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by Gary Michaels

Special Agent Ryan Lilly’s surprise interruption was not welcomed nor appreciated, but when a second call from the FBI juts into your life, you tend to take notice. Looking back, I must admit, I was more than a little annoyed. After all, the crippled creep I had been tracking for the last five days was about to make his grand declaration. Some twenty years earlier, he had kidnapped, raped, mutilated and buried a pretty cheerleader but cleverly slithered away well before she was discovered missing. When her disappearance was eventually reported, the corrupt and traditionally inept law enforcement ol’ boys’ in the small Texas town woke up and took notice. A local cheerleader was missing, a white one at that, so someone had to do something about it, but what?

After discovering who was missing, putting a face to the name, and then pondering their first move, the local cops began to bungle the investigation, most likely on purpose. First, they refused to form a search party. Their collective reluctance was substantiated on the standard twenty-four-hour waiting period rule, at least that’s what was stated publicly. But it was the vicious and wicked rumor, well-substantiated, or so they said, that had allowed their lackadaisical approach to feel justified.

It turns out our pretty and rich cheerleader was a vivacious young filly. Her personality, athletic ability and killer smile forged her popularity with most everyone in her high school, especially the boys on the football team. Both black and white players marveled at the raw sensuality she built into her cheerleading routines, each probably wishing they could participate in a one-on-one encounter of their own design. But our girl followed the historical race rules of her family, class and society, voluntarily or forcibly, we will never know. But what we do know is that she chose a white boyfriend and reputedly remained true to him, at least for the first year or so.

Not only was he a white boy, but he was the starting quarterback of their high school football team. The only fly in the ointment was the undisputed fact that, year in and year out, her boyfriend could never get the hang of playing quarterback proficiently, and by all opinions, was less successful than expected. She knew it well, as did his teammates, other students, the townies and some say, even quarterback himself. It’s just that he refused to admit it. Both cheerleader and quarterback hoped and prayed for his improvement, perhaps by divine intervention, but it never arrived. On the surface then, their scenario looked perfect in a classic way, but beneath the veneer of teenage bliss it was critically flawed.

The success of the football team lay squarely on the shoulders of their enormous middle linebacker who routinely struck fear into the opposition. His reputation for fierce hits and debilitating tackles preceded his presence in every game. Not only was he incredibly strong, fast and uncannily adept at reading plays, his legendary mean streak had already caught the attention of college scouts state-wide. As captain of the defense and always leading by example, our sensational middle linebacker fashioned his cohorts into a consistently near impregnable wall of resistance. Opposing teams most often found it difficult to reach double figures in their scoring, leaving our rather slack quarterback with much less to do. To be consistent winners, all quarterback had to do was engineer a touchdown or two throughout the entire game and middle linebacker’s defense would routinely do the rest. It was a rather unique way to win football games, but in the tired eyes and hoarse roar of Coach Radcliffe, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

This default game plan naturally resulted in the defense occupying the field longer than the offense. In every game, our heroic middle linebacker seized this golden opportunity to lead his team to victory while simultaneously showcasing his growing repertoire of star quality talents. His future looked bright. He could feel it, more and more with the passing of every triumphant game. College scouts were out there, watching, evaluating, scribbling words into little notebooks, clustered behind the bench, maybe huddled in the stands, crowded into coach’s tiny office, or maybe just perched high up in the bleachers just like we see in the pros.

The writing was on his wall and it shone brightly. Some colleges had already begun writing letters to coach, ‘letters of inquiry’ they were called, to find out if his character was as stellar as his talent on the gridiron. And it was. He knew he was a good kid because his family raised him right. This was it. This was his chance, his one and only. If he kept his nose clean, football would earn him a free ride through college straight to the bigs. Follow the rules, no back sassing, stay healthy, and always be humble was the way our star middle linebacker tried to live his life. Or so everyone initially thought.

His many adoring fans needed little encouragement to lap up the brilliance of his punishing tackles and masterful play-calling even though plenty was provided by the school’s eagerly enthusiastic cheerleaders. One young lady in particular seemed to gaze longer and cheer louder every time middle linebacker took the field. It soon became impossible for her to disguise the increasingly wandering eyes of a sultry cheerleader in lust. Everyone noticed as rumors began to fly. This attention shift did not go unnoticed by our less active quarterback.

Post-game celebrations were now tainted by his vociferous complaints fueled by jealousy for a man with whom he could not compete. Anger soon accelerated into a rage so uncharacteristic of our normally calm, cool and collected quarterback. Those close to him began to worry incessantly. What was quarterback going to do? Or better yet, what could he do? When was he going to explode? Or wonderingly, was there anything inside of him to explode? It didn’t appear to anyone that middle linebacker was going out of his way to entice any of his female fans, including our lustful cheerleader. Most onlookers and semi distant observers later claimed that linebacker had no interest whatsoever in cheerleader or any other young lady at his high school. His love interest lived in the next town and as he was taught by his loving parents, staying true blue was the proper way to treat a lady.

Something had to give, and on a cool autumn evening outside the local mall entrance it did. All hell didn’t break loose, as everyone expected, but a less unruly bombshell was most certainly dropped. Quarterback gathered up his courage and bravely delivered his ultimatum to a visually less than concerned cheerleader; either stop gushing over middle linebacker and embarrassing him or they were through. Fully expecting his loving cheerleader to acquiesce and apologize profusely through a river of tears and mascara smearing sobs, quarterback was shocked to hear his cheerleader immediately and eagerly accept the second option.

As far as she was concerned, their relationship was over. With a sly smile, a huff, an eye roll and a visual sigh of relief, cheerleader proclaimed to quarterback and anyone else who would listen that, for the last few months, she had been bored stiff with their love life. For that reason and a slew of others, she was not in love with quarterback anymore and that was that.

Completely confused, red-faced and crestfallen, quarterback asked ‘why’ more than a few times through swelling eyes on the verge of tears. Now openly disgusted with his love sick puppy act, cheerleader sneered “boola boola,” in her most valley girl snark. It was so over. Now that quarterback had been officially advised of their breakup, in her shameless mind, she was now free to pursue anyone who caught her eye. She was tired of being tied down by an inadequate boy and now everyone knew it. What she craved were the sincere blandishments of a real man, one who was sexy, heroic, successful and entirely desired by others.

Quarterback was crushed. His world had fallen apart and there was not very much he could do about it. She wasn’t coming back. Over the next weeks and months, his grades suffered along with his play on the field. Life just wasn’t the same without her. Alcohol became his solace when the rumors began to fly. He tried to ignore them but the same theme battered him from every direction.

Cheerleader, his cheerleader, was hooking up with middle linebacker, not once or twice, but on a regular basis, whenever they could arrange it and however they could pull it off. It had nothing to do with love, so said the rumors, it was just sex, raw sex, rough sex and secret sex. Both of them had jettisoned the shackles of their boring relationships to fulfill a blistering mutual attraction that had been secretly percolating under their skins for at least a year, maybe longer.

But it was imperative that their culmination of unsullied passion be kept under wraps for the simple reason that their skins didn’t match. Just the idea of a black man accepting an invitation to have his way with a white woman of any age in that town at that time was as outlawed as parents executing their children for misbehaving at the dinner table. This was especially true for young people, cheerleaders and football players included. No legal constraints existed to prevent this behavior from occurring but the social laws governing that society certainly did.

While the opposite form of racial sexual mixing was only frowned upon, a black man having sex with a white woman, under any arrangement meant at least a social death for both of them and their families. And, in that town, it was not unheard of that this sexual combining contributed to a literal death for the male and perhaps the spoiled female as well.

When the missing cheerleader’s car was found abandoned at the mall, keys in the ignition, the wicked rumor became factual in the minds of all concerned, especially the police. Middle linebacker was not only the immediate suspect in her disappearance, but her kidnapper, rapist and murderer all rolled into one. Later, when quarterback swore he saw them struggling outside the mall in an ‘anonymous’ call he placed to the head detective, middle linebacker’s seat had already been reserved in the death chamber. The questioning, arresting, charging, prosecuting and convicting of middle linebacker were a mere formality and, of course, his assigned sentence was death by lethal injection. Even though he vigorously denied ever physically touching cheerleader, never mind having sex with her, the conjured images in the poisoned minds of the all-white jury sealed his fate.

Death row was the middle linebacker’s home for the next twenty years, during which time a plethora of appeals were filed, but all were lost. Now his date of execution was four days away. But three states over, crippled creep, a convicted sexual predator, sat uncomfortably ensconced in a halfway house after serving a long sentence for another very similar crime. His claim of having an inoperable brain tumor convinced a local pastor that crippled creep was prepared to do the ‘right thing’ by stepping up and admitting to all concerned that it was him, not middle linebacker, who killed cheerleader. Of course, this incredibly heartwarming and self-sacrificing gesture would set middle linebacker free, implicate quarterback and expose the local cops as entirely crooked.

To make this happen, the pastor was forced to drive crippled creep hundreds of miles to arrive at the small Texas town before the execution was to occur. To confirm the validity of his confession, crippled creep produced a unique school ring with cheerleader’s initials engraved on the inside of the gold band. Then he revealed he had worn her ring on a chain around his neck and close to his heart for the last 20 years. The pastor was aghast! On the way to Texas, they located the grave where crippled creep hastily buried cheerleader after killing her. Then, in his toxically sniveling voice, crippled creep was preparing to describe how he had committed his gruesome act upon our unsuspectingly helpless cheerleader while standing next to her previously undiscovered burial site. How did he kill her? Was all of this action possible? Would the pastor and crippled creep get to the Texas death chamber before the needle claimed its falsely convicted murderer?

My mind was completely captured by the vivid images created by Grisham’s words and Beck’s narration. I had to find out! Then everything in my real world stopped dead in its tracks.

About the Author

After over 25 years of teaching at the college/university level, Dr. Gary Michaels continues to guide students in their quest for academic excellence. He is an outstanding content editor who helps decode committee comments and guides the rewrite process.

Dr. Michaels has authored five books and eight articles that explore, describe and analyze a wide variety of criminal and deviant behavior. Topics of qualitative inquiry include detailed studies of young offenders, uniformed police subcultures, hockey enforcers, outlaw motorcycle clubs, arsonists, youth gangs and how detectives use informants. Further, a nine-year qualitative investigation closed a previously unsolved murder/suicide case, granting closure to the remaining victims.