by Randalynn
And in the end, we were just outplayed." — Brendan Nagel
Tessa Stuart stood outside the school next to her unmarked cruiser, a cold cup of Starbucks in her hand. Between pauses to use her cruiser’s radio to deploy her officers, she listened to the feed from the mikes in the lecture hall on a separate handheld system, relayed from the surveillance van. It sounded like a madhouse in there, as it had for the thirty seconds it took for Principal Steele to get from there to his own car parked next to hers.
“Hey, Allen,” she said, pausing to throw him a smile. “You sounded like you enjoyed yourself in there just now.”
“That’s ‘cause I did,” he replied, smiling back. “After what he did to Mindy, I enjoyed letting him and the team feel like the whole world was closing in on them. They need to know what it means to feel trapped and alone.”
“Well, you put on a good show, but I’m looking forward to a bit more,” Tess said with just a hint of sarcasm. “Aside from making you feel all righteous and powerful, I’m hoping it will give us more evidence to lock things down. You only managed to get the single bit about Mindy’s attack from the locker room tap, but there were two more attacks prior to that, and they could skate on those without more for the DA.”
“I need to pick up Mindy from the hospital soon, so I hope we get what we need quickly. I'd really like to bring her some good news. I'm not too worried, though. As PT Barnum or HL Mencken once said, ‘You will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.’” The principal sighed. “I’m hoping to amend that statement to include the coach and his team, but time will tell.”
The detective put up her hand and raised the volume on the handheld.
“Coach! What are we gonna do?”
“Yeah, we can’t go to jail! I’ve got a college scout ready to hand me a check for a full ride at State.”
“Maybe you shoulda thought about that before putting on a mask, Lynch.”
“Maybe you should shut your mouth before I fill it with my fist, Cooper!”
The room erupted in chaos again, and Tessa shook her head. Steele just smiled, and then the coach overpowered everyone.
“Shut up, all of you! We need to think, not start ripping each other to pieces. We’re a team, damn it! Act like one!”
“Sorry, coach.”
“Yeah, you are and you should be. Be quiet for a minute and let me think.”
The room was almost completely quiet, and then Torkelson spoke.
“Stop acting like a bunch of wusses. First, all Steele’s got is that locker room tape from before we beat up the Vincent fag. Nothing else. It makes us look bad, but we could all say we were just joking ...”
“Until they go check that equipment we borrowed, coach.” Joey DeNiro piped up. “They’ll go all CSI on it and find blood and skin and shit.”
Torkelson thought for a minute. Steele imagined the smoke coming out of his ears from the effort. “Well, then, the first thing we do is ‘borrow it’ all again and trash it. Replace it with new stuff so nobody knows it’s gone missing.”
Jimmy Lynch spoke again. “And how do we pay for that, Coach?”
“We put some cash together and do it in Hadleyville, next state over.”
Pete Cooper wailed, “That’s gonna cost a lot!”
The coach cut through his complaint with a shout. “Not nearly as much as jail time, or having everybody think you’re queer. This is crunch time, Cooper. We buy new equipment or we wind up being the most popular ‘ladies’ in the State Pen. Do you read me?”
“Yes, coach.”
“Now, as I was saying, he’s got nothing on the other two fags we beat on, and if we’re careful, we can walk on those too. Without the equipment, there’s nothing to link us to those at all.”
“Znaniecki’s in a bad way, coach. He still hasn’t woken up. What if he croaks?”
“What if he does?”
“Cops hate murder more than just beating on someone.” Cooper again. Torkelson sighs loud enough for the mikes to pick up.
“Geezus, listen to you. You think cops are gonna care about some homo dying? They’re just like us. They know one less fag ain’t gonna hurt the planet any. The other pussy we hit, Kelly ... he won’t even talk to the police ‘cause he’s so damned afraid we’re gonna come back and finish him off, and that they’ll even help us when we do. Maybe when the heat is off, we will. As long as we stick together, as a team, we can get through this.”
Steele nods, his smile growing, and Tessa smiles back. She picks up the mike for the cruiser’s radio. “All units, prepare to move in on my command.”
“What about those DVDs, coach? The principal can still do a lot of damage, even if we dodge the charges on the Vincent kid.”
“Leave him to me.” Torkelson’s voice held a grim satisfaction. “You know I ain’t gonna let him hurt my boys. Sometime tonight, he’s gonna find himself in a room alone with me, and I won’t leave until I know where those recordings are — and until he can’t cause us any more trouble.”
Everybody went quiet.
“You’re ... you’re gonna ... kill him, coach?” Pete Cooper again, his voice hushed in disbelief.
Tessa spoke into her mike. “Hold up, everyone. Wait for my signal.”
“Don’t have much of a choice, boys. It’s him or us. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d rather it was him.”
There was a stunned silence, then Jimmy Lynch shouted.
“Are you nuts?”
And the whole team erupted.
“Kill Principal Steele? What the fuck is your problem?”
“Bad enough Znaniecki’s in a coma, that was an accident, but this is crazy!”
Torkelson roars. “Cut me some slack. I’m not gonna just leave a body around for someone to find!”
“That’s not it at all,” Cooper shouted back. “You can’t just kill the guy. I like the principal!”
“What the hell are you talking about? He just put your balls in a vise!”
There was a pause.
“Yeah,” Pete replied slowly, “and maybe that’s right where they belong. I never should have gone along with any of this. I grew up with Tom Kelly. He was an okay guy, and even when he turned homo, he never tried anything with anybody I knew.”
“He’s a fag!”
“Yeah, well maybe that ain’t as important as you keep saying it is. He never hurt anybody, and we all beat on him for something that wasn’t a problem until we made it one.”
“Pete’s right, coach,” Jimmy fired back. “Mark Vincent was just some quiet dweeb, too. Never hurt anybody, kept to himself. He decides to be a girl and suddenly he’s a threat?”
There was the scrape of a chair against the floor, and Joey DeNiro spoke.
“They’re right, coach. I mean, come on, kill the principal? He’s always been okay in my book, and he caught us fair, ‘cause he was smart and we were stupid. Stupid? We were idiots! A gang instead of a team. We should just turn ourselves in, guys. We did wrong, and we gotta make it right. We should never have hurt those kids. What the hell were we thinking?”
“But if he’s gone —“
“If he’s gone, what?” Stan Purdy shouted, and you could hear him stand up, too. “You think this is all going to go away? He’s working with a judge and the DA, and you don’t think anybody’s gonna come after us like the wrath of freaking God when he just disappears?”
Jimmy spoke up. “Joey’s right. We gotta turn ourselves in. We gotta make this right.”
Pete followed. “Maybe Officer Trumbull’s still in the security office.”
A whole bunch of chairs scraped the floor and Tessa and Steele heard the footsteps as the entire team headed for the door.
“Wait! What if Steele decides to let those videos loose? You’ll never be able to raise your head in a locker room again!”
There was a long silence, then Jimmy Lynch spoke.
“Steele’s always been a good guy. He told us nothing would happen if we turned ourselves in, and I believe him. And even if I didn’t, maybe we deserve some payback for beating on a bunch of defenseless kids, just ‘cause you said so. Shit, coach, what the hell were you thinking?”
Another silence, and Tessa and Steele could hear somebody spit. Pete Cooper spoke.
“He wasn’t, Jimmy. And neither were we. Let’s go, team.”
Tessa spoke into the mike. “All units, let the boys come out and take ‘em, one at a time. Be gentle, they aren’t gonna resist. They decided to surrender.”
Steele shook his head. “I guess they were better men than I gave ‘em credit for. Except for Torkelson.”
Suddenly Tessa keyed the mike and shouted. “ Units three and four, rush the lecture hall and take the coach. He threatened to murder the principal — no kid gloves for him. Take him down!”
There was a pause, then a burst of static. “Unit Three, the room’s empty. Torkelson’s gone.”
Tessa cursed, then keyed the radio again. “Everybody not involved with the team spread out. I want all outside doors guarded and a room to room search until we get him.”
There was a whistling sound, and suddenly Steele’s right shoulder flared with pain. He fell forward into the side of the police cruiser, and reached up with his left hand to find an arrow lodged in the area between the back and shoulder.
“Get down,” Tessa shouted, and pushed him to the ground between the vehicles. She unholstered her gun and raised herself high enough to see the coach stalking towards them both with a bow and arrow in his hands. He already had another arrow notched.
“Police! Put the weapon down NOW.” Her voice echoed across the empty schoolyard. “The whole school is surrounded, we have a recording of you planning to kill the principal, and you just shot the man with a freaking arrow while he was standing next to the detective in charge. Torkelson, you are so screwed, your legs might as well be threaded clear up to your ass. So put the bow down, or I swear to God I will put you down. NOW.”
Steele’s shoulder felt numb, then hot. He felt rather than saw Tessa stand up, and turned his head to see the arrow bury itself in the side of the cruiser. The detective fired a single shot, and he heard the coach cry out. Then she ran over to him and started reading him his rights, and the principal drifted into the black.
He opened his eyes and found himself lying on a wheeled stretcher in the parking lot. His shoulder hurt, but it felt like it was bandaged, and even thinking about moving his arm caused a spike of pain.
“This whole scheme of yours showed how much of a cowboy you are, Allen,” Tessa said, moving into his field of view. She was smiling. “No wonder you got taken down by an arrow.”
“Yippee kai-ay,” he replied, groaning. “Bruce Willis, I’m not.”
“Thank God for that. Have you seen him lately?” She smiled and put her hand on his other shoulder. “They’re going to take you to County for X-rays and scans. They want to look for any hidden damage, see if the arrow did anything more than what they could see here.”
“And Torkelson?”
“I winged him, made him drop the bow. He’s not saying a word, but he doesn’t have to, We got what we needed from the lecture hall, and from the boys on the team.”
The detective looked down at him, and Steele fidgeted slightly.
“You know,” she said softly, “you never mentioned those edited confessions or the PR campaign before. Suddenly, there they are, and you’re threatening the team with being exposed as something they aren’t.”
Allen nodded, and Tessa bent closer.
“You must have planned that part way before this sting in order to have ‘em for today,” she whispered. He nodded again, and she sighed. “Why?”
“Because I wanted them to suffer,” Steele replied, looking into her eyes. “I wanted everyone to see them and act towards them the way they were acting towards Mindy and others like her. I wanted them to hurt the way those kids hurt every day, because bigots can’t keep their damned mouths shut or their fists to themselves.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged, then winced. “I made the plans, but I was never going to go through with it. I just pulled them out today to add fuel to the fire.”
The EMTs lifted the stretcher and pushed it into the ambulance. Tessa leaned forward.
“Why did you do it ... or rather, why didn’t you? Why go to the trouble to load the gun and not pull the trigger?”
“Well, once I had the recordings and the plans in my hand, I stepped back and took a long look at myself, and then I remembered something very important.”
“Remembered what?”
“I’m not Torkelson,” he said, giving her a crooked grin.
“Damn straight,” she replied, smiling back. “Let’s keep it that way, okay?”
Steele nodded, still grinning, and she closed the ambulance door.
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Comments
Randalynn, you outdid
Randalynn, you outdid yourself with Overtime. A most excellent way to close the case against a bigot and a grim reminder about controlling our emotions and srving the dish of revenge as cold as possible. But I hope that the team is seen as being duped by a racist bigot and the new coach can lead the team to victory.
May Your Light Forever Shine
I Feel Very Good About This
I think it addressed just about everything that the readers brought up. There will be justice. Hopefully the severely injured student recovers. Very nice follow up.
Portia
Portia
“I’m not Torkelson,â€
exactly. He did good. And I like the boys deciding to turn themselves in. Maybe there's hope for at least some of them.....
Dorothycolleen
Finding out that someone you respected ...
... could kill a good man for convenience is bound to bring about a change in how you see him, and make you re-evaluate the things he said were right. Of such discoveries come things like maturity and wisdom (we hope).
I'm glad you liked where I took the story. Now to rescue that poor boy trapped in the groundhog costume. *lol*
*smiles, hugs*
Randalynn
Thank you,Randalynn
ALISON
'whatever you write,I will read it-----two wonderful stories!
ALISON
Almost Believable
First....Good story.
I do believe some would have backed off and realised that they would have to draw a line at deliberate murder, but I don't believe that they ALL would. After all, they had as near as dammit already committed murder;
"Znaniecki's in a bad way. He still hasn't woken up...."
The difference being that it was not OK to murder someone they respected and liked. I see no "Road to Damascus" moment here.
However, the result would be satisfactory in that the vigilante gang would be broken up and the coach get his comeuppance.
A nice conclusion,
Joanne
The thing is ...
... it's a big step to take, going from beating up on someone surrounded by your teammates to agreeing to let someone murder another person in cold blood, just because he's in the way -- particularly someone you like and respect. I don't think every bully is a murderer at heart, and I was banking on them not being able to cross that line. I don't think they were miraculously turned from evil to good. Instead, i believe they looked into the heart of Torkelson and saw the abyss. Seeing that, they stepped back from the cliff's edge and turned themselves in.Will it last? Who knows. But it does give them time to think, and that's a start.
Randalynn
Group think/mob mentality is a dangerous thing
Us vs them is sooo easy to manipulate.
Sad to say the military and government propaganda works on that principle far too often. "Those filthy Krauts! Japs! Commies! Western Imperialists! Infidels!"
Or just as bad, " We are the children of ... " pick your favorite deity. "We love all, crave peace and hate sin. Ours is the way to heaven. Thus anyone who does not believe as we do will burn in hell no matter how pious and saintly they act as they have not been *saved*. Everyone wants to be saved thus they must worship the devil and we must kill them in the name of" insert your favorite deity once again... or roughly goes the reasoning of fanatics.
Over simplified view? Well duh but it makes the point. A team or any close knit group has a potential for group think and group action that the individuals would not do or even dare to do otherwise. Sometimes these are good things but too often they are terrible things. Look at the violence at sport stadiums. Or riots.
All it takes is the wrong charismatic leader to get control, a right bastard. Look at the harm, the deaths caused by Cromwell, Stalin, Hitler. All born *leaders.*
But fortunately they can be stopped and not all groups are bad. When the boys realized what a sicko they had been following his power was lost. The group dynamic shifted from us vs them to do the right thing.
There are also good leaders, honorable leaders of groups, like a George Washington, Lincoln, Ghandi.
Can the boys of the team be saved? Maybe but their chances of a career in football or a scholarship are toast and even entering college will be hard or impossible. Can the victims be helped? Also maybe though the one in a coma sound bad. Could die or have permanent serious disabilities. Can the coach be saved? Only as Bubbas cell mate and *girlfriend* IF he lasts that long.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Well... I wonder how it'll
Well... I wonder how it'll turn out in the end. I was glad the bullies surrendered, apparently they didn't want to go that far. That's the sad thing about bullies, they bully and bully and if someone ends up dead it wasn't their fault. I guess they won't be very happy kids, but I don't know if the judical system will destroy all their chances for a decent future.
I kind of liked this, but I would like to know how this criminal case will be wound up.
thank you for writing,
Beyogi
An excellent continuation
of your story GAME PLAN that puts a neat twist on the Principal's original trap; letting them convict themselves. And with Torkelson revealing himself to be far more unhinged than anyone suspected, and some of the players snapping out of the violent mob groupthink they'd fallen into, it all rendered my uninvited barging into these themes superfluous, so I sh*tcanned that idiot scribblage. Best for me to leave the serious topics to the humans.
~~hugs, Veronica
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Great "Fictional" ending Randa!
We can dream, we can wish, we can fantasize, but reality seems to have the last word. I liked the way the team got together when the coach started talking murder, but they all can't be that stupid to remain in a room they all know is bugged and continue to implicate themselves.
Hey, great story though with an ending that was perfect for this story! KUDOS to you Randa
Huggles
Angel
"Be Your-Self, So Easy to Say, So Hard to Live!"
"Be Your-Self, So Easy to Say, So Hard to Live!"
Gotta go with what they know ...
... and at that point, all they knew was that the principal WASN'T going to do anything until the morning. He was just going to wait for their decision. They also knew the principal had a judge and the DA on his side, but as far as they were aware, he hadn't yet involved the police. Given how panicked they were by the options they had been given, I'm thinking they wouldn't be thinking too clearly. They would be too focused on getting out of the trap they were already in to realize they were in a place where they could be digging a deeper hole.
Anyway, that was the theory, and I'm sticking with it! *grin* And thanks for the compliments, I'm blushing.
*hugs*
Randalynn
Nice Closure
Thanks for continuing the story. I think this was needed. There was too much left hanging.
So thanks and kudos.
- Terry