“I still can’t believe Bobby killed all those people,” Kenny says.
“Could you believe he wasn’t paralyzed?” I ask.
“No, that just blew me away.”
Kenny and Tanya have very few questions; they’re still flushed with relief that their lives haven’t been permanently derailed. I finish my coffee and get up to leave.
“Man, can’t you stay another couple of hours? I need an excuse not to work out.”
“That’s probably the only athletic thing we have in common. Hey, let me ask you a question,” I say, and then describe in detail my plan to become a placekicker for the Giants.
“That sounds pretty good,” he says.
“You think it could work?”
“Not a chance in hell,” he says, and laughs.
He’s challenging my manhood. “Be careful or I’ll be on that field before you will,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. They’re looking to activate me next week in time for the game at Cincinnati.”
Tanya stands to pick up the coffee cups. “Don’t remind me,” she says, smiling.
The comment surprises me. “You don’t want him to play?”
“Not in Cincinnati. I’ve got bad memories of that. But this time I’m going… Watching it on television was horrible.”
Kenny explains. “I got my bell rung in the fourth quarter when we were out there two years ago. I was out cold. Late hit.”
I nod. “I think I remember that.”
“Only time that ever happened to me. Man, that was scary as hell. Next thing I knew it was four hours later in the hospital. I didn’t even know who won. Bobby had to tell me.” He shakes his head sadly, probably at the awareness that Bobby won’t be there to tell him anything anymore.
I head out to the car, and I’m three blocks away when it hits me. I drive the three blocks back to the house about twice as fast, then jump out and pop open the trunk. I’ve brought a lot of my case files with me, in case I needed to refer to them to answer any questions about my bill, and now I pore through them until I find the piece of information I need.
Tanya Schilling is surprised to find me standing there when she answers the doorbell. “Sorry, but I need to talk to Kenny.”
“Sure, come on in,” she says. “He’s still in the den goofing off.”
She goes into the kitchen while I go back into the den. Kenny is also surprised by my reappearance. “Hey, you forget something?”
“Are you positive that Bobby was with you in the hospital in Cincinnati?” I ask.
“Absolutely. And not just because he was my friend. He was my trainer… it was his job to be there.”
“Kenny, I’m going to ask you something I’ve asked you before. Last time you wouldn’t answer; this time you’ve got to.”
“What is it?”
“The night you dropped Troy off at his house… the night he died… who was the woman you were arguing about?”
“I told you, I don’t remember,” he says. He can see by my face that I’m not going to drop it, so he changes his approach. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“I think she’s got everything to do with it,” I say.
“Tell him, Kenny.” It’s Tanya, standing in the doorway.
Kenny looks like the classic deer in the headlights. “Tell him what?” he asks, but it’s clear he knows what. And he now knows that she knows.
Her voice is firm. “You tell him or I will.”
I press him. “Who were you arguing about that night, Kenny?”
He nods in resignation. “Teri Pollard. Bobby’s wife.”
I already knew the answer to that question, and I can make a good guess at the answer to the next one. “Why were you arguing?”
Kenny looks at Tanya, gets no help, and turns back to me. “Troy was fooling around with her.”
“Why did you care?”
“Bobby was my friend. They had a good marriage… they had a son… I didn’t want him breaking them up.”
“There’s more to it than that,” I say.
“No,” Kenny says, “that’s it.”
I turn to Tanya. “Can you tell me?”
She nods. “Yes, I’ll tell you. Jason Pollard is Kenny’s son.”
Kenny whirls in surprise. “How did you know that?”
“Because I know you. Because I live with you. Because I understand you. You think I could watch you for all these years and not know what was going on? How stupid do you think I am?”
With no need to keep the secret from Tanya anymore, the story pours out. Kenny had a brief affair with Teri back when they were graduating high school; he thinks it was not long after the all-American weekend, but he can’t be sure. Teri was planning to marry Bobby at the time and went ahead with it.
“When did she tell you that you were the father?” I ask.
“Maybe six months after Bobby’s accident. I had just met Tanya. I’ve helped support Jason ever since.” He looks at Tanya. “Teri insisted that I keep it a secret, or she would cut me off from Jason. I didn’t want that to happen. I’m so sorry.”
“Did Teri want to leave Bobby for you?”
He nods. “Yeah, at first. But that was years ago. Why do you need to know all this?”
“Unless I’m very wrong, Teri Pollard killed Troy Preston. She killed her husband. She killed all of them.”
* * * * *
SHE ASKED ME TO come over tomorrow night.” It’s the first sentence Kenny can manage to say after he processes what I’ve just told him.
“Why?” I ask.
“She said she was going through Bobby’s stuff, and she needed some help, and that there might be some things I’d want to keep for myself. I told her I’d be there at eight.”
“You’re not going,” Tanya says.
Kenny looks to me for guidance. “Don’t say anything to Teri right now,” I say. “Let me think about this for a while. We have until tomorrow night.”
I promise to get back to them later today. I leave to be on time for my twelve-fifteen session with Carlotta, which has just changed in content and increased in importance.
Carlotta’s door opens at exactly twelve-fifteen, not one minute sooner or later. This would be true if we were sitting just below an erupting volcano, with hot lava raining down on us, or if we were in Baghdad dodging cruise missiles. I suspect that punctuality is a trait common to all shrinks, but it is nonetheless amazing.
Once I’m seated in the chair opposite her, Carlotta asks, “So, Andy, why are you here?”
“Laurie left and I’m in such pain that sometimes I think I can’t breathe,” I say. “But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”
She laughs. “Of course not. Why would it be?”
She’s familiar with the case, having testified, but I proceed to tell her everything that I have just learned about Teri Pollard and Kenny Schilling, stopping frequently to answer her questions. Finally, I say, “I know it’s hard for you to judge people from a distance, but if you can enlighten me at all, I’d appreciate it.”
“Well,” she says, “assuming Teri is the murderer, we can also assume two other things. One is that she is terribly unstable, in layman’s terms a wacko. Such people only flirt with rationality, and it’s not always helpful to try and predict their actions using logic. Two is that she took the pact that those young men made that weekend very seriously, maybe even more seriously than her husband did. When he had his accident, she thought she could rely on that pact, that the others would support her husband, and by extension her, in the manner in which they had promised. When they didn’t, she exacted her revenge. She was possibly taking out on them her anger at her husband for failing her.”
“But why commit the other killings in secret and Preston’s so publicly? And why frame Kenny? Why not kill him also?”