Sudden Death fk-7

by William X. Kienzle

  “Again, common knowledge?”

  “The team almost took up a collection so he would get the soft lenses. We all spent time lookin’ for his lenses.”

  “Were you aware Hunsinger kept a strong poison at his apartment?”

  “You mean the strychnine. Sure. Like I said, the Hun was a talker. He blurted it out when we had a meeting of the discussion group at his place.”

  The sound of many male voices talking loudly and simultaneously interrupted the interrogation. The team had finished viewing the films of yesterday’s game. Now they filed through the locker room.

  “Show’s over,” Cobb observed. “Are we just about done?”

  “Just about. What happens now with the team?”

  “The coaches’ll run us for a while. . just to loosen up after yesterday’s battering.”

  “One last question then,” said Harris. “Can you account for your time yesterday?”

  “Let’s see. .” Cobb nibbled on a knuckle. “I got up about seven, kind of overslept and then started running behind.”

  “You were late getting to the Pontiac Inn,” Harris stated.

  Cobb looked at him sharply. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “How late?”

  “Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.”

  “Isn’t that kind of late for rising at seven? The brunch meeting didn’t begin till eight.”

  “I had a flat on the way to the stadium.”

  Harris looked skeptical. “Did you call anyone? Triple-A?”

  Cobb shook his head. “Happened at an empty stretch of I-75.”

  “Anybody stop to help you?”

  Again he shook his head. “Ever see I-75 early on a Sunday morning?”

  “Was your family awake before you left for the stadium?”

  “No. They usually sleep in till about ten.”

  “So no one would be able to attest to your whereabouts until you arrived at the inn at eight-forty-five or nine?”

  “What are you getting at?” Almost from the beginning of this interrogation, Cobb had understood its purpose. Now that the intent had become so obvious, he thought it best to get the cards on the table.

  “Nothing, Bobby.” Ewing was conciliatory. “But Hank Hunsinger is dead and we have to find a murderer. And to do that, we’ve got to ask questions. As, for example, what does Hunsinger’s death mean to you?”

  Cobb glanced pointedly at Harris and hesitated, as if refusing to answer any more questions. But finally he spoke. “Nothing. Hun’s death means nothing to me. By a series of coincidences we happened to be on the same team. That was the end of it. No, I’ll take that back: You saw it for yourselves up there,” he gestured toward the field. “I’ll be throwing to a better player. And if you want to know whether I knew Hoffer was that good, the answer is no. I’ve had practically no time with him since he joined the club this season.

  “Now, is there anything more?”

  “Not now, Bobby. We may want to talk to you again,” said Ewing in parting.

  Cobb lightly jogged out of the locker room and headed up the ramp to join his teammates in their running exercises.

  “That’s a lot of time unaccounted for at the beginning of his day yesterday, isn’t it?” Koesler asked.

  “Yup,” said Ewing. “Since Hunsinger arrived at the inn on time, he would have had to leave his apartment by about seven. If Cobb went there, he could have gotten there anytime between, say, seven and eight, and still have had plenty of time to get out to the inn by nine. It would take only seconds to switch containers and pour the strychnine into the DMSO.” Ewing paused and reflected.

  “But have you noticed?” Ewing continued. “So far, everyone we’ve talked to has an unaccounted-for gap in yesterday’s schedule. And in each case, the missing time is sufficient for the person to have gone to Hunsinger’s apartment and made the switch.”

  Harris shrugged. “Sometimes you can’t raise a suspect. And sometimes there’s too many.”

  “Who’s next?” asked Ewing.

  “We’d better grab that kicker before he gets away. But first, I want to call headquarters.”

  While Harris was gone, Koesler studied the locker room. Just a series of open wire cages, each containing a set of shoulder pads on a shelf topped by a helmet. Wide open. No privacy. He could imagine Cobb studying Hunsinger indulging in one obsessive compulsion after another. It would be hard to hide anything in this setting. Not that Hunsinger had tried to hide anything, from all they’d been told. Perhaps he should have tried to be more secretive.

  Harris returned. “There are prints all over the apartment. But then a lot of people had been there lately. However, only Hunsinger’s prints on both shampoo and DMSO containers. And another thing. Hunsinger’s latest girlfriend, that Jan Taylor who found his body. Jackson checked her out. She’s got a roommate who testifies that they were together all day Sunday until Taylor left to join Hunsinger. The timing checks out. She’s clean.”

  “It figures,” Ewing commented, then turned to Koesler and smiled. “Father, you’re not holding up your end.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Praying for success.”

  They offered him a contract guaranteeing a salary of $35,000 and containing a health-care package and litle else. He thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Of course, it meant that he might never return to Dunderry, at least not to work there. That was the best part.

  Dunderry was an estate of approximately a hundred acres. It had been taken from its native Irish owners in 1573 and settled by a transplanted English landlord. Though the property had been passed down through generations of the Birmingham family, the present Georgian mansion had not been built until the late nineteenth century.

  At about the time of the official establishment of the Republic of Ireland in 1949, the then Lord Birmingham lost interest in Dunderry. He became an absentee landlord. The Murray family became his tenants.

  The Murrays came from Gurteen, less than ten miles south of Ballymote. Dunderry stood at the outskirts of Ballymote. Both Gurteen and Ballymote were in County Sligo.

  Three of the seven Murray brothers pooled all their resources and entered into a mortgage on Dunderry, much to the relief of Lord Birmingham. The Murray brothers moved their considerable families into Dunderry. Space was not a problem; the mansion was huge.

  The Murray plan was to make of Dunderry a sheep farm. The secondary plan was to make of the mansion a bed-and-breakfast establishment. The combined plans put food on the table. And that was about all it did. That the sheep were sheared, the once magnificent gardens maintained at least to a minimal degree, and the occasional overnight guests satisfied was a tribute to the industriousness of the Murray families and all their many children.

  Into the large family, in 1965, was born Niall, fourth son and seventh child of Liam and Meg Murray.

  Niall learned the rudiments of farm life not long after he learned to walk. He was given responsibility for a list of chores as soon as he was physically able to carry them out. The list of chores grew right along with Niall. As a side effect of all this work, Niall was building a strong body. He would not become a huge adult, but he would be hard packed, with sinewy power.

  At the age of only four, he began his formal education at Ballymote National School. Discipline was rigid, obedience and performance expected. Although it had been years since physical punishment had been banned in schools, that did not preclude a cuff on the ear from time to time. Teachers guilty of sporadic hitting had little fear that the punishment would be reported. Pupils quickly learned that the blow suffered in school, if reported at home, most likely would be repeated there.

  At age fourteen, Niall attended St. Nathy’s College in Ballaghadreen. St. Nathy’s was the equivalent of high school in the States. A Catholic boys’ school with a priest as dean and a faculty comprising clerics and laity. If anything, the discipline and demands were far more intense than at Ballymote National.

  There were times during Niall’s
four years at St. Nathy’s that he was invited to friends’ homes. At some of these visits, he learned that Dunderry was a mansion in name only. The experience was akin to that of one who grows up in poverty, not desperate poverty, but poor nonetheless. As long as everyone in his milieu lives in roughly the same circumstances, the boy is unaware that he lives in what others would term poverty.

  Niall, in his visits to some Ballaghadreen homes, discovered that not everyone lived with sheep; that outer clothing does not have to carry an animal odor; that toilets, even though indoor, need not appear to be the outdoor variety; that multiple consanguine families need not live together; that every able-bodied person in a home need not work at every conceivable moment.

  He was by no means the only one in the Murray clan to learn these facts. But as he assimilated them, some unpredictable inner conviction was formed. He would escape. He would flee the inheritance of Dunderry. There was a better life out there, and he would have it.

  But how?

  One possible avenue was the natural progression, taken by many of his predecessor classmates, from St. Nathy’s to Maynooth. St. Nathy’s, as a Catholic school, was a feeder to the seminary. Many’s the lad who had been force-fed a liberal arts curriculum featuring Latin; been an altar server over many years; been exposed to the example of so many clerical professors; then matriculated at Maynooth to pursue studies that might lead to the priesthood. For many Catholic students in Ireland, the progression was as natural as going from third to fourth grade.

  But that was not for Niall. He’d had a belly full of discipline, starting with his earliest memories at Dunderry, then St. Nathy’s. Spending his adult life curtsying to some bishop hardly described an escape for Niall.

  Besides, he wanted to get as far from Dunderry as possible. He felt that if he remained in Ireland, Dunderry would get him in much the same way a vortex sucks under a drowning person. His future lay in the States. He was sure of it. There, in the land of the free, his horizons would be limited only by his talents and his ambition.

  Of course, it was possible to get to the States through Maynooth. For many years, a goodly number of Irish priests had been imported to the States, technically excardinated by their Irish bishops and incardinated by American bishops. The trend was particularly strong throughout Florida. In Florida the imports were called by the local clergy, FBIs. Foreign-Born Irish. The term was used pejoratively.

  Again, Niall had no intention of trading obedience owed an Irish bishop for that owed an American Irish bishop.

  He was aware of the Irish Clergy Connection because he made himself aware of every possible shred of news about what went on in America. He read all the American literature and journals he could find. And when he chanced upon any potential avenue of entry to the States, he zeroed in on it.

  Thus it was that Niall learned that there had been a blend of sorts between distinctive United States and European sports. Football-American, not Irish-rivaled baseball as America’s favorite sport. Niall took special note of and interest in the phenomenon of soccer-type kickers, many of European origin, becoming specialists in attempting field goals and extra points for American football teams.

  Why not? He’d played a lot of Irish football. He was a strong young man. And, in remote preparation for such an event, he’d gotten a mail-ordered American football and kicking tee. On one of the seldom used fields of Dunderry, he’d set up regulation-sized goalposts. As often as possible, he would cajole or bribe one or another of his brothers or sisters to shag the ball. For him, practice made not only permanent, but near perfect. Repeatedly, he would split the uprights from distances approved by American standards.

  Then, as if fate had ordained it, he read that the Pontiac Cougars, before each training season, staged a sort of open house for amateur athletes to try out for their team.

  The open tryout was the brainchild of owner Jay Galloway. His intention was twofold: to whip up more local interest in the Cougars; and, on the off chance that some genius talent might be uncovered, to sign that talent to a minimum contract.

  Niall could not know Galloway’s intent. Nor would he have cared had he known. The opportunity seemed perfect-God-sent, in fact.

  Despite warnings and dark prophecies from family and friends, he spent nearly every pence he’d saved and purchased a plane ticket to Michigan. He promised his fiancee, Moira, whom he’d been courting these two years since graduating from St. Nathy’s, that he’d send for her as soon as he’d made good with the Cougars. She alone believed in him.

  It happened. The Cougars coaches, who usually daydreamed through these ragtag tryouts, scarcely could believe their eyes. This Niall Murray-not a potbellied, overstuffed, noncoordinated dreamer-was a trim, powerful, natural athlete.

  At first, the coaches were content to watch him put kick after kick through the crossbars from the 10-yard line, about the distance of a PAT. Then they began moving him farther and farther from the goalposts, adding difficult angles to the increasing distance. Rarely did he miss.

  Few of the coaches could recall, in their experience, anyone like him.

  The assistant coaches fetched head coach Bradford, who generally retreated to his office during these tedious tryouts. He, of course, agreed wholeheartedly with the others. Altogether, they treated Murray like a piece of rare Waterford. They got him a good room in a good motel and made sure he had sufficient money for expenses.

  The coaches immediately found general manager Dave Whitman, who informed owner Jay Galloway that a rough-cut diamond was all but signed. Then, before anyone could say “agent,” Niall Murray was under contract to the Cougars.

  It did not matter to Niall that he would be the lowest paid Cougar, nor that he would be among the lowest salaried players in the league-$35,000 to Niall was as good as a million. It got him off Dunderry and out of Ireland. Forthwith he sent for Moira Malloy.

  Hank Hunsinger arranged for their wedding at Holy Redeemer after the Hun’s mother pulled a few strings with the good Redemptorist Fathers. Hunsinger also arranged Niall’s bachelor party, at which the Hun introduced him to marijuana.

  Niall could not quite fathom why he had been singled out for special attention by Hunsinger. The other Cougars treated him like an alien at best and a toy at worst. Some mocked his brogue, others taped him to the goalpost. But as time passed and his consistently excellent performance exhibited itself, his teammates had to acknowledge that the Mick would be winning games and helping them make more money. Now Niall was unreservedly accepted into their company.

  From the very outset Hunsinger had accepted him. Actually, more adopted than accepted. And, correspondingly, Murray had become dependent on Hunsinger. After a while this dependency became apparent even to Niall. However, since, from his first days with the Cougars, he had accepted an enormous amount of help from Hunsinger, Murray could find no way of terminating his dependency.

  And as long as this dependency continued, Murray felt himself drifting further and further from his goals. He wanted to be superior at his job as a place kicker for the Cougars, make an escalating amount of money, and secure a future for himself, his wife, and the family they would have. Meanwhile, the Hun continued repeatedly to try to lead him into chemical dependency and infidelity.

  He decided his relationship with Hunsinger was one of aversion-attraction. Niall was truly grateful for all the Hun had done in the beginning, even though the ill-intentioned basis was becoming apparent. Niall acknowledged to himself that somehow he must free himself from the harmful hold Hunsinger had on him.

  There was no doubt in Niall’s mind that he would have to do something. The only question was how far he would have to go.

  Around and around the track circuiting the playing field the team jogged. Koesler watched, fascinated. These finely conditioned athletes ran so effortlessly. They were running ostensibly to loosen up from the aftereffects of yesterday’s game. Some needed more than others.

  Lieutenant Harris informed one of the coaches that Niall Murray
was wanted for interrogation. As Murray neared the group, the coach waved him out of the drill.

  “It’s grateful I am to you for that.” Murray toweled his head as he stood with Harris, Ewing, and Koesler.

  Introductions were made and explanations given, specifically for Koesler’s presence. The introductions and explanations were becoming less and less necessary. Word of the interrogations, their purpose and scope, was circulating throughout the team.

  Yes, Murray was well aware of Hunsinger’s compulsive behavior; wasn’t everyone? Niall also knew of the Hun’s astigmatism and nearsightedness. Team members by and large were aware that Hunsinger kept some sort of device in the training room for cleaning, or “cooking,” his contact lenses after practice. Only after practice? Then did Murray know what Hunsinger’s postgame routine was? Of course. He took a cursory shower here and then went back to his apartment where he took care of his lenses, showered again, and prepared for the Big Evening. Everyone knew that.

  “Were you aware of anything else being wrong with Hunsinger’s vision?” Ewing asked. “I mean, besides the astigmatism and nearsightedness?”

  “Oh, then, you must mean that the poor man was colorblind.”

  Murray’s unequivocal delivery of this unexpected answer stunned the officers and Koesler.

  Harris recovered first. “How did you happen to know that Hunsinger was colorblind?”

  “It came out of a night when we were, as they say, hoistin’ a few. For once, I used the brains I was born with and let the Hun get well ahead of me with the creature, and the poor man was after running off at the mouth about the bad tricks fate had played on him. Among them was the fact that he was colorblind. But once it was out and the Hun realized what he’d said, he swore me to secrecy. . I don’t suppose it matters anymore now, does it?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Ewing, “it does. Very much. Have you told anyone else?”

  “Oh, I did not; certainly not! It was a secret! I told no one. I just thought. . now that he’s dead-”