked with Drea to create a yearlong program of nonprofit events raising money for the cause. He got nominated for the Walter Payton Man of the Year award. But I didn’t tell the detectives that.
“Okay,” said Andrews, somewhat recovered, “but you didn’t answer this time.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was busy.”
“At midnight?” Prager wanted to embarrass me, to save face, and his voice dripped with sarcasm. “I’m guessing there’s someone who can corroborate that, then.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Where were you?”
I sat back. “That’s personal, and since this is just an informal interview I’m sure you understand I’d like to leave it at that. I will tell you that I did not talk to or see Red Guillory after I left the stadium that night, I’d guess around eight fifteen. You can check my ID card swipe for the exact time. Can I ask you guys a question back?”
Prager and Andrews looked at each other, and then Prager shrugged in a way that clearly meant I could ask whatever I wanted but there wasn’t much chance of an answer.
“The Guillorys had security cameras. Shouldn’t your answer be right on that tape?”
“They were turned off,” said Andrews. He opened his mouth to say something else, but a barking cough from Prager stopped him.
No drugs or alcohol in Red’s system. No security cameras. What did that mean? What had Red been planning?
I stood without being dismissed. “Who can I send in for you next?”
Andrews consulted a list. “We’ll take Rodney Dupree.”
“Hey, Ms. Benjamin?” I was almost out the door when Prager spoke. His arms were folded across his barrel-shaped chest. “You know, Coach Guillory made a second phone call that night, and the person he called is the only other one who hasn’t been able to give us an alibi.”
“How frustrating for you. But you both seem pretty smart, I’m sure you’ll figure things out.”
I walked away with confidence, like the points of my heels were nailing the carpet to the floorboards, but in reality my suit was the only thing holding my body together. Everything I’d said was true—I didn’t kill Red, didn’t see or even speak to him after work that day. But I knew who else in this building Red called when he’d fucked something up, and as I passed Asbel’s office I was careful not to meet his eye.
* * *
*
Halloween-adjacent games were always messy. It might seem like one had nothing to do with the other, but no one loves a costume like a bunch of people already wearing face paint and jerseys. The fans were always a little rowdier, a little drunker, and—depending on the team’s record—either happier or meaner than normal. Our cheerleaders were dressed in Daisy Duke versions of Disney princess costumes. A group of fans with paper bags over their heads dressed as “Bobcats fans in December,” and I saw at least three people dressed as Zombie Red Guillory.
That was the environment into which we introduced Craig Washington.
He jogged out with the team to a chorus of boos, his still-vibrant hair a perpetual spotlight. An arc of cups and wadded-up garbage from the stands fell behind him like a comet’s tail. From the front row of the press box, the writers pecked frantically at their computers, a familiar blue bird flashing out from every screen.
“At least it’s the right holiday for it,” Rodney said, and then, when I raised my eyes dryly at him, “You know—boo?”
We won the coin toss and opted to receive, and as Atlanta kicked off I realized I was tapping my pencil against the press box table at triple speed. Raj, our kick returner, caught the ball near the ten-yard line and took off, managing to pick up twenty yards before being dragged down.
“All right!” I gripped Rodney’s shoulder. Maybe Coach Washington was the change we needed after all. Our receiver-heavy offense trotted onto the field, huddled briefly around A.J., and then took their places.
“Jesus,” said Rodney, seeing the way they lined up, with receivers stretched to both sidelines. “They look like a bag of spilled marbles.”
A spread offense was so called because the players are spread out across the field, which means the defense has to do the same to cover them. It gives options to throw the ball and space to run the ball, but most of all it puts pressure on the quarterback to make split-second decisions because all that blue sky in the middle is like a magnetic field pulling defenders toward him. A great quarterback could shine in that offense; a shakier quarterback—or an older, less mobile one—could lose a tooth. It was time to find out if A.J. still had it.
The ball was snapped, and A.J. handed it quickly off to Alec, who ran forward for two yards.
“Okay, okay,” I breathed. Two yards was fine. Two yards was a solid start.
When they lined up for second down, A.J., instead of tucking himself under the center, was several feet back in a shotgun formation. Rodney and I exchanged bracing looks. Here we go. A.J. clapped his hands, the ball shot backward, and he caught it, bouncing on his toes and checking down his receivers to see who was open. No more than three seconds had passed when—splat.
“Oooooh,” came the collective groan from the press box as A.J. peeled himself off the field. He shook out his head, huddled quickly, then sent everyone back to the line with another clap of his hands.
It was hard to watch. I hated A.J., but even I didn’t want to see him leave little bits and pieces of himself all over the ground. His jersey was filthy, with half of the letters of his name smeared away.
“Terrific,” I said, showing Rodney my phone. “ ‘Ufie’ ”—all that was left of the Caufield between his shoulder blades—“is trending.”
By the end of the game, I couldn’t blame the fans—those of them still in the stadium. It was always going to be bumpy transitioning midseason to a new offensive scheme, but A.J. was sacked seven times, two of which resulted in fumbles, and threw a pick-six. The defense, with A.J.’s crew going three-and-out more often than not, had spent the majority of the day on the field, and they limped toward the locker room looking like neglected ferns.
I rubbed my temples, staring numbly at the field. Beside me, Rodney snorted. “Well, that went well.”
* * *
*
“Did you try to fix this yourself?”
I stood in my office with my arms folded while Mohammad tinkered with my computer. After that massacre of a game I’d watched two episodes of The Americans (late to it, loved it) before lying awake most of the night. I’d gotten up as soon as the clock struck an hour that could reasonably be called morning and made it to the office while Chloe was still delivering the papers, then spent a frustrating few hours fighting with my glitching computer. My nerves were shredded—any small movement sent a jolt straight down my synapses.
“No.”
Mo stopped clicking around and gave me a look.
“Fine, yes.”
“A graveyard full of desktops,” he muttered. He stood. “Okay, well, you’ve killed this one, so I’ll have Nikko bring a new one this afternoon. It’s going to take some work to get everything configured, so you might want to pick up a project or something.”
Exasperated, I abandoned my office, and I tried texting Annika again.
Thinking of you. Here if you want to talk.
There was no response.
What now? We got the first note the day after Red was killed. Three days after that came the second, and two days beyond that the news broke about Annika. Now it had been almost another week. Sarah was still getting those creepy messages, and my skin crawled any time I stood near a window for too long, but there were no notes and no bombs. What did it mean? And why involve Dayanna and Nisha at all if nothing was going to happen to them?
I took a lap around the building and passed the detectives, now interviewing Dot. The younger detective met my eye through the window, and I increased my pace, taking the coach’s wing stairs down toward the dining room.
Coach Washington was there, with black coffee and a bowl of hard-boiled eggs. After a loss like yesterday’s I wouldn’t have gone near Red until at least Tuesday, but Craig seemed calm enough, if tired. “Coach,” I acknowledged politely. I had about ten seconds before I needed to get away from the scent of those eggs.
“Poppy Benjamin. We picked a hell of a time for the bye week, huh?”
Each team gets one week off per season, and this was ours. It meant no players in the building, no media—just a quiet little murder investigation and a series of threatening notes. “It probably would have been nicer for you to start after the bye so you could have had a longer runway. Are you settling in okay? Anything I can do to help you?”
He grinned, and a web of creases spread from his eyes and mouth. “You can try apologizing to my wife, since she doesn’t want to hear it from me,” he cracked. “She just convinced me to retire, and now I’m back here with a whistle around my neck.”
I pulled a sympathetic face. “It’s a big change going from Texas to Syracuse.”
“Oh, she’s not leaving Texas. We’ve been married long enough to give each other some space.”
Well, that must be nice. I knew that you started out thinking space was okay, that two people with busy careers could hold up their own skies and come together when it worked for them. That was how it had started with Peter and me. We were a perfect match, because who else could understand that I slept with my phone not on the nightstand but on my bed, right where my neck met the pillow? Who else but me would be okay with an emergency call that sent him stumbling out of a theater in the middle of a movie, stepping over purses and legs, then moving at a near run as he headed to the hospital? There was no guilt. There were no apologies.
And then, without warning, it changed. Peter wanted more of me than I could give. He planned trip after trip for us, crushed each time when I explained I had a game, I had training camp, I had to prepare for the draft. After a while it felt like he was planning those things because he knew I couldn’t do them, so that he could get angry with me.
And then, last winter, he broke it off. And found someone more available. And by the end of the summer had proposed to her.
“Oh man.” Craig’s voice pulled me back. His cell phone, on the table beside the eggs, was lit up with a text.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re saying Buster Gibbs had a heart attack. Nice, nice guy. He was manager of the Rangers for a while when we were both starting out, and our wives are real close, too. Actually, I’m sorry, Poppy, I should give Suzanne a call.”
I nodded and spit out some platitude. A horrible, creeping dread spread up my back like a sopping-wet blanket covering my shoulders.
Buster Gibbs was Dayanna’s general manager.
* * *
*
We need to tell someone, Sarah wrote to Nisha and me. That’s two deaths now.
We don’t know he’s dead, and it’s a heart attack, Nisha responded. They’re not that uncommon in portly old white guys. You seriously think someone took out Dayanna’s GM because she slept with a player?
Sarah had the decency to pause before responding, Why not? They killed Red because of whatever Poppy did.
I turned my phone off.
Dazed, I headed upstairs and toward my desk before remembering Mo was working on my computer. There was no media over the bye week, no players to deal with. I didn’t realize I was hovering over Chloe’s space until she looked up at me expectantly.
“Did you need me for something?”
“I—yes.” Her desk was covered with envelopes and Bobcats stickers. “How’s the fan mail going?”
“It’s okay. A.J. gets a lot of letters from weirdos.”
I know the feeling. I picked one up and skimmed it.
…wasting the best years of your career at a dying organization. You need a real team to show what you can still do…
Letters from weirdos…
“Chloe, why don’t you and I go to lunch?”
* * *
*
Chloe, I learned, was a pollotarian.
“And what is the thought process behind that?”
We were at a Moroccan restaurant on Marshall Street in the center of the university district. It was casual—counter service open to the bustling kitchen, and hard-backed green booths filled with a mixture of Syracuse students and employees from Crouse and University Hospitals down the street.
Chloe lifted her chicken shawarma pita, an entire meal encased in a bread pillow that set my mouth watering. “It’s an environmental thing. Like, red-meat animals belch methane and fish can be toxic, so chickens are the most sustainable meat source.”
“And pigs?” I strained to sound interested. I didn’t dislike the Earth, but cutting the plastic loops on a six-pack was more my speed on environmentalism. My fingers twitched toward my phone, still switched off in my pocket. I hadn’t gone this long without looking at it in at least a decade.
“So, pigs are bad because the wild ones dig into the soil and that lets off all these gases. Domestic pigs are better, but they still spread a lot of waste.”
I wondered how bread was for the environment because I was about five seconds away from knocking that pita out of her hands and shoving it in my face. What was I thinking, ordering a salad on a day like today?
I put my fork down and folded my hands. “Why don’t you tell me how you’re liking the internship.”
“I like it. Or I did, before. I still like it, and you and Rodney are great, it’s just—”
“It’s okay. I know what you mean.”
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for here, except that the notes came through the mail, which Chloe delivered, and she also read every piece of crackpot fan mail that came to A.J. Maybe she’d, I don’t know, noticed something or read something or just knew anything about anything that might be helpful. I watched her carefully for some sign I might be on to something and was startled to find her looking at me just as intently.
Neither of us blinked.
“It’s a strange time to be here,” I tried again. “I’m sure emotions are running high, and probably the mail…?” Nothing. She waited with raised eyebrows for me to finish, looking polite and slightly confused. Chloe couldn’t help me, this was a dead end. I sighed.
What would it be like to be the intern when the coach was killed? I hadn’t thought about Chloe for a second in all this, hadn’t checked in on her. Since Red died, I hadn’t even done the usual mentoring like asking about her plans for next year and creating a contact tree to help get her there. I had no idea who killed Red. I couldn’t explain what was happening to the WAGS or figure out what we should be doing about it, or even whether we were all still friends. But a young girl was sitting in front of me with hopes and ambitions and plans for her future, looking for some kind of leadership. And that, I could do.
