Third, they needed Pete, too, to serve as the leverage against me. They had no problem roughing him up to punch my buttons, but they couldn’t kill him, not yet. Still, for the time being, secure as he might have been from a violent death, Pete was still a sitting duck for Smith’s thugs. I had to get him out of Dodge. I had to hide him.

It was for the best, anyway, that Pete get lost for a while. I didn’t want him around for what might come next. I wondered about that for a long time, as I sat on my bed, waiting for the sun to come up, fatigue sweeping over me like a heavy coat, my eyes losing focus but the churning of my stomach preventing any attempt at sleep: What was I capable of doing?

SAMMY SEEMED TIRED, more than usual, when I visited him the following morning. Rare was the inmate who looked well-rested, but Sammy, I assumed, had done a great deal of thinking about his sister since the discovery of the bodies behind Hardigan Elementary School. Nor did it help that he was less than three weeks from a murder trial that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.

Despite his obvious sleep deprivation, Sammy listened attentively as I laid out the entire story about Smith, and what had followed with Pete. He was alternatively concerned and puzzled, two traits I had in great quantities myself these days. “Pete,” he mumbled. “Pete.”

I was running short on time, and I’d hoped that Sammy knew more than he was letting on about Smith. I was disappointed.

“Man, I don’t know that guy Smith,” he said when I finished. “He shows up, offers me ‘the best lawyer money can buy’—I figured the same as you, Koke. He was working for someone who that asshole hurt. Some victim. Y’know, sympathetic to what I was going through. Wanting to offer help. I mean, yeah, it was kinda weird that he didn’t want to give me their names, but, y’know, under the circumstances—a lot of people like to stay anonymous when it comes to, y’know—”

He was right. Sex abuse victims don’t advertise on billboards. That might be all it was with Smith. But it sure felt like more. “These guys are hiding something,” I said. “Something they’re afraid I’ll find. Sammy, I think—” I gathered my thoughts a moment. “Sam, look—I never ask a client if he’s guilty. I dance around it, because most of my clients are guilty, and if I know that, I can’t put them on the stand to testify they didn’t do it. Right?”

Sammy was listening intently. He nodded slowly.

“Right,” I continued. “But I’m sitting here thinking, Smith is working for someone who killed Griffin Perlini. Maybe they feel for you, maybe they want you to beat the rap, but their main concern is that they don’t want me out there trying to find new suspects, because they’re afraid I’ll find them.”

Sammy didn’t answer. He’d given me ample reason to think he killed Griffin Perlini, though he hadn’t come out and said it. But he’d also been the one to mention that I should consider other victims of Perlini’s crimes. Look at other people he hurt, he’d suggested, the first time we talked strategy.

“Should I be looking for Griffin Perlini’s killer, Sammy?”

Sammy looked away, turned his head. He hadn’t shaved for a while, and a thickening red beard was forming. “I don’t get this stuff with Smith,” he said. “Doing all that shit to Pete and all. But there’s one guy, I think—a good guy, but I could see. . . .”

Was Sammy proclaiming his innocence?

“The name,” I said, but I thought I already knew it. I just didn’t want to be the one to say it first.

“Archie,” he said. “Guy named Archie Novotny. His daughter—Jody—was one of the victims.”

I hadn’t told Sammy of my visit to Novotny. “Why him?” I asked.

Sammy shook his head slowly. “He took the thing with Jody real hard. And he seems like the kind of guy who might have it in him.”

“He’s close enough to matching the description,” I noted.

“Oh, you’ve met him.”

“I did, Sammy. And I managed a peek in his coat closet. Guess who owns a brown leather bomber jacket and a green stocking cap?”

“No shit? Wow.” Sammy fell back in his chair, new animation. “You think Archie did it? For real?”

I felt an uneasy heat to my face, a weight on my shoulders. “Sammy,” I confessed, “I thought you did it.”

He showed a brief hint of a smile. I wasn’t sure what to make of this.

“Novotny says he has an alibi,” I said. “He says he was at a guitar lesson. I’m checking it out.”

Sammy thought about that. “Maybe it’s a cover. Yeah, shit.” He looked at me. “But that don’t explain Smith.”

I agreed. “I suppose Novotny could be the guy using Smith. It’s just hard to imagine. The guy’s a laid-off painter for the electric utility. Where’s he get the money to hire a guy like Smith, and a bunch of goons to scare the shit out of my brother?”

“Don’t make sense.”

It didn’t make sense. But at least I was making progress. I had a more than plausible suspect in Archie Novotny. Now, I would need to find a way to punch some holes in the eyewitness testimony placing Sammy at the scene of the shooting. I’d left one message with each of the witnesses already. On my drive from the detention center, I called each of them again, leaving them my office, home, and cell phone numbers.

When I got to my office, I amended my witness list in Sammy’s case to include Archie Novotny and put it on the fax machine to the prosecutor, Lester Mapp. I’d have preferred to spring the witness on Mapp, but judges take a dim view of such things, and maybe—just maybe—if I convinced Mapp that Novotny was the guy, he’d walk Sammy.

Next, I did an Internet search for hotels in nearby suburbs and booked a room for Pete in a town just outside the city boundaries. Now I’d just have to make sure Pete got there without anyone noticing. He needed to fly under the radar for the time being.

Joel Lightner called me on my cell phone and gave some information I’d requested. He had found J.D.—John Dixon, Pete’s supplier who escaped arrest when Pete got pinched.

“You want me to put a tail on him?” he asked.

“Not just yet, Joel. Thanks. I’ll let you know.”

“I’m worried about you, kid. Play it smart.”

I smiled. Lightner had a pretty good head on his shoulders. “Always,” I told him. “Always.”

31

SUNDAY PRACTICE at State is usually the easiest of the week—film of the previous day’s game, then a brief, no-contact workout in sweats and helmets, no pads. But today will not be your finest day. They are on you, the seniors, the team captains, before you make it to your locker.

What’s this disappearing act you pulled yesterday? Tony Karmeier, a massive offensive tackle and four-year starter, is breathing heavily into the side of your face. Apparently Tony—and by the looks of it, the rest of the team—didn’t look kindly on you walking off the football field yesterday, after the referee ejected you, and driving home. You want to forget that scholarship and go back to being a loser?

You don’t answer. You open your locker and remove your helmet. Your right hand is still sore from the number you did on Jack, your father, last night.

Give me a fucking answer, Kolarich.

I’m thinking, you say.

He shoves you, and when a six-six, three-hundred-fifty-pound lineman pushes you, you fly sideways, landing on the floor.

We’re a team. We play as a team. We don’t have any room for this superstar crap. Are you a team player or a superstar?

You slowly get up and recover your helmet, still spinning on the floor. You feel your internal reservoir refilling with the hot venom from last night, the assault on your father. It felt good, you have to admit, better than it should have. Your hand balls into a fist and releases. You look again at the team captain, Karmeier, a physical mountain, mean as a snake, and you realize how much you hate him, how much you hate all of them.