I WAS IN CINCINNATI that night. Just as we’re all coming off the ice after this big final number we do. Pat, one of our stage managers, calls me over and says there’s some kind of emergency, and I’m supposed to call home right away. So I run right over to a phone with my skate guards still on and my show outfit. I mean, when they call you on the road like that you know something terrible’s happened.
It was my uncle that answered. My parents were down at the police station already. When he said it was Larry I just let out this scream. All these other skaters nearby who were taking off their costumes came running over naturally. But I couldn’t even talk. All I could say was “my little brother.”
Crazy things pop into your head at a moment like that. There was this Halloween one time when I dressed up like a witch. Larry couldn’t have been more than three. When I came out of my room to show him how I looked he didn’t even know it was me. He wouldn’t stop crying until I washed off all the makeup. “See,” said Mom. “It’s just Janice.”
Sometimes I’d hang around with him and his friends, back when they had this little rock group in junior high. He was a really terrible drummer, but he loved it and nobody had the heart to tell him.
I never liked Suzanne. Even back when they were first engaged and everyone was saying how great it was that he’d found a girl like her, how pretty she was and what great places she was headed. You see girls like that at the rink. They’ll kick their blade into your shin and pretend it was an accident. Cut you off in a jump and make it look like it was your mistake. I mean, some people would skate in the middle of a deserted lake, just for the feeling of sweeping across the ice. And then there are the ones that would just shrivel up and die if there wasn’t someone out there cheering for them every second, telling them how great they are. That was her.
The next morning, when my flight got in, my uncle told me how they’d found all her jewelry and stuff disturbed, and it looked like burglars did it. But I never really bought that. My first thought, when I heard the news, was Suzanne. I can’t say I ever would’ve pictured some other guy involved. I mean, there was just no reason to want to kill a guy like Larry.
But I had to figure, one way or another, he must’ve gotten in her way. And like I said in skating, there’s people who’d sooner knock you over and leave you flat than move themselves over half an inch. People like that, you just don’t want to get in their way. I figure one way or another, my brother must’ve gotten in hers.