When she stepped outside and saw me standing there, Chrissie Lester turned and walked in the opposite direction. I waited a few seconds and then followed.
If she was aware of me behind her, she didn’t show it. She kept walking, heading for the school parking lot. When she reached a maroon Prius, she used her remote to unlock it and was about to step inside when she finally acknowledged my presence. “Why are you following me?”
“You’re Chrissie Lester.”
“What of it?”
“I’m Deputy Sheriff Steel.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have a few moments?”
“Not really. I have to get home.”
“I’ll only take a tiny bit of your time.”
She sighed theatrically and stood staring at me with one hand planted firmly on her hip. She was a plain-looking young woman, not particularly attractive. She wore a gray sleeveless sweatshirt over extremely short cropped jeans that revealed a good deal of leg and a glimpse of the bottom of her shapely behind. She was self-possessed, confident, and overflowing with attitude.
“If you must,” she said.
I flashed her my sincerest smile, an effort to win her with my incalculable charm. “What can you tell me about Henry Carson?”
“The coach?”
“Yes.”
“Well, for one thing, he’s dead.”
She stared at me in smug anticipation of my response. I could sense her disappointment when I chose to remain silent. At last she spoke. “I didn’t have much to do with him.”
“Wasn’t he one of your coaches?”
“Mostly he coached the boys. We girls kept our distance from him.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know if I want to go into this.”
“Go into what?”
“He was somewhat of a polarizing person.”
“Meaning?”
“He was into separating us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were either a Coach Hank person, or you weren’t.”
“What was the distinction?”
“Your looks.”
“Meaning?”
“You were either good-looking or you weren’t.”
“And if you weren’t?”
“He had nothing to do with you.”
“What if you were good-looking?”
“He was your new best friend.”
“And you?”
“Clearly, he had nothing to do with me.”
“Aren’t you the captain?”
“I am.”
“How could he have nothing to do with you?”
She dropped her hand-on-hip pose and leaned heavily against the Prius. Some of the air appeared to go out of her. Her attitude softened. She exhibited teenage vulnerability, an uncertainty that made her more accessible and even a bit friendly.
She went on. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear. If you were a Coach Hank Girl, you received special privileges. Sometimes he’d take you to Gruning’s ice cream parlor after practice. He talked you up to your teachers. Some girls he’d even invite out to dinner.”
“So you weren’t included in any of his extracurricular activities?”
“Never.”
“Even as the captain.”
“Whatever contact we had, me being the captain and all, he was cordial and polite. But he wasn’t warm and charming.”
“Which he was to the so-called Coach Hank Girls?”
“Exactly.”
“Did you ever speak with your teammates about this?”
“All the time.”
“And?”
“The good-looking girls shrugged their shoulders as if being a Coach Hank Girl was nothing special.”
“And the others?”
“Like me, you mean?”
“You know, Chrissie, I have no interest in passing judgment on your Coach Hank-Girl qualifications, but to me you’re quite nice-looking. You’re articulate and clearly smart. Assets that are every bit as important as your looks. More so, even.”
“Well, he didn’t think so.”
“So what?”
“So me and some of the others were left standing by the side of the road when Coach and his cadre went roaring off into the sunset.”
“Did any members of his cadre ever complain about Coach Hank?”
“Complain?”
“You know. Did he ever get out of line with them? Did he ever come on to any of them?”
“I wouldn’t know. If he did, no one ever said anything to me about it.”
“What do you think?”
“About whether or not he was a lech?”
“Something like that. Yes.”
Now she looked at me with contempt—as if she had just come to the conclusion I was a waste of her time. An annoyance. Like she was the wrong tree for me to be barking up.
“What I think doesn’t mean squat. If you want to know about what went on between Coach and his girls, go ask them. Are we done now?”
Clearly, she was. She glanced at her watch and began fidgeting, anxious to get as far away from me as possible. She asked again, “Are we?”
“I suppose we are.”
I reached inside my shirt pocket and pulled out one of my cards. I scribbled my cell phone number on the back and handed it to her. “If you think of anything else, call me.”
She took the card and briefly glanced at it, then at me. She folded it in half, dropped it into her bag, got into the Prius, and drove off.
The Coach Hank Girls, I muttered to myself. I didn’t like the sound of it. What it portended. What bothered me more was the disparate impacts he seemed to have had on Bobby Siegler and on Chrissie Lester. That there existed a polarity of criteria. Some were in and others were clearly out. Attractive was in. Unattractive was out.
Which bothered me even more.