Timothy #2
smiling. I love this kid, I have to say. He came to me a couple of months ago and the changes in him—lost a few pounds, more
confident, calmer—are the reason I do this work. I roll down the window.
“Hey, Ernie, get the ring set up for me, will you? Help the other kids with their gloves and I’ll be right in.”
He gives me a grin, grows like an inch. “Got it, boss.”
He jogs off. Sometimes you just have to show kids that they can do things, that you trust them, and watch them rise to your expectations.
“Was Trina Snell associated with The Cove?”
It’s a cheap trick, a cop thing. Repeat the question in a different way. Or pretend that the perp didn’t already deny knowledge
of this or that. But the old dog doesn’t bite.
“Yeah, like I said. Never heard of anything like The Cove. She just came to mind because you mentioned poison.”
I hear the television click off in the background. A couple of kids walk up to the gym.
“So, what’s your next step?” asks the chief. There’s an eagerness in his voice that tells me he misses the work.
“Go back to the location where we found Paul Hayes’s body with Old Bob. Keep looking for Amanda Alessi. Hope Iggy Rose wakes
up.”
It sounds as weak as it is.
“If I were you, I’d be looking close at the victim. What was he involved in? Did he owe money? Did he run afoul of any shady
types? Paul Hayes, for all the money he threw around, wasn’t a good guy. Sounds to me like someone got sick of his shit.”
“Not Ana Blacksmith?”
“You said yourself it would take more than one person to kill him and move the body where you found it. Crimes of passion
aren’t usually premeditated. Maybe someone just wants it to look like it was the ex-girlfriend. Because that’s the most predictable story, right. Now she’s a witch, to boot? That’s an easy
narrative to write.”
I let the words bounce around a minute. Ana Blacksmith. It’s not that she doesn’t seem capable of doing bad things. It’s just
that it doesn’t feel to me like she did this. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
“Anyway, I don’t have to tell you that Paul Hayes wasn’t a good man.”
“How’s that?”
“It was his donation that never came through. The shortfall from his promised-but-never-delivered hundred thousand dollars that was supposed
to make the budget for last year is the reason why the center is in trouble now.”
This is news to me. I’m not on the board, just a worker bee. And that particular piece of information never reached me—if
it’s true.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Ask Marge Caine.”
Marge Caine, Brock’s mother, volunteers at the center, as well as serves on the board. “I’ll do that.”
That word comes back to me again. Entangled.
Ernie’s waving from the door. I check my watch; it’s time to go in and get started. I tell the chief as much.
“Call me if you need me. And, Tim? Just be careful.”
It’s an odd thing to say and his tone has gone a bit dark. “Careful of what?”
Another one of those micro-silences. “I don’t know. I’ve got a weird feeling about this one.”
“Me, too.”
It’s almost dark when I head into the gym, air frigid. The boys are waiting. A ragtag group of kids the sight of whom makes
me feel like a kid again myself. Not just boys. I have a girl, too, as of last month. Dahlia joined up at the suggestion of
her sister, Miranda, from Beck’s office and who is raising her since their mother died a couple of years back. Their dad was
nowhere to be found. Dahlia, tiny, fierce, has a look of wild sadness, barely checked anger. She’s a tiger in the ring; the
boys are a little wary of her.
Predictably, as I enter, they’re all staring at their phones, not talking to each other. Those devices. I wish they’d never
been invented.
I take the big box off the shelf, walk from kid to kid. No one says a word as they put their phones in the box. This is a device-free zone. Even I put mine in, with a twinge of guilt since there’s an active murder investigation and that’s top of mind.
But sometimes it’s these down moments when answers and ideas pop up. I have a lot to bat about after my talk with the chief.
We glove up, put on protective head gear, mouth guards in.
“Ernie and Benji, show me what you got today.”
They get in the ring and start to dance around each other. Benji’s bigger, but Ernie’s fast on his feet with quick reflexes,
a smart fighter. Benji gets angry, gets sloppy, but he makes up for it in sheer girth. His fists are like hams. Ernie’s creative,
adaptable.
We’re not here to hurt each other. If things get too hot, I break it up. They go a couple of rounds.
Then it’s Dahlia’s turn. I put her in and watch her work over Carlos, who is twice her size. I take pity on him, get in with
her and let her hit the hand pads for a while. She has a mean upper cut, a killer left jab.
The gym smells of sweat and exuberance as the kids leave tired and happy, wrung out, stress and pain forgotten for a while.
There’s peace in physical exertion; it’s the cure for many ailments physical and mental.
Later, as I lock up, I think about the day Paul Hayes came with the big foam-board check. Everyone keeps telling me what a
shit he was, but that’s what I remember about him. How he laughed with the kids, even got into the ring. I didn’t know it
was a false promise. Maybe he wanted to give the money but came up short. Or maybe he just did it for the publicity and never
planned to deliver the real check.
Either way, I’m starting to get why he had so many enemies.