can I leave you alone when I don’t know where you are or what’s going on?”
A heavy sigh. “You know what your problem is?”
Her voice loud enough through the phone that Pinney perked up.
“What’s that?” I said.
“You ask too many questions. You always have. You milk every conversation until it’s dry, until you have every last bit of information about somebody. You always have to be the big bad detective, no matter who you’re with or what you’re doing. Frankly, it gets old. It’s exhausting.”
“Laura, what are you talking—”
“Stop calling me Laura. It’s Judge Porter, in case you’ve forgotten. I’m talking about you butting into my personal business.”
“Butting? You were the one who—”
“Just leave it. Stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Laura . . . Judge, I—”
“Listen carefully for once, all right? You have practically zero percent feelings for anybody but yourself. You know that? So just stop interfering. I’m fine. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“Practically zero, Andy.”
“I—”
“Goodbye.”
THE PHONE DISCONNECTED. THE room was quiet. The smell of Pinney’s coffee drifted in my direction. Suddenly exhausted, I could have used a cup or three myself.
The detective reached for his phone. “Satisfied?”
“No.”
“Oh really? Why not?”
“She said ‘jabbering.’”
“What?”
“She used the word jabbering. It’s not something she would say.”
He looked at me in disbelief. “And you would know this how? Same reason you know she wouldn’t leave her cat’s bowl empty?”
“It doesn’t matter. You have to believe me. Something wasn’t right. What if she wasn’t able to speak freely? Have you considered that?”
“Of course I did.”
“And?”
“And I eliminated that as a possibility.”
“How?”
“Every judge is assigned a safe phrase,” Pinney said. “Something they could bring into conversation if there’s a problem. Normal sounding, but specific to them.”
“And she didn’t use it?”
He shook his head.
“What’s the phrase?”
“Like I’m going to tell you that.”
I thought about protesting. But what was the point? I was as sure as I could be that not only was Laura in trouble, she was in danger. Yet what was I supposed to do? Pinney might have been a pain in the ass, but clearly he was good at his job. He had batted down every argument with cold, hard evidence. Whatever was going on with Laura, fixing it wasn’t going to happen here, in this room, with the detective doubting my every word.
“All right,” I said, standing. “I appreciate you listening. I’ve still got my concerns. But I suppose there’s nothing left to do.”
“You suppose right. But just for yuks, where are you going now?”
“I’m going to toss a football around for a while, I guess.”
“Perfect. You do that, and leave the detecting to the real investigators.”
“If I see any, I’ll be sure to do so,” I said, walking out of the room before he had a chance to reply.
6
“YOU’RE NOT FOLLOWING THROUGH all the way,” I yelled. “Rip your arm down across your body. Like this.” I arced the ball through the air to my son, who plucked it easily with a sideways catch.
“That’s what I’m doing.” Mike stepped back and drilled a spiral pass at me. He threw hard enough that my hands tingled as I caught the ball. But there was no denying the slight wobble as it flew over the green expanse stretching between us. He wasn’t listening.
“No, you’re not,” I said, impatiently gunning the ball back to him, ignoring the tweak in my arm as I threw.
We were spread out on a practice field behind Worthington Kilbourne High School, just north of Columbus, a mile or so from where Mike lived with Kym, her husband, Steve, and their two kids. The August air smelled of mowed grass and fertilizer. Mike’s morning practice was over. They had a scrimmage the following Friday, the first time in uniform, though they wouldn’t wear pads or be allowed to tackle. Steve was convinced his stepson had the right stuff, that a college career or more was possible. Kym was skeptical—she’d been there, seen that with me. She was also worried about his health because of the new focus on concussions. I was worried about that as well; two guys I played with in Cleveland had killed themselves, and autopsies showed severe brain damage in both. I was also prone to forgetfulness, though in fairness I’d been forgetting things that didn’t involve football or girls since the ripe old age of thirteen. Kym and I permitted the dream to flourish so long as Mike kept up with his studies and his piano lessons, which somewhat to my surprise he did, along with a grass-cutting service he ran with a couple of buddies. His life of camps and trainers and physical therapists was about as far as you could get from the summers I spent tossing footballs through swing tires and over fields of corn so high I couldn’t see my receiving buddy on the other side. But apparently it amounted to the same thing, since the kid could throw, even if he couldn’t listen.
He tried again, better this time, but his spiral still had the slightest wobble to it, like a diving falcon with a hitch in its wing. There probably weren’t five coaches in Ohio who would deem the flaw worth remarking on. But the ball might as well have been rotating end on end for all I could stand it. Instead of returning the toss, I cradled the ball and crossed the field to where he stood, eyeing me like a ref he knows is delivering bad news.
“What.”
“You’re doing this.” I imitated his follow-through, which was stopping just short of where it should go. “Which is why you’re getting that wobble.”
“There’s no wobble.”
“There is. It’s subtle, but it’s there. And it’s going to add up.”
“What do you mean?” He took a step back, crossing his muscular arms across his chest. He’d shot up in the past school year and was now an even six foot, though with my height I didn’t think he was done growing yet. Between his camps, his lawn job, and the free weights in Steve’s basement—weights I paid for, thank you very much—he was
