The Prophet

4

WHAT KENT TOLD THE BOYS in the locker room—Enjoy this one, all right? Don’t look ahead yet. Tonight, relish the opportunity you’ve had to play ball this season with your best friends. But keep your heads down. We aren’t done— was something he believed. They were entitled to a night of celebration. The intensity of focus he demanded on the field needed to be released when they stepped off it. This was a game, and these were kids, and they needed to enjoy it.

For him, though, there would be no celebration. There had been an alarming number of mental errors made, fundamental mistakes, and those sickened Kent. He could tolerate many things, but not those that should have been handled by preparation and practice.

The digital age was a beautiful thing for a football coach. Less than an hour after the game concluded, he and his assistants already had the chance to watch a high-definition replay. Coffee had been made and cans of soda opened. No alcohol was allowed on school grounds, but after this session, most of his assistants would go out to drink together. Kent rarely joined, for two reasons: one, he didn’t drink, and two, far more important, he understood that his staff often needed the opportunity to vent without him around. Or, more aptly, the need to vent about him. His was not a relaxed coaches’ room, nothing about it was low-key, not even after victory, and he understood that this wore on them. He did not intend to address that by relaxing the tone, but he did know that it needed to be addressed. So they’d invite him out to join the festivities and he would decline, and it was better for everyone that way.

Before he released them, though, they’d assess the night’s performance and agree to responsibilities for the next day’s video breakdown. Tonight he knew that they wanted to get out early. Byers was hosting a celebration, and because of that, Kent would hold them a little longer. There were four games left, and they could refresh themselves on that notion before they refreshed themselves with a Budweiser.

While they all looked at their watches and then at the door, he hooked up the laptop to the projector and suggested they have a quick look at some key plays.

The first key play was that fumbled kickoff, and even though they knew it was coming, everyone shook their heads. Colin Mears didn’t make mistakes like that. He just didn’t.

“Won’t happen again,” promised Steve Haskins, who coached the receivers and special teams units. “First playoff game, lot of crowd energy, he was trying to show off a little, that’s all. Break a big one for his parents, for his girl.”

Kent nodded, but something felt off about the explanation.

“Something was up with him tonight,” Kent said.

“He came back fine,” Haskins said. “Big second half. Big.”

“Yeah,” Kent said, but still he was bothered. Maybe that’s why it didn’t come as a total surprise when he got the call from the police.

It was almost midnight and they were still watching the game video. The ringing phone got an immediate reaction, because one of the swiftly understood rules of Kent’s locker rooms was that cell phones did not exist. He didn’t hold his staff long, but when he had them there, he demanded focus. Each year there would be some new assistant who’d decide it was acceptable to send a text message or check an e-mail during a meeting. That would happen once. It would not happen twice.

This call came on the locker room landline, which almost never rang. All of the coaches were given the number at the start of the season with specific instructions to share it with family. You never knew when someone was going to need you for something bigger than football. Kent answered the phone, heard a man identifying himself as a lieutenant, and closed his eyes. It was not the first call from the police to this locker room, nor would it be the last. Boys got in trouble, even good boys.

So it wasn’t the caller’s identity that rattled Kent but the player’s name. Colin Mears. Something was wrong with him, he thought. Something was wrong and I could see it but I didn’t ask, why didn’t I ask?

“What’s he gotten into?” Kent said, and his voice drew attention from the other coaches. The next thing he said—whispered, really—was “Oh, Lord,” and then Byers grabbed the remote and shut off the video.

“Of course,” Kent said into the phone while his assistants stared at him, trying to read the situation from the one-sided conversation. “Of course I can provide witnesses. Fifty of them.”

That got a visible reaction, everyone turning to look at one another.

“I’ll come down,” he said. “You tell his parents I’m going to come down. Please.”

He hung up, the room silent, everyone waiting.

“Rachel Bond is dead,” he said. They all knew who she was. It was a small school and a smaller football program. When you had an all-state receiver on the roster, your coaches knew his girlfriend. “They’ve got Colin down at the jail.”

“No way,” Haskins said. “Absolutely no way on earth could that boy have—”

“Of course not.”

“But they think?”

“I don’t know,” Kent said. “Probably not. He’d be one of the first to look at, that’s all. I guess they need me to confirm where he was this afternoon and tonight. They want to see me.”

Byers said, “First to look at. You’re not talking a car wreck. Someone killed that girl?”

Kent nodded.

There was a hushed pause. Kent picked his keys up off the desk, stood, and said, “Get on home, gentlemen. Go see your families.”

He drove with the windows down and the radio off and he prayed aloud, as was his habit when he drove in the darkness. He prayed for Rachel Bond and her family and for Colin Mears and for the police tasked with the investigation. Prayed for everyone he could think of except himself, because of all the people deserving, he was well down on the list.

Prepared for this, he told himself, flicking a glance at the mirror. You are unusually, terribly prepared for this. Every horror has its purpose, and this…

He prayed for his sister then, and her name rose through him and passed his lips like a strand of cold barbwire tugged from a coil within. Marie Lynn. How it hurt to let that go, as if by saying it aloud he was releasing her into a world that would not return her, and he knew that but did it anyhow. Memories of the dead. You wanted them close; you needed them far.

The police station was bright, clean limestone, the sidewalk marred by scattered leaves. Kent crunched through them and went up the steps to where the Mears family waited.

Looking for a leader, he reminded himself. It was important to know that people were watching. You carried yourself differently when you remembered that, carried yourself better. There under the bright lights when the crowd was watching, you could become a different man, the one you knew you should be. How much better would the world be if everyone operated under the lights and before the crowd, if they were not granted moments alone in the dark?

The police led him through a hall and into a room where Colin Mears and his parents sat at a small round table. Colin’s face was a winter pallor with anguished and unbelieving eyes. Kent said, “Let’s do what we have to do to help her, son. Let’s do that first.”

He meant doing this: the police station, the questions. He meant holding his head above the waters of grief for just a little longer. The boy understood.

“Yes, sir,” Colin Mears said. “I’m trying.”

Kent reached across the table and laid a hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and Colin’s mother, Robin, said a soft “Thank you for coming.” Kent nodded and stepped back and looked at the police officer who’d brought him in, a Lieutenant Salter.

“Anything you need from me, or my staff, I can get you immediately. Beyond my statement, and verification that he was with our team, what can we offer that will—”

“Hang on, Coach,” Salter said. “We don’t need any of that from you. We know where Colin was, and we understand that can be verified several hundred times over. What we need is a little more personal to you.”

“Personal?” Kent said, and he thought, Here it begins, the shared experience. They will want you to tell the boy how to carry this weight, because you had to once before.

“Yes,” Salter said. “Do you have any idea how we might get in touch with your brother?”

Kent swiveled his head a quarter turn, as if he’d had his ear in the wrong place and missed the question.

“My brother.”

It wasn’t Lieutenant Salter who answered but Colin.

“He helped her, Coach. But she wasn’t… I don’t think she was honest with him.”

“Helped her,” Kent said. “My brother helped Rachel.”

He was squinting at the boy now.

“You have a number for him?” Salter asked. “We haven’t been able to reach him. Sent someone out to his house, but he’s not there.”

“Probably a little early for that.”

“It’s past midnight.”

“Yes,” Kent said, and then he looked at Colin, catching up now. “You went to him for help with her father?”

“He wrote to her that he was out of prison. She wanted to find him. She believed him. We both believed him. And so I suggested…”

His words were swept away from him then like flimsy things in a gust of wind, and Kent said, “What do you mean, you believed him?”

Salter answered for the boy.

“Rachel’s father never left prison, Coach. We don’t know much yet, but that part is clear. So whoever your brother found for her… well, it was not her father.”

“She didn’t tell me she was going alone,” Colin said, the tears spilling now. “I wouldn’t have let her do that. She promised me I could go with her. I got a message just before the game, she said she was going to see him and would meet me at the game, but she wasn’t there. She was missing at the start and she…”

Was missing at the end. Kent didn’t need the boy to finish that sentence. He thought of the fumbled kickoff, the kid standing there alone waiting on a football to float through the air to him and trying to tell himself that it mattered. Why hadn’t he told anyone? What might have been avoided if he’d spoken?

But of course he wouldn’t have said anything. Kent’s demands on the field were consistent: total focus. Total.

“The place where… where she was located,” Salter said, choosing his words with gentle care, “is not where she was sent. This is why we need your brother. To find that place.”

Kent lifted a hand, squeezed the bridge of his nose, and told himself to focus. He could not think of the full weight of it yet, could not allow himself to consider the scope of this night, the way it was spreading away, seeping into corners he’d never imagined it would touch.

“I can give you his cell phone number,” he said. “I just can’t guarantee that he’ll answer.”

Salter took the number and left to make his call and then, for a few minutes, it was just Kent and his star receiver and the boy’s parents. Kent said, “Tell me how we got here, son.”

It started in the summer, Colin explained, and this much Kent already knew. Rachel was around their house often because she was their regular babysitter and because Kent’s wife, Beth, had taken a special interest in her. Mostly, Kent left her to Beth. The exception was in the situation with her father, who’d never been a figure in her life and was currently in prison. She was interested in Kent’s prison visits, asked about them often, from details of the cells to what he thought of the men inside. She told him that she wanted to see her father again. It had been nearly ten years since their last encounter, when he stopped by to drop off a birthday card days after her seventh birthday, a crumpled ten-dollar bill inside, and Rachel’s mother, a woman named Penny Gootee, chased him off. Kent’s advice was to start with a letter. He warned her not to expect an answer.

She’d received one.

Short, curt, and to the point. Jason Bond was sorry they did not have a relationship. He appreciated her taking the time to write. He hoped her mother was well. Things for him were as good as could be expected. She was to stay in school, take care of herself, and make better decisions than he had.

Kent remembered this letter. He also remembered that the four Rachel sent back went unanswered. He’d tried to counsel her through that, tried to remind her that she represented guilt to the man, and that you could not rush a relationship along, could not force one into existence.

He was unaware of other letters. He hadn’t pressed after learning that those beyond the initial attempt had been ignored. Then the season began, and while he was focusing on football, she was focusing on her father. Letters had been exchanged regularly, according to Colin, who had seen most of what Rachel’s father had to say: apologies, always couched in the warning that he did not want to fail her again and perhaps they should not be in contact. There was talk of guilt, talk of almost everything Kent had explained to her earlier in the summer.

There was also talk of a pending release.

By September the letters were more frequent, and more detailed. Jason Bond said he was back in Chambers, close enough to tantalize the daughter who wanted to meet with him. But he would not be rushed. He urged her to understand that one-way communication was best, urged her not to discuss the situation with her mother because that was another relationship that he was not ready to handle just yet, if ever.

Not a bad ploy, because Rachel Bond’s relationship with her mother was hardly a strong one. Penny Gootee was an alcoholic, given to struggles with depression and greater struggles with maintaining employment. Her only words for Rachel’s father were soaked in bitterness. If there was one person to whom Rachel was unlikely to rush for guidance, it was her mother.

So she rushed to her boyfriend, to Colin. He had an idea. If she wanted to find a way to return her father’s letters, she would have to locate him. And Coach Austin? He had a brother who was a detective.