Terry said, “Derek couldn’t have been more than four-ten or -eleven back in Little League. I’ve seen him since—tried to get him to play for City last year, as a matter of fact—and he’s grown six inches since then. He’ll be taller than you by the time he graduates from high school, I bet.”
Ralph waited.
“He was a shrimp, but he was never afraid in the batter’s box. A lot of them are, but Derek would stand in even against the kids who’d wind up and fling the ball with no idea of where it was going. Got hit half a dozen times, but he never gave in.”
It was the truth. Ralph had seen the bruises after some of the games, when D peeled off his uniform: on the butt, on the thigh, on the arm, on the shoulder. Once there had been a perfect black and blue circle on the nape of his neck. Those hits had driven Jeanette crazy, and the batting helmet Derek wore didn’t comfort her; every time D stepped into the batter’s box, she had gripped Ralph’s arm almost hard enough to bring blood, afraid the kid would eventually take one between the eyes and wind up in a coma. Ralph assured her it wouldn’t happen, but he had been almost as glad as Jeannie was when Derek decided tennis was more his game. The balls were softer.
Terry leaned forward, actually smiling a little.
“A kid that short usually gets a lot of walks—as a matter of fact, that’s sort of what I was hoping for tonight, when I let Trevor Michaels bat for himself—but Derek wasn’t going to get cheated. He’d flail at just about anything—inside, outside, over his head or in the dirt. Some of the kids started calling him Whiffer Anderson, then one of them changed it to Swiffer, like the mop, and that stuck. At least for awhile.”
“Very interesting,” Samuels said, “but why don’t we talk about Frank Peterson, instead?”
Terry’s eyes remained fixed on Ralph.
“Long story short, when I saw he wouldn’t take a walk, I taught him to bunt. Lot of boys his age—ten, eleven—they won’t do it. They get the idea, but they don’t like dropping the bat over the plate, especially against a kid who can really bring it. They keep thinking about how much their fingers are going to hurt if they get hit with their bare hands out front like that. Not Derek, though. He had a yard of guts, your boy. Besides, he could really scoot down the line, and a lot of times when I sent him up to sacrifice, he ended up getting a base hit.”
Ralph didn’t nod or give any sign at all that he cared about this, but he knew what Terry was talking about. He had cheered plenty of those bunts, and had seen his kid fly down the line like his hair was on fire and his ass was catching.
“It was just a matter of teaching him the right bat angles,” Terry said, and held up his hands to demonstrate. They were still smudged with dirt, probably from throwing batting practice before tonight’s game. “Angle to the left, the ball squirts up the third base line. Angle to the right, first base line. Don’t shove the bat, most times that does nothing but send an easy pop-up to the pitcher, just give it a little nudge at the last split-second. He caught on fast. The kids stopped calling him Swiffer and gave him a new nickname. We’d have a runner on first or third late in the game and the other team knew he was going to lay one down—there was no faking, he’d drop the bat across the plate as soon as the pitcher went into his motion, and the kids on the bench would all be yelling ‘Push it, Derek, push it!’ Me and Gavin, too. And that was what they called him that whole last year, when we won the district. Push It Anderson. Did you know that?”
Ralph hadn’t, maybe because it was strictly a team thing. What he did know was that Derek had grown up a lot that summer. He laughed more, and wanted to hang around after the games were over instead of just heading for the car with his head down and his glove dangling.
“He did most of it himself—practiced like a mother until he had it right—but I was the one who talked him into trying it.” He paused, then said, very softly, “And you do this to me. In front of everyone, you do this to me.”
Ralph felt his cheeks heat up. He opened his mouth to reply, but Samuels was escorting him out the door, almost pulling him along. He paused just long enough to say one thing over his shoulder. “Ralph didn’t do it to you, Maitland. Neither did I. You did it to yourself.”
Then the two of them were looking through the one-way glass again, and Samuels was asking if Ralph was all right.
“Fine,” Ralph said. His cheeks were still burning.
“Some of them are masters at getting under your skin. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you know he did this, right? I’ve never had a case sewn up so tight.”
Which bothers me, Ralph thought. It didn’t before, but it does now. It shouldn’t, because Samuels is right, but it does.
“Did you notice his hands?” Ralph asked. “When he was showing how he taught Derek to bunt, did you see his hands?”
“Yes. What about them?”
“No long pinky fingernail,” Ralph said. “Not on either hand.”
Samuels shrugged. “So he clipped it. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Fine,” Ralph said. “I just—”
The door between the office area and the detention wing buzzed, then banged open. The man who came hurrying down the hallway was dressed in his Saturday night relaxing-at-home clothes—faded jeans and a TCU tee-shirt with SuperFrog hopping on the front—but the boxy briefcase he was carrying was all lawyer.
“Hello, Bill,” he said. “And hello to you, Detective Anderson. Would either of you like to tell me why you have arrested Flint City’s 2015 Man of the Year? Is it just a mistake, one we can perhaps smooth over, or have you lost your fucking minds?”
Howard Gold had arrived.
18
To: County District Attorney William Samuels
Flint City Chief of Police Rodney Geller
Flint County Sheriff Richard Doolin
Capt. Avery Rudolph, State Police Post 7
Det. Ralph Anderson, Flint City PD
From: Det. Lieutenant Yunel Sablo, State Police Post 7
Date: July 13th
Subject: Vogel Transportation Center, Dubrow
As per request of DA Samuels and Detective Anderson, I arrived at the Vogel Transportation Center at 2:30 PM on the date referenced above. Vogel is the main depot for land transportation in the southern part of the state, housing three major bus lines (Greyhound, Trailways, Mid-State) as well as Amtrak service. There are also the usual car rental agencies (Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, Alamo). Since all areas of the Transportation Center are well monitored by surveillance cameras, I went directly to the security office, where I was met by Michael Camp, Vogel’s Security Director. He was ready for me. Surveillance footage is kept for 30 days, and the whole operation is computerized, so I was able to review everything from the night of July 10th, as seen from a total of 16 cameras.
According to Mr. Clinton Ellenquist, the Flint City Cab Company dispatcher who was on duty on the night of July 10th, driver Willow Rainwater called in at 9:30 PM to report she had delivered her fare. The Southern Limited, which Ms. Rainwater has stated is the train the subject under investigation meant to take, pulled into the Vogel at 9:50 PM. Passengers disembarked at Track 3. Passengers going on to Dallas–Fort Worth were given the go-ahead to embark at Track 3 seven minutes later, at 9:57. The Southern Limited pulled out at 10:12. Times are exact, as all arrivals and departures are monitored and recorded by computer.