The Final Play

by David Baldacci

  “She said she’d have an answer back for me today. She was going to check the sales records to see if she could determine who had purchased the wig. I found it and was trying to return it to the owner.”

  “Oh, well, I’ll check in the back. What did it look like?”

  North took out the photograph of Gloria Draven and held it up. “Like this woman’s hair.”

  The young woman looked puzzled but studied the photograph, then went into the back to check. North rubbed his nose, for the same noxious scent of perfume was still heavy in the air. It was so thick that he actually looked around the shop for the woman, but didn’t see her.

  The young woman came out a few minutes later, empty-handed. “There’s nothing back there like it.”

  “Was there a note? Maybe a message to give me? She told me to come back this afternoon.”

  “No, there was nothing like that.”

  “Is there a way for me to contact her? Do you have her home phone?”

  The young woman’s manner changed, and she looked guarded, almost hostile. “We don’t give out information like that. And your name is…?”

  North could easily read her thoughts. She had suddenly hit upon the possibility that he might be some creep, and was trying to wheedle information out of her.

  “Merl North. I go to school at Draven.”

  The woman’s face instantly brightened. “That’s right. I thought I recognized you. You’re on the football team. I saw you when you helped that other player break the record.”

  “That’s right, my friend and teammate, Jimmy Swift.” He sniffed the air. “Whew, that perfume is really pungent. I smelled it when I was in yesterday.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “God, tell me about it. It’s like cigarette smoke; it never goes away. Nobody has the heart to tell her, though. I guess her sense of smell must be dead.”

  “Must be.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you. She didn’t even let me know she wasn’t coming in. I can call her at home, if you want.”

  “Would you?”

  She smiled again, picked up the phone, and made the call. She listened for a bit and then replaced the receiver. “Just got the answering machine. I can try later.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Let me give you my cell phone number. If you or she can call me, I’d appreciate it. It’s pretty important.”

  The young woman took the number and then shook North’s hand. “Wow, to shake the hand of someone who helped break Herschel Ruggles’s record. My grandfather would be so impressed.”

  “Who’s your grandfather?” asked North curiously.

  “Herman Bowles. He was the trainer for the team during the Ruggles years.” She paused. “I wonder what really happened to Herschel Ruggles? Grandad never could figure that one out.”

  “Yeah, I wonder. Look, is your grandfather still around here? I’d like to go and shake his hand.”

  The young woman’s eyes lighted up. “Would you? He’s right over in the next county. Just a half hour away. He moved back from California about six months ago, after my grandma died. I can give you directions. I could call him and say you’re going to drop by sometime. I won’t say when, so you won’t feel any pressure.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Susan. Susan O’Riley.”

  “Well, Susan O’Riley, you can tell your grandfather I’ll be by today,” said North. “And I’m going to bring Jimmy Swift with me. Two legends for the price of one.”

  “Oh my god, are you serious?”

  “I never joke about legends.”

  As North left with the directions to Herman Bowles’s home, he noted the name of the proprietor over the door: Linda Daughtry. North hoped she was in the phone book, because he intended to pay her a visit as well. Now he just needed to rescue Swift from his hangover hell, and he was in business.

  Chapter 12

  H​ERMAN BOWLES LIVED at the end of a narrow road that one got to by driving through a cleft eroded inside of a hill, like an extracted wedge of cheese. The steep walls that rose on either side caused sundown to occur inside the cleft at around three o’clock; thus it was dark when North and Swift arrived at the house.

  North had poured cup after cup of the most powerful coffee he could find down his friend’s throat even as he had explained all that had happened. He had left out the part about seeing Ruggles, though, figuring that, even stone cold sober, Swift would be unable, or at least unwilling, to grasp such a concept.

  Bowles was a short man with bandy legs, and a thickened torso with popped-vein forearms revealed because he had his shirtsleeves rolled up. He coughed hoarsely when he greeted the two young men, and explained that he was about halfway through his winter cold that was not helped by his pack-a-day Winstons habit. “I’m old,” he confided to North with a wink and a smile. “And a man’s got to pick his poison and then live, and die with it, right?”

  “Right,” answered North. “But you still shouldn’t smoke. Because that’s real poison.”

  They settled in the small living room of the little house that was decorated, as far as North could tell, in Americana sports memorabilia.

  Bowles coughed up a chunk of phlegm into his handkerchief, cleared his nose, and then slapped his withered thigh. “Can’t believe you two are here sitting in my living room. Holy shit, excuse my French.”

  “Nice place,” said Jimmy as he glanced at the collection of vintage professional football cards that hung under glass next to the little bar set up in the far corner. On the bar’s counter were arranged, pyramid style, whiskey tumblers from all the major college football conferences. The lamp tables and some of the chairs had college and professional football helmets melded to wood that was stained medium dark. The pattern of the furniture upholstery on these chairs was a green football field covered with figures of famous football players in frozen action. Under their feet was an official Philadelphia Eagles rug. On the walls were posters of what appeared to be every major AFL and NFL quarterback of the last forty years with arms cocked, jaws set, eyes ablaze. One wall was festooned with a mural of none other than the craggy countenance of Raymond Nitschke, with a miniature shrine to Dick Butkus arranged on a nearby table.

  No one remotely interested in the game of football could sit here and be unmoved.

  Bowles said, “After my wife died, God rest her soul, and I mean no disrespect by saying this, I finally was able to pull out all my stuff and do the house the way I wanted.”

  Swift rubbed his temples before closing his eyes and sitting back.

  North glanced at him and then poked Swift sharply in the side with his elbow. Swift scowled and then his eyes fluttered closed once more.

  Bowles leaned forward. “So I got to know, what’d it feel like breaking the record, Jimmy?”

  North elbowed Swift again, jolting him awake. “Go ahead, Jimmy, Tell Mr. Bowles what it felt like breaking the record.”

  Swift coughed, straightened, and said, “It felt good. It felt great. Couldn’t have done it without Merl, you know.”

  Bowles looked over at North, who said bluntly, “Matter of physics, mostly.” He paused. “I guess Jimmy never thought about continuing his run on into the tunnel, did you?”

  Swift looked puzzled. “What?”

  North managed to surreptitiously plant a sharp kick against his friend’s leg and Swift finally woke up to his role in the story that North had drilled into him on the drive over.

  “No, no way. Not like Ruggles. Herschel Ruggles, that is,” added Swift, with all the subtlety of the lamest actor ever to take up space on a celluloid roll.

  They had practiced this part on the way over, and he had performed it far better in the car.

  Damn Cindy Wilson and the Wild Turkey, thought North. “So you were the trainer on Ruggles’s team?” he asked.

  Bowles nodded. “Well, up until he disappeared, o’course.”

  “Boy, that was something, that was, huh?” volunteered Swift and then looked at North for app
roval and received none, for North’s gaze was on Bowles.

  “Yes it was,” said Bowles thoughtfully. “Never could figure it out.”

  North said, “I guess there was always the possibility of Ruggles escaping through the locker room door, the one that led to the parking lot. Although he would have had to have a key.”

  Bowles shook his head. “Nope. He didn’t go through the locker room. Of that I’m certain.”

  North looked surprised. “But don’t you know that Ruggles’s street clothes weren’t in his locker?”

  “I heard that, but hell, folks were always sneaking in there and stealing his stuff. And if he went and disappeared and all, think what that stuff would’ve been worth. And they never found his uniform, either. Now tell me, how do you pull off all that gear and then put on your street clothes and then walk off carrying all that gear and somebody not notice, tell me that, willya? Hell, I wouldn’t have put it past the police to have pinched that stuff and then written it up that those clothes and such weren’t ever there at all. People are people and Herschel Ruggles was Herschel Ruggles,” he added, as though that explained all.

  North sat back. “So, is that why you believe he didn’t go through the locker room? That hardly seems conclusive to me.”

  “No, I know he didn’t go through the locker room because he would’ve seen Ruggles.”

  North almost fell out of his chair. “Who? Who would’ve seen him?”

  “The feller who was in there taking care of an injury.”

  North almost dug his fingers through the face of Joe Namath that was revealed between his legs on the chair’s upholstery. “Who, a trainer?”

  “No, a player. He got a bad stinger. Sent him in there to try and work it out.”

  “What was his name?”

  Bowles slumped into thought as he tried to recall. “Been a long time,” he said apologetically. “Forty years about. Memory ain’t that good no more.” He added defensively, “And, Jesus, all the players come through there. And I’m a trainer. Remember bodies a lot better than names. Remembered the bad stinger, didn’t I? That’s something most wouldn’t. And I’ve been out in California too long. In fact, left right after the season Ruggles disappeared. Worked at USC mostly, lots of fellers with weird names and nicknames come through there. Filled up the dang memory. If I’d stayed ’round these parts, probably know it off the top of my head. But I didn’t and so I don’t.”

  “What position did he play?” asked Swift. “That might help you narrow it down.”

  Bowles’s eyes almost closed as he chewed on this. “Oh, he was a lineman. Biggest man we had.” Bowles thought about it some more. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “It’ll most likely come to me.”

  North said, “Do you remember his jersey number? I could look that up.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  North was confused. “But didn’t the police question you? And the player?”

  “Sure, they came around. Asked some stuff. I assumed everybody told the truth. But you fellers have to understand something—back then, folks just thought it was an act of God, so to speak. I mean Ruggles wasn’t like other people. That boy could run, jump, change direction, defied gravity like. Some of us, well, some of us just thought he decided to go back to where he really came from. You know, where he really came from,” added Bowles nervously, and he shot a glance to the ceiling.

  “What, like from another planet?” asked Swift, who looked like he might start laughing until North stopped him with a grim stare.

  “I know it sounds crazy. But then some other folks, they thought he might have wanted to disappear, if you get my meaning. You know, over some trouble or something. Nobody wanted to find the boy if he didn’t want to be found, you know. I mean, people come from all over to see him play. Even President Eisenhower came one time. That boy put Draven University and Crucifix, PA, on the map. Nobody wanted to do nothing to hurt Herschel Ruggles.”

  “So, in other words, the police investigation wasn’t all that thorough,” said North.

  Bowles shrugged. “You heard the expression ‘Let sleeping dogs lie’? Well, nobody wanted to mess up all that was good about Herschel Ruggles.”

  “And by that, you mean mess up all that was good about the town? And the university?” said North a little testily.

  “I guess you could say that.”

  North inwardly fumed. The investigation obviously had been botched. A man had disappeared, and the truth had never been allowed to come out simply to appease folks’ vanity. It was yet another example of history written totally wrong. He looked at Bowles. “But if you could remember that name, maybe we can do now what should have been done then.”

  Bowles looked deeply embarrassed. “It just ain’t coming to me, son.”

  North just sat there, depressed and thinking that perhaps his entire destiny was to be forestalled by an ex-trainer with an excellent memory for physical ailments but a faulty one for names. As he looked down at the chair he was sitting in, he noted with some embarrassment that, in his heightened frustration, he had gouged out both eyes of Broadway Joe Namath. He discreetly covered this defilement with his legs.

  They talked some more about the greats of the past and present, then North and Swift took their leave. North left his phone number with Bowles in case he conjured the critical name from his dubious memory bank.

  As they drove back through the shadows of the early dusk, Swift said, “Well, that wasn’t much help, but it will be if he remembers that name. Maybe that person, if he’s still alive, could tell us what he saw.”

  “If anything,” exclaimed North, who was obviously upset. No wig, no name—how could it get worse? And was Bowles’s memory really that bad, or did he have a reason to withhold the name from them? The possibilities were beginning to rival a thermodynamics problem. And for the first time he could ever recall, North’s brain was beginning to tire.

  He glanced at Swift and decided to change the subject to more pressing—if less important—modern matters. “Exams are coming up. I hope you’re studying. The team can’t afford for you to be put on academic probation like last year.”

  “I was in the library most of the night,” Swift replied indignantly.

  “So I heard,” said North right back. “But this time leave Cindy Wilson in her dorm room. I’m sure she needs the rest.”

  All Swift could do with that rejoinder was slyly smile.

  Chapter 13

  T​HEY DROVE TO LINDA DAUGHTRY’S HOME. North had gotten the address out of the phone book. The woman’s residence was located at the end of a cul-de-sac and was ringed by mature trees. It was a nice house, big, and set on a large lot, North noted. And there was a late-model Lexus coupe in the driveway. The wig business must pay better than he had thought. A dog barked from somewhere, perhaps from the woods next to the house. North and Swift walked up to the front door, and North knocked.

  They waited and he knocked again.

  Swift eyed the car. “Looks like somebody’s home.”

  “Ms. Daughtry?” called out North. Most likely, he thought, she didn’t want to face him. Perhaps she was hiding in the closet after making off with his forty-year-old wig for some inexplicable reason. With the way his luck was running she was probably a fake-hair kleptomaniac.

  “Ms. Daughtry?”

  “Try the handle,” advised Swift.

  “That’s breaking and entering.”

  “Not if it’s not locked.”

  “That’s a distinction the police do not make, Jimmy.”

  Before North could stop him, Swift reached out and tried the knob, and it turned. The door swung open.

  North looked at Swift in dismay. “Now you’ve done it. Step through there and it’s a felony.”

  Swift promptly stepped through. “I’m a felon. Feels good. Come on, Merl, we can always say the wind blew it open.”

  North shook his head. “This is not right.”

  “Damn, Merl, sometimes I just don’t g
et you. You’re so uptight. You’ll go down in a tunnel in the dead of night with maybe a psychopath, but you get squeamish walking through an open door in broad daylight. Now come on. I thought you were all about the truth.”

  North, fuming a bit, followed his friend inside.

  “Ms. Daughtry?” called out North. “I was the person who dropped off the old wig. I was just wondering if you’d found out anything?”

  There was no response. The only sounds were a clock ticking, the hum of probably an appliance, and their breathing.

  North said, “Okay, let’s look around.”

  They had not gone far when both men stopped and stared upward. Where the chandelier in the living room should have been was, instead, the unfortunate owner of the house. Linda Daughtry was hanging from the ceiling. The chandelier had been taken down and a strong rope had been run through the hook that had supported the light to form the improvised gallows.

  Daughtry’s eyes were open and seemed searching; her neck was cocked at an angle and ligatured to such a degree that life was pretty much ruled out. And North noted that, ironically, her wig had fallen off, revealing that her real hair was composed of wilted fragments of gray surrounded by broad, peeling patches of scalp. A pathetic, forlorn figure in death was Linda Daughtry.

  The stench from her putrid body was fierce and hit them both hard when the wind coming through the open front door pushed the foul odor in their faces. The dead, North knew from his science labs, did not keep particularly well without ice or embalming.

  This malodorous grenade propelled Jimmy Swift into giving up the last portions of the Wild Turkey still lingering in his gut, mixed with a half-dozen cups of coffee and a cheese Danish. That concoction did nothing to enhance the appearance of Daughtry’s living room rug.

  North, shaken to his core, managed to dial 911.

  The police arrived shortly thereafter. Before they got there, North lectured Swift on what and what not to say, even as the fastest of the present-day Mighty Johns sat on the floor cradling his head between his legs.

  “Say nothing about the wig, Jimmy, or the investigation we’re undertaking. Do you understand?”