Trial By Fury

CHAPTER 8

I've never faced a tougher audience. Browning was right. Those kids were hurting and needed answers. As a group they had taken a closer look at death than most kids their age. Adolescents aren't accustomed to encountering human mortality on a regular basis. Two times in as many years is pretty damn regular.

They needed to know when Darwin Ridley had died, and how. Evidently, some helpful soul had spread the word that Ridley was despondent over the loss of the game and had committed suicide on account of it. The asshole who laid that ugly trip on those poor kids should have been strangled.

I answered their questions as best I could, fudging a little when necessary. I knew what would happen as soon as they stepped out of Ned Browning's artificial cocoon and the me dia started chewing them to bits. The principal stayed long enough to hear my introductory remarks, then left when Peters and I started our routine questioning process.

It took all afternoon to work our way through the group, one at a time. It was a case of patient prodding. The kids were understandably hesitant to talk to us. Candace Wynn, the guidance counselor, hovered anxiously on the sidelines.

Peters was a lot more understanding about that than I was. I had no patience with what I viewed as a direct impediment to our conducting a thorough investigation. As a consequence, we split the room by sex. I talked to the boys, the team members, and Peters dealt with the girls, the cheerleaders-helpless chicks to Mrs. Wynn's clucking mother hen. At least it kept her out of my hair.

Surprisingly, in spite of all that, we did get a few answers fairly early on. One of the first team members I interviewed was a gangly kid named Bob Payson, captain of the basketball team. I asked him if he had noticed anything unusual about Darwin Ridley's behavior the night of the game.

Payson didn't hesitate for a moment. "It was like he was real worried or upset or something."

"He was preoccupied?" I asked.

Payson nodded.

"Before the game? After it? During?"

"The whole time," Payson answered. "He was waiting at the gate when the team bus got there."

"The gate?"

"To Seattle Center. The team buses all stop at that gate there on Republican."

"Across from Bailey's Foods?"

Payson nodded. "That's right."

"He didn't ride on the bus with the team?"

"That was weird, too. Always before he rode the bus, but not this time."

My ears pricked up at that. Something out of the ordinary. Something different in the victim's way of doing things the night of the murder. Most human beings are creatures of habit. They don't like change, they actively resist it wherever possible. A change in Darwin Ridley's behavior the night he died might well be connected to his murder.

"So he didn't ride the bus, and he seemed worried when you saw him?"

"Yeah. He was looking up and down the street like he was waiting for someone. He told us to go on in and suit up, that he'd be inside in a minute."

"Was he?"

"No. He didn't come in for a long time. In fact, he got to the dressing room just before we had to go out and warm up. He didn't even have time to give us our pep talk."

"That was unusual?"

"You'd better believe it."

"He was a good coach?"

"The best."

"So what happened during the game?"

"We were leading by two points at halftime. He talked to us then, told us we were doing great." Payson paused.

"And then?" I prompted.

He frowned. "Just before time to go back on court, someone came to the door and talked to him."

"Did you see who it was?"

"No. They knocked. He opened the door and talked through the crack to whoever it was. After they left, he went over and sat down on one of the benches. He told us to go on, that he'd be out in a minute. He looked real upset."

"There wasn't anyone in the hallway when you went out?"

"No. At least I didn't see anybody."

"And did he come right out?"

"I don't know exactly when, but it was after the half started."

"That was unusual?"

"I told you. Coach Ridley was a good coach. He never missed part of a game before that, as far as I know."

"What about after the game?"

"We were pissed."

"Why?"

"The ref made a bad call in the last two seconds. They won by two points. On free throws."

Payson was suddenly quiet. He sat there fingering the intertwined M and I emblazoned in white felt on his maroon letterman's jacket. He seemed close to tears.

"What is it?" I asked.

"He just walked off. I couldn't believe it. He never said anything to us. Not good game. Not nice try. Nothing. Not even a word about the bad call. It was like he couldn't wait for the game to be over so he could be rid of us."

Payson was quiet again. There was more to his silence than just grief over the death of someone close to him. It wasn't an end of innocence, because I'm not so sure innocence exists anymore. But it was the end of something else-of youthful hero-worship, maybe-and the beginning of a realization of betrayal. It's hell growing up.

"He didn't even leave us the damn cookies," Payson managed.

"Cookies?" I almost choked on the word. "Did you say cookies?"

Payson grinned sheepishly and swiped at his eyes. "Girl Scout cookies. Pretty stupid, huh? But it was a tradition. Every member of the team got his own personal box of cookies after the first game in the tournament-win or lose, it didn't matter."

I hadn't expected an answer to the Girl Scout cookie question this early in the investigation. "Why Girl Scout cookies?" I asked.

"Coach Altman, our first coach. His wife was a Girl Scout leader, and he always brought cookies. Coach Ridley said he was going to do the same thing. And he did, last year. I guess this time he just forgot."

"He didn't forget," I said.

Bob Payson's eyes lit up. "He didn't?"

"The trunk of his car was full of Girl Scout cookies. Something kept him from giving them to you, but he didn't forget." It was small enough comfort, but Payson seemed to appreciate it.

Embarrassed, he mopped a tear from his face. "Knowing that makes me feel better and worse, both. How come?"

I shook my head. "Beats me," I said. "Can you think of anything else, Bob?"

"No. Can I go now?"

"Sure," I said, "you've been a big help. Thanks."

As Payson got up, I glanced across the room to where Peters was talking to one of the cheerleaders. She had broken down completely. She had buried her face in her arms and was sobbing uncontrollably. Candace Wynn patted her shoulder and gently straightened the girl's hair.

All other eyes in the room turned warily toward the weeping girl. Raw emotion can be pretty tough to take, especially when everyone is feeling much the same thing, but only one or two have nerve enough to express those feelings.

The counselor leaned down and spoke into the girl's ear. She quieted some, and I went on to the next boy on the team. Peters finished with the cheerleading squad long before I had worked my way through the team. In the course of the interviews it became apparent to me why Bob Payson was captain. None of the other boys was either as observant or as articulate as Bob had been. They told me more or less the same things he had, but without some of the telling details.

By three o'clock, parents began arriving to take their kids home. I could see Ned Browning's handiwork in that as well. One way or another, he was going to make sure the likes of Maxwell Cole didn't lay hands on any of his "young people" as long as they were in the school's care and keeping.

Unfortunately, I knew the news media a little more intimately than Ned Browning did. I guessed, and rightly so, that reporters would make arrangements to snag the students at home if they couldn't reach them at school. Had Ned and I discussed the matter, I could have told him so.

By the time the last of the students had left, Peters and I were wiped slick. As usual, we had worked straight through lunch and then some. Candace Wynn looked like she'd been pulled through a wringer, too. We invited her to join us for coffee at Denny's, a suggestion she accepted readily. It wasn't totally gentlemanly behavior on our part, though. We still hadn't interviewed her.

I waited politely until she had swallowed a sip or two of coffee before I tackled her. "Mrs. Wynn," I began.

"Call me Andi," she said. "I hate my name."

"Andi, then. Were you at the game?"

She nodded and smiled. "Where the cheerleaders go, there go I."

"Can you tell us anything about that night, anything odd or unusual that you might have noticed about Mr. Ridley."

Her eyes clouded. "You'll have to bear with me," she said. "We were good friends. It's hard to…"

"We understand that," Peters interjected. "Your point of view might be just that much different from the kids', though, you could give us some additional insight."

She sighed. "I knew him a long time. I never saw him as upset as he was that night."

"Any idea why?"

"No. I tried to talk to him about it during halftime, but he just cut me off."

"Are you the one who came to the dressing room door?"

Andi gave me an appraising look, as though surprised that I knew about that. She nodded. "He said he couldn't talk, that he was busy with the team. He shut me out completely."

"What about after the team left the dressing room? Did you see him talking with anyone in the hallway? Something or someone made him late for the second half."

"I knew he was late, but I didn't see anyone with him."

"Could he have been sick? Did he say anything to you?"

"No."

"Did you talk to him after the game at all?"

"I left during the third quarter. My mother's sick. I had to go see her. I was late getting back."

"So you never talked to him again, after those few words at the dressing room door."

"No." She choked on the word. "Something was wrong. He looked terrible. If only I…" She stopped.

"If only you what?"

"If only I could have helped him." She pushed her coffee cup away and got up quickly. "I'm going," she said. "Before I embarrass myself."

"We appreciate your help, Andi," Peters said.

"It's the least I can do."

We watched her drive out of the parking lot in a little red Chevy Luv with a bumper sticker that said she'd rather be sailing. As she pulled onto the access road, Peters said, apropos of nothing, "How many women do you know who drive pickups?"

I shrugged. "Not many, but it figures. She's a guidance counselor. My high school counselor at Ballard wore GI boots and drove a Sherman tank."

Peters laughed. "Come on now, Beau. Mrs. Wynn isn't that bad. I think she's cute. And she really seems to care about those kids."

On our way back to the Public Safety Building, Peters and I compared notes from our respective interviews. The cheerleading squad had been able to tell Peters very little that the team hadn't already told me, except they said Darwin Ridley had been five minutes late coming into the game after halftime.

The cheerleaders had taken a short break at the beginning of the third quarter, and they had followed Darwin Ridley onto the court. None of them were able to tell who or what had delayed him between the dressing room and the basketball court.

It wasn't much of a lead, but it was something. It gave us another little sliver of the picture. It didn't tell us what exactly had gone awry in Darwin Ridley's life that last day of his existence, but it was further testimony that something had been sadly amiss.

All we had to do was find out what it was. Piece of cake, right?

Sure. We do it all the time.