I WAS NOT PREPARED.
I probably had not ridden a hundred miles in the entire calendar year. I needed to get to Sturbridge and had made no arrangements for transportation. I needed a place to stay the night so I could be there for the 5:30 a.m. start time and I had made no reservation.
It was possible, I realized, to call Sean Murphy, see if I could catch a lift with him, sleep on his floor, if there was nothing else. I sat at my desk in my new office surrounded by unpacked boxes and thought about it. Pledge a hundred bucks to Sean’s ride, don’t tell him I’m riding myself, wait till the day before the ride starts and then tell him I need help.
Weird George. Wacky George. The guy they just moved upstairs. Can you believe it? Can’t even plan a bike ride.
I GOT OUT OF BED at 4:30, ate a banana and an energy bar, drank some orange juice, and began riding at 5:00. I had to go five miles just to reach the starting line from the motel I had been lucky enough to get at the last minute. The motel wasn’t much, but the owner agreed to let me leave my car. I would ride five miles to the start, ride one hundred and ten miles to the finish, and then catch the bus back to Sturbridge at 7:00 p.m., pedal five miles back to the motel, and drive home.
I would ride, and then ride, and ride again. Up at 4:30, be home on the Cape by midnight. It didn’t make any difference. I wasn’t sleeping much these days, anyhow.
WE STARTED OUT FAST, the sun not yet up, several thousand riders bunched together, chattering excitedly, feeling good about what we were about to do. I had begun close to the front, and for half a mile I was in sight of the leaders. I hit the first hill too hard and wasted a lot of energy. There were no hills to speak of on the Cape and I was winded by the time I reached the first crest.
People began passing me in droves. I concentrated on what I was doing, knowing the hills would keep coming, forty-five miles’ worth, none of them killers … well, maybe one, out in farmland, but I kept pushing, telling myself to take my time, locking onto those other riders who didn’t look to be in riding shape, trying to stay at least with the older people, the women with large bottoms and the men with big bellies, those whose gears clanked as they tried to downshift lower and lower as the road took us higher and higher.
Older people passed me. Women with large bottoms got away from me. Men with big bellies discussed the Patriots as they cycled along.
I couldn’t have done that. I couldn’t have talked even if I had the chance.
I thought of giving up, but then what would I do? Walk? Wait by the side of the road for the race marshals to come by and load my bike and me into a van? The van of shame. It would be like riding to jail in the back of a police cruiser.
One of the great things about cycling is that even when you think you can’t do something, you’re in the process of doing it. I told myself that’s what I was doing. What I was doing on the road, what I was doing in the Heidi Telford case.
I won’t quit the race.
I won’t quit the search for Heidi’s killer.
I won’t give up till I prove it.
Till I nail him.
Fat bastard.
Gets away with everything.
Just because he’s a Gregory.
Not even a Gregory by last name.
Only by middle name.
Has to go around telling everybody.
I can make it halfway.
I can make it three-quarters.
Rape a girl. Lie about it. Let her life be ruined. Beautiful girl. Used to ride horses. Rich. Beautiful. Could have done so much. I could have said something.
Get up, get up. Over the top. Now you can coast.
He didn’t ask, though, did he? Fucking Ralph Mars. Fucking state attorney. What’s he now? Congressman Mars. And I was just a kid. A college kid. Who kept his mouth shut.
I didn’t lie.
Peter lied. And probably Jamie.
I just kept my mouth shut. Answered what I was asked. No, the Senator wasn’t there. He stuck his head into the library, that was all. Saw we were there. Peter, Jamie, Kendrick, and me.
No, he didn’t come in.
No, he didn’t say anything.
Drunk? I don’t know.
I was drunk. I know that.
We all were.
Peter, Jamie, Kendrick, and me.
I told him what I was doing.
Looking at the Homer. The Winslow Homer. The boat with the big fish. Covered with dust. Fucking Winslow Homer. Fucking big fish.
Kendrick. On the couch.
Reclined. Did I say reclined?
Peter. Just standing there. Next to the couch. When the Senator looked in.
I answered what I was asked.
Fuck you, George. You fucking wimp.
WE TURNED ONTO a shaded lane in a rural town. There had been people all along the route cheering us on, sometimes offering water, clanging bells, blowing air horns. But this street was different. Cherry Street. Families were gathered out in front of their homes, displaying poster-size pictures of cancer-stricken kids. Big-eyed kids, hairless kids in nightgowns, kids who had terrible things happen to them that never should have happened to anyone.
The families clapped as we went by. They called out encouragement. They yelled, “Thank you, riders!” They made us feel like heroes.
If only they knew.
I WOULD RIDE. I would ride until I fell off. Until I blacked out. I would never give up. I would never surrender. I will push the investigation. I will go wherever it takes me. I will ask all the right questions. All the right questions. Of anyone and everyone. Even if I have to go back to Costa Rica. Back to California. I will go wherever I have to go. Do whatever I have to do.
IT WAS ABOUT 3:30 by the time I arrived at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on the west bank of the Cape Cod Canal, the end of the first day’s leg. The end of the ride for me.
A huge tent had been pitched, and inside was all the free food a person could possibly want. I went right for the beer. Harpoon Lager. Poured by people who thanked me for what I had done.
I sat down at a long picnic table that happened to have an open space and listened to the others at the table talk. Some were eating burgers, some clam chowder, some ice cream. Some, like me, were just drinking beer. Those guys, the beer drinkers, wanted me in the conversation. We all agreed that nothing in the world could possibly taste better than a fresh, cold beer after one hundred and ten miles of riding in the midsummer heat.
Where was I from?
What did I do?
“George?”
Somebody had heard me identify myself. I turned. It was Sean Murphy, a large cookie in one hand, a beer in the other, staring at me as if I were an apparition.
“Hey.”
He looked at the rest of my table, searching for a familiar face. He didn’t find one. “You rode?”
“I did.”
“I didn’t know you even— Hey, can I talk to you?”
The Murph-Dog, with a cookie and a beer, in tight Lycra shorts, a colorful Pan-Mass riding shirt, and click-clackety bicycle shoes, wanted to talk to me in private.
WE FOUND A TABLE off by ourselves. Sean sat without using his hands. He was looking at me in a way he never had before. I assumed it was because he was impressed at my performance, my accomplishment, the mere fact that I was here in the beer tent at the finish line.
He said, “Pretty good gig you got there on the Telford investigation.”
I drank because it gave me a chance to lower my eyes to my plastic cup.
“Office next to Reid Cunningham’s, huh?”
He knew it was. I just nodded.
“I saw all those uniformed officers delivering files, so obviously something big is going on.”
“It’s been going on for a while, Sean.”
“Cold case suddenly heats up, something new has happened.”
Sean was leaning forward, his wrists resting on the edge of the table, his hands still holding his beer and his cookie.
“You taking it before the grand jury?”
“Taking what, Sean?”
He smiled as if he recognized that a certain code had to be used, certain protocol had to be followed. “Rumors are going around that there’s new evidence the Gregorys might have been involved.”
I did not respond. This did not bother Sean in the slightest.
“Is the Senator going to testify?”
“Sean, tell me exactly what it is you’re hearing.”
He looked left and right. He lowered his voice. “I’m hearing there might have been an orgy going on at the Gregorys’ that night the girl was killed. I’m hearing she might have been there and seen too much.”
There was something childish about the way Sean was addressing me. Maybe it was the cookie.
“You believe that?” I asked.
“What I believe,” he said, his eyes sparkling, “is that Anything New Telford has been making the rounds for years telling people the Gregorys had something to do with the death of his daughter. What I hear is that he’s got your ear now. What I see is you’ve suddenly got prime office space and stacks of files. And I want in.”
“Want in how?”
“To assist you. To co-counsel with you. Whatever you’ll give me. I heard you turned down Barbara.”
He took a big bite out of the cookie, what I thought was a rather vicious bite. Crumbs shot all over the place.
“Guys are talking,” he went on, his mouth full. “They’re saying, ‘Why would he do that?’ People are saying, ‘Well, she doesn’t have enough experience.’ But me, I looked at it, I figured something else out altogether.”
He washed the cookie down with beer, dropped his voice even lower, and said, “I figure, Barbara, she’s from around here. She’s tied in with those people. You can’t have her going after them like you and I could.”
“By ‘those people,’ you mean the Gregorys?”
“Damn right.”
“And you wouldn’t care which Gregory might be involved, as long as it’s one of them. Is that what you’re saying?”
Sean Murphy looked at me as if I had just spoken a profound truth, one that was going to make us great friends now that we shared this understanding. “You got it,” he said. “Case like this, fucking career maker, I’d go after the Senator’s mother. Fry her ass, if I had to.”