“So everybody but you is guilty,” says Pete. “Is that it?”
Jaeger winks at Crouse. “Wade liked pretty girls. And pretty wives were best. Which is funny, considering the man’s ethics. But adultery isn’t a crime. Romance is a contest, a race. There is a winner, and there is everybody else, and I’m looking at you but thinking about your wife. She is a dream. A fat toad like you is lucky to have her. And believe me, a guy like Wade is going to be interested, and by the way, whose baby did she just have?”
Crouse tries to curse, but he hasn’t the breath.
Audrey says, “Carl.”
“With you, darling, I don’t have guesses.” Jaeger’s face softens. “Maybe you two had a history. Maybe there was a good reason for you to cripple him and kill him. I heard your marriage fell apart a couple months ago. Anybody can draw a story from that clue. Except you never tried to kill me, not once, and I gave you a hundred reasons to cut off my head while I was dreaming.”
Audrey cries.
Jaeger points at Sarah. “But you,” he says. “At the races, I saw you chatting it up with the dead man. I’m not the most sensitive boil, but everything showed in those eyes. If you didn’t screw Wade, you wanted to. And maybe you didn’t do the bashing, but you’ve got a husband. And worse, you’ve got this tall goon following you around. What would Mr. Masters do if he discovered that his training buddy was cheating on her husband and on him?”
Breathing hard, Masters stares at the back of Sarah’s head.
“No end to the suspects,” Jaeger says.
“What about Pepper?” says Pete.
“Yeah, I was saving him.”
Lucas feels sick.
Pete turns and looks at him. “The party,” he says.
“At the coach’s house,” says Jaeger. “I’ve heard stories. Not that anybody invited me, thank you. But my sources claim that a brutal load of liquor was consumed. By one man, mostly. Years of sobriety gone in a night, and then the drunk drove away.” He smiles, something good on his tongue. “And that’s when somebody called the hotline. Somebody told the world, ‘Lucas Pepper is driving and shit-faced, and this is his license plate, and this is his home address, and this is his phone number.’ ”
Lucas manages ragged little breaths.
“A night in jail and your license suspended,” says Jaeger. “But there’s worse parts to the story. I know because my first source told me. That next Monday, when I crossed paths with Wade, I asked about you, Pepper. ‘Where’s your prize stallion?’ I said. “‘Why isn’t he running in this miserable heat?’ That’s when he launched into this screaming fit about drunks, about how stupid it was to waste effort and blood trying to keep bastards like them on track.
“I know something about ugly tantrums,” Jaeger says. “And this was real bad. This is what the witnesses saw when they saw us in that park. They assumed it was two men fighting. Which it was, I guess. Except only one of the men was present, and I was just a witness, trying to hang on for the ride.
“Wade told me about that party and how he watched you drinking and drinking, and then he made it his business to walk you to your car, and that’s where he got into your face. Standing at the curb, he told you exactly what you were, which was the worst kind of failure. He said he wasn’t sure he was going to give you even one more chance. Why bother with a forty-year-old drawerhead, spent and done and wasted?
“And that’s the moment I turned around. It was a hot sticky evening, and that was my excuse. But really, I was embarrassed for you, Lucas. I didn’t know that was possible. I turned and ran home, and Wade went on his merry way, and I can guess what happened if he came around the bend and ran into you trotting by yourself.”
Lucas stares at Jaeger but glimpses something moving. Something is running through the trees, and nobody else sees it.
With the one finger, Pete punches Lucas. “Is there something you want to tell us, Pepper?”
Sniffing, Audrey whispers his name.
Jaeger removes the cap again, wiping at his forehead.
Lucas is the only person who doesn’t jump when Harris trots up behind Jaeger.
“Hey, guys,” says a big happy voice. “I finally found you.”
In November, in the warm dark, Lucas rode up to the Harold Farquet Memorial Fieldhouse. He was stowing bike lights when Varner appeared. “I must be late,” said Lucas.
“What’s that mean?” said Varner, not laughing.
They went inside. Half an acre of concrete lay beneath a shell of naked girders and corrugated steel. The building’s centerpiece was the two-hundred-meter pumpkin-orange track. Multipurpose courts filled the middle and stretched east. Athletics offices and locker rooms clung to the building’s south end. Banners hanging from the ugly ceiling boasted about third-place finishes. The largest banner celebrated the only national championship in Jewel history—twenty years ago, in cross-country.
Thirty people had come out of the darkness to run. Most were middle-of-the-pack joggers, cheery and a little fat. Masters and Sarah were sharing a piece of floor, stretching hamstrings and IT bands. Audrey ran her own workout, surging on the brief straightaways. Lucas watched her accelerate toward him and then fall into a lazy trot on the turn, smiling as she passed.
Varner vanished inside the locker room. Out of his pack, Lucas pulled a clean singlet and dry socks and the still-young shoes. His shorts were under his jeans. Kicking off street shoes, he changed in the open. His phone rang, and glancing at the number, he killed the ring. Then Audrey’s phone rang as she came past, and she answered by saying, “Kind of busy here, Mr. Tanner.”
The indoor air felt hot and dry. Lucas walked toward the lockers, bent, and took a long drink from the old fountain, the water warm enough for a bath. Burping, he stepped away. Heroes covered the wall. Someone made changes since last winter, but the biggest photograph was the same: The championship team with its top five competitors in back, slower runners kneeling at their feet. Able and his assistants flanked the victors. The coach looked happiest, standing beside his main stallion. By contrast, Jaeger appeared smug and bored, his smile as thin as could be and still make a smile. The big portrait of the school’s national champion runner had been removed. Three different years, Carl Jaeger was the best in Division II cross-country. But that man was in jail, and the dead man had replaced him. Newly minted prints of Wade had been taken from past decades, each image fresh and clean. Testimonials about the man’s competitive drive and importance to the local running community made him into somebody worth missing. Lucas read a few words and gave up. Farther along was a younger Audrey, third-best at the national trials. Her hair was long but nothing else had changed much. He studied the picture for a minute, and then she came around again, saying, “Don’t stare at little girls, old man. Hear me?”
“You pointed east,” Harris says. “So I headed east. I chased you. Except nobody was there. Old farts start slow, and I didn’t see you after the first mile, so I figured you changed your minds.”
The kid is angry but smiling, proud of his cleverness.
“I thought about going north. But then I realized. . . . ” Harris stops talking. “Hey, Carlie. What are you doing with this crew?”
Nobody speaks.
Something odd is happening here. That fact is obvious enough to sink into Harris’s brain. The smirk softens, blue eyes blink, and again he says, “What are you doing with these guys, Carl?”
Jaeger turns and runs.
Harris is wearing long shorts and a heavy yellow top, his black headband streaked with salt. His glasses are the same as Masters’s, only newer. His shoes look like they came out of the box this morning. “You should see your faces,” he says. “You guys look sick.”
Pete steps away from Lucas.
“Anyway,” Harris says. “I didn’t know where you were, but I knew somebody who’d know. So I called Wade. He pointed me in the right direction, and I ran the train tracks to cut distance. I nearly missed seeing you, but I heard shouting.”
“What do we do?” says Gatlin.
“Follow him,” Varner says.
Jaeger is crossing a meadow, the black cap bobbing too much.
Pete looks at Lucas, big hands closing into fists.
And Lucas breaks into a full sprint, cutting between bodies.
Harris smiles and says, “Pepper.” Then, for fun, he sets his feet and throws out an arm. “What’s the password?”
They collide.
The young body is wiry-strong and tough. But Lucas has momentum, and they fall together. Lucas’s sore hand ends up inside the kid’s smile. Bony knuckles smack teeth and lips, and with a hard grunt Harris is down, the split upper lip dripping blood.
A wet voice curses.
Lucas is up and running.
Harris pokes at his aching mouth, and after careful consideration he says, “Screw you, asshole.”
Lucas charges past the oak and across the meadow. The black cap is gone. Lucas holds to the main trail, following it back into the woods where it turns cozy with the stream. A wild sprint puts him near a five-minute pace. Then he slows, feeding oxygen to his soggy head. Roots and holes want to trip him. Voices call out from behind, and he surges again. Somebody hollers his name. Lucas holds the pace. He has little extra to give, but his stride stays smooth and furious. A half-grown ash tree is dead on the trail, and his legs lift, carrying him over what is barely an obstacle. The stream is straight ahead, the bank cut into a longugly ramp, rocks and concrete slabs creating shallow water where horses can ford. Lucas turns left, following a narrower trail, and the trail splits, the right branch blocked by a CLOSED sign.
Jaeger went left, gravel showing where a runner churned up the little slope. Lucas runs right on the badly undermined trail. Holes need to be leaped. Last year’s grass licks at his legs. The trail ends where the bank collapsed, probably in the last few weeks, and he pushes sideways and up through the grass, popping out on the wide rail bed.
Jaeger is close. Seeing Lucas, he surges, and where the trail drops back into the woods, he accelerates. But his head dips too much. Long arms look sloppy, tight to the body and not in sync. Lucas throws in his own surge, and, catching Jaeger, he dips his head, delivering one hard shove.
Jaeger stays up but drifts into the brush, and his right leg jumps out. Both men trip and fall, bony arms flinging at each other, trading blows until they are down, scraped and panting.
Lucas is first to his feet.
Cursing, he tries kicking Jaeger’s ribs and beats his toes into the frozen ground by mistake. Then Jaeger grabs the foot and tries to break it, twisting as hard as he can, doing nothing but forcing Lucas to fall on his ass again.
Lucas breathes in long gulps. “This is no fun,” he says.
“Better than jail,” Jaeger says.
“Not much.”
Up on the rail bed, Gatlin says, “I see them.”
Harris says, “He’s mine, mine.”
Jaeger finds his feet first. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he reaches down and offers a hand to Lucas.
Pete emerged from the locker room, walking ahead of Gatlin. “Are you standing or running?” he said.
“I can do both,” Lucas said.
The men laughed and left him looking at pictures.
Audrey was taking another turn. She wasn’t talking to anybody now. Harris had come from somewhere, trotting next to her, chatty and happy.
As if he had a chance with her. He said something and laughed for both of them, and Audrey did her best not to notice.
Lucas had no fire. He didn’t want to run, and that’s why he kept delaying. Walking the wall, he studied volleyball pictures and wrestling pictures and a big plaque commemorating Harold Farquet, dead thirty years but still looking plush in that suit and tie. Then he reached a bare spot. A rectangular piece of the wall seemed too bright, holes showing where bolts had held up something heavy. Curious to a point, he tried remembering what used to be there. He couldn’t. The adjacent hallway led to the offices, and someone was moving inside Able’s office. On a whim, Lucas knocked, and the coach came out smiling.
“What’s up, Pepper?”
“I like that stuff about Wade,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, we thought it was good to do. Glad you like it.”
“And you took down Carl.”
Able grimaced. “Yeah, we did.”
“There’s something else down,” Lucas said. “There used to be a plaque around the corner. About Carl?”
“No,” the coach said. “A few years back, we had an alum give the athletic department some money. We thanked him with a banquet and a big plaque in his honor.”
“So what happened?”
“Jared Wails. Remember him?”
“I don’t do names,” Lucas said.
“He was a slow runner, a businessman. Had that big-title company up until last year.” Blood showed in the round face. “You saw him at races, probably. The rich boy who drove Corvettes.”
“The ’73 Stingray.”
“That’s him.”
“I remember. The guy was kiting checks.” Lucas nodded, pieces of the story coming back. “He told people heinherited his money, but he didn’t. And when it caught up to him, he drove out to the woods and blew his brains out.”
“And we pulled down his plaque.”
“Yeah, I knew him. I even talked to him a few times.” Lucas nodded, saying, “I liked the man’s cars. I told him so. He was the nicest rich guy in the world, so long as we were yabbering about Corvettes.”
“He wasn’t that nice,” the coach said.
“That’s what I’m saying.” Lucas wiped at his mouth. “We always had the same conversation: Cars and how much fun it was to drive fast, but gas was scarce, even for somebody with money. It was a nice conversation. Except he always changed subjects. He always ended up making big noise about hiring me.”
“You?”
“I was going to be his personal trainer. I was going to coach him to where he could run a sub-three-hour marathon, or some such crap. And he was going to pay me. He always gave me numbers, and each time, the numbers got fatter. Wilder. Plus he was going to drop ten pounds, or twenty, and then thirty. And I was going to run ultra-marathons with him, crossing Colorado or charging up that mountain in Africa. Kilimanjaro?”
“Lucas Pepper, personal trainer,” Able said, laughing.
“Yeah, Mr. Discipline. Me.” Lucas shook his head. “Of course Wails didn’t mean it. Anybody could tell. He always smiled when he talked that way. It was a smart bossy smile. The main message was that he had enough money to buy my ass. Whenever he wanted. And I needed to know it.”
The coach nodded. Waiting.
“The Program’s full of people like him,” Lucas said. “AA, I mean. It’s drunks and drawerheads who spend their lives lying about a thousand things to keep their drinking secret. That’s the feel I got off the Stingray man. The shiny smile. The way his eyes danced, not quite looking at me when he was telling his stories. Any story.”
“The man was a compulsive liar.”
“I guess.”
“No, after the suicide. Jared Wails had this big life story, but most of it was made up.”
“A lot of people try doing that,” Lucas said.
“But you saw through him.”
Lucas shrugged.
“So? You ever mention your intuition to anybody?”
“Yeah, I did.” Lucas nodded, looking out at the track. Ready to run now. “Once, I told somebody what I saw in that guy.”
What matters is the trail. Trees and brush and the wide sunny gash of the stream slide past, but they are nothing. What is real is the wet black strip of hard-packed earth that twists and folds back on itself. What matters is what’s under the foot and what waits for the next foot. A signpost streaks past—a yellow S sprouting an arrow pointing southwest. The trail narrows and drops and widens again, forming an apron of water-washed earth that feels tacky for the next
two strides. The runners slow, barely. Lucas leads. Then the trail lifts and yanks left, and the pace quickens and quickens again, and a guttural little voice from behind tries to say something clever, but there isn’t enough air for clever. Jaeger settles for a muttered, plaintive curse.
Two strides ahead, Lucas’s clean gait skips over roots and a mound of stubborn dirt. His blue windbreaker is unzipped, cracking and popping as the air shoves past. Every sleeve is pushed over his elbows. The stocking cap and hair are full of sweat, but the face is perfectly relaxed. Except for little glimpses, his eyes point down, and he listens carefully to the footfalls behind him.
Jaeger slows, dropping back another stride.
Ash Creek takes a hard bend, and then it straightens, pointing due east. The water is wide and shallow, filled with downed timber and busy bubbling water heading in the opposite direction, and the trail hangs beside it, smooth and straight. Lucas pushes, and somewhere the water sounds vanish. The endless wind still blows, but he can’t hear it pushing at the trees and he can’t hear Jaeger’s feet getting sloppy, starting to scrape at the earth. Coming from nowhere is a great long throb, and the ground shakes. Lucas dips his head and turns it, and Jaeger says one word with a question mark chasing. Then Lucas slows enough to shout the word back at him. “Train,” he says.
The stream bends right, slicing close to the old rail bed. Last year’s floods endangered the tracks, and the railroad responded with black boulders dropped over the trail and bank. A big two-legged sign blocks the way onto the bed, stern words warning those foolish enough to trespass on railroad property. Lucas lifts his knees and drives, a few stones rolling, and he glances downstream, seeing sunlight dancing on the bright skin of the morning Amtrak.
The big diesel throbs, pushing against the steady grade. Then the driver sees runners and hits the horn, and every living organism within a mile hears the piercing furious white roar.
The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition Page 59
