Change-up: Mystery at the World Series

20: JIM HATLEY

MILES HOY PULLED AWAY from the curb and had driven to the corner before Stevie recovered from his shock and found his voice again.

“Miles, what’s this about?” he said. “Are you in on this too?”

Hatley laughed. “Miles isn’t in on anything,” he said. “Nancy Molloy called me and said you kids were talking to Joe. She’s scared because Joe’s scared. She asked me if I would talk to you because she’s afraid you won’t believe Joe.”

“Why wouldn’t we believe him?” Susan Carol asked.

“Because he lied to you on Friday,” Hatley said. “He called me that night to ask me why I ran you off. Then he told me he panicked and lied to you.”

“So you two are friends?” Stevie asked, becoming more incredulous by the minute.

“No, not at all,” Hatley said. “But he told me you snooping around could be trouble for Norbert Doyle. And he was my friend, once upon a time.”

“So what did happen that night?” Stevie said. “What’s the truth?”

Hatley held a hand up. “Let’s wait until we get to my house. You can run a tape recorder once we get there.”

“So you’ll talk to us on the record?” Stevie said.

“I will only talk to you on the record.”

They drove in silence through the rain until they came to Brill’s Lane, which Stevie recognized immediately. His stomach churned a little bit at the memory of the great dog chase. Hoy pulled into the driveway.

“You stay here, Miles,” Hatley said.

“I think maybe I should come in,” Miles said.

“I understand,” Hatley said. “But you stay here. The kids will be fine.”

Stevie wasn’t so sure he wanted to take Hatley at his word, but the look on his face made it clear that Miles wasn’t going to be welcome inside.

“It’s all right, Miles, we’ll be okay,” Stevie said.

“Don’t worry,” Hatley said, climbing out of the cab. “Remember, I came looking for them, not the other way around. This won’t take long. You can probably make it back to Washington for the game tonight.”

He got out and started walking into the house. Stevie looked at Susan Carol. They could easily get away right now. “Should I take off?” Miles said.

“No,” Susan Carol said. “We need to talk to him anyway. Let’s go, Stevie.”

They both followed Hatley up his front steps and into the house, which was apparently unlocked. He led them into a large living room with a high ceiling and a large fireplace. Hatley gestured for them to sit, then tossed a couple of logs into the fireplace and knelt to light them.

“You kids want anything to drink?” he said once the fire was started, acting as if they were old friends who had dropped by for a Sunday visit.

“Thanks, we’re fine,” Susan Carol said.

“Actually, I’d like a Coke if you have one,” Stevie said. He was thirsty and he wanted a moment alone with Susan Carol.

“Be right back,” Hatley said.

He walked off, presumably to the kitchen.

“Why do I feel like this is another setup?” Stevie hissed at Susan Carol.

“Stay calm,” she said. “He clearly wants to talk, so we’ll let him talk. Maybe we’ll even believe him…”

Hatley walked back in carrying an ice-filled glass of Coke and a coffee mug. He looked at Susan Carol. “You sure I can’t get you something?”

Susan Carol shook her head. Hatley sat down in a chair next to the couch. He turned to Stevie. “First, I want to apologize to you for Friday,” he said. “I got carried away. Watching Norbert pitch the other night-I was so happy for him after everything he’d been through. And then this guy Walsh came by telling me there’d be reporters down here snooping around, trying to ruin it for him. And not two hours later there you were. I overreacted.”

The man sipping coffee in front of a fire on a rainy Sunday afternoon was considerably different than the snarling jerk who had confronted Stevie two days earlier.

It suddenly occurred to Stevie that he hadn’t seen or heard the dog who’d chased him. “Where’s your dog?” he asked, even though it was an irrelevant question.

“Out in the barn,” Hatley said. “I didn’t want to scare you to death again.”

This was all too weird. Two days ago Hatley sics his crazy dog on him. Then he shows up out of nowhere and half kidnaps them, and now he’s mister sensitive? Susan Carol was clearly thinking the same thing.

“Okay, Sergeant Hatley,” she said. “Why don’t you tell us your version of what happened that night?”

“It will be my pleasure,” Hatley said. “Where’s your tape recorder?”

The back part of Hatley’s story wasn’t all that different than what they already knew-or thought they knew-except for one key thing: Hatley had been friends with Norbert Doyle and they did hang out at the same bar, but they were not (according to Hatley) drinking buddies.

“If you do any research on cops, a lot of us drink too much,” Hatley said. “But it wasn’t like that with me and Norbert. I went into King’s Tavern after work to eat. The food there was good, and it was the only place in town where the kitchen stayed open late.

“I’m fifteen years older than Norbert. He was a kid when he was here-twenty-four, twenty-five? I was closer to forty. It was a happy time in my life. My marriage was good, and my kids were teenagers. I already had fifteen years in on the force and wanted to get to twenty-five so I could have enough money to build a house like this, hunt and fish, and maybe do some part-time work teaching. I have a degree in animal pharmacology from Virginia Tech, and I teach part-time over at Radford University.”

He paused, picked up his coffee mug, and smiled.

“I’m betting Joe left that out of his story.”

Stevie and Susan Carol both nodded. He had.

Hatley went on to say that Doyle was one of several ballplayers who had come into King’s-same reason as the cops: good food and a kitchen that stayed open late.

“Norbert, sober, was a good guy,” he said. “Good sense of humor, very self-deprecating, especially after he didn’t pitch well. But he drank a lot. It got to the point where I was driving him home a lot of the time. That was when he’d talk about his marriage.”

“What about his marriage?”

“It was falling apart. He said he and Analise were fighting all the time. He was convinced she was cheating on him when he was on the road. That’s kind of a ballplayer’s ultimate nightmare, you know. The travel schedule is hard on any marriage, especially when you’re kicking around the minor leagues. And drinking makes you paranoid.”

“Paranoid?” they both said.

“Yes, paranoid,” Hatley said. “Norbert thought there was something going on between Analise and Joe Molloy.”

“And you’re saying there wasn’t?”

Hatley shook his head. “Like I told you, Joe and I were never friends. He was always a pretty boy who played a lot of politics in the department. That’s how he got to where he is right now. But he loves his wife. I can’t know for sure, but I don’t believe there was anything going on.

“Sober, Norbert knew Analise would never cheat on him. Drunk, he wasn’t so rational.”

Stevie and Susan Carol looked at one another. The story kept getting more complicated by the minute.

“Just so I’m clear on this,” Susan Carol said. “You aren’t trying to say that the accident wasn’t an accident, are you?”

Hatley shook his head. “No, I’m not saying that. What I’m trying to tell you is the reason Joe went along with the way I wrote the report.”

Stevie started to say that they already knew why, but Susan Carol shot him a look that clearly said, “Keep quiet.”

“Joe knew that Norbert shouldn’t have been driving that night,” Hatley said. “He got a phone call from the restaurant where Norbert and Analise were having dinner.”

“He told us that,” Susan Carol said. “He got there too late.”

“No, he didn’t,” Hatley said. “He never went. He called me and said, ‘Your pal’s drunk again, go drive him home so he doesn’t hurt Analise.’ I was the one who got there too late.”

“Why didn’t he go himself?”

“I guess he thought Norbert Doyle was my problem, not his.”

Stevie’s mind was swimming upstream. At that moment he was completely convinced that Hatley was telling the truth. Molloy had lied once, why not a second time? The good cop was turning out to be the bad cop, and the bad cop was turning out to be the good cop.

“Does Norbert know this?”

“I don’t know… Norbert was a mess after the accident, as you can imagine. I may have told him, I don’t remember, but he wasn’t in any state to take it in one way or the other. He only ever blamed himself.”

“Molloy told us the reason he went along with your report was because you agreed to get Norbert to go to rehab.”

Hatley laughed. “He told you that? Wow, that’s good. I told Norbert he was going to rehab in the hospital that night. You can ask him that if you want. Joe went along with the report because he knew if he had responded to the call from the restaurant himself, instead of calling me, the Doyles wouldn’t have been in the car that night. He was saving his own skin.”

“Does Mrs. Molloy know all this?” Susan Carol asked.

“No, I’m sure not,” Hatley said. “And I’ll be very sorry when she finds out her husband hasn’t been honest with her all these years.”

“Have you talked to Norbert this week?” Stevie asked.

He shook his head. “No. We keep in touch sporadically, mostly by e-mail now. He updates me on the kids, things like that. I wrote to him to congratulate him after game two but didn’t hear back, which certainly isn’t surprising. Then that guy Walsh showed up on my doorstep saying that if I talked to anyone in the media, it could cost Norbert millions.”

“You just talked to us,” Stevie said.

“I know,” Hatley said. “But the ship sailed on this staying secret days ago. I mean, what are the chances I could convince you this has nothing to do with baseball and that you shouldn’t write about it? About zero, I’d guess. So if it’s going to come out, it should come out the way it really happened.”

“Norbert hasn’t told the truth about what happened,” Susan Carol said. “That makes it a story.”

“Maybe. But maybe you can understand why he wouldn’t want it splashed over the headlines. Norbert was a good guy going through a very bad time: he was killing his career and his marriage with his drinking. He’s carried the guilt for Analise’s death around for twelve years, and I don’t think he’s had a drink since that night. That may not be the squeaky-clean, feel-good story people are looking for, but it’s not a bad story of redemption, if you ask me.”

There was something to that, for sure. Susan Carol stood up. “Can we get a phone number for you?” she said. “I’m sure we’ll want to get back in touch before anyone writes anything.”

He pointed at her notebook, which she handed him, and wrote down a phone number. “There’s my e-mail too,” he said, handing the notebook back. He led them to the door. “I’m sorry again about Friday,” he said. “I overreacted. All I really want is what’s best for Norbert and those kids.”

They shook hands at the door and then sprinted back through the rain to the cab.

“You guys okay?” Miles Hoy asked when they climbed back inside.

“We’re fine,” Susan Carol said. “Just completely, absolutely, and totally confused.”

Stevie called Kelleher from the cab to tell him they had spoken to both Molloy and Hatley.

“That’s good work,” Kelleher said. “What’d you figure out?”

“It’s complicated,” Stevie said. “The next train back is at four-thirty. Why don’t I call you from the train? I’ll fill you in then.”

On the way to the train station, they told Miles Hoy about Hatley’s version of events.

“I never heard about him teaching over at Radford,” Hoy said. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Easy enough to check, I guess.”

“Miles, can we possibly ask you one more favor?” Susan Carol said.

“Name it,” he said.

“I know you weren’t here back then, but you must know some of the cops who have been on the force long enough to remember what it was like at King’s Tavern back then. We don’t have time to hang around here and try to track them down, but maybe…”

“I can do that,” Miles said. “In fact, I think I can do better than that. I know the guy who’s owned the place since it opened. Mickey DeSoto. Nicest guy you’ll ever meet. I think he’d remember those days.”

Stevie looked at his watch. “Is King’s open today?” he said.

“Absolutely,” Hoy said. “They serve a brunch and then dinner on Sunday.”

“Do you think Mr. DeSoto would be there now?”

“I’d think so…”

“We’ve got an hour and fifteen minutes until the train,” Stevie said. “How about we swing by there?”

He looked at Susan Carol, who nodded. “Great idea,” she said. “Maybe we can get a better sense of who-if anyone-is telling the truth.”