Page 109 of Our Daughter's Bones

Mackenzie felt her heart spike. Behind Bill, Peck shifted in his seat uneasily and fixed his glasses. “Bill, are you sure you don’t need a lawyer?”

“I’m sure. I’m sure.”

“Mr. Grayson, what is ‘916’?” she asked.

“It was years ago. Please understand. This was fifty years ago. It was different back then.”

“What does that mean? What is this?”

“My junior and senior years at Lakemore High, I was on the team. My junior year was the fifth year the Olympic Championship was held. The Sharks hadn’t won a single match in the tournament since its commencement. No one took the Sharks seriously. But on September sixteenth, wewon.”

Nick was right. “916” was a date to honor the first match in the Sharks’ first winning season.

“Something clicked. We won the Olympic Championship that year. Do you realize how important that was?” His chest swelled in pride. “We didn’t realize it back then, but we wrote history. Football became the heart and soul and pride of this city. The Sharks made that possible. There was so much euphoria.” He paused. “And that led to bad things. We were surrounded by booze and drugs and all kinds of freedoms. We were underage. It was illegal, but we were treated like royalty. And it was the Sixties. Everyone looked the other way. Everyone allowed us to doanything. When we weren’t practicing, we were fooling around with cheerleaders, drinking till we blacked out, doing drugs, partying on the streets and in the woods all night. It was madness. The month of September.”

“Go on.”

He wiped his mouth with his palm. “Can I get some water, please?”

Nick stepped into the corridor, returned and handed him a plastic cup.

“Thank you. As I was saying, we got carried away, detectives. We were young, impressionable men who were offered the world on a platter. And we took it.”

“What does that mean?”

A haunted look pinched his face. “It started off as harmless fun the first few nights. To try to sleep with drunk girls at parties. It was sleazy in hindsight. It became… wrong. We picked up girls with or without their consent.”

“Bill…” Peck said, but this time Mackenzie raised her hand to silence him.

“Go on, Mr. Grayson.”

“Sometimes we drugged them. Sometimes we lied to them. Sometimes we just grabbed them. Some of the girls were willing. But a lot of them weren’t. That’s how we spent the month of September. We spent days with them. Wake up, hit the gym, practice, party, and go to the girls we had decided to keep for the month. It became routine. It was how we celebrated the start of football season. Unofficially, we called ourselves Club 916.”

Nausea swilled in Mackenzie’s belly and rose up the back of her throat. “How long did thiscelebrationcontinue?”

“Three years. My two years at Lakemore High and one more year after that.”

“Who participated in this club?”

“Everyone. Everyone on the team. The junior team. Including the coach and the training staff. Also, the Sharks alumni who were in town.”

“There were never any complaints? None of the women you preyed on ever went to the police?” Nick asked.

“I wouldn’t know. Things were taken care of for us. Even if some did, they were swept under the rug.”

“Why did the club dissolve after three years?”

“I wasn’t here. I was at college, en route to the NFL. But I heard that there was a new principal. A woman. She found out what was happening and threatened to expel the entire team if they continued. She ran a tight ship during her tenure. But it was long enough for the culture to change and people to forget that ‘916’ was ever a thing. Over the years, the knowledge diluted. The new kids didn’t know anything. Things changed for the better.”

“This napkin is from your club? This is your logo?”

“No,” he said sharply. “I haveneverseen this napkin or this logo in my entire life. All I recognized was the number.”

Mackenzie pulled out a spare sheet of paper and pen. “I want you to write down the name of every person you can remember who was a part of this club.”

“It was fifty years ago.”

“I bet all the exercise has kept your brain sharp.”