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10

The ca and clean The hallere lined with yellow lockers Most sported coh a feere padded with locks of considerable fortitude These were blocks of titaniuineered to protect far s than school books and pencils

My footsteps echoed along the now-empty hallway Just a half hour earlier it had been filled to overfloith students Within these hallowed lockered halls, plans for parties had been one down, students had been harassed, asses pinched and thoughts of teenage suicide pondered

In the police report, Derrick claiym at the time of the murder He had no alibi His football coach often left hiainst school rules, but Derrick had proven himself to be reliable, and after all he was the star athlete The coach probably loved him like a son

The coach was the last to see Derrick That had been at 5:45 p of the murder The coroner&039;s report placed the ti to the arrest report, the detectives figured Derrick left the school weight room shortly after the coach had left and proceeded to ahtered her in front of her home His vehicle had no trace of her blood There were no wounds on Derrick&039;s hands or arms Other than theto link hih

Had he not blundered and forgotten about the ly clean murder I&039;ve now had a chance to see the crime scene photos The murder was definitely not clean

Derrick, of course, claiht, like he was every night A routine that anyone could have caught onto and used against him

No one believed Derrick&039;s story Except his defense attorney Charlie Brown, although he was being paid handsomely to believe his story

Andhandsomely paid I hate it when that happens

I moved beyond the hallway, beyond the brick walled central quad, beyond as probably the school cafeteria, beyond the gym, and toward the athletic depart, and so there was no football to be practiced, which hy Derrick had been lifting weights after school, rather than working out with his team Instead, it was baseball and track season Beyond a chain-linked fence I could see a varsity baseball ga under way Parents and some students filled the small bleachers To the north of the baseball field was a track field, and it was a beehive of activity I watched a young girl sprint for about thirty yards and leap through the air, landing gracelessly in a cloud of dirt She dusted herself off, and then headed back for another leap

I followed a paved pathway, bigger than a sidewalk, but not big enough to be called a road The pathway skirted the softball field and headed toward a group of buildings lined with doors One of the doors was open, and inside I could see shining new gyh school did not have shining new gyyhts and a few squat racks, coh, if used correctly and religiously Both of which I had done

I stepped into the doorway and peaked in, al to see achrome equipment covered the entire rooh loud speakers situated in every corner Boys and a handful of girls were in there, all taking their workouts very seriously I was conored In fact, there seemed to be aof the dance music

I spied so two kids lifting an iht They were benching almost three hundred pounds

Not bad for a kid

I can on the closed door said Coach

Only the egocentricity of a football coach, in an entire department of other coaches, went by Coach alone

I knocked on the closed door Doing so, the door creaked open, and i

Coach was a big man, and from what I could tell he had taken a bullet to the side of the head Blood and brain matter sprayed the east side of his office A revolver was still in his hands The blood had not congealed, and was dripping steadily from the wound in his open head His eyes ith the shock and horror of what he had done to himself

Music thumped loudly into the office

No one had even heard the shot

11

Sanchez and I orking out at a 24 Hour Fitness in Huntington Beach It was ym was quiet I had worked up a hell of a sweat, and was dripping all over the place Sanchez didn&039;t sweat; at least not like a real ain

"I save the sweating for the bedroo off his third and final set of military presses "Woh school sweetheart You don&039;t know shit about o down the machine "Danielle likes it when I sweat Shows her I takeseriously Besides, Danielle is a lot of woman"

"Yes," I said, "she is"

We ht until we ran out of plates

"Place is going to hell," said Sanchez, looking around, then swiping two forty-fives from another bench

"Yes, but it&039;s cheap And apparently open twenty-four hours"

"You sound like a goddamn commercial" He handed me one of the plates and we pushed each into place The bar looked very unstable and heavily overloaded "We&039;re attracting attention again"

I had eased down onto the incline bench In thesonored the on a steel platforht clanked as I went throughca up soon This motivated me, pushed ood for Cindy This motivated me as well Only on the last rep did Sanchez lend souided the barbell into place

"Didn&039;t need your help on the twelfth," I said

"Sure you didn&039;t," he said

A voice said: "Hey, ht is that?"

We both turned He was a surfer Bleached hair and so in his nose, and soraphs up and down his arm

"You too stupid to do the math?" asked Sanchez He turned to ely

The surfer looked at the weight ere hefting and decided that he would not take offense He left Good decision

Sanchez did his twelve reps, and to be a dick I helped him with the last two After twobenches and sipped from our water bottles

"He leave a suicide note?" asked Sanchez

"Nothing," I said "But he had been fired earlier that day"

"Why?"

I shrugged "He&039;d been taking a lot of shit about leaving Derrick alone on the night of theto be fired over"

"Uh huh"

"Papers say he was a hell of a coach," said Sanchez

"Three CIF championships"

"Why do you think he popped himself?"

"Hard to say," I said "Detective Hanson tells me the man was divorced earlier in the year They say divorced hest risk for suicide"

"Thank you for that useless bit of fucking trivia"

I ignored him, and continued

"Add to that your best athlete being accused of a heinousyour job"

I shrugged again

"You shrug a lot for a detective," said Sanchez

"I know It&039;s part of the job description"

We moved over to the squat rack We slammed on as many forty-fives as we could find, then some thirty-fives

"You know," said Sanchez, "people here think we&039;re freaks Maybe we should go to a real gy down under the bar and placing my feet exactly the width of my shoulders "Besides, it&039;s open twenty-four hours"

Sanchez shook his head

12

He atching ly with those nondescript eyes Nondescript only in color, that is Everything else about them ell, very non-nondescript

He knohat you&039;re thinking

The words flashed acrosswith the popular ChristhMac Or three He was drinking another coffee Lukewar

"So have you told anyone about me?" he asked

"That I speak to God in a McDonald&039;s?"

"Yes"

"Everyone I know Hell, even people I don&039;t know In fact, I just told the sixteen-year-old gal working behind the counter that I waswith God in a few minutes and could she hurry"

"And what did she say?"

"Said she was going to call the cops"

Jack shook his head and sipped some more of his coffee I noticed he still had the sa his forehead

"So your answer is no," he said

"Of course it&039;s no, and if you were God you would know that"