The Recruiter (A Thriller) Page 3

  Samuel picks up his shirt from the sand where he’d thrown it before taking the blonde out for her swim. He reaches into the pocket and pulls out a pair of surgical gloves and then the baggie with the used condom inside. He drops the condom onto the blanket, then stands over Nevens.

  The wind from the ocean has changed. It’s colder and there are ominous clouds rolling in. It will rain soon, Samuel thinks.

  He takes a long look at the ocean. It will be some time before he sees it again. At least eighteen months.

  And when he comes back, he’ll get what he deserves.

  He’ll be a Navy SEAL.

  Eight

  In the girls’ locker room of Lake Orion High School, Beth Fischer attempts to slow her heartbeat, to keep her muscles loose, to keep the adrenaline from pouring into her veins like a river overflowing its banks. She sits quietly in front of her bright orange locker. The carpet is a dull green. The bench upon which she sits is lacquered pine, with hundreds of scratches and dents, a few gouges, and indecipherable graffiti.

  Beth feels in control of her body. Some players try to pump themselves up, but for Beth, it’s about keeping things under control. Her success has always been about control.

  She stands and stretches again, although she’s already as limber as she can possibly be. She reaches back and lifts her right foot, catches it, and pulls it up against her butt. The muscles in her arms pop from her skin. She feels her quadriceps tug with the stretch, and when she drops her foot, the muscle snaps into place. Firm. And strong. She repeats the process with her other leg and then bends down and touches her toes, pulling her hamstrings, her face against her knees.

  Beth straightens, rises up and down on her toes. Her calf muscles are clearly defined, standing out against the smooth skin like half discs of steel. She hops in place. A teammate walks by and pats her on the rump. A locker slams somewhere. Beth turns and sees her reflection in the window of the coach’s office. Her face is sharp, her jaw set. No one would ever call her cute or say she had the prom-queen look. But there is a tranquil beauty in her lean, strong face. The reflection doesn’t do her gray eyes justice, but even in the reflection, she can see the intensity.

  Beth looks at the face in the window. She thinks about everything that’s riding on this game. It’s the first game of the state tournament, and her school is playing the team picked to win it all. But that’s just a part of the prize. Tonight is also the biggest game of the season as far as the number of scouts who will be at the game. Most of them have been recruiting Beth since she was a sophomore and won the job of starting point guard on the varsity squad. Since then, her stats have improved every year. She led her team to the conference championship and was all-conference player of the year, leading everyone with points, assists, and steals. Only one question remained among the scouts: could she do it against bigger, stronger opponents than her somewhat weak conference forced her to face?

  She doesn’t intend to disappoint them.

  Beth turns away from her image and goes to her locker. She opens the door and looks at the picture taped inside. It’s a faded color photograph. The edges are folded and bent, and one part is held together by a piece of Scotch tape. In the picture, a young man with light brown hair and bluish gray eyes looks into the camera. She can see the similarities with this image and the one she just looked at. The man in the picture is wearing Army fatigues and an M-14 machine gun is strapped across his back.

  Her father.

  Beth looks into his eyes. She can see the quiet bravery in his eighteen-year-old face. The same age then as she is now. She draws strength from the picture. And calmness. It’s as if he has the ability to focus her. To remind her what’s important. And that to fight with courage is sometimes the best you can do.

  The coach calls out for the team to gather. Beth hears the quiet voice of her teammates as they gather around the coach’s chalkboard.

  Beth slams the locker shut.

  The sound echoes like a gunshot.

  Nine

  The Lake Orion High School gym is big, with a capacity of nearly two thousand people.

  Anna Fischer walks slowly, unsteadily, up the bleachers. She has never been here before, and isn’t used to walking on bleachers, the big steps, the big fall should one misstep. She walks slowly. Looking down, stepping, looking up, then looking down again, taking another step.

  She carries a big soda in her hand and a program in the other. She is an older woman in her fifties, tall and thin with a sagging face and tired eyes. She’s wearing blue jeans and a blue cotton sweatshirt that has had more than its share of tumbles in the dryer.

  Anna takes another step, her foot goes too far and she stops it in time, but her balance starts to go. She puts a hand out and grabs something, pushes herself upright. She looks down. Her hand is on a man’s head. He looks at her, a surprised “O” on his face. Anna smiles sheepishly and takes another step, then another one before she sits down, quickly.

  It is a good spot, about three rows from the top. She doesn’t want to sit at the very top because she thinks it’s too visible. She would rather sit a few rows down, try to blend in a little bit. Beth doesn’t know she is at the game, and by the look of the number of people at the gym, tonight wouldn’t be the night to distract her with her presence.

  Anna takes a deep breath and then takes a long drink from her soda. It’s Diet Coke, or at least half of it is. The other half is some fine sour mash from the great state of Tennessee. After Anna has drained a quarter of the cup’s contents, she pops a stick of gum into her mouth and chews it. She doesn’t want to cause any trouble here. Doesn’t want to embarrass Beth, whom she has heard is the star of the team.

  But Anna wants to watch her play. And she feels she has a right to watch her play. Beth is her daughter, after all.

  The pep band picks up, and the local team runs out onto the court, forming itself into two lines for a layup drill. Anna knows the basic terms. Her husband taught her them when they were dating. He’d taken her to some games, and they’d even horsed around at a playground basketball court not far from his apartment. He’d been good. Anna could still remember the ease with which he moved. The power in his legs when he exploded toward the basket for a dunk. She’d marveled at his pure athleticism. It had been one of the things she’d loved about him.

  Now, Anna picks out her daughter in one of the lines. She can see the light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Can see the stern expression. Anna thinks that her daughter looks older than the other girls. More serious. Maybe more under pressure?

  The thought prompts Anna to take the gum out of her mouth and drain more of the whiskey and soda.

  No, Beth doesn’t look older, she thinks. She’s just projecting her own beliefs onto her daughter.

  Anna watches as Beth catches a pass and drives to the basket, springs up, and lays the ball up gently against the backboard. So easily. So effortless. So smooth.

  Just like her father.

  A kind of black flower blooms briefly in the pit of Anna’s stomach. So unfair that Vince died.

  A sign in the home student section catches her eye: “Beth is #1!” Yes, Anna thinks, Beth is #1. Because all she has left is Beth. And in the dark hours of sobriety, Anna wonders if the cancer ruined that for her too. Or, she wonders, maybe she ruined it all herself.

  Anna wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. She’s failed Beth time and time again. Beth no longer believes in her. But now, Anna can see that these people believe in Beth.

  So maybe the damage she’s done to her only daughter isn’t as bad as she thinks. She thinks about it, then puts the straw back in her mouth.

  Ten

  Despite the scouts, despite the fact that a scholarship may be hanging in the balance, Beth’s first thoughts as the game begins are of her teammates. As the players perfunctorily shake hands at center court and ready themselves for the tipoff, she can see that her teammates have never looked so nervous. So tense. Their faces are white, their expression
s grim. As always, at the start of a game, Beth feels light, almost giddy. The jitters are replaced by raw exultation of playing the game. She wants to look up into the stands and find Pete, but she doesn’t. Light and loose is one thing, distracted is another.

  The ref, a short man with a slight paunch and a strand of dyed black hair pulled across his balding head, blows his whistle, tosses the ball up, and steps back. Beth watches the ball as the two centers leap, and then the ball is in her hands. She feels the smooth surface, and for an instant, feels the strength surge through her hands, and the feeling flows through her body that she can do anything with the ball, that tonight she can score at will.

  But she doesn’t.

  Beth realizes that to win, she needs to get her teammates involved. So she brings the ball up, passes off, gets it back, then drives into the lane, draws two defenders, and makes a flawless bounce pass to a teammate who’s right under the bucket. She blows the layup. Beth knows she was right; her teammates are even more tense than she thought. The other team takes a perimeter shot and misses. Again, Beth brings the ball up, passes off, passes again, and drives again. This time, her teammate is ready and under control. Two points. Lake Orion’s student section erupts with the first points of the game. The cheer sends a chill through Beth’s body. That first bucket always does.

  The other team brings the ball up. Beth’s opponent, the other point guard, is familiar to Beth. She’s shorter than Beth but is built like a tank. She’s also very quick. Because Beth is taller, the crowd thinks the shorter girl is quicker, but she isn’t. The other point guard brings the ball up; Beth knows her last name is Schmidt. She drives to the left of the free throw extended, and Beth, who has watched films of this girl, knows she is going to turn her back and pivot, trying to get to the center of the lane. Beth anticipates the move, jumps out, and easily steals the ball. Beth takes it down the court and, at the last moment, passes to a teammate who makes the easy lay in.

  The opposing team fights back, though, and the lead seesaws. Beth remains under control, passing with unerring accuracy. She feeds her teammates time and time again. By the time the first quarter is over, she has over ten assists and has yet to take a shot. She has two points, on free throws, from a blocking foul against Schmidt. By now, Beth’s teammates are relaxed. Beth has made a point of getting the ball into the hands of every starter on her team. Each one has made at least one basket. Each one has handled the ball with regularity. They have calmed down.

  And even better, the opponent’s players have begun to slack off of Beth. When she drives into the lane, they drop off her. She feels like a wolf who is being offered fat sheep who can’t walk. She has passed up every opportunity for open shots. She can see the looks of the opponents. They are confident she is scared. That she doesn’t want to shoot. Some players fold in the big games. And it is on their faces.

  But still, she passes up the shots.

  Their defense sags, and Beth gets more inventive with the passes. No-look passes. Bounce passes—one through an opponent’s legs. One alley-oop. She drives and draws three defenders; she skips the easy pass and makes the hard one. On the next play, she draws the defenders and makes the easy pass when they’re expecting her to make the hard one.

  The other team has weapons, though. A tall center who is shooting over Lake Orion’s center with ease. And their power forward is a slasher, driving along the baseline, making reverse layups and short jumpers with maddening fluidity.

  With less than a minute left in the first half, despite Beth’s orchestration, Lake Orion is down by two points. Beth gets the ball and takes it down the court. They will hold for the last shot. Beth dribbles and passes, gets the ball back, dribbles from one side of the court to the next. She goes into the lane then back out.

  When the clock reaches ten, she drives to the free-throw line, the defense collapses, and the crowd screams for Beth to shoot. For a moment she considers it, then pulls back off and fires a pass to her teammate on the wing. The shot, a three-pointer, would give Lake Orion the lead going into halftime, a key momentum-builder.

  The shot goes up and misses.

  The buzzer sounds.

  Eleven

  “What the hell is she doing, Pete?”

  “What do you think she’s doing?” he answers.

  “Choking.”

  “Screw you, Doug.”

  “Well, good God, they’re gonna lose unless Beth pulls her head out of her ass.”

  Peter Forbes takes a sip of his Coke and looks at his friend, Doug Feit. Doug has razor stubble he’s trying to grow out to cover the acne that’s sprouting along his jaw line. Doug’s a forward on the Lake Orion boys basketball team and doesn’t have a clue to the principles of the game. He’s a good rebounder, a good defender, and that’s about it.

  “I can’t believe you’re this stupid,” Pete says.

  “Maybe you didn’t satisfy her last night,” Doug continues. “She can’t concentrate now.”

  Pete flicks his hand out and slaps Doug on the cheek. It happens lightning-quick, and Doug is stunned. “Shit!” he says, then laughs.

  “I need another Coke,” Pete says. He gets up and heads for the recession stand in the lobby outside the gym. He’s tall, two inches over six feet, and he moves with the grace of a natural athlete. Doug and a few of the guys follow him. After they’ve bought their Cokes and a couple bags of popcorn, they take up a loitering position in the hallway where the conversation continues.

  “I just don’t get it,” Doug says. “Beth never chokes.”

  Pete rolls his dark-green eyes and runs his hand through his dark, wavy hair. “She’s not choking. Doug, what do you think Detroit Mercy’s coach told her team?”

  “Stop Beth.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean?” Doug scoffs. “She’s the star. Conference player of the year. Leading scorer. To beat us, you have to stop Beth.”

  “So if you were Beth, what would you do?”

  “Be more aggressive.”

  “You’re not exactly a student of the game, Doug. What you should do, and what Beth is doing, is spread the wealth. Get your teammates the ball. This accomplishes two things,” Pete said, gesturing with the Coke in his hand as if it were a pointer and he were the instructor. “One, it gets your teammates involved. And you saw the way Steiner blew that first layup that they had their undies in a bundle. And, Douglas, because you’re such an astute student of human behavior, you no doubt picked up on the fact that by the end of the first quarter, Beth’s teammates were much more relaxed and scoring with regularity.”

  Peter pauses to take a long drink from his Coke. “The second thing this accomplishes is it forces the opponent to abandon their strategy and improvise a new one—never a good idea in a big game.”

  “But Jesus, what about that big shot at the end of the half? It was wide open! She’s gotta shoot at some point!”

  Peter puts his arm around Doug’s shoulders. “If she had taken that shot and made it, there would be a chance that the other team’s coach at halftime would have a hunch and tell his team to stay on Beth. By passing off, she pretty much forced the other coach to change her game plan, to tell her team to lay off Beth, maybe drop back in a zone. The players will lose a little bit of confidence, seeing their coach forced to change strategy, and they’ll be a little more tentative coming out to start the second half.”

  Peter watches Doug digest the information. It’s like watching a snake trying to swallow a big, fat hamster.

  “You know Beth pretty well, don’t you?” Doug asks.

  Peter shrugs. He does, but he isn’t arrogant enough to claim it. He knows how she reacts under most situations. And he has thought about how she’ll react when he tells her he is breaking up with her. He isn’t sure he likes what he’s thinking.

  “So what’s she gonna do in the second half, then?”

  Peter drains the rest of his Coke, tosses it in a wastebasket, and smiles at Doug.

  “She’s going t
o light up that scoreboard like a motherfucking Christmas tree.”

  Twelve

  Beth is not surprised by the zone. She knew it would be a 1-3-1 or a 2-3. Beth holds her dribble and signals for the low-post offense. Her team adjusts, and she makes dribble penetration, expecting the tank of a point guard to come to her, but she doesn’t. She drops back, and the zone collapses inward and outward. Beth retreats to the top of the key. She moves to the right, stepping back behind the three-point line. She picks up her dribble, fakes a pass to the wing guard, and when the Tank springs out to cover the intended pass recipient, Beth is left with a wide-open shot at the basket.

  She squares up to the basket, crouches slightly, and brings the ball up in one fluid motion. Beth doesn’t sense the purity of the shot, the picture-perfect mechanics of her motion; she only knows that it feels right. Almost effortless.

  The ball arcs through the air and swishes through the rim with a soft silkiness.

  The crowd erupts.

  A shiver runs through Beth’s body. She feels like a hungry wolf who hasn’t eaten for too long, at last sinking her teeth into soft, tender flesh. The will to win is upon her, as strong as bloodlust.

  The other team scores on its possession, and Beth brings the ball up the court. She passes to a teammate, who forces the ball inside. Beth can see the pass is a bad one. But instead of dropping back to prevent an easy basket on a fast break, Beth darts into the lane. The pass is deflected, and Beth arrives at the exact spot where the ball lands. She scoops it up, dribbles hard to the right, gathers herself, and leaps into the air. She rises effortlessly, her body poised, the ball resting lightly on the fingertips of her right hand. The opponent’s center goes up to block it, but Beth keeps rising, and the ball leaves her hand inches over the other girl’s hand. The ball swishes through the hoop.