Double Play (24 page)

Confusion clouded
her guarded skepticism. It was becoming clear what the detective
was angling toward, but there were still too many pieces of the
puzzle missing and she couldn’t provide a corner piece just
yet.

Detective Kahn’s
dark brown eyes searched her face. He was trying to solve this
puzzle himself.

“
So
what did you find?”

“
Neither his injuries nor the simulated body rotation that he
would’ve taken are consistent with the story that both you and your
guests keep spinning. Furthermore, we’re doing some forensics on
the ground itself. Ryan Brokaw’s a big boy and he smacked the
ground with a lot of force, but if he hit that grass with so much
as an extra pound of pressure, we’ll know.”

“
You
think he was pushed.” It was not a question. She’d known from the
start that’s what the detective suspected.

“
I
think it’s possible a fight broke out. These cats were drinking and
gambling; I wouldn’t be surprised if someone got riled up. Your
neighbor heard shouting. I’m thinking someone got carried away and
now you’re all covering up for him. Maybe because that someone is
pretty important to your team—say, for example, a fiery
closer?”

“
Oh.”
His insinuation began to dawn on her. “Oh! You think I’d cover for
Adam Alvarez?”

“
Would
you?”

“
No!”
She looked around the empty lobby and dropped her voice. “Even if I
liked him I wouldn’t, but trust me, that ass doesn’t inspire me to
martyrdom. He makes John Rocker look like Roberto
Clemente.”

Detective Kahn
smiled again, but this time it was genuine. “Pretty harsh for a guy
you had over to your house.”

“
For
the last time—”

“
I
know, I know. It was your brother.”

“
Do
you know how much hell that night heaped on me from this town,
while AA remains their golden boy? As long as he’s not blowing
saves, he could burn down the children’s hospital and this town
would love him.”

“
He
did blow a save, though, didn’t he?”

Cat nodded. “Two
nights ago.”

“
Maybe
a guilty conscience?”

She scoffed.
“He’d have to have a conscience first. I once saw him refuse to
sign an autograph for a kid with Muscular Dystrophy because the
boy’s wheelchair wheels were decorated with the Mets’ logo instead
of Soldiers’. Trust me, Adam Alvarez isn’t losing sleep over
anybody. That act he put on after the game was just that, an
act.”

“
Well,
humor me for a minute. There were five guys there that night,
right?”

“
For
the hundredth time, yes.”

Cat steadied her
breathing. Detective Kahn had asked that question too many times.
He must know that was a lie and was observing her every move. She
remembered the fingerprint dusting on that night and wondered if
Spencer’s set had came up after all.

“
The
guilty party would have to be pretty important for everyone to
cover for him. Your brother is a nobody—no offense.”

“
None
taken.” Cat shrugged. She knew how it worked here. In this
building, Quinn was a nobody, Cat was a nobody, even the
gun-toting, stalwart officer of the law Kahn was a
nobody.

“
There’d be no reason to cover for Joel Faulk. He may have been
last night’s hero, but the team could go on without him at any
point. That leaves two other guys and from what the sports pages
tell me, the team wouldn’t have made it to the playoffs without the
lights-out closer and the clutch first baseman. Unless someone else
was there that night?”

“
Again, no.” Cat cursed her decision to keep the secret, but
she couldn’t come clean now. Detective Kahn really would think she
was a liar and Spencer would be thrown to the wolves.

“
Maybe
it was Damien, then. Maybe the guilt from ruining his friend’s
postseason run drove him to do something stupid.”

“
Suicide? You think he killed himself?” That would explain why
a guy who couldn’t swim would wander along the riverfront in the
middle of the night.

“
I’m
just laying scenarios on you, Ms. McDaniel. I think there’s
only a few people who can help me figure out what happened that
night and you’re one of them.”

He didn’t seem as
hostile as before. His voice had softened and he no longer eyed her
with gruff suspicion. Cat hesitated. She wanted so badly to spill
her guts and get this off her chest, but maybe that’s what
Detective Kahn wanted—to lull her into a false sense of security
and then revert to his obsessive witch hunt. Or maybe he was like
her—caught in a web and not sure where the spider was.

“
Detective, I do know these guys pretty well. There’s
twenty-five guys on the team and it’s no coincidence that Adam,
Damien and Ryan hang out with each other over the other
twenty-two.”

“
What
do you mean, they’re friends?”

“
They’re as tight as it gets, but I wouldn’t call them friends.
Guys like them aren’t capable of friendship. They’re selfish, mean
and greedy. They make fun of little kids who ask for their
autographs, they blow off charity events, they cheat on their
wives, they don’t pay child support to their mistresses ….
Simply put, they’re assholes. I love my brother, but it’s no
surprise that they hit it off with Quinn, too.”

Detective Kahn
was hanging on her every word, but didn’t look surprised. If he was
any kind of investigator, he surely knew this already.

“
What
about Joel Faulk?”

“
I was
surprised to see Joel with them that night because he seems like a
pretty nice guy.” She shrugged it off. “But those three covering up
for one another? It would never happen. They’d sooner hand over
their own mothers.”

“
This
is an eye-opener. I went through a substantial amount of your
archived articles and I don’t recall reading any of this. You
describe these guys like they’re Boy Scouts.”

“
I
work for the team, not the
Enquirer
.” She smiled. “If I did,
you’d read about our road trips. The team hotels have to put them
on a different floor and a different wing than every other member
of the club because of how much they party. When we were in Los
Angeles, they stuck the team with a thirty-thousand-dollar bill for
damages to a suite at the Ritz. They’re drunken idiots, Detective.
I don’t know why your biomechanic thingy would say that Brokaw
didn’t fall, but that’s really the only answer. They just aren’t
the kind of guys who would cover for each other.”

“
Hmm.”
He tapped his foot on the lobby’s hardwood floor.

“
There’s something else.”

He perked up.
“I’m listening.”

“
Damien couldn’t swim.”

“
How
do you know this?”

“
I
heard him telling Adam. You want to know what I think
happened?”

“
I do,
actually.”

“
He
had a really good game the night he went missing. I bet he was
meeting one of his skanky girlfriends at that skanky motel and had
too much to drink. He probably stumbled into the water and
drowned.”

Now that he’d
washed ashore, she knew no one in the organization would say that,
but they would all be thinking it.

“
Do
you know any of his girlfriends?”

She scoffed. “No.
The only person I ever saw him with was his wife, but everyone
knows he screws—screwed—around on her.”

Detective Kahn’s
head bobbled back and forth as he weighed her theory with careful
consideration. “Would any of the players know her?”

“
I
doubt it. It isn’t really a double date kind of
situation.”

He nodded. “Well,
we’re canvassing the motel room. Maybe her name will turn
up.”

“
Maybe. I’m just saying the only connection between the night
at my apartment and the night he went missing is that he was an
idiot both nights and I know that because he’s always an
idiot.”

“
Are
you always this compassionate about the recently
deceased?”

“
I’m
sorry, Detective, but Damien and his friends brought a lot of crap
my way, so I’m not going to pretend he was something he
wasn’t.”

“
No,
please don’t. I find this bout of honesty refreshing.”

She returned his
smile, signaling a truce between the two of them. “Now can I ask
you something?”

“
I
suppose.”

“
Let’s
say you’re right and I’m wrong: Quinn and the players are covering
up about what happened on that balcony. Ryan, the supposed victim,
isn’t reporting it.”

“
No,
he’s not.”

“
So
why do you care? Aren’t there more sympathetic victims out there
that actually want and need your help? Why bother with
this?”

“
Because I don’t think it’s right for anyone to hide behind
their power and money.”

A laugh bubbled
through her lips and echoed through the empty lobby. “You know
what’s funny? I think that if the circumstances were different, you
and I could actually be friends.”

“
Well,
maybe there’s hope for us yet.” He stood up and held his hand
out.

She took his
large mitt in hers. “Will I see you tonight at the vigil? I imagine
all the guys will be there.”

“
Nah,
I think I might close the book on this one.”

“
What
about the forensics? The fingerprints?”

He winked at her
in response. “If anything new comes up, you call me.” With that, he
sauntered out the lobby doors
,
sticking one long arm in the pocket of his pinstriped pants and
using the other to dial on his cellphone.

Cat frowned as
the door slammed shut behind him.

He’d played
her.

The vigil was
announced two hours later, after it buzzed around the stadium that
a body found downstream had been positively identified as Damien
Staats: husband, father and—most importantly to this bunch—first
baseman. The past week was forgotten and Cat was once again at the
forefront of Soldiers’ business. She helped the media relations
spread word of the six o’clock vigil and made the fifty mile trek
to a candle warehouse to pick up thirty thousand tapers and drip
protectors. It felt good to be a part of the team again.

As the sun began
to set, the fans arrived at the gates and were handed a candle and
a program. A makeshift stage had been placed in the outfield with
rows of chairs extending all the way into the infield. The sight of
a hundred folding chairs digging into the lush Kentucky bluegrass
was sure to make the grounds crew cringe, for when the vigil was
over, they would only have twelve hours to get the field back into
playoff shape.

Cat stood behind
the stage, near the field access doors, watching the sad faces
mourn the first baseman. She’d been present for a team death
before. Her first professional club in Las Vegas had witnessed the
death of a star rookie. Only there, his life had been gone in an
instant. This was different. Damien had been missing for five days
now. The team had played without him and would continue doing so
tomorrow.

No one would
admit it, of course, but you could almost hear the sighs of relief
emerging from the first row, the seats that housed the front office
staff. Damien’s death was a tragic conclusion, but for the Buffalo
Soldiers, the conclusion to the philanderer’s disappearance could
have been much worse—a PR nightmare. He could’ve been found alive
but passed out in the back alley of a strip club. The team would’ve
gotten their first baseman back, but they would’ve been painted as
a troubled team undeserving of a title. Instead, the death afforded
the team the world’s pity and put them in the enviable spot of
being mourners at tomorrow’s home game. People would say, “Win it
for Damien,” and boo Chicago for giving anything more than a medial
effort.

Players took
their turns up at the podium, reminiscing about their teammate
through sweet stories that Cat could barely believe were true. She
tore her eyes away from the blinding glow of the vigil candles to
look to the night sky, her gaze fixated on the brightest light in
the sky. She wondered if the crew on the space station could make
out the
thirty
thousand
flames.

She shifted her
feet in the warning track and leaned back on the outfield wall. Her
eyes
dropped down and
fixed on
her ankle
boots. They were an inappropriate choice. Not only were her calves
cold, but the bold burgundy suede seemed too flashy for mourning.
Not that it mattered, no one
would notice what she was wearing.
Once again, she was on
the sidelines. The Soldiers might pride themselves on being one big
happy family, but she couldn’t even get a seat at a “family”
funeral. The players sat up on the stage in folding chairs lined up
behind the podium. Roger Aiken joined them, while the rest of the
management sat in rows directly in front of the stage. Fans crowded
into the stands, except for the bleachers, which had been blocked
off. There wasn’t an empty chair on stage—that would look bad—but
not all the players were present. Ryan Brokaw and his broken wing
had flown back to Canada, but she couldn’t believe he couldn’t flap
back for his teammate’s vigil. Joel Faulk—stumbling through the
field doors ten minutes into Roger Aiken’s opening speech—had
reeked of tequila. He stayed back on the field instead of going on
stage. It was a good call. The last thing the team needed was for
him to attempt the five stairs and break an ankle. No doubt the
fans would find a way to blame her for that, too.