Mean Streak

“It didn’t turn out so well, though. He was slow and had no aptitude for the game.”

“Then why was he chosen for the team?”

“To be the coach’s whipping boy. If they lost, Coach gave the team hell, but he was especially hard on Eric.”

She murmured, “The soccer coach in Utah.”

“He’s not a coach anymore and never will be.”

“You saw to it.”

“I never laid a hand on him. All I did was hand him a length of pipe similar to the one he’d cracked across Eric’s kneecap.”

“With an implied threat.”

He didn’t respond to that. “More often Eric’s torment was psychological. He attended a parochial school. It was reported to the headmaster that he’d been caught masturbating in a restroom stall. During chapel the following morning, the headmaster used the incident to illustrate moral turpitude.”

Her heart sank with pity for the boy who’d been publically humiliated, and her expression must have revealed the sadness she felt for him. “This headmaster was a priest?”

“Yeah. A man of God,” he said with rancor. “When I caught up with him, he’d been reassigned to a school in Lexington.”

“I understand that he resigned under…duress.”

“I was in the congregation the morning he confessed to his sex addiction from the pulpit.”

“He was a sex addict?”

“I don’t know, but I made it clear that was the sin he’d damn well better confess to.”

“Moral turpitude.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And there were others. Connell mentioned something in Texas. A hairdresser?”

“Vain bitch. She was Eric’s barber. He had a crush on her. She made fun of him on Facebook.”

“And?”

“A few weeks after I caught up with her in Wichita Falls, she posted a photo of herself on her Facebook page. Shaved head. No makeup.” He sighed, said, “You get the idea.”

“Their punishment fit their crime.”

“Not so much a crime as a transgression against an easy target. But yeah, I make my point.”

“The Floyds?”

He smiled crookedly. “That was especially satisfying.”

“They beat Eric up?”

“Just a few weeks before the shooting rampage. In fact, they might have been the final straw. They’d been picking on him since he was hired on. During a lunch break, Eric had enough of their torture and took a swing at Norman. That gave them all the excuse they needed to lay into him. Beat him senseless.”

“As you did to them.”

“Yes.” Darkly, he added, “And I wish I had it to do all over again for what they did to Lisa.”

“On that, I agree with you.”

His eyes found hers with the accuracy and intensity of lasers. “But you don’t agree with the rest of it.”

She raised her hands, trying to convey the helplessness she felt. “I’m conflicted.”