Break Point Down Read online

  “Right. Interesting that she told you. Probably saving her own hide at the expense of your brother.”

  “You think she was one of them?”

  “Could be. Recently we've started working with Don Grady, the investigative reporter.”

  “Wow—going first class, huh? Got anything?”

  “In a nutshell—around the time of your retirement we picked up some rumors, whispers, some stuff from the Internet. Gambling on the pro circuit. We were concerned. Wanted to keep the sport as clean as we could. So we nosed around a little, you know, first on our own, later with Grady.”

  “And?”

  “You already know Jeff was involved. Also some of his friends, prominent people. All of them rich.”

  Figures.

  “Don't be too sure Wynne hasn't known about this for years. Looks like her father was in pretty deep. Nothing we can prove. Yet. It's illegal, and they're protecting each other. An exclusive little rich-fan club. They bet on you.”

  Just me?

  “Think so. A Cannon fan club.”

  ”Lloyd-Rutgers didn't even know me when I called.”

  “Oh, yes, he did. It started with friendly bets in a little clique centered around Jeff. It snowballed. They played Jeff for a sucker. Got more people involved than he knew about, and with their slick little payback deal in case you pulled out, it was a bomb waiting to go off. Of course, deals like that aren't enforceable.”

  “But Jeff couldn't look cheap in front of his friends. So far you've told me nothing new. How do you know about Wynne and her father?”

  “Lots of checking. The way I read her, she knew and sat on the information in case she could use it.”

  “Charms the socks off you, doesn't she.”

  “Right. Just look at it. She knew about Warner. She had a lot of details.”

  “So where do you get your information?”

  “Some people lose a lot of money—they get mad, they talk. You can't involve a lot of people and have nobody talk. It's going to get out. Gossip. The Internet. Grady has sources you and I haven't even dreamed of. You can take this to the bank—Warner, Lloyd-Rutgers, Jeff, and a bunch of their fat-cat friends were into it. It started way back when you were fifteen or so. We were trying to find out if they transferred their attentions to other players after you pulled out.”

  “Did they?”

  “Can't be sure, but I don't think so. Warner and Lloyd-Rutgers seem to have pulled out. It was a diversion. They lost money. They could afford to lose it, but they couldn't afford publicity. These were no professional gamblers. Just rich people looking for a thrill. Making a buck in the process made it that much more interesting.”

  “Must've been a real rush.”

  “Yeah. Well, at your brother's trial we started looking a little harder at him. The court records are revealing. Once we knew he'd been plunging, bombing in the stock market and all, of course we knew why. He was about to go broke and dragged you down with him.”

  “My bank account, anyway.”

  “That's right. We never doubted you, Kitt.”

  “Why didn't you tell me then?”

  “That was just our starting point. Until then we'd just sort of kept a listening ear out. We contacted Grady. But Jeff committed suicide and we couldn't lay more on you just then.”

  “You kept investigating?”

  “With Jeff gone, we didn't have the focal point we'd had, and we still don't know all the main players. We'd set out to expose gambling and corruption, and what we wanted to know was if it was still going on, and if so, the who and how and where.”

  “And?”

  “We've hit a wall. The main players have pulled out. Seems like Jeff made a double-or-nothing deal that he could get you back by a deadline. But the IRS moved in faster than he expected.”

  “Never occurred to him to just talk to me. I'd probably have kept playing. So when I didn't go back, he lost everything?”

  “That's when he lost the last of his own money. He'd already gone through yours. It's mostly there in the papers filed in court during his trial. You didn't look at them?”

  “I had no stomach for it.”

  “I'll keep you posted, Kitt.”

  “Something wrong?” Kitt raised his eyebrows as he caught Shay looking at him. After practice he'd introduced her to one of his favorite trails, and they'd walked silently, single file, till they found a place for their picnic. The snow wasn't gone from these elevations, but the strenuous climb had taken the chill out of their bones.

  “I want to ask you something.”

  “So ask.”

  “What brought you to our tennis practice when you stopped by the first time?”

  “Just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  “If you don't want to tell me, just say so.”

  He thought of it for a moment, then shrugged.

  “Okay. I was looking—I am still looking—for a runaway.”

  “Who?”

  “My niece. She ran off when her dad committed suicide. Blamed herself. Suicides leave a sweet legacy.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Fourteen, now. Thirteen when she ran.”

  “And you've been looking for her all this time? How long's it been?”

  “Nearly six months.”

  “What's her name?”

  “Kari. Kari Buchanan. I am her legal guardian.”

  “How come?”

  “If a court had picked someone, I wouldn't have been on the short list. She interfered with mom's social and economic ambitions. She turned custody over to me. It's very simple. All it took was a little old piece of paper her lawyer concocted, that said I was now in charge. Bingo.”

  “She sounds like a winner.”

  “She has her points. Anyway, that's why I was cruising around the scenic route. I figure she's not hanging out in the suburbs.”

  “Are you sure she's still around here?”

  “I'm not sure about anything, except I'm going to find her.”

  “I hope you do.”

  “So tell me how you wound up teaching at Monroe High.”

  “I graduated just this past winter, so I'm barely starting, and the vacancy was there. I want to make some money and finish my master's. What about you?”

  “Same here, except I haven't graduated. Haven't picked a major yet. Got about five choices going. You don't suppose I should narrow it down, do you?”

  “At least you have an open mind.”

  “Gargling at the fountain of knowledge, somebody called it. That's all I've done so far.”

  She laughed. “You probably need to look into the practice. You know, get some idea what it would be like to spend your life working in any of these fields.”

  “Practical, that was never me. I am trying to cultivate that part of my persona.”

  “So now you're working and going to school.”

  “It works. It wasn't the plan, but it works.”

  “What was the plan?”

  “I guess I was counting on being solvent.”

  She didn't say anything and he thought quickly. Jeff's shenanigans had been all over the papers. She might have paid no attention. So much the better.

  “I read about your troubles with your brother.” She hesitated. “Do you mind my bringing it up?”

  “No. It's ancient history.”

  “You could have recouped on the tour. But you didn't.”

  “Lots of reasons. Seeing if I could do something besides hit a ball. Impatience. I wanted to get on with life, not go back. And there was Kari.”

  “I see.”

  “Let's talk about you. You planning to stay here?”

  “For now. Dad's been teaching at a college in Oregon since he got out of the air force, and Mom's just started working there as a family counselor. They like the west coast. I'd like to be a little closer to them. And my two older brothers are in Seattle.”

  On the way down the mountain it started to rain, and before they'd gone very fa
r they could not see across the valley. Sheets of water clattered down on the rocks and turned the trail into a mudslide.

  “There are some good caves around here. We can wait it out there for a while.”

  “You wimp! Wait out a good rain like this? No way!”

  Slipping and sliding and laughing they made their way down, and within minutes they were soaked.

  “Another half hour to go,” said Kitt, shaking mud off his hiking boots. “Don't get chilled. Here, take my jacket. It's better for this weather.”

  “Don't go chivalrous on me, Buchanan. I'd have to drag you down this mountain like a wet rag. My coat is just fine.”

  In the truck he dug up a towel and she dried her face and vigorously rubbed her hair. “It's amazing what some people keep around their cars.”

  “Aren't you lucky I do.”

  “Look at all this stuff. You could live in this truck.”

  Standing in the steam at the car wash that night he remembered Shay, muddy and wet, her hair plastered to her head and her face tilted up into the rain. The image lasted until she called him on his cell phone the next day and her voice brimmed with a hostility that gave him frostbite.

  “I need to talk with you. Can you come to the library?”

  “I'm working till eight. That soon enough?”

  “I'll be in the lobby.”

  “What's wrong?”

  “We'll talk tonight.”

  He racked his brains, but he could think of nothing he had done to make her angry. She wasn't just upset; the animosity had been thick enough to slice. Puzzled, he went over their last meeting in his mind. They'd hiked up the mountain, and down in the rain. It had been a great day. They'd eaten sandwiches at the little stand by the river, and stood outside the concert hall downtown listening to the symphony orchestra rehearse. What could he have done to tick her off like that?

  She was pacing the lobby when he arrived, and her face was a storm warning. She motioned him to the far corner.

  “You told me you'd been looking for a runaway niece.”

  “Why the attitude?”

  “You never told me why she'd run away.”

  “Yes, I did. I told you she lost it after her dad committed suicide.”

  “But you didn't say what led up to all this. Before the suicide.”

  “That's need-to-know information,” he informed her coolly.

  “I was trying to help you, so I asked around at the school where I teach.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “Some of Kari's teachers teach at my school. Some said she was an abused child.”

  “Is that so.”

  She fixed a penetrating stare on him.

  “A sexually abused child.”

  “They know that for a fact?”

  “They aren't stupid, Kitt. She wrote a paper for one of her classes. It was a dead giveaway.”

  His eyes were dark with anger now, and he had difficulty keeping his voice in check.

  “So what exactly is the point?”

  “I am running a program for young kids,” she said in a quivering voice. “I knew that a background check might not reveal everything I needed to know. I took a chance on you. I trusted you.”

  “And have I done something to betray that trust?”

  “You've talked about your niece, and about feeling guilty, as though you'd failed her somehow. I thought you were too hard on yourself, for little things—regular parent-kid stuff.”

  “And now?”

  “I want to know why she doesn't want to live with you.”

  “Find her for me and you can ask her.”

  Her voice rose angrily.

  “This is not funny, Kitt.”

  “Why don't you spell it out, Shay. You think I molested her and she's scared of me”.

  Shay's face was white, but she did not avoid his eyes.

  “Is she?”

  “Shouldn't be.”

  “That's no straight answer.”

  “Then ask a straight question. Did I rape her? Is that what you want to know?”

  His jaws tightened.

  “No, Shay, I have never raped, molested, assaulted, abused, or violated anyone. Kari was sexually abused by her father. She came to me for help, and I obviously screwed it up. She ran. I'm sorry I didn't include my brother's track record in my resume when I applied for the job. Let me save you the trouble of firing me. I'm out.”

  Grimfaced, he stalked out of the building.

  He delivered the boxes of rackets and balls that Danny sent to Shay's apartment, leaving them with a neighbor at a time when he knew she wouldn't be there. It felt miserable, not being able to work with the kids any longer. Did they think he'd abandoned them? What other way was there? Shay's questions had left no room for illusions. He'd spoken his piece, but he wasn't the first guy to make denials. Obviously, she considered him capable of rape. Guilty, even. What was left to say?

  For that matter, what was left to do? Go to the practices and cause a scene when she threw him out? Beg her to believe him? Tell the kids she was wrong? He couldn't undermine their regard for her without undermining the entire program. As it was, they'd be disappointed in him, but that was better than wrecking the whole setup. Nothing to do but bow out and let her make whatever explanation she wanted. Chalk the whole thing up to another dream gone awry.

  The work at the car wash ended a week later when the establishment folded, and he got a job at a warehouse, where no one knew that the young man who hauled heavy boxes from the shelves was a former world champion athlete and multimillionaire.

  The mail had started to bring plain envelopes with his name on it and no return address. Mailed from different places. Pictures of dead people and animals. Smashed-up cars, bullet-riddled neighborhoods. After a few weeks it stopped. No one he knew seemed a likely suspect. He'd been operating on the assumption that everything had to do with his tennis career. Perhaps it was time to look elsewhere.

  The taunting resumed with an ordinary-looking manila envelope, addressed to him by name on a printed label. His breath caught in his throat. A photograph of a large, cream-colored dog, his body grotesquely distorted in a death cramp.

  Thor.

  Fury knifed through his brain, ripping through the protective blankets of self-comfort that wrapped his pain. Maybe he'd died quickly. Maybe it had not hurt much. Maybe—

  Thor. The psycho who had killed the dog had stopped to take pictures. The man in the beat-up truck, tossing chunks of poisoned cheese into the yard, watching Thor writhe and listening to him whine in agony, all the while focusing his camera, checking the light, trying a better angle. He put you through hell, and I wasn't there.

  The next mailing brought a picture of Kaz hanging limp from somebody's gloved hand, and then another of Thor. At night he flailed about in his sleeping bag, tormented by the pictures now carved raw and ulcerous into his imagination. Thor, in spasms of agony, and Kaz, a frail bit of bedraggled fur flung down on the dead body of her huge friend.

  At last there was a new wrinkle. Instead of the photographs, the mailing this time contained newspaper and magazine clippings. Articles on teenage prostitution and throwaway kids, at times with the fictitious names whited out and Kari's carefully penciled in. Graphic descriptions of life on the street. Pornographic pictures of young girls being gang-raped or stripping for a leering, drunken crowd. For the first time in his life he felt vulnerable.

  It was spring. Delicate green saturated the mountainsides bathed in the lengthening light, but Kitt saw nothing but paralyzing gloom. The ugliness oozed through his mind and poisoned his dreams.

  Somebody wants to get inside my head. How do I stop it? This was no disgruntled fan of yesteryear, no gambling buddy of Jeff's. Someone with a psychotic grudge, a deranged obsession. Someone who knew and fused the fragile filaments of Kitt's helpless anger: Jeff, Wynne, Kari. Shay.

  He could come up with no satisfactory explanation, but he changed his post office box a second time and signed a request at the post
office to have all junk mail and mailings without return address blocked from delivery, then panicked, and rushed back to rescind the request and leave a forwarding address, in case Kari should try to contact him.

  While he hoisted boxes onto high shelves, he weighed his options. The police again? Postal authorities? Even if it turned out to be illegal and he could stop the mailings, what would the psycho do then? He knew about Kari. What if he knew where Kari was and went after her?

  Chill, you idiot. She's not that easy to find. Yet his tormentor seemed to know a lot. Wish he had someone to kick this around with, get some input. He was stumped. He couldn't ask Linda for advice. She'd want to do a freebie. Then who?

  Danny. Nah, this was stupid. What was he going to say—boo-hoo, somebody's sending me nasty pictures? That's what garbage cans are for, Danny'd say. Would this come under stalking laws? So what if it did—police had better things to do than pursue a case of petty harassment. Come to think of it, so did he.

  He drove slowly through the darkened streets, always looking. On impulse, he turned a corner and drove back into the warehouse district. Moonlight lay still and cold on the vague green haze of the newly seeded half of the tennis patch. He ambled across to take a look, and nodded with satisfaction. It had been only a couple of weeks, and the grass was starting to grow. Before long they'd need a lawnmower. The cheap netting was sagging and one of the posts was coming out of the ground. Come back tomorrow night and bring some cement mix. Get that sucker anchored down. For the time being he straightened it and stamped the dirt hard. He paced the unseeded portion of the improvised court, smoothing the soil with his foot. Maybe, if they could keep kids from driving motorcycles across the lot and drug dealers from plying their misanthropy here—they could have a passable grass court. She did a good job getting the kids to keep the place clean of litter and rocks. She'd stand right there and call out names—you practice on the wall, you two serve, you two play a set, the rest of you pick up fifty rocks each. Her streaky blond hair framed her jaw line and bounced as she ran across the court playing ball girl, and he could hear her voice echoing off the warehouse walls. Her eyes lit up as one of the kids hit a ball he'd always missed before, and she'd walk over and hug Joey, the little street kid who stopped by every practice just to watch, because he was too little to play.