“Her little finger was twisted; the nail faced out.”
“NOOO!”
Everything stopped, the running girl skidded to a stop, a kid dropped from the high bar, the group holding up torso and legs with their abdominal
muscles froze in place. The music—something Russian-sounding—goaded uselessly. Cass stood, mouth actually open. What had she been thinking, to ask this guy here?
“Her finger’s fine! It works fine!” He made for the door, yanked it open, left it banging as he shot through.
Works fine?
I started after him.
“Don’t, Darcy!”
Cass was right, but I ran. I caught him next to a dusty van. “Wait!”
A ring of keys crashed to the ground. I scooped them up. “Wait,” I repeated. “You’ve been worried about your wife, haven’t you? What I’m telling you, it’s not a surprise, is it?”
He yanked the keys out of my hand. My hand stung.
“I don’t know any Karen.”
“Your wife was called . . . ?”
“Alison Widley,” he said, as if to an idiot. “You know her? Show me you’re not a reporter.” It was part question, part accusation.
Behind him, the gym door opened. A woman with her hand on the shoulder of a tiny girl peered out and pulled the door shut. I turned out my pockets, thrust my purse at him. “No mike, no recorder, not even a pencil!”
He smashed the keys into the door. “Tell me!”
“I met her Tuesday afternoon. I liked her.”
“What’d she say? How’d she seem?” The keys jangled. “Goddamn it! She tells me she’s going to scout out San Francisco. She says since she’s going to be gone, why don’t I hang with Graham and the guys. She hates Graham: I haven’t seen him since I agreed to move to California. I’m surprised, but I trust her. She’s my
wife!
This is the longest we’ve been apart since we got married. I tried to call her! She didn’t answer . . . I tried.” His face was red and twisted. He shouted, “Goddamn it, I have no idea what the hell my wife is doing in that fucking city!”
He took a deep breath, as if he’d been schooled to do just that—or explode. He seemed like the least likely husband for calm, thoughtful, beautifully turned out Karen Johnson—Alison Widley, Sonora Eades, or whatever her real name was. And him, why did his name sound so familiar? He hadn’t played for a team in the NFL West or I would have known him. It was a legacy from my dad who’d groused as if playing for other teams in the conference was a sign of degeneracy. Matt Widley? Matt Widley? “Oh!
Stat
Widley! You creamed the 49ers in a game when your miserable linebackers just about killed our quarterback. Montana was already out with his elbow, and Young had a sprained finger on his throwing hand and we were counting on our third-string guy to get us through the season and there he is on the ground! After that, you just piled it on! Touchdown after touchdown! My dad hated you!”
He almost laughed.
I felt like an idiot. A teenaged idiot. “Sorry. For an instant—” “S’okay. It’s the only decent moment I’ve had since I dropped Alison at the airport.” He didn’t smile, but his face relaxed out of the hard lines of fear, frustration, bafflement, his body from the need to smash something. There was a sweet desperation in that look, the kind of expression that seduces women into bad decisions.
Stat Widley must have been forty, give or take. He’d been a rookie the year he ran up those huge statistics, feeding on teams like the 49ers and from then on was known in our house as “that-goddamned-Stat-Widley.” He’d been a rookie quarterback for some team the 49ers didn’t play often, maybe Chicago or one of the Ohio teams. He was local to the area and a big favorite back there, wherever there was. He’d played another year or so and then had some kind of injury—knee or ankle I gathered from his uneasy walk now—and was gone for about a year. When he came back, his arm was better than ever, but by then Dad had died and the list of hated
football players faded from family consciousness. Like Cass said, there’d been something about drugs, but that’s hardly memorable in pro sports.
“Alison
said
she’d be back in a couple days.”
No, wait, it hadn’t been the standard drug test failure and the normal four game suspension. Stat’s drug thing had been a big scandal. What specifically? Damn, I couldn’t remember. If Dad were alive he’d tell me every detail. Whatever, it’d been a screaming sensation in the days before such sensations became the norm. “You were the golden boy. But they cut you for drugs. You were a great quarterback and they cut you anyway. How come?”
“Old news,” he muttered.
“Maybe to folks in Cleveland or Cincinnati, but not to me.”
“You’re supposed to be here about my wife and you’re asking about this?”
“Yeah! What kind of user are you?” I stepped back next to a tiny Ford. Wind blew across the empty parking lot, scraps of paper skittered over the macadam. From inside the gym, Russian music blared.
Widley inhaled hard. “You want that dirt, Google it.”
“Tell me!”
He was trying to hold himself together, trying hard.
“Tell me, Matt.”
“My wife?”
“I need to be sure my woman was your wife. Just answer my question, dammit.”
I need to know if she betrayed you like she did John.
“Okay, okay. I got caught doing drugs. I’d had some injuries, and drugs were easy. I’m not saying teams pushed them, but they shot you up with painkillers so you could play hurt; they called you a coward if you stayed out just because you were going to aggravate an injury. Meanwhile, the guys who played hurt all season didn’t get as many touchdowns, got
sacked because they couldn’t push off on sprained ankles to scramble, and you know what happened to them?”
“They got cut?”
“Damn right, they got cut. Tossed like garbage. But let me tell you, a guy gets injured and suddenly he’s healing faster, no one’s asking why. No one’s complaining about that. No one’s bitching if you bulked up. The only guys asking how are the ones who want whatever you’re taking. So, yeah, I did it. I got caught. I went from being the hometown hero to out on a rail. That clear enough for you?” His hands were jammed into fists. Veins bulged in his arms, his neck. Sweat coated his face.
“Why you? Lots of guys get caught.”
“I was a trailblazer.”
“Still, you were the quarterback. They could have hushed it up.”
“I admitted it.”
Now I remembered. He’d named names, names that took the team out of the playoffs—for years. He’d named a coach, so the team lost draft picks, and that in addition to the scandal’d ruined the team for years. Fans crucified him. I remembered someone saying he couldn’t even drive through the state afterwards. “How’d you meet Alison?”
He could have told me it was none of my business, but I had the feeling that he understood the longer I talked, the further he could put off hearing something about her he knew he didn’t want to hear. “In a casino.”
“Here?”
“Yeah. Where d’you think?”
“What were you doing?”
“Drinking free booze. When you’ve spent your life being the golden boy and suddenly you’re universal crap, the only place for you is Vegas. Everyone assumes pro sports is hypocrisy central. The guys betting are hoping you’re taking everything you can plunge or swallow. If you were
a mass murderer, in Vegas you’d find guys glad to hang with you—if you could stand hanging with them.”
“What—”
“Enough!” He bent over me. “My wife! You know where she is, tell me! Graham kept telling me she was a bitch with secrets. I flattened him. But, damn, he must have been right! Where the fuck is she?”
“I can’t be sure—”
He pushed me against the van. “Hey!”
“Tell me where she is!”
“In . . . the . . . morgue.”
He let go as if I no longer existed.
“Look . . . I’m not certain. I could be wrong. I want to be wrong. That’s why I’m asking you about her. Where’s she from? You’ve been married how long?”
“Six . . . years.” He was standing, feet apart, hands at his sides. The blood was gone from his face. He looked like a cardboard cutout. I didn’t know whether to squeeze his hand or run for my life.
“I can find out from her family.”
“Good luck!”
“Just give me her maiden name or where she’s from or—”
He grabbed my shoulders, turned me around and shoved. I went flying back. And then he was in the van, screeching out of the parking lot.
24
“CASS, LEND ME your car!” I couldn’t let him get away.
Not another woman in the world would have flipped me the keys as fast. “Get it back here in an hour!”
“Sure.” I raced for her van. It wasn’t meant for a high speed chase, but I wouldn’t be tailing a Maserati, either. I just hoped Widley hadn’t turned off onto a side street. I flipped the ignition, hit the horn and cut in front of a panel truck.
The road was four lanes. Light traffic. Nearly dusk. Night comes fast in the desert. Another half hour and all cars would be one. I drifted left, trying to spot the other van through the traffic. No luck.
My shoulders screamed. I was going to have marks where he’d grabbed me—twice. Once would have left bruises! No wonder Karen wanted out. I stepped on the gas; I’d be damned if I’d let him get away now.
I swung around a truck. Cass’s van drove like an ox. Half a block ahead, the traffic light turned yellow. I cut in front of a low, white compact and hit the gas. That maneuver bought twenty yards of space. Three cars ahead in the fast lane was what looked like Stat’s van. I slipped in inches from the tail of a silver Toyota and flicked the high beams.
The Toyota sped up.
I flicked again, weaved left, jerked right, flicked.
No one wants a crazy drunk on their tail. The Toyota pulled right. That left a new Mercedes in its place. I cut in front of the Toyota—its driver was giving me lots of room.
Damn! The driver was on the phone. Calling 911? I cut off the Mercedes—luxury cars are easy—settled behind the van, and hoped. Hoped it was Matt, hoped we turned off this road before I got pulled over. Damn him, tailing in the right lane was twice the work.
A truck waddled ahead. Open topped, full of rubble. Old. I pulled up inches from its rear. Splatter hit the windshield. Dirt. Or worse. The van was a car length ahead. I squinted through the muck and the growing dusk.
Jeez! It wasn’t Widley! Just a family van! A dog stuck his head out.
I slumped, easing off the gas. Now what? My shoulders ached. Damn him!
I pulled up to the truck’s tail, held down the horn, stuck my hand out and pointed. The van with the dog went faster. I honked again. It slowed and I cut in front, waved thanks.
A Mini Cooper, like Korematsu’s—who was probably at this very minute squeezing Leo for everything I’d said in the last week—was doing 70. In front of him was—aha!—another van.
Ahead, the light turned amber. The van hung a left. The Cooper slowed. I laid on the horn. He hesitated and shot through.
The light was red. I ran it.
We were in a residential area—one-story houses, eighth of an acre lots. Landscaping. In the growing dark, it could have been an upscale development in San Diego or Jersey. Two-car garages, driveways displaying two or three vehicles. No sidewalks, no people out, and no moving vehicles.
He hung a left. A streetlight showed him—it
was
Widley!—on his cell phone. Was he frantically calling Karen—
Alison?
Or some pal Karen had made someone desperate enough to kill her? Someone still out here.
He turned again, into a driveway, beeped up the garage door and shot in. He barely got the living room lights on before I hit the doorbell. The door stayed shut. I fist-hammered.
“If you care about your wife,” I yelled, “you need to talk to me! I’m the one who saw her this week.”
The door opened. His face was tight, his gaze unfocused. I couldn’t read him; he probably couldn’t read himself.
“Show me her picture. Let me make sure it’s her before I say anything. Maybe I’m wrong.” But I wasn’t wrong; he knew that, too. He took his hand off the door, leaving fifteen or so inches between him and it. I slipped through, so close I could feel the heat of his body, smell his anger and fear.
The room was big, with white walls, leather chairs, and Spanish motif. It looked like a cool evening, but with the air-conditioning it was freezing. Temperature set for a big, sweaty guy. “Do you always have it this cold?”
“So leave.”
“I’m just asking.”
“Yeah, I always have it this cold. I turn it down everytime I come in. Alison keeps it hot. I turn it down, she turns it up. It’s a thing we do.”
He was stalling, putting off bad news about his wife—or about himself?
“Do you have a picture of her?” I repeated.
He walked out of the room, leaving the front door open and I was relieved. I moved closer.
“Here.” The picture he thrust out was a quick shot by a person without skill. The woman in it was half in shadow. The focus had been on her blonde hair shining in the sunlight. Her face was so underexposed as to be barely recognizable. “Is this the best one you have? It’s so dark.”
“She didn’t like being photographed.”
I peered closer, eying her for wider shoulders, a more solid stance, anything that would rule her out, as if my discovering Karen Johnson had not been this man’s wife would make her less dead. “It’s the same woman.”
“No! You said it’s too dark to tell!”
“It’s hard, but I can see enough of her face. Her body’s the same, the way she leaned onto that left hip. It’s how she looked when I came up to her, when she’d been standing, waiting.”
“You can’t be sure!” It was a cry.
“The police—”
“You come here telling me—you push into my house,
Alison’s
house. You—who the hell are you?”
“Alison died, Matt. She didn’t have identification. I don’t want to leave her body lying in the morgue.”