I was sure Jem’s soccer coach would cause a general uprising by the end of the summer season.
The guy was an unpaid volunteer who knew next to nothing about soccer. He came in late every day of practice, looking like he’d been up all night doing things a role model for little kids shouldn’t do.
On the other hand, the school was too cheap to hire a real coach. None of the parents could or would volunteer. So when the kids were close to tears, thinking their summer season might be canceled, this guy had been the only knucklehead dumb enough to commit every Tuesday and Thursday morning, plus Saturday games, for the rest of the summer.
“Tres!” Jem yelled as I walked in the boys’ bathroom. Then he corrected himself. “Coach!”
The Garcia twins were hitting each other with their shin guards.
Paul had dumped somebody’s clothes in the urinal.
Jack was climbing over the door of the stall while another kid whose name I couldn’t remember tried to climb underneath.
The other boys were in various states of lunacy-pulling shirts over their heads, skating on backpacks, calling each other poop-butts.
I did the only thing a coach can do. I blew my whistle.
“Ow!” they all said, pulling on their ears.
I jumped into the half second of focus I’d created. “On the field, five minutes!”
They probably heard the first two words. Getting directions across to a group of eight-year-olds is akin to Luke Skywalker hitting the meter-wide vent on the Death Star.
I ruffled Jem’s hair, told him to hurry out of the bathroom, since I was personally responsible for his safety, then went to check on the girls. From their bathroom doorway, I heard shrill sounds like parakeets being tortured. I yelled, “Five minutes, ladies!” crossed myself, and headed outside.
The practice field sat on a ridge overlooking Salado Creek. From any vantage point, the entire city seemed to spread out below one’s feet. Given the school’s wealthy clientele, I was pretty sure the visual message was intentional.
Unfortunately for frustrated coaches, the edge of the cliff was fenced, so bad children couldn’t go rolling off into oblivion. It also wasn’t rainy enough to cancel practice, though the sky was heavy gray and the field was spongy.
I set out cones for a relay race, put all the soccer balls in a neat line, then watched my plans disintegrate as the troops came charging over the hill.
Kathleen and Carmen ran screaming straight into the nearest mud puddle and started jumping on top of each other. Paul kicked all the soccer balls as hard as he could. One of them bounced off Maria, who luckily was the size of a totem pole and didn’t seem to notice.
Laura hung on my arm. “I’m going to marry Jack!”
Jack, the object of her affections, lolled his tongue out of his mouth and barked like a dog.
“I’m very happy for you,” I said. “Now everybody on the line!”
No results.
Even Jem, my faithful sidekick, was right there in the mix, tangling himself in the goalie’s net while the Garcia twins kicked puddle water at him.
I blew my whistle. “On the line!”
Nothing.
“Last one is a rotten egg!” I yelled.
A few of them ran to the line.
“Oh, look,” I announced. “Kathleen’s not the rotten egg! She’s here!”
“Yay!” Kathleen said, and proceeded to run away, but the others had gotten the idea.
“I’m not rotten!” said Jack the dog.
“Me! I’m here!” Laura told me. “I’m going to marry Jack.”
Pretty soon I had the whole team of sixteen on the line.
We practiced kicking around the cones, plowing straight through the cones, picking up the cones, putting them on our heads and singing “Happy Birthday.”
We did throw-ins, passes and dribbling, stopping approximately every three minutes for a water break. Jack kept barking. Maria kept getting whacked in the head with the ball and not noticing.
Some of the mothers had gathered on the bleachers to watch and gossip. I wondered: If they have off at this time of day, why didn’t they volunteer?
I answered myself: Because they are intelligent.
One hour into practice, it started sprinkling. I considered calling an early stop, sending the kids to the extended care building for snacks and board games, but Jem said, “Can we scrimmage now,
Tres? PLEEEASE?”
“Yeah!” Paul said. Then the Garcia twins started in: “Please, Coach! Please?”
Suddenly I had sixteen little rain-freckled faces crowding around me. Jem and Paul pulled on my arms.
I thought: This is how it happens. This is how people can have a second or third kid, even though one is enough to kill you. They’re occasionally cute enough to make you suicidal.
“All right,” I said. “Eight on eight.”
“Yay!” Jack shouted. “Best coach ever!”
We kicked off and all strategy was forgotten. Kids crowded the ball, moving back and forth down the field in a multi-legged clump. Paul was our best kicker, except he tended to boot it the wrong direction. Maria was a natural halfback, since the ball bounced off her anytime it came her direction whether she meant it to or not.
Jem played keeper. After only five minutes, the other team had scored three goals off him.
All that hand-eye coordination from playing video games didn’t seem to translate to sports. He moved slowly, grabbing for the ball right after it went past him. He dove in the wrong direction. I yelled, “Hands!” and he tried to block with his foot. The whole time, he kept a huge grin on his face, as if the other team was cheering for him whenever the ball sailed into the net.
My heart sank. I’d been working with him one-on-one all the previous week, ever since he announced he wanted to play goalie in our first game against Saint Mark’s. I didn’t want to see the poor kid get blamed for what promised to be an absolute slaughter.
Somebody’s dad-a pale Anglo in an Oxford and khakis-joined the mothers at the bleachers. I checked my watch. Only twenty minutes left of practice, and now the rain was really starting to come down. Typical.
Jack the dog boy kicked from the edge of the penalty box-a slow, weak shot. Jem lunged for it, just the way he and I had practiced. He fell on his side, a foot short, and the ball wobbled into the net.
“Yes!” Jack yelled. “Woof!”
Laura clapped for him. His team yelled hooray. Jem got up, grinning happily, his left side caked in mud.
We were still a few minutes early, but I decided it was time to stop.
I told the kids to line up. We would walk together to the extended care building, where they could play until their parents came.
They heard the “extended care” part, cheered for joy, and scattered.
“Pick up the balls!” I yelled after them, but of course it was too late.
Jem and I cleaned up equipment. The rain came down heavier, sizzling against the grass. We gathered the balls and cones, stuffed everything into the supply sack. Jem skipped around in his muddy yellow goalie vest, punching the air.
“Wasn’t I great?” he asked. “Goalie rocks!”
“We’ll keep working on it, champ.”
“Can I play goalie the whole game, Tres? Please?”
“Remember, you have to give the others a turn.”
“Aw, please?”
We lugged the gear bag to the storage shed, out by the kindergarten parking lot. Rain drummed against the aluminum roof.
I’d just finished padlocking the door when I noticed the silver BMW idling by the curb. The father in the Oxford and khakis was walking toward us.
“Looking for your child?” I asked.
“No, no,” the man said. “Got him in the car.”
The BMW’s windows were so dark he could’ve had the whole soccer team inside and I wouldn’t have been able to see them.
Technically, he shouldn’t have parked in the kindergarten lot. It was off limits for the summer. Everybody was supposed to pick up at the main entrance, where the security booth controlled access. But the back lot was closer to the field, there was easy egress to neighborhood streets, and many parents, like their kids, had trouble believing school rules applied to them.
“I’m Alec’s dad,” the man said. “Jerry Vespers.”
His hand was callused, odd for a BMW driver. His accent West Texas-an oil man, maybe.
“Tres Navarre,” I said.
I tried to picture his son. There were still a couple of kids’ names I was shaky on, but Alec Vespers?
The father’s skin was fish-belly white, his black hair shaved in a severe military cut. His eyes, behind the gold wire rim glasses, were wrong somehow-calm but intense, like he was staring down a rifle scope.
“I don’t know Alec,” I decided. “He isn’t on the team.”
“No,” Mr. Vespers agreed. “Couldn’t get him interested. I told Erainya we’d pick up Jem.”
“Pardon?”
“The play date.” Mr. Vespers smiled thinly. “I’ll have Jem home by supper. Or Erainya can call, if she’d rather come get him. Come on, Jem.”
Jem was looking at Mr. Vespers with a curious expression, as if he’d just been offered a dangerous present. He took a tentative step forward, but I put my hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t know anything about a play date,” I told Mr. Vespers.
“Erainya must’ve forgotten to tell you,” he said. “How about I call the agency? She at the 315 extension?”
He took out a cell phone, started to dial. He seemed keen to prove that he knew Erainya’s business number.
“No need,” I told him. “Jem’s going with me.”
Vespers closed his cell phone. He slipped it into his pants pocket. “You the boy’s parent, Mr. Navarre?”
“I don’t know you. Erainya wouldn’t forget to tell me.”
He shifted his gaze to Jem. “Alec’s in the car, son. How about you come say goodbye to him, at least?”
Jem looked agitated now. He was chewing on his thumbnail.
“Mr. Vespers,” I said tightly. “You need to leave.”
Vespers lowered on his haunches. His eyes narrowed, rain speckling his glasses. “What’s the matter, boy?”
“You’re making my stomach feel queasy,” Jem murmured.
Vespers’ stare was unpleasantly hungry.
“You need to leave,” I told him again, trying to keep my voice level. “Before I call the police.”
Vespers rose.
“You think I’m a predator?” he asked. “You think I like little kids, is that it?”
I took out Erainya’s cell phone. For once, I was grateful she’d made me take it on the trip to San Marcos. “I’m calling campus security.”
“This ain’t personal between you and me, Mr. Navarre,” Vespers said. “Think about that before you insult me. I need to talk to the boy.”
“The hell you do.”
Vespers’ hand drifted toward his side. He had something in his pocket-a lump I should’ve noticed before, maybe large enough to be a small gun.
Fifteen years of martial arts training told me that if I was going to act, I had to do it now.
But Vespers looked down at Jem again, and the rifle-scope intensity of his eyes dissipated, as if something much too close to target had moved into his field of vision.
“Tell your mother you saw me,” Vespers said. “She knows what I want. She’d best give it back.”
By the time I got Chuck Phelps, the school security captain, on the phone, the BMW’s taillights had disappeared onto Hundred Oaks. I gave Chuck the BMW’s model and license plate, told him to call the police.
I could hear Chuck flipping pages in his master directory. “Thing is, Mr. Navarre, that is Mr. Vespers’ car. He does have a kid, Alec, in Jem’s grade. Alec’s in summer art class. Mr. Vespers waits on the street over there all the time.”
“Call anyway.”
Chuck said okay, but I got the feeling my request had just been bumped down to low priority, and I didn’t insist it was an emergency.
I’d have plenty of time to kick myself about that later.
It would be almost a week, long after the worst had happened, before the police would find the silver BMW abandoned in a sorghum field in the north part of the county, the body of the real Jerry Vespers curled in the trunk. His death would become a mere sidebar to the story of the Floresville Five, a life cut short merely because it served Will Stirman’s purpose to assume another identity for a few minutes.
But that afternoon, driving Jem back to his mother’s house, I was slow to process the obvious.
Nothing can prepare you for the moment a child you care about is threatened. Doesn’t matter if you’re a cop or a social worker or a private eye.
My upper brain functions shut down. My senses went feral. I was a cat under attack, crouching and blinking, smelling my own blood, thinking of nothing beyond my claws.
We were halfway to Erainya’s before I realized who I’d been talking to, how close I’d come to dying.
Jem curled up in the cab of the truck, put his head on my lap like he used to in kindergarten.
“That isn’t safe, kiddo,” I told him. “We’re driving.”
But he was already asleep, his body trying to absorb a trauma bigger than he was.
I turned on Nacogdoches to avoid the flooding on Loop 410, but that proved a mistake. The low-water crossing by the YMCA field had become a river, black water cresting at the tops of the speed limit signs. A house was floating across the road.
Dozens of people had left their cars. They stood with umbrellas by the waterside, watching the prefab model sail slowly over the bridge. The house had white aluminum siding, a gray-shingled roof, blue curtains and a sign in the window that read, NO MONEY DOWN!!!
I should have backed up, but I sat in my truck, watching the spectacle, my hand on Jem’s feverish forehead.
I had failed to recognize Will Stirman, even though his disguise had been nothing more than a pair of glasses and the fact that he had appeared out of any context I would’ve anticipated.
I had failed to take him down when I had the chance. I told myself I could have taken him.
But the truth was: Jem and I were alive for only one reason. Will Stirman had let us go to deliver a message.
Tell your mother you saw me. She knows what I want.
The prefab house snagged on something, made a grinding noise as the current bent its walls. It careened sideways and continued its stately journey.
Will Stirman had tried to take Jem. He had dared to step into a little boy’s world.
I promised myself I would get the bastard for that.
I watched the house bob past the line of silent spectators with umbrellas, an American flag fluttering bravely on the doorpost as the building slipped off the bridge and glided downriver.