Starvation Lake

twenty-one

Seven dead judges peered down on the packed courtroom of the Pine County Courthouse. The portraits hung on walls of polished walnut, circa 1950, rising two stories from shellacked wood floors to a ceiling of pressed tin. Beneath the paintings, townspeople filled every one of the fold-down wooden chairs in ten rows of wrought-iron frames. Elvis and the Audrey’s crowd took up two rows on the prosecution side, just behind Dingus, D’Alessio, and Darlene. Joanie sat across the aisle one row behind the defense table, scrawling notes. I squeezed next to Neil and Sally Pearson standing along the wall on the prosecution side. I scanned the room for my mother. I figured she’d be there, if not for the action then at least for the socializing. A bunch of her bingo partners were sitting in the back, but Mom was not among them.

The room was dead quiet. Atop his tall wooden bench, Judge Horace Gallagher sat reading a piece of paper. On the brown leather of his chair back was the familiar dark spot left by the Brylcreem he wore on his just-so silver hair. Soupy sat before him with his head bowed slightly, his uncuffed hands flat on the table. I couldn’t see his face for the blond locks drooping around it. He wore an orange jumpsuit inscribed Pine County Jail on the back in big black letters. His attorney, Terence Flapp, sat next to him, digging in a folder.

Soupy had pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. That was a bit of a surprise, or so thought Sally Pearson, the town florist who in a rushed whisper filled me in on what had transpired so far. Everyone had expected a first-degree charge, but Sally said the prosecutor had cited “mitigating circumstances,” as yet unspecified, that dictated the lesser charge. The assault charge against Teddy Boynton had been dropped. He was now fully awake and feeling somewhat better, despite a slight skull fracture, a broken jawbone, and thirty-six stitches. I didn’t mind hearing about the jaw.

The unpredictable was as integral to Judge Gallagher’s courtroom as the delicate shapes of roses he had personally carved into the front of his bench. He was a distinctive man in Starvation Lake. He did not smoke, drink, swear, or cavort with women, but somehow he had been married six times. All of his ex-wives still lived in town, and all still claimed to be fond of Horace Gallagher, despite their apparent inability to live with him. His house on Main Street, one of the oldest in Starvation, was furnished almost entirely with items he had procured at a rent-to-own store in Traverse City, items that he frequently swapped out for even newer items two or three times a year.

In thirty-two years as a county judge, Horace Gallagher had won a reputation for driving lawyers crazy with his inscrutable questions and head-shaking rulings. He had a habit of interrogating prosecutors and defense counsel alike, even at pretrial proceedings. He was known for ordering hearings moved outside on balmy days-“Let’s play hooky,” he’d say-where he’d then indulge his hobby of bird-watching by noting in the middle of a lawyer’s disquisition that a pileated woodpecker had landed in an oak behind Fortune Drug. (This practice finally came to a halt when the state judicial commission got wind of it.) Yet for all of his eccentricities, he was a judge’s judge. He frequently took months to issue decisions that would be so precise and legally airtight that he had been overturned on appeal only three times, and in one of the cases he was later upheld by the state supreme court.

Now he was about to consider whether to grant bail to Soupy. “OK,” he said, handing whatever he’d been reading to the court reporter sitting below his bench. He squinted at the prosecutor. “Bond, Miss Prosecutor?”

Eileen Martin stood at her table, tall and gawky and looking like she might tip over in her heels. Leave it to Soupy to be prosecuted by a woman he’d once dated, cheated on, and then christened “Rudder Lips” to her face one night at Enright’s in front of five or six of her friends.

“Your Honor,” she said. “The county believes the defendant, Mr. Campbell, poses an unusually high flight risk. He is an unstable man with a long record of unpredictable behavior, as suggested by his various drunken driving arrests, as well as incidents as recent as last night in which-”

Flapp stood. “Objection, Your Honor.”

“Sustained,” the judge said. Sitting back, he looked as neckless as a turtle in his billowing robes. “Confine yourself to the case at hand, Miss Martin.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” she said. “Your Honor, the prosecution urges that bond be denied altogether and Mr. Campbell be returned to the county jail until trial.”

As she was speaking, I noticed Peter Shipman, who had been Leo’s attorney, slip into the jury box and sit down, alone.

Judge Gallagher turned to Flapp. “Counselor?”

Flapp stood, even taller and gawkier than Eileen. “Your Honor,” he said, “I can understand the court’s reluctance to grant bond where there’s an allegation of second-degree murder. Of course we expect at trial to show that my client is innocent. But for now, I beg the court’s mercy. Mr. Campbell is in a precarious time as regards his business, the Starvation Lake Marina. As you may know, Your Honor, the county zoning board is preparing to render a decision that could have a profound effect on this business and, frankly, on the entire town. My client would like dispensation merely to put his affairs in order. We would request forty-eight hours, Your Honor.”

“You want your client freed for forty-eight hours, then he goes back to jail?” Gallagher said. It was an unusual request but, as Flapp well knew, Gallagher was an unusual judge.

“Yes.”

“Your Honor,” Eileen said. “This is preposterous. There is no legal-”

“One moment, Miss Martin,” the judge said. He leaned forward and a sliver of neck appeared. “Mr. Flapp, if we’re going to consider something so out of the ordinary, I think it fair to everyone involved to hear a little more about the charges. This is a hearing, after all. Would you have an objection to hearing the affidavit for the arrest warrant read, or at least parts of it?”

Flapp looked flummoxed. “Well, Your Honor-”

“What I’m thinking, Mr. Flapp, is that perhaps we’ll hear something that might make me more inclined to be, as you say, merciful. Or I can simply rule now, and on the basis of there being a murder charge, I can assure you that your client would be headed directly back to the pokey.”

“No objection, Your Honor.”

Eileen stepped to a lectern in front of the judge and removed a thin sheaf of papers from a file folder. She cleared her throat. Everyone in the gallery leaned slightly forward. This was why they’d stood in line.

“Your Honor,” Eileen said. She began to read aloud. “At approximately eleven thirty-five p.m. on the date in question, the decedent Blackburn was in the forest approximately five miles northwest of the town of Starvation Lake, Michgan. He and an acquaintance, Leo Redpath of Starvation Lake, had been riding snowmobiles. They had stopped in a clearing to build a bonfire. The decedent Blackburn and Redpath heard the sound of a snowmobile approaching. The snowmobile was being operated by the defendant Campbell. The defendant Campbell stopped the snowmobile in the proximity of the bonfire. He appeared to be intoxicated. The defendant Campbell and the decedent Blackburn exchanged words. The defendant Campbell became highly agitated and-”

“Pardon me, Miss Martin,” Gallagher interrupted. “Tell me now, why is it that the county didn’t see fit to bring a charge of first-degree murder? Was this not a premeditated act?”

Flapp stood.

Eileen said, “Yes, Your Honor, we believe it was.”

Gallagher propped his glasses on his forehead and covered his face with his hands. I felt myself holding my breath. He removed his hands and his huge glasses fell into place. “Tell me, Miss Martin,” he said, “the prosecution does have a motive in this case, does it not? You plan to demonstrate precisely why Mr. Campbell would want to kill a man who had been his coach and, presumably, a mentor, even a father figure of sorts, for many years?”

“Yes, Your Honor, we do.”

“And these motivations,” he said, “would these prompt, say, a neutral observer-not an officer of the court, mind you, just regular folk; the lady at Ace Hardware, say, or the propane delivery man-would these prompt that person to conclude that what Mr. Campbell allegedly did was justified, in some, let’s say, moral sense, setting aside the law for the moment?”

“Setting aside the law, Your Honor?”

Gallagher waved her up to his bench. Flapp followed. As the judge listened to what Eileen Martin had to say, his face remained a blank. He glanced past them once at Soupy and nodded before sending them back.

“Miss Martin,” he said. “Please continue reading.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said. “Picking up where I left off…The defendant Campbell became highly agitated and produced a twenty-two caliber pistol…”

In the jury box, the lawyer Shipman was motioning toward the bailiff, who was sitting to Gallagher’s right. The bailiff stepped over to Shipman. Shipman whispered in his ear and handed him a piece of folded yellow paper. The bailiff walked it over to Soupy’s table and handed it to Flapp.

“…The defendant Campbell brandished the firearm in a threatening manner. The decedent Blackburn and Redpath attempted, without success, to persuade the defendant Campbell to disarm himself…”

Flapp unfolded the paper and read it. He showed it to Soupy, who glanced at it and turned away, pressing his eyes shut.

“…The defendant Campbell then fired two shots. The first bullet missed the decedent Blackburn and lodged in his snowmobile…”

Flapp stood. “Your Honor,” he said, brandishing the note. Gallagher had followed the note-passing and was now glaring at Flapp.

“…The second bullet struck the decedent Blackburn-”

“Excuse me, Miss Martin,” Gallagher said. Eileen Martin looked over at Flapp, annoyed.

“Mr. Flapp?” the judge said.

“Your Honor,” Flapp said. “May I approach?”

“This had better be good, Mr. Flapp.”

A murmur rose in the gallery as Flapp and Martin stepped to the bench. Gallagher tapped twice with the butt end of his gavel. “Quiet, please.”

Flapp handed him the paper. Gallagher read it once, then again, and offered it to Eileen Martin, who read it and handed it back. I couldn’t see the attorneys’ faces, but Gallagher looked perplexed. The three of them had a brief, whispered discussion, then the judge looked over at Shipman and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Mr. Shipman, can you tell me why the deceased here would need a lawyer? Are you representing his estate?”

“Your Honor,” Shipman said, “Mr. Redpath retained counsel approximately one day after the snowmobile washed up at Walleye. I was asked to deliver this note should any tragedy befall Mr. Redpath.”

“He wanted you to deliver it to the defendant, Mr. Campbell?”

“To his counsel, Your Honor.”

“I see,” Gallagher said. “Approach, please.”

Shipman eased out of the jury box and went to the bench. The judge leaned down and asked him something. Shipman nodded emphatically. His lips said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

Gallagher sent them all back. Eileen motioned to Dingus, who stood and leaned close to her while she whispered something. He immediately looked over at Shipman. Dingus kept his eyes on the lawyer as he sat back down.

The judge took his glasses off and directed himself to the court reporter. “For the record, Miss Reporter, I have just been handed a note from the attorney, Peter Shipman, who is representing Leo-excuse me-the estate of the late Leo Redpath. I have disclosed the note’s contents to counsel for the prosecution and the defense.”

Flapp whispered something in Soupy’s ear. Soupy put his head down on his clenched hands and shook his head an emphatic no. The gallery leaned closer still.

“So, Miss Martin,” Gallagher said. “What do we do now?”

“With all due respect, Your Honor, this note is merely hearsay at this point. Until we’ve had an opportunity to verify-”

“Yes, yes, Miss Martin, don’t worry, I’m not about to dismiss the charges, but let me ask you this: You have no body, is that correct?”

“That is correct, Your Honor, but the county is prepared to dredge Walleye Lake at the first opportunity.”

Gallagher turned to Dingus. “Is that right, Sheriff?”

Dingus half stood. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Had we only pursued such a seemingly logical step ten years ago, yes, Sheriff? Maybe we’d all be out watching the winter storm today. Instead, we’re here. So.” He looked at Eileen Martin. “Do we have a weapon?”

“Yes, we do, Your Honor.”

One of the other lawyers at the prosecution bench handed Eileen a clear plastic bag containing what everyone could see was a pistol. She held it up for the judge. “The county has marked this Exhibit 1-A,” she said. “It is a Browning Challenger III. 22-caliber pistol, manufactured in 1984. Although it was most recently in the possession of Mr. Redpath-our ballistics analysis indicates that he used it to inflict a fatal wound on himself-the gun was registered to the defendant, Alden Campbell, in January of 1988, and we have reason to believe it was used on the night Mr. Blackburn was killed.”

Another murmur rose and again Gallagher rapped with his gavel’s butt end. He looked skeptical. “Miss Martin, why would Mr. Redpath have had Mr. Campbell’s gun ten years later?”

Eileen lowered the bag. “Your Honor, what we believe we will elicit at trial is that Redpath had it for safekeeping.”

I looked at Soupy. His eyes were fixed on the table.

“Do you have other evidence, Miss Martin?”

“Your Honor, we have a witness who has additional testimony that, albeit indirectly, bears on the night in question. We would have had him here today but”-she turned and looked directly at Soupy-“he was detained.”

“Detained?” Gallagher said. “Just who is this witness?”

“Theodore Boynton, Your Honor.”

Of course. Boynton had known something himself and embellished it with whatever he’d picked up from Joanie and used it to blackmail Soupy. After Soupy stranded him at the zoning board, he’d gone to the police.

Gallagher turned to Flapp. “So what do we do, Mr. Flapp?”

Flapp stood. “Your Honor, based on the contents of the note delivered by Mr. Shipman, I would offer a motion to dismiss-”

“I wouldn’t do that, Counselor. Despite the fact that the circumstantial evidence in this case could just as easily point the finger of guilt at Mr. Redpath, and that this note proffered by counselor Shipman could just as easily be a cover for Mr. Redpath’s culpability, I am nevertheless inclined, for now, to give the benefit of the doubt to the prosecution out of respect for their professional integrity as well as that of Sheriff Aho, who in my experience does not bring defendants willy-nilly before this court.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Flapp said. “In the alternate then, this note, as Your Honor suggests, does raise serious questions about my client’s guilt in this matter. So again, addressing the question of bond, I would ask merely that Mr. Campbell be granted time to deal with the pressing matters pertaining to his livelihood.”

I didn’t think bailing Soupy out for even a few hours was a good idea. If he really cared about his business, his affairs would already be in order and he would have been at the zoning board meeting. The way he’d been acting of late, I thought he’d be safer-less of a threat to himself-behind bars.

Gallagher hitched himself forward. The faintest hint of a smile played on his lips. “Tell you what, Mr. Flapp, I’m certain that everyone in the courtroom would love to hear what it is we’re talking about.” He produced the note Shipman had given him and held it out to Flapp. “Would you do me the favor of reading this aloud?”

“Objection,” Eileen Martin said.

“Overruled. Counselor?”

Flapp stepped forward and took the note from Gallagher. The judge motioned for him to turn and face the gallery. The judge then said, “Mr. Flapp will read into the record a one-page note, as yet unauthenticated, handwritten in pen on yellow legal paper, purportedly by the late Mr. Redpath. Is it dated, Mr. Flapp?”

“Yes, Your Honor. Sunday. Two days ago.”

“Proceed.”

Flapp cleared his throat and read:

To the good people of Starvation Lake,

Today, I trust my higher power to guide me to a realm of peace, light, and rapture. No longer will I allow shame and guilt to control my feelings, nor will I willfully prevent myself from grieving the losses in my life. I am fully human on this day, and every day going forward.

Jack Blackburn was my mentor and my friend. He taught me many things about life. Knowledge can be a gift, and it can be a burden. Everything Jack did was rooted in the desire to live life to its fullest possibilities. This on occasion led him to places of shame and hurtfulness. He was human. He meant harm to no one. His knowledge became a burden he could not bear. On that night in the woods, Jack and I entered into a suicide pact. Jack honored his end of our agreement. I was weak at the time, and did not, until now.

You should look for Jack’s body in Walleye Lake, if it hasn’t been swept into the river by now. I pray I’ll be forgiven for keeping this to myself for so long. I pray this will satisfy those who want the truth, and release any and all who might mistakenly be held responsible. I am now willing to surrender to the darkness with the knowledge that light awaits me.

Flapp handed the note back to the judge. The gallery sat silent, stunned. I had begun to transcribe Flapp’s reading in my notebook but had to stop when he came to the suicide pact. I listened in a daze, without believing, without knowing what to believe. Nothing added up. I tried to picture Coach putting the pistol to his temple. I imagined Leo depositing the snowmobile in Walleye Lake. What “knowledge” could have prompted such an end? Why had Leo let Blackburn end his life if he didn’t think he could end his own? And why now, ten years later, had Leo felt the need to “honor” his end of the pact? Why hadn’t he simply confessed to what happened and let it be? What was he afraid of? Jail? The town’s recriminations? How had he concluded that a journey to peace, light, and rapture led down the barrel of a gun? Even if what he said happened had truly happened, there had to be something more, something darker and more sinister that he had determined to take with him to his grave. I looked at Soupy. He had lowered his head to the table and was gently shaking it, no.

Gallagher broke the silence. “I will be giving this note to the county for handwriting analysis. We’ll deal with that at trial, which I’m setting for March seventeenth, nine-thirty a.m. Mr. Flapp, I’ll give your client twenty-four hours, bond one hundred thousand dollars. Naturally you’ll need to post ten percent. When the twenty-four hours is up, he goes back to the county jail. Mr. Campbell, do you understand?”

Soupy’s answer was barely audible. “Yes.”

The judge looked at Eileen Martin. “Objections, Counselor?”

“Your Honor-”

Gallagher stopped her. “Keep in mind, Miss Prosecutor, that you have no body. You might have the weapon, or you might not. Many of the people in this courtroom, and in our town, are probably wondering why we’re dredging this up at all. Because it’s the law, of course, and the law is sacred. But the fact is, Miss Martin, I could shut this down right now, and the law would be served well enough.”

“No objection, Your Honor.”

Cigar ashes and snowflakes flecked Delbert’s steel-wool beard when I found him outside the courthouse. An unruly gray mane spilled from his black fedora. He wore his camouflage jacket open and hid his eyes behind Ray-Ban shades.

“You know,” he said, “we had a perfectly good picture of the sheriff on file. Did you even bother to look?”

A few feet away, gawkers crowded the courthouse steps to eavesdrop on Tawny Jane Reese interviewing Flapp. With one hand Delbert raised his camera to his shades and snapped off a clicking whir of pictures. Behind me I heard someone call out, “Hey, Gus,” and I turned to see Elvis, grinning and pointing toward Flapp. “The puck’s over here,” he said.

I turned back to Delbert.

“Well,” he was saying, “if you have a bottomless budget for film stock and developing chemicals, fine with me, I’ll just keep shooting these people over and over again. Maybe you could make a flip book.”

“I have to talk to you,” I said.

“Talk.”

“Over here.” I motioned him toward the street. Standing close, I smelled the cigar smoke clinging to his beard. “You knew Blackburn, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Delbert said. “Fine man. Fine businessman.”

“You did some business with him?”

“Now just hang on, sir, I had permission from the publisher himself, Mr. Nelson P. Selby, to do my freelance work with whomever I chose. It didn’t cost the Pilot more than-”

“I don’t care about that, Delbert. What was it you did for Blackburn? Take pictures? Develop film?”

“Both, actually. I shot stills at hockey practices, a few things out at his place when he was building. I made him some prints. Mostly I sent stuff away for him.”

“You took pictures when I was playing?”

“That’s right, you played, didn’t you. Yeah, I was out there a few times.”

“And what stuff did you send away?”

“All film. Eight-millimeter. Sent it for developing.”

“You didn’t develop it yourself?”

“Nope. Wasn’t my thing. I got it done by a guy downstate. Cheap and reliable. But”-he chuckled-“he was mixed up with some shady characters. Like the Mafia or something. I think he got whacked.”

“Whacked?”

“Killed. Someone killed him.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know. I made a delivery down there once. Wasn’t pretty.”

“Uh-huh. What was on the film?”

He tilted his head forward so that his pinprick eyes appeared between the brim of his hat and the rims of his shades. “Why do you care?”

“Look, Delbert, I don’t care if you did it on the Pilot ’s dime, OK? Like I said, I played for Blackburn. He meant a lot to me. I noticed some film in boxes in the photo files and wondered if it had anything to do with the team.”

“Jack thought it’d be safer, better organized, filed at the paper.”

Safer? I thought. From what? “Of course,” I said. “Did you ever look at any of it, by chance? The film, I mean?”

Delbert snorted. “A bunch of runts playing hockey? I hate hockey. You can’t see the damn puck. No, I just sent it to my guy.”

“And you think your guy got whacked because of a film of kids playing hockey?”

“That’s not what I said.”

A sheriff’s cruiser slid up to the curb where we were standing, Darlene at the wheel.

“Can I go back to doing my job?” Delbert said.

“Get the sheriff,” I said.

Dingus was coming down the walk toward us. He didn’t look happy. Tawny Jane followed along asking questions Dingus ignored.

“Sheriff?” I said as he neared me. I thought he was going to brush past, but he stopped. For a second I thought he might grab me again. He kept his voice low.

“What made you think you could go see my Barbara?” he said. Before I could answer he got in the car and slammed the door as Darlene pulled away.

My mother’s Jeep wasn’t in the driveway when I approached her house ten minutes later. Good, I thought. The fresh snow, now nine inches deep, groaned beneath my tires as I parked on the road shoulder. While the truck idled, I unlocked the back door and hurried into Mom’s basement. Mildew hung on the dank air. I reached into the dark and pulled the string that lit the ceiling bulb.

The 8-millimeter Bell amp; Howell projector was sitting atop a stack of boxes in the storage room Dad had built next to the water heater. I wrapped the cord around my left hand and gathered up the projector, rushing to get out before my mother came home. Halfway up the stairs I realized I hadn’t turned off the basement bulb. Hurrying back down in my wet boots I lost my footing and fell smack on the same spot I’d banged when I slipped on Boynton’s fish. “Son of a bitch,” I grunted. I stood, grimacing and rubbing my butt, snapped the light off, and struggled back up. At the top I looked out the kitchen window to see my mother pulling into the driveway.

“Gussy,” she said as she stepped into the kitchen, stamping the snow off her boots. She stared at the projector bundled under my arm. “What’s that for?”

“Oh,” I said, “I found some of these old films of our hockey practices and I thought, you know, with all that’s going on, it might be interesting to watch them.”

In silence she hung her coat and scarf in a closet by the door. She knew I was lying. She shut the closet and went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. “Can I fix you something to eat?” she said.

“No, thanks, I’ve got to get back. I didn’t see you at the hearing.”

“I didn’t go.”

“I thought I’d see you.”

“Well, maybe I’ve had enough of the past for one week.”

She was upset. She closed her eyes and leaned against the counter, letting her hands hang over the sink, dripping. I set the projector down, stepped behind her, and put my hands on her shoulders.

“Are you OK?”

She shook her head. “It just seems like the whole town is falling apart.”

“Come on.”

“Leo. All these questions about Jack. Everything was fine before that snowmobile. Now wherever I go, everybody’s talking about what really happened to Jack, what really happened to Leo, and I know they’re all thinking I have the answers, just because I happened to be here that night, trying to get some sleep. But I don’t have any answers. I don’t have any answers, Gus.”

She pulled away and went to the fridge and removed a carton of orange juice. As she took a glass from the dish drainer and poured, I saw that her hands were trembling. I grasped her shoulders and gently turned her to face me.

“Mom.”

“Dingus called,” she said. She took a sip of the juice, then set it on the counter. “The police want to see me. And that TV woman called.”

“You didn’t talk to her, did you?”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t polite.”

“What can you tell Dingus that you didn’t tell him ten years ago?”

Her eyes flitted over the projector on the floor. “I worry,” she said.

“About what?”

She folded her arms. “Do you remember the time you called me a bitch?”

Of course. We’d been fighting for the hundredth time about whether I could spend the night in Coach’s billets with the other River Rats. Unlike other kids my age, I didn’t fight much with my mother, maybe because since Dad died we were all each other had. But this time I might as well have slapped her across the face. We didn’t speak to each other for two days. When I finally apologized, all she said was, “You’re too young to understand,” and it made me so mad that I almost called her a bitch again.

“Yes,” I said.

“I wasn’t just being a bitch.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“No. You don’t know.”

“What? Why do you keep talking in riddles?”

She took my hands off of her shoulders. “Those little houses,” she said.

“What? It’s not like we had to go there to drink and smoke dope.”

“Never mind,” she said. “Why do you care if I talk to that TV woman?”

“I don’t.”

“Please.” She turned back to the sink and started wiping the counter, which needed no wiping. “Don’t you need to get to work?”

“Mom,” I said. “Tell me.”

“That night,” she said. “Leo…” She dabbed at an eye with the towel. “Leo told me…he said he did a terrible thing.”

“What terrible thing?”

“I wouldn’t let him,” she said. “He kept trying to tell me. I wouldn’t let him. Then the police came, and we never talked about it again.”

“Do you mean he killed Coach? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying.” She put the towel down. “Go to work.”

“Mom.”

“Be careful with your father’s projector.”

She pushed past me and disappeared into her bedroom.

When I walked into the Pilot newsroom, Joanie was on the phone, frantically scribbling notes. I went up front and found Tillie hunched at her computer, smoking and typing. “You have a message,” she said, gesturing toward a pink While You Were Out sheet on the counter. Someone had scribbled on it, “Mr. Carpenter, I’m a reporter with the Detroit Times. Any chance I could borrow your newsroom to file a story this afternoon? Many thanks, R. Kullenberg.”

“Someone from Chicago called too,” Tillie said. “Didn’t leave a message.”

“They’re descending,” I said. The out-of-town reporters would come and interview the regulars at Audrey’s and Enright’s and then write their overwrought stories about the little town with the big trial. And in a day or two they’d all be gone again, and I’d be stuck putting out the Pilot. I tossed the message in the garbage. “Did all the stringers’ stuff come in?”

“Except for the wrestling meet, yes,” Tillie said.

“Can you handle the wrestling story?”

“I cannot wait.”

On her phone the number 38 glowed red in the message window. “Whoa,” I said. “Did we get that many Sound Off calls?”

“It’s not many more than we usually get,” she said.

I let it go and punched the button to hear the first message: “This is Phyllis T. Fraser of 661 Oak Lane.” The elderly woman sounded like she was underwater. “My opinion is that of course there are tunnels in the lake. In point of fact my uncle Sherman’s boy Kevin, a graduate of the Michigan Technological University, says it has been studied by hydrogenists from his institution. And anyway, the tunnels are a tradition we’ve held dear for as long as I can remember, and I’m seventy-six, actually almost seventy-seven. We’ve always believed it. Who would think-”

“Hydrologists?” I said, while pushing the button for the next message. A man’s voice came on. “Can I ask you something?” he croaked. He cleared his throat, coughed, coughed again. “May I ask why you waste valuable space on items like this? Who cares about tunnels when we have a Social Security system that is-” I shut the machine off. Tillie was smiling.

“Any good ones?” I said.

“I’m on deadline.” She waved her hand in Joanie’s general direction. “Worry about your star reporter. She’s getting her precious career started, and what better way than to shovel dirt on a dead man’s grave?”

“What’s with you?” I said.

“Gus!” Joanie called out.

I went back to her desk. “What’s her problem?” I said.

Joanie glared past me in Tillie’s direction. “She spends most of her day eavesdropping,” she said. “My sources are always asking why I’m whispering.”

“What’s up?”

She lowered her voice. “The lawyers are going to be too chicken to run this story. Maybe you will be, too.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. What is it?”

“I got the kid in Canada.”

“Which kid?”

“The kid who was a big star for Blackburn and just quit? The one with the diary? He’s an adult now, of course. His aunt, the newspaper lady in St. Albert, told him about me. He just called me out of the blue.”

She seemed at once excited and oddly put off, almost as if something had offended her.

“What’d he say?”

“I’m warning you. This is nasty stuff.”

“What?”

She made me sit closer to her on her desk and whispered, “This kid’s name was-is-Brendan Blake. He was a good player. A really good player. Pro scouts were watching him. I guess Blackburn knew some of the scouts, and he got them to come out. That’s about when the weird stuff started. A couple years later, Brendan was out of hockey altogether.”

“What weird stuff?”

“Bad stuff, Gus.”

“OK. Just tell me.”

She took a deep breath. “Blackburn started getting this kid alone,” she said. “Mostly on road trips. Sometimes at home. He was abusing him.”

“You mean-”

“Sexually, yes. It’s all in the diary.”

“Jesus. How?”

She told me in a flat, clinical whisper. As I listened, I felt my throat constrict. How could a teenaged boy write such things down?

“Why would a kid-why wouldn’t his parents have called the cops?” I said.

“Come on, Gus. These are hockey parents in a hockey town. How do you think their kid would’ve been treated?”

That I could certainly imagine. Regardless of what happened to Blackburn, the kid would’ve been branded a pansy who should have fended off his coach’s advances. The players, some of the other coaches, even some of the fans would have called him “fag” and “homo” and worse. He would’ve had to leave town himself. Which he apparently did anyway.

“So they just got Blackburn to leave?”

“Yeah.”

“Like in the other place.”

“I’m betting. I’m not sure yet. I have some calls in.”

“Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

“Why wouldn’t he? What’s he got to gain now? It was like he was glad to talk to me, like he’d been waiting for me to call. And he was dying to know what happened to Blackburn. Said he was sorry to hear it.”

“He was sorry to hear the guy who supposedly abused him was dead?”

“Not supposedly.”

“You look a little pale. You all right?”

She shook her head. “You know,” she said, “we had a priest like this at my high school.”

I imagined a middle-aged man, baggy-eyed and paunchy in a black cassock. “Was Brendan angry?” I said.

“I don’t think so. At least not anymore. I mean, it’s been thirty years.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“He’s an electrician. Married. Two little girls.”

I’d heard enough. “OK,” I said. “Write it.”

“Write a story, Gus? Are you sure?”

“He’s on the record, right?”

“Yes.”

“And his story checks out with the folks back in St. Albert?”

“Yes, I went back to them.”

“And it goes to motive, right?” Soupy’s motive, I had to admit.

“Well, only indirectly, unless we know that Blackburn sexually abused players here in Starvation Lake.” Her tone was expectant. But I had no answer for her. This man she was describing was not the one who’d taught me to play goalie and sat at my Sunday dinner table.

“If it happened here,” I said, “I didn’t know about it. Just write it. Straight and simple.”

“OK. I already filed the arraignment story. Boy, was that weird. Do you believe this suicide pact stuff?”

“I don’t know what to believe,” I said. I went to my desk and sat down. And I remembered.