The Scorekeeper

by Dustin Stevens

  He just still wasn’t asking the right questions.

  “Mr. Klauss, do the names Mark Lawson or Ray Cicotte mean anything to you?”

  Twisting his mouth to the side, Klauss seemed to ponder the question for a moment.

  “Not that I know of. Can’t remember ever knowing a Lawson at all, the only time I’ve even heard the name Cicotte was in that old baseball flick about the Chicago White Sox.”

  The movie Klauss was referencing was Eight Men Out, the player a pitcher named Eddie Cicotte, a man barred from baseball for allegedly taking bribery payments.

  The irony of him being the one Klauss recalled was not lost on Reed.

  “And no Della Snow?”

  Again, Klauss dropped his head toward the table. He let it hang there for a moment, pushing out a long sigh, before raising his focus to Reed.

  “Come on, man. I already told you, the name doesn’t mean anything.”

  Staring back at him, Reed nodded. He let the words resonate, thinking back on everything that had transpired in the last hour.

  The man was probably right. The name didn’t mean anything. Because prior to a few years before, the girl didn’t seem to even exist.

  Shifting his weight onto a haunch, Reed slid one of the printouts from earlier from his rear pocket. Smoothing out the creases, he turned it so the DMV image of Della was facing Klauss and slid it forward.

  “You sure?”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Multiple times throughout the previous hours, Reed had felt his adrenaline ebb and flow. Nervous energy that had seeped into his system, driving him onward, occasionally punctuated by sudden bursts that sent him hurtling ahead at an even quicker pace.

  Moments like when he’d first spotted the message scrawled on Della Snow’s mirrors, or when the blast charges had gone off at the house in Grove City. Even after seeing the surveillance photos at his last stop, the magnitude of what the young woman had been through spread on the wall before him.

  All seemed to pale in comparison to what he felt as he burst through the front door of the 8th Precinct. Practically sprinting, Billie was in a full jog to keep pace beside him, both crossing the tiled expanse between the front and the frosted doors of the back in just a few quick strides.

  By the time he presented himself at Grimes’s door, drawing the attention of him and Officers Greene and Gilchrist all three his way, Reed was almost panting, his body fighting to keep up with his mind.

  It didn’t matter.

  For the first time all night, they were out ahead. He was just trying to piece together random facts, stitching them into a pattern that might provide a complete narrative.

  He now had the narrative and could begin to work in the other direction, putting what he knew toward it.

  “Sheila Damien,” Reed said, announcing the name as he stepped into the room.

  To that, there was no visible response, the two officers merely staring his way as he walked forward, both standing at the end of the desk. Moving past the elongated hallway serving as the entryway into the space, the room opened out to his right, revealing Dr. Mehdi sitting in the far visitor seat. Her sweater back on, she sat with it wrapped tight around her, one leg crossed over the other.

  Given her posture and the positioning of the officers, it appeared all four people had been staring at the computer monitor.

  “Sheila Damien,” Grimes said, the first of the group to speak.

  “Yes,” Reed replied. Pulling up just short of the desk, he remained back far enough to keep all four people in his periphery. Beside him, Billie remained on her feet, swinging her gaze from side to side, watching everyone.

  “I just came from the FCC and had a little sit down with Paul Klauss. He had no idea who Della Snow was, had never even heard the name, but once I showed him her picture...”

  The customary frown that tended to appear when Grimes was working his way through things appeared, the corners of his mouth trending downward, sagging far enough they almost touched his jaw on either side. Releasing his grip on the mouse, he turned a few inches so he could look directly at Reed.

  “Della Snow is Sheila Damien?”

  A reasonable inference, it was what Reed had first assumed when Klauss reacted to the picture. Given that so little had been in the system about the young woman, even prompting Grimes to have said it was like she just appeared a few years before, it could be thought that she had changed her name.

  It wasn’t that uncommon, especially in the wake of some form of tragic event.

  “No,” Reed said, “Sheila Damien is her mother. At least, I think so.”

  Knowing how it sounded, understanding the various looks of confusion around him, Reed pressed forward, getting there before any of the standard follow-up questions could be asked.

  Holding up a hand, Reed said, “Klauss didn’t know her, had never even met her, but six years ago he was brought in for questioning about a hit-and-run accident involving Sheila Damien.”

  Casting a gaze around the room to make sure they were still with him, he continued, “Apparently, she was a single mother that lived in one of the neighborhoods on the outskirts of Franklinton.”

  To his left, he could see Gilchrist nod slightly. Such arrangements were a hallmark of that area, the homes all single-family dwellings, places that seemed to be split between the previous generation that had stuck around even as the surroundings had trended downward and those that couldn’t afford much else.

  “A woman, Klauss claims, looking exactly like the image of Della, only ten years older.” Checking each for a reaction, he continued, “He remembers her because one afternoon, she was walking back from the Sunoco station on the corner. It was drizzling outside, and a car slid through the intersection and hit her before driving off.

  “In total, she suffered a sprained knee and a fractured wrist.”

  Having not yet had time to check the reports, Reed rattled off what Klauss had told him.

  Glancing at the officers, he added, “You guys know that corner as well as I do. They don’t have cameras there today, let alone six years ago.”

  Greene nodded.

  “And if they did, the kids would just use them as target practice,” Gilchrist added.

  “Right,” Reed said. “Yet somehow, a witness came forward and swore up and down that it was Klauss that had done it.”

  “A witness?” Greene asked, an eyebrow arched. “In that neighborhood?”

  He didn’t add anything more to it, but he didn’t need to. Every person in the room save Dr. Mehdi was intimately familiar with the track record of people in their jurisdiction speaking to the police.

  It was avoided at all costs if possible. The only time it wasn’t was when the opportunity for direct personal gain was on the table.

  “Exactly,” Reed said. “So they went and had a little perfunctory discussion with Klauss, but we all know what happened next.”

  “They started looking at the witness,” Grimes said.

  “Exactly,” Reed replied. “Turns out, the guy had seen it all because he’d been following Damien. He was her boss, had pictures of her on his computer, at his house, everything.”

  “Bet the prosecutor had fun with that,” Gilchrist muttered.

  “He did,” Reed said, “and so did the jury. Maxed out everything they could. Hit-and-run, aggravated stalking, the works.”

  Running the math in his head, Grimes said, “Which would carry a total sentence of about five and a half years.”

  Reed nodded. “Which would have ended six months ago. Enough time inside to get him good and pissed off, more than enough time since for him to start putting all this together.”

  Things were moving at a breakneck pace. Reed knew it, the words spilling forth almost as fast as his mind could formulate them, but that didn’t mean he could take the risk of not pressing forward.

  Della was still somewhere nearby, down to her last gasps of breath.

  The man behind it was also close, their understan
ding of him getting clearer by the moment. It was all here. Things were pulling together, but they weren’t quite there yet.

  In the wake of Reed’s information, each person went silent, retreating into their thoughts to best make sense of it all. For a moment, nobody said anything, avoiding even eye contact as they sorted through the details.

  “And Klauss told you all of this?” Grimes said.

  Shifting his focus from the bare desk to the captain, Reed nodded. “That’s the damnedest part of it. He knew all the details because he had a vested interest in keeping tabs on the case.

  “He was the one that hit Damien that afternoon.”

  In the right corner of the room, Dr. Mehdi’s eyes and mouth all dropped into perfect circles, shock painting her features.

  Opposite her, both of the officers shifted, their belts groaning softly from the movement.

  “What?” Grimes asked.

  “Yeah,” Reed said. “He was going through a divorce at the time, had been doing some day drinking, made a little run for a top off. He didn’t want to be seen buying that time of day at any of his neighborhood spots, so he ran down from where he was living in Hilliard at the time to the Sunoco.”

  The statement landed with all the expected weight, a few raised eyebrows the first response.

  “Holy...” Gilchrist began, his voice trailing away short of the punchline.

  “Uh-huh,” Reed said, nodding as he flicked a glance at the young officer. “He knew if any of this came out, he’d never see his kid again, so he sped off, lied to the cops when they showed up.”

  “And that was that,” Grimes muttered.

  “And that was that,” Reed echoed. “Statute of limitations on a hit-and-run is only two years, so he kept his mouth shut and his head down, rode it out.”

  “And he figured since the other guy had been stalking Damien anyway...” Greene inserted.

  “Right,” Reed agreed. “No harm tacking on a couple extra months for a creep.”

  “But now the time has been served and that creep is back getting retribution,” Grimes said, pushing the conversation on ahead.

  “It would seem so,” Reed said. “Klauss hadn’t actually put the two together, said he hadn’t really thought about the incident in years.”

  In the corner, Gilchrist scoffed. “Send a guy to prison, sleep easy at night. Must be nice.”

  “Like he said,” Dr. Mehdi inserted. Her first words since Reed’s arrival, the sound of her voice seemed to punctuate the conversation, drawing the attention of every person her way. “He had rationalized it away. You’d be surprised what the mind can believe when it needs to protect itself.”

  Chapter Sixty

  The cold air rolled out of the freezer, a model with cabinet facing on the outside and a stainless-steel interior. Guessing that it must cost more than any of the homes that he’d been monitoring throughout the night, The Scorekeeper stood before it, letting the sweet relief lick at his skin.

  Gnawing at the beads of sweat that covered his face and neck, he rolled his head back, rotating it from side to side. As he did so, small pops could be heard, a result of more than five years spent sleeping on the hardest mattress on the planet.

  Or quite possibly the savage beatings he received for the first few weeks he was there.

  One would think with the amount of money taxpayers were forced to invest in such facilities every year that a few decent pillows or competent guards might not be too much to ask. Of course, by that logic, they would also hope that local law enforcement would be able to do uphold their duties.

  If The Scorekeeper’s experiences were any indicator, both fell woefully short.

  Letting out a small sigh, The Scorekeeper opened his eyes, his gaze seizing on the small package resting in the center of the freezer. Everything else having been pushed to the perimeter, it sat alone, one of the most important items of this entire undertaking.

  And the one that had taken the most effort to retrieve.

  Making anything resembling a friend inside had been impossible. Not for someone that looked like he did and spoke like he did and generally just existed like he did.

  Nothing about him could be construed as threatening, something he would have thought would insulate him from the depravity and violence he so feared upon sentencing.

  Instead, it had made him an easy target. Once the news had leaked that his sin had been stalking, many of the others had made it their personal mission to seek him out. To inflict on him their own form of punishment, acting as if he had wronged them personally.

  What had earned such hatred from them, he never once got close to understanding. At first, he thought it might have been racial, the fact that Sheila Damien was black and himself white what had caused such angst, but time proved that theory wrong.

  His attackers ranged across every nationality, blind to his or their own skin tone.

  After that, he had thought maybe it was on the basis of his charges, though that too had been proven wrong.

  In the end, the only thing that stuck, that made any sense at all, was the simple fact that they did it because they could.

  Just as in the end, he had flipped the script on everybody simply because he could.

  Becoming one of the most powerful, most important, inmates in FCC wasn’t something The Scorekeeper had set out to do, but that didn’t keep him from achieving it in record time.

  The process had started with protection. He’d found the two biggest brutes in the yard and offered them something nobody else could. Money. Finances. A monthly retainer for their services.

  From there, it was almost too easy. Word had leaked about his backing, and soon every person inside was lining up to get in the pockets of the newest kingpin.

  That’s how the single item now sitting before him had found its way back. He was an important man.

  And soon enough, he would be again.

  Setting Paul Krauss up for financial crimes was a small matter. The man was greedy and he was sloppy, making it almost too easy for The Scorekeeper to slide a few extra things onto his docket and make a single phone call to the BCI telling them where to look.

  But that was just the first part of things. That was simply to get him into prison, making him serve the time he should have already, time that The Scorekeeper had been saddled with unfairly.

  The real key, though, was in ensuring that such an injustice was brought to light.

  Reaching out, The Scorekeeper took up the small insulated cold sleeve and drew it out. Holding it between his hands, he peeled open the top, peering inside at the tiny treasure that had played its part to perfection.

  Staring down at the top half of the digit, The Scorekeeper felt a smile come to his face. He thought back on those early beatings he’d received, of the nights he’d lay awake, his body aching. Of the mornings he’d find his head crusted to the sheets by his own blood.

  Of the nights he’d made sure Klauss endured the same.

  The Scorekeeper’s eyes glazed as he continued to stare down at the thumb, the cold air washing over him, thinking of everything the preceding years had entailed.

  He’d heard in a bad movie one time that it wasn’t until a person completely let go, became totally uninhibited, that they were truly able to live. Nothing more than a throwaway line, he hadn’t thought much of it at the time.

  Certainly not that it would eventually become his guiding mantra.

  From that moment forward, everything he had done had been in the name of redemption. Bleeding away his fortune to seek out protection. Spending months researching Sheila Damien and her daughter. Making sure that every person that was somehow responsible for what happened to him was brought into the scheme in some way.

  Folding the cold sleeve closed, The Scorekeeper returned it to its rightful place in the freezer.

  Eventually, it would be found, logged into evidence, perhaps even offered back to Klauss. What became of it from this point forward didn’t quite matter to The Scorekeeper.


  All that did was the part that it had played, helping to bring things full circle.

  Swinging the freezer door closed, The Scorekeeper walked back through the finely appointed home, his footfalls silent on the plush carpeting. Passing from the kitchen and back into the living room, he settled himself down onto the sofa, the enormous item swallowing him up.

  His focus he kept aimed at the screen before him, just two last windows remaining open.

  The end was nearing. He could feel it.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Once they had the name of Sheila Damien, working through the system was easy. In short order, Grimes was able to pull the report up on the screen, the court transcript playing out much the way Paul Klauss had intimated.

  Leaning forward from the second visitor chair, Reed’s eyes were narrowed in focus, peering at the images on the screen. Enlarged so everybody could read, Grimes scrolled down slowly, letting everyone get their fill of the narrative.

  “Middle of the day on a Wednesday,” Reed said aloud, putting a mental visual to the words on the screen. “She runs home on her lunch break, grabs a few things at the store...”

  “Boom,” Grimes finished. “Some asshole with a buzz sideswipes her, leaves her alongside the road.”

  “And the only person there that could have helped her couldn’t because he wasn’t supposed to be seeing any of it,” Reed said.

  The only detail that Klauss had left out of the narrative was the name of the defendant. He said the police had never mentioned it to him in their interview and that the media had kept it out of print because of the nature of the case.

  Rarely had Reed heard of such a gag order being issued, but depending on the severity of the evidence that was found against the man, it wasn’t entirely out of the question.

  “Scroll down a little further,” Reed said. His backside rose up out of the seat as he put his fists flush against the desktop, using it for leverage as he leaned forward.

  His gaze dancing over the screen, he took in bits and pieces of data, small snippets of things jumping out at him.