Bryan Gruley: Starvation lake

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “We’ll watch for your story.”

She walked down. I hurried a fresh videotape into the camera. The first one wasn’t nearly used up, but I was going to need two. I refocused the camera as the coach followed the boys off the ice toward the dressing room. At the door, he stopped and turned and looked at me again. I felt an involuntary shiver of fear while I zoomed in on his face, the hard, certain face that nobody in Starvation Lake could fail to recognize, no matter how much they might want to. He held the camera’s gaze for a full two seconds before turning away. Again I wondered if he had recognized me. But this time I relished the thought that he might have stood there wondering, for even a split second, whether his past was about to crash down on him. thirty

I pulled into another gas station pay phone and inserted the rest of my quarters. A man answered at Channel Eight in Traverse

City. I told him Gus Carpenter was calling for Tawny Jane Reese. Five seconds later, a woman picked up.

“T.J. here,” she said.

“I’m holding for Ms. Reese.”

“That’s me.”

“T.J.,” I repeated, liking it.

“You know, you’re pretty famous around here.” Her voice was just as soothing on the phone as it was on TV. “Where are you now?”

“Am I on the air, T.J.?”

“You are not.”

“Good. I don’t have much time, so listen carefully: I’m going to FedEx you something. You’ll have it in the morning. But you have to promise you won’t air it until eight a.m. Saturday.”

As she thought about it, I imagined her furrowing her brow the way she did when she was telling her viewers about a bombing in Kosovo or a flood in Des Moines. The image appealed to me, at once so mundane and so glamorous.

“I don’t usually make deals,” she said.

“Really? So you just happened to be covering a men’s hockey game in the middle of the night when the cops showed up to arrest an alleged murderer?”

“Ah, well, we all make exceptions, Gus, as you ought to know.”

Touche, I thought. “Trust me, you’ll want to make an exception for this. It has to do with Jack Blackburn.”

“OK. What about you?”

“There’s something else you need to do. After you get this FedEx and you’re getting your story ready, you’ve got to call a guy for comment. His name is Kerasopoulos. He’s the lawyer at the company that owns the Pilot. ”

“I know that blowhard. Why do I have to call him?”

I was liking her more every second. “For one thing,” I said, “to find out what happened to Gus Carpenter.” That was partly true. Really I wanted her to let Kerasopoulos know that Channel Eight was working on a story so he would have to run Joanie’s story, unless he wanted to be scooped on the most explosive news ever to hit Starvation Lake. “The rest will be obvious once you see what I’m sending.”

“You’re just a voice on the phone.”

“No, I’m a FedEx package on your doorstep tomorrow morning.”

“OK, OK, it’s a deal. But let me ask could we just run a teaser the night-?”

“No. No teasers. Eight a.m. Saturday.”

“All right, but listen, we have a one-minute news break at seven-thirty that morning. Let me just mention it then. What difference will half an hour make? The Pilot’s out by then. That’s what you’re worried about, right?”

Tawny Jane Reese was all right. And, yes, I just wanted to make sure Elvis read the story in the Pilot before he saw it on TV. “OK,” I said.

I bought a Coke and a package of cheese crackers and ate as I drove to the FedEx store. I parked, pulled out my notebook, and transcribed my scribbling into readable print. Then I went inside and made a copy of the same notes on other pages. I slipped the copied notes, the videotapes, and the undeveloped stills into separate FedEx boxes and shipped one to Joanie at her apartment, the other to T.J. at Channel Eight.

I had originally planned to return to the rink and record Richard Blackstone’s three forty-five session with the eight-to twelve-year-olds, but decided it might spook him. Instead I backed the Bonnie into a spot at the rear of the rink parking lot with a clear view of his silver Toyota Camry. The sun was sliding down the sky when he emerged from the rink a little after five. He was carrying the puck bag, two hockey sticks, and his tackle box first-aid kit. A man and a boy walked along with him. The man carried a hockey bag. The boy, his dark hair matted with sweat, had a pair of goalie pads slung over a shoulder and a stick in his hand. He squinted up at the coach and the man as they talked. The coach lowered himself to a knee and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and spoke to him. The man regarded his son and the coach with a proud smile. The boy nodded.

I let anger rise up to suffocate my sadness.

I followed the Toyota at a distance of a few hundred yards. We ended up in a neighborhood of red-brick bungalows with greening end-of-winter yards, towering oaks, and one-car garages. The streets twisted and turned. At a four-way stop, a UPS truck got between me and the Toyota. Three houses down, the truck came to a lurching halt at an awkward angle and the driver hopped out with a package under an arm. With cars parked along both sides of the street, I couldn’t pass. “Son of a bitch,” I said, slapping the steering wheel as the Toyota disappeared around a curve.

I dug through my notes for the address I’d written down at the clerk’s office and, after doubling back once, located Blackstone’s house. I drove about half a block past it and pulled to the curb. As I waited for darkness to fall, I considered whether he’d seen me. Maybe as I sat there he was calling the police and I’d be hauled away before I could make anyone believe me. It didn’t really matter. This neighborhood where I’d never been before and probably never would be again was exactly where I was supposed to be. When the streetlights blinked on, I stuffed my cap in a coat pocket and pushed the record button on the miniature tape recorder.

“Home of Jack Blackburn,” I dictated, “214 East Luray, suburbs of Washington, D.C., Thursday, March fifth, five forty-nine p.m.” I slipped the recorder into my breast pocket and stepped outside.

Four shaggy pines obscured the front of his house, making it impossible to see inside. A lamp over the concrete porch was unlit. I climbed the porch steps and rapped on the door, standing away from the peephole. The last time I’d seen Jack Blackburn up close was on the sidewalk outside Kepsel’s Ace Hardware the summer before he left us. We’d said hello and nothing more.

I pressed my ear to the door but heard no stirring inside. I knocked again. Still no answer. I walked around to the backyard. The side drive was empty. Maybe he hadn’t driven home. Maybe he’d noticed me following and decided to lose me in the maze of his neighborhood. I tried to peek into the garage but couldn’t see a thing through the tinted windows.

Cyclone fence hemmed in the backyard. I unlatched a gate and stepped across a semicircle of turquoise patio stones to the back door. Laying an ear against the door, I heard only the flat ticking of a kitchen clock. I looked around at the shadows surrounding me, thinking maybe I had been foolish to come at night. I looked at the knob on the storm door. Did I really want to add breaking and entering to my list of crimes? I tried the door and it gave. The door inside gave, too. I eased it open two inches and called out softly, “Anyone here? Mr. Blackstone?” I stepped into the dark vestibule. A corn broom leaned on the wall beneath a flyswatter hanging on a hook. To my right was a sliding door, to my left two steps up into the kitchen.

I turned toward the kitchen, catching a whiff of Lysol. In my breast pocket, the record light on the tape recorder glowed red. I leaned my head down and whispered into it, “Inside now.” The immaculate kitchen was dressed in snow-white Formica countertops, a white tile floor, white appliances, blond cupboards. On the counter sat a dish drainer holding a clean plate, a coffee cup, a fork, a steak knife. Next to it stood two bottles of Jim Beam, one nearly empty, one unopened. Impulsively, I opened a cupboard door. There was no River Rats sticker on the inside.