Michael Koryta - The Prophet

He’d turned full circle, his back to the pond again, and was staring at the cottage.

I’ve kept ours up, Eleanor had said. Yes, she certainly had. He called her from the dock and found her at home again. He told her he was still working on the Shadow Wood leads and was now searching for potential witnesses.

“You had some maintenance done recently,” he said. “The roof was replaced, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes. Roof replaced this summer, the exterior painted last summer.”

“Do you recall what company did that work? It seems that the activity with your address began in the summer, so I was—”

“It wasn’t a company,” she said. “It’s a man who’s been our caretaker for years out there. He works for the hospital in some sort of maintenance job. My husband met him there.”

“What’s his name?”

“Rodney Bova,” she said. “That’s spelled B-O—”

“I know Rodney,” he said.

“You do? How?”

He hesitated, then said, “I played football with him once. A long time ago. Thanks, Mrs. Ruzich. Maybe Rodney will be able to help.”

14

RODNEY BOVA WAS A GHOST’S name, an attachment to vague and receding memories. He’d been one of those kids who flitted around the periphery of Adam’s life but never stepped into focus.

His place among the memories had been etched by rumors and gossip. Adam couldn’t recall his face, his voice, his family, or even what position he’d played. He remembered only two things about Rodney Bova—he’d been on the team briefly, and he’d left it when he was sentenced to a juvie lockup. He had, for a short time the summer before Adam’s senior year, taken a starring role in the team’s conversation by getting himself arrested. There was a live-in camp every August, the first week of practice, the kids practicing twice a day and spending the nights in sleeping bags on the gym floor, a bonding-by-boot-camp exercise that Walter Ward designed. As Adam recalled, Bova was missing during live-in camp, and nobody was sure why, but some of the kids had heard rumors. Adam’s interest in the situation was minimal, Bova being a couple of years younger than him and not a starter. Had a contributor been arrested, had they lost a playmaker, that would have been different. Bova was a nobody, though, and so his flare of fame had faded fast.

Rodney Bova, the caretaker at 7330 Shadow Wood Lane.

Maybe it shouldn’t have felt like so much. Maybe the mind was teasing him into believing this connection had value simply because it was the only connection he’d found, an unanticipated link to the past and to crime. Maybe the right thing to do was simply to give old Rodney Bova a call and ask the questions—when had he logged his hours at Shadow Wood this summer, who had he seen, which of the neighbors were talkative, which were suspicious.

Somehow, though, that didn’t feel like the move to make.

The voice that whispered in Adam’s head when he was chasing skips, the one that was usually right, was telling him to circle Rodney Bova, and do it quietly.

At least to start.

The team began approaching practice with distraction where passion belonged, and while Kent understood it, he also had to fix it.

Rachel Bond’s murder was in all of their heads, he knew that. Grief and gossip, faith and fear. The conversation inside the school would be swirling amidst those four cardinal directions right now, and it would be ceaseless. There were a few on the team—Colin Mears foremost among them—to whom the loss was truly and deeply personal. There were more to whom it was distant and would now be made personal. That strange magnetic pull of tragedy. Kent had known it too well, for too long. Classmates who’d never spoken to his sister began reminiscing over time spent with her. Strangers in town would approach him in the grocery store or at McDonald’s or on the street, tears in their eyes. Often, they wanted to touch him while they offered their condolences. He was struck by the frequency of that—hands on the arm, pats on the back, awkward embraces. Seeking some contact with the tragedy, but minimal, of course. Minimal. As if somehow that offered a vaccination. If they got just the right amount of contact, incubated just the right amount of terror and horror in their own hearts, they’d be protected.

You had to find your refuge. The place of consistency in a world gone mad. For Kent it had been the football field. Walter Ward had understood so well what nobody else seemed to: Kent and Adam needed some level of normalcy. Had to have it. Kent did, at least. Adam started missing practices. Never missed a game, and never played better than he did down the stretch after Marie was killed, but until kickoff he was uninterested. Kent had gone the other way. Taken more reps, watched more film. Immersed himself. Ward had helped him to do that.

Now, twenty-two years removed, Kent watched Colin Mears in the receivers line, saw him glancing over his shoulder, and followed the boy’s look. Three of his teammates engaged in earnest, whispered conversation. Kent could guess the topic, if not the specifics.

He turned away, his cap pulled low, and chewed furiously on his whistle. It was a lifeguard’s whistle, soft, waterproof rubber, and he liked it because he could bite on the thing so hard that it was almost like having a mouthpiece back in, almost like having the helmet on and lining up under center with the crowd in your ears and the lights on your face.

We are going to lose, he thought. We are going to lose.

Byers was barking and pacing and cussing, but Byers always barked and paced and cussed, and so the kids paid him little mind. Kent watched his linebackers run through a drill, banging off the tackling sled with cursory attention, nobody coming close to earning a bruise, which made him furious—this point in the season, the point that mattered most, and they didn’t want to hit? Then he swiveled his head and watched his offensive linemen execute what was supposed to be a zone-blocking scheme but looked like blindfolded kids being chased by bees, and he knew they were going to get beat.

Again.

Just like every other year.

Hickory Hills might not beat them, even if Chambers extended this passionless effort from the practice field to the game. But on the opposite side of the bracket waited Saint Anthony’s, a school Kent had never beaten, led by a coach, Scott Bless, Kent had never beaten. There was no team in the state he wanted to beat more desperately. In his two state championship appearances, Saint Anthony’s had marched off the field with the trophy two times.

Kent’s jaw was beginning to ache from chewing the whistle. He turned downfield, watched his receivers, who were working on snap counts, Steve Haskins trying to confuse them with a mix of cadences, making sure they’d jump only when they were supposed to, and Colin Mears bristled with energy, crisp on every play, then back in line, slapping helmets and demanding focus and providing reminders.

Kent blew the whistle, and most of the field went silent, but not enough of it. Not enough. His defensive secondary was laughing through their drill, and it was the worst kind of laughter to have on the football field. Cocky laughter. The kind that suggested they thought they’d already won, when they’d never walked off the field at the end of a season without a loss.

“This is funny to you?” he screamed, and now he was walking toward them and everyone was backing up. “Practicing for the playoffs is entertainment? Is that what I’m to understand?”

A chorus of “no, sirs” came, but he was already turning away from them in disgust.

“Colin, Lorell, Damon! Get down here.”

In came his three senior all-state studs. When Kent stared them down, they all met the gaze, but Colin did it with hunger, almost as if he’d been hoping it would go this way. Kent understood. There was an excruciating fatigue that came when every pair of eyes that looked your way seemed to read a FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE label on your forehead.