A Hopeless Game

by Daniel Carson

  “They said you won the drill, even as a sophomore. But when Coach told you to choose the weakest kid, who would be taped to the goalposts… you chose yourself. And that your team hasn’t done the drill since.”

  “Did you have a question?” Elliot asked.

  “I’m just amazed that a fifteen-year-old kid would have the maturity and courage to do something like that.”

  Elliot shrugged as he looked over at his father. “Dad always taught me to treat other people the way I’d like to be treated.”

  They exchanged another look. Good father. Good son. Close relationship.

  “I guess I was right,” I said. “A little of both.”

  “There are enough bullies in the world,” said Kevin Sunderland. “I could tell early on that Elliot was bigger and stronger and faster than everyone else. So I told him to use that for something good.”

  Elliot smiled proudly. “Ever since I was little, Dad was always telling me to protect the weak, look out for the kids on the edge, and never, ever be a bully.”

  That’s when the double doors swung open and the doctor walked in. He motioned me over.

  “He’s stable, finally.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Did he wake up?”

  The doctor shook his head. “He might wake up tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe never.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m afraid so. With as much as we’ve learned about the brain, it’s still quite a mystery. Trauma is a funny thing. But he’s well enough that some people could go into his room and visit. If you want to take some people in that know him well, it couldn’t hurt.” He looked around the packed waiting room. “But just a few people. We don’t want to smother the man.”

  Five minutes later I was in Coach Duncan’s room with Kevin and Elliot Sunderland and a few players that Elliot had picked out to join us. And the remarkable Elliot gave the comatose Arnie Duncan a speech fit for an inspirational sports movie. If Arnie Duncan was still in there somewhere, I sure hoped that he heard it.

  Finally, Elliot reached out to his coach’s arm and squeezed it, and he, his father, and the other players left the room.

  Replacing them were two other visitors: Sheriff Kramer and Susan Mossback. She was wearing dark sunglasses that practically covered the entire top half of her face, but when she took them off, her eyes weren’t even a little bit red.

  She moved to the bed, paused a beat, then turned to me.

  “Is he going to live?”

  “Do you want him to?”

  “What?”

  “Or are you upset that you didn’t finish the job this time?”

  She turned to Sheriff Kramer. He quickly held both palms out to me as if to ask if I knew what I was doing.

  As usual, I did not know what I was doing.

  But Granny always said you had to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

  “You, see, Mrs. Mossback,” I continued, “you know that I know that Arnie picked you up at your house the other day. What you might not know is that I followed you. So I know that even though your late husband hasn’t even been buried yet, you’re already running off with another man to a hotel.”

  Her mouth opened. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  “Really? Because what it looks like is this. You and your husband had one heck of a dysfunctional marriage. He was a jackwagon and you hated him. You wished you’d never married him. And then you happened to connect with somebody who hated him as much as you did. Arnie Duncan. And he was sweet on you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I think it is. The two of you got involved. And then you came up with a plan. A plan to kill your husband. You just needed someone else to do the dirty work. Who better than the coach who hated his guts?”

  “You’re insane.”

  “You thought your crime was perfect. Criminals always do. You expected us to just accept that your husband’s death was a suicide. And I admit, at first we did. Until we didn’t. And once we started investigating his death as a murder… well, you and Arnie must have decided you needed to clean up whatever evidence you might have left behind. So you come to your house, and go down to the basement. And when Arnie wasn’t looking… Bam. You killed him. Except, according to the doctor, you didn’t quite succeed.”

  Susan looked at me. She looked at Sheriff Kramer. It was like she was trying to form words but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. I was starting to think maybe this omelet had come pretty close to the actual truth.

  “But that’s impossible,” said a voice. A soft whisper. The words barely audible.

  But I had been watching Susan Mossback, and I knew she hadn’t spoken. Nor had the handsome sheriff. Which left only one possibility.

  Arnie Duncan, assistant football coach for the Hopeless Tigers, was awake.

  Chapter 24

  Susan, Alex, and I could only look on in silence as the doctors and nurses rushed in and worked on Arnie. Eventually they removed his breathing tube and ran a few tests. Then the doctor turned toward us.

  “Take it easy on Coach Duncan,” he said. “He and his brain have been through a lot.”

  Susan went to one side of the bed and grabbed his hand, while Sheriff Kramer went to the other side. “Arnie,” said Sheriff Kramer. “I’ll try to make this quick so you can rest. What did you mean before when you said it was impossible?”

  Coach Duncan’s chest heaved as he prepared to talk. Then, as Susan nodded to him, he began.

  “Susan didn’t go to the house with me. I went all alone. She wasn’t the one who attacked me.”

  “Then why wasn’t your pickup truck there?” I asked.

  “I left it in my driveway and walked over,” said Arnie.

  “And where was Susan?”

  “I was at the Clap Back Inn,” she said, glaring up at me.

  “If you were at the motel, then…” Alex looked at Arnie. “Then why weren’t you there, too? Hope saw the two of you arrive there together,” he explained.

  Arnie’s head moved back and forth just a little. “I was afraid you might have seen that. It’s true, I got the motel room for me and Susan. But…” He stalled and looked to Susan. She gave him an expression that showed only kindness—and possibly even a little love—and nodded.

  “We were going to, but… Susan didn’t think it was right,” Arnie continued. “You know, with Randall being dead such a short time. But I still told her she could stay in the motel as long as she wanted.”

  “People have been driving by the house nonstop,” Susan explained. “Nothing but a bunch of gawkers. I’m tired of it. I wanted to get away.”

  “And I went back to my house,” said Arnie. “I’m in the neighborhood right across the creek from the Mossbacks. It’s a short enough walk. So last night I went over to their house. I walked because I didn’t want anyone to see my truck there. I didn’t figure anyone would be home.”

  “Why did you go there if you knew Susan wouldn’t even be home?” I asked.

  “I’m embarrassed to say.”

  “In case that giant headache isn’t a reminder, we are way past embarrassment,” said Sheriff Kramer.

  Arnie’s chest heaved up and down again. He motioned for Susan to give him an ice chip, and he labored to swallow it.

  “We’re gonna lose the championship,” he said finally. “As the interim head coach, it’s my job to come up with the game plan. And I can’t do it. Call it writer’s block or coach’s block or just plain ol’ nerves, but I simply cannot see clearly how we’re going to beat Mound City. I’ve seen the coaches and the players losing confidence—in me, in themselves. So I decided I’d go look through Randall’s old game plans. He’s kept every game plan he ever came up with. I thought maybe I’d find something in there that would work for us this week. But when I get down to the basement and head for the bookshelves, something hit me in the head. I’ve never been hit so hard in all my life. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  A nurse came back in and said that
Arnie had probably had enough chit-chat for now. Susan bent down and gave Arnie a kiss on the cheek and told him to get well. And as we walked out into the hall, she tugged on Sheriff Kramer’s coat. “I’d like a moment alone with Hope, if I could.”

  Alex shrugged, then put on his cowboy hat and walked away.

  The slap came so fast I couldn’t react. My head bounced to the right as the pain shot through the left side of my face. In my peripheral vision I could see Alex turning around and coming back toward us, but I straightened up and waved him away.

  “You sure?” he asked from twenty feet away.

  I nodded in reply as I massaged my cheek.

  “That really hurt,” I said to Susan.

  “Good,” she replied. “In case you’re a moron, and I highly suspect you are, that slap was for thinking I was the kind of woman who would cheat on my husband. For thinking I was the kind of woman who would kill my husband. For thinking I was the kind of woman who would try to kill Arnie.”

  She was mad as hell. And if she was telling the truth, she had a right to be. She even had a right to slap me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said weakly.

  She narrowed her eyes at me, puckered her lips, and stepped closer.

  “You wanna make it up to me?” she whispered in a low, throaty growl. “Go find the person who really killed my Randy.”

  After that, Sheriff Kramer put me in the proverbial penalty box. I was not allowed to go near Susan Mossback or Arnie Duncan.

  “But one of them still might have killed Coach Mossback,” I protested.

  “Maybe. But if we need to talk with either of them again, I’ll be the one asking the questions.”

  So as Arnie Duncan began his recovery and the Hopeless Tigers continued to prepare for what seemed like a now very improbable shot at a state championship, I needed to do what I was trained to do. I needed to go to work. But first, I needed a ride.

  Granny picked me up from the hospital and handed me a phone in a box.

  “You bought me a phone?”

  She shook her head. “Flo heard you needed one. She’s got a stash of burner phones for just this kind of thing.”

  “And what kind of thing is that?”

  “You know, trouble with Johnny Law. I assume that’s why you conveniently lost your phone.”

  “You think I’m running from the law?”

  “Flo said she can get you a fake ID and a one-way ticket to Mexico too, but she’ll need a few hours.”

  “I’m not running from the law.”

  “So you’re going to stand and fight? Even better. Flo can get you an untraceable gun by tomorrow.”

  “Why don’t I just get a tank?”

  Granny considered it. “For starters, you can’t very well hide a tank in your trousers, plus Flo would need two or three days at least to come up with something like a tank.”

  “Then how about a bazooka?”

  Granny nodded. “That’d be easier for sure. And with the size jeans you wear nowadays, you might be able to hide it in your pants.”

  “How about this, Granny? How about we just stick to the phone for now.”

  I got back to my apartment and called Mound City High School and spoke to the head coach, Mason Hawes. He’d heard about Coach Duncan already—the athletic commission had told him about it, and he’d readily agreed to moving the game. He seemed genuinely upset about it. But he also confirmed that the word on the street was correct: he hated Coach Mossback’s guts. Not enough to kill him, he assured me. Plus, he was surrounded by coaches all night Friday night.

  “All night?” I asked.

  “Call it part celebration and part preparation. But yes, I didn’t move from my basement until I went to grab donuts the next morning.”

  “And you have people who can confirm that?”

  “Four coaches and my wife. Want their numbers?”

  I did want their numbers, actually, and Coach Hawes gave them to me.

  I left my apartment to get some fresh air, and I kept making calls while I walked around town. I checked with every coach, as well as Mrs. Hawes herself. Mason’s story checked out. He indeed was at his house all of Friday night. Which would have been the perfect alibi if Randall Mossback was killed on Friday night, as everyone else still believed he was. Only Dr. Bridges, Sheriff Kramer, and I knew the truth.

  Which led me to ask Mrs. Hawes one final question. “And after your husband brought back the donuts, what did he do the rest of the day?”

  “I don’t know. He took off. I assume he went to the office to start work for the game.”

  There was just one problem with that assumption. When I asked the four coaches the same question, they had no idea what Coach Hawes did on Saturday either. It was possible he was at the office, but not with them. They didn’t meet as a staff again until Sunday.

  I needed to learn more about Mason Hawes.

  But first I looked into the players on the Hopeless High School football team. After getting permission from the boys’ parents, I interviewed a handful of the players. There was unanimous consensus on two points: Coach Mossback was a jerk, and Coach Mossback was a genius. All the kids were horrified by his death, and by the subsequent attack on Coach Duncan. But in response to my question about whether anyone on the team might have had reason to hurt either man, the answer was a resounding no.

  Then I considered the matter of Martin Gellman—the “weak link” on the football team. A kid who’d gotten treated particularly badly by Coach Mossback for the two weeks he’d played football. But that was three years ago, and Mandy had said he was a nice kid who would never hurt anyone.

  Still, I placed a call to Bev Hamilton just to confirm.

  “I don’t know Martin very well, but with my limited interaction, I agree with Mandy. Sweet boy. I don’t think there’s any chance he was involved with this.”

  By now I’d worn a path around downtown Hopeless and found myself on the tourist side of Main Street. Some shops and businesses were closing for the day, while the restaurants were just getting into the swing of the evening rush. It was amid all of this hustle and bustle that I heard the raspy sound of a small engine. I listened more carefully, and I recognized what it was. A chainsaw. I looked around, expecting to see arborists trimming the elms whose limbs hung over Main Street, but I saw no tree trimmers. Instead, the noise seemed to be coming from inside a building just to my right.

  The sign on the window said Hopeless Accounting—and beneath that was a name. Kevin Sunderland, CPA.

  I leaned closer to the little storefront, and the chainsaw noise continued. No doubt about it—the noise was coming from inside.

  I walked inside. A pretty secretary wearing headphones looked up at me from the front desk. Hopefully those were noise-canceling headphones. The chainsaw noise was coming from the back, and it was pretty loud in here.

  “May I help you?” she said, removing one side of her headphones.

  I pointed to the back. “Is that a chainsaw I hear?”

  She smiled and hit the intercom button on her phone. The roar of the chainsaw blared through her speaker. “Kevin’s working on one of his sculptures,” she said as she turned the intercom off.

  “I thought he was an accountant.”

  “He does ice sculptures on the side.”

  “That’s right! Kevin told me it was part of his nerd Olympics cred.”

  The young woman laughed. “He’s said the same thing to me.” She jerked her thumb toward the noise. “You can head on back if you like. He loves to get visitors while he’s sculpting.”

  I followed the noise past two empty offices and a small break room, then stepped through a door into a medium-sized garage. A very, very cold garage. And in the middle of this cold garage, wearing goggles and gloves and wielding a chainsaw, Kevin Sunderland, CPA, was transforming a block of ice into some kind of a trophy.

  “Kevin!” I hollered over the roar of the chainsaw.

  He turned around, tipped up his goggles, and shut o
ff his chainsaw.

  “Hi, Hope! What are you doing here?”

  “I heard the roar of the chainsaw out on the street, and what can I say…”

  He laughed. “Let me guess, you had to investigate?”

  “Call it an occupational hazard. So—accountant by day, crazy ice sculptor by night. I remember you talking about it, I just didn’t know it involved chainsaws.”

  “A chisel and hammer would take too long. And you can’t take too long when sculpting ice, because…”

  “Because ice melts.”

  “Exactly.”

  I surveyed his work. “So what do you do with a sculpture when it’s done?”

  “I sell it!” he said enthusiastically. “I am an accountant after all, so I like to make money. Weddings, birthdays, special events. That kind of thing. What do you think of this one?”

  It was quite good actually. And the more I looked at it, the more I realized it wasn’t just any trophy. “Is that the Lombardi Trophy?”

  “The woman knows her football! Well done. I thought, just in case we pull out the victory this weekend, wouldn’t it be fun to have our own Lombardi Trophy?”

  “You’re right. That would be pretty fun.”

  “I heard Coach Duncan woke up shortly after Elliot and I left,” he said.

  “Thank God,” I said.

  “He doing okay?”

  “He’s weak and needs his rest, but… he seemed like he’ll recover.”

  “That’s great to hear. Elliot will be so glad.”

  I shivered. “Don’t you ever get cold in here?”

  He shrugged. “Nah. I’m used to it.”

  “I guess you’re tough like your son.”

  “Ha! That’s the only time I’ll ever be compared with my son when it comes to being tough. The kid is the hardest worker I’ve ever seen, and he didn’t get it from me. Listen, I need to finish this sculpture so I can get it into the cooler. Was there anything in particular you needed?”

  “No, I was really just curious about the chainsaw. And now I really hope you get to display your sculpture this weekend. With everything that’s happened, do you really think the team still has a chance to win?”