“Are you saying all the other athletes assigned to you weren’t good kids?” Ramsey interrupted, impatient now to get at the truth. He’d been waiting too long.
“No, sir, that’s not what I said.” Chester’s tone had lowered submissively. The speed with which he delivered the words was exactly the same.
“Jack was a good kid,” Lucy said.
“That’s right, ma’am.” The older man looked her in the eye. “The athletes were only required to work ten hours a week—games and practices excepted. Jack came in asking for extra hours. He was scheduled around baseball practice and class, and still worked twenty, twenty-five hours a week. Never missed a shift. Not once, all semester.”
Ramsey was familiar with Jack Colton’s work ethic.
“So that’s why you remember him?” Lucy asked.
“Partly, maybe, but no, ma’am, not really.”
“What, then?” Ramsey blurted. “What makes this guy stand out?”
Chester’s gaze didn’t move from Lucy. “The boy’s heart wasn’t really into baseball, not like most of the kids that come through there,” Chester explained. “He was good enough to have gotten the offer to try for the team, but he didn’t have the… Baseball wasn’t everything to him, you know?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, smiling softly.
Ramsey noticed. With a kick to his gut. And a realization that his coworker was handling this interview much better than he was.
He was too aware of her.
“What do you think was important to Jack?” he asked, making a point of softening his tone.
“He wanted to get a college degree,” the old man said simply. “He wouldn’t take no loans, though. Being in debt scared that boy to death. He figured baseball was the answer. And then he didn’t make the team. That’s why I remember him. The day they put up the names, and he saw his name wasn’t on it, the first place he came was to me.”
“That must have made you feel good.” Lucy leaned forward as she spoke.
“Heck, no!” There was fire in Chester’s voice. Honest fire. “It was horrible! I couldn’t do nothing to help him. Next day he drops out of school, packs his bag and catches a bus back to the place he come from. Never heard from him again. Never forgot him, neither. I hope he found a way to get his schooling.”
He hadn’t. Not as far as Ramsey knew. He was not at liberty to divulge as much.
Probably just as well. No harm in letting the old man hope. “Can you remember anything else about Jack?” Lucy asked.
“Anybody he was friends with? What he did in his spare time? Any enemies?” Ramsey was back on his game.
“What spare time?” Chester said through the door. “The boy was taking eighteen credit hours, doing homework, practicing and working out six days a week and working for me. He barely had time to sleep.”
“What about Friday nights?” Ramsey remembered being eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. “Were there any girls he had his eye on?”
“There was a girl…?.” Chester drew out the word, like he was calling up a distant shadow from his memory bank.
Good. Now they were getting somewhere. If there’d been a girl, with a name they could pursue, they’d have someone else to question. Guys tended to get a little sloppy around their girls.
“He never told me about her, but I overheard one of the other guys, one who later made the team, ragging on him for not bringing a girl to the Friday-night mixer. The guys wanted as many girls there as possible and each guy was expected to do his part.”
Chester’s tone left no doubt as to his opinion of that preference.
“I heard Jack tell the guy th
at his girl wasn’t from UC. I didn’t even know he had a girl, and I asked him about her later. He said she wasn’t a student, that she was really sweet, but that he wouldn’t be able to continue seeing her.”
“Because he didn’t make the team?”
“No, it was before that. At least a month. He never said anything more about her, and I didn’t ask again, but I always figured she was older. And maybe married. Jack was more mature than the rest of those guys. I pictured him with someone older.”
“Do you think it’s possible that he was seeing one of his instructors?” Lucy asked, frowning.