Pretty Girl Gone (Mac McKenzie #3)

Pretty Girl Gone (Mac McKenzie #3) Page 40

“Hockey and baseball,” I told him.

Testen frowned, like I had failed an easy test.

“Not basketball?”

“Just pickup,” I told him.

“Well, you play sports you learn about motivation. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen is the best. Josie Bloom, not our best player by any means, he’s the one that carried us in the final. Seventeen points, eleven rebounds, four steals, including a big one at the end. He said before the opening tip he was dedicating the game to Elizabeth. Jack—I think Beth’s death hit him the hardest—he was our best player, and he said the same thing. Yet in the championship game he didn’t play well at all. ’Course, being double-and triple-teamed all night didn’t help. So, to answer your question, I don’t know. I just don’t know.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” Testen said. “Linking what those kids achieved, linking their great triumph to something as sordid and tragic as Beth’s murder annoys me. It’s unfair to them.”

Now was a good time to change the subject, I decided.

“Tell me about the players,” I said. “Where are they now?”

Testen seemed relieved. He found a team photograph.

“Like I said earlier, they weren’t that special.” He was giving his practiced speech again. “It was only what they did that made them special. In many ways they were just typical kids who went on to lead typical lives.”

He pointed to the boy in the middle of the photograph holding a basketball.

“Jack Barrett went on to become governor—you know that. Before politics he was a millionaire entrepreneur, owning companies, making deals.”

His finger moved to another boy at the far end of the photo with long hair that must have been pulled into a ponytail in order for him to play.

“Gene Hugoson went to prison for robbing a convenience store, assaulting the cashier, and stealing her car. He’s now working on his family’s farm.”

Testen moved his finger along the line of basketball players, referring to each of them in turn.

“Dave Peterson, or I should say, Doctor David Peterson, is an optometrist working out of Mankato. Nick Axelrod owns and operates Nick’s, a family restaurant here in Victoria. Brian Reif works as an auto mechanic . . .”

Ah, my friend Brian, my inner voice said.

Testen sighed again and I wondered if he always sighed at this part of the presentation.

“We lost Tony Porter just a while ago,” he said. “He was there for the thirtieth reunion of the team, but we all knew then that he was very sick.”

Testen sighed some more, and pointed at the last of the Seven.

“Josiah Bloom. Well, I guess he’s sick, too. He’s an alcoholic, although the last I heard he was clean and sober.”

Testen set the photograph carefully where he found it.

“Very much a microcosm of America.”

“Just one big happy family,” I said.

Testen laughed in reply.

“Lord, no. I said they were a microcosm of America. Sometimes they couldn’t stand to be around each other.”

“Why’s that?”

“People can always find a reason to irritate other people, can’t they?”

“What about Governor Barrett? How did he get along with the rest of the Seven?”

“Jack—he was the exception. Everyone loved Jack.”

Everyone loved Jack. Well, not everyone, I reminded myself when I returned to my Audi and headed south. I was fumbling with my map, debating whom to annoy next when I encountered County Road 13. I hung a left and followed it to Milepost Three. I don’t know why, certainly there was nothing to see after all these years. Curiosity, I guess.

When I reached the milepost, I stopped the Audi along the shoulder, put it in neutral, and set the brake. I sat and listened to the radio. After a few bars of country anguish, I switched it off. There were no structures that I could see and no traffic. It was as good a spot to dump a body as any.

I slipped out of the car. Only the wind whistling through the power and telephone wires that lined the blacktop and the gentle hum of the car engine disrupted the silence. Gray, snow-covered farm land stretched into the distance, merging with the gray sky—the horizon could have been a mile away, or it could have been a thousand. There was no color, except . . .

I moved to the edge of the ditch. I gazed at a spot of red just below the milepost.

What is that?

I stepped into the ditch and immediately descended into knee-deep snow. I could feel it lodge between my boots and jeans as I plowed my way to the red.

It was a flower. A red rose partially drifted over by blowing snow. When I pulled at it, a second bud appeared, and a third. I kept digging until I had recovered a bouquet of fifteen long-stemmed roses, frozen but still bright with color. Whoever had thrown them there had done it recently—I say “thrown” because there were no footprints in the ditch save my own.