But Baibir only stood in foul territory, staring at Terry and bawling. Terry stared back, positive （almost positive） he was dreaming all this, and then Tom Yates grabbed him and yanked his arms out with enough force to make Terry stumble forward. Ramage snapped on the cuffs. Real ones, not the plastic strips, big and heavy, gleaming in the late sun. In that same rolling voice, he proclaimed: “You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions, but if you choose to speak, anything you say can be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney during questioning now or in the future. Do you understand?”
“Troy?” Terry could hardly hear his own voice. He felt as if the wind had been punched out of him. “What in God’s name is this?”
Ramage took no notice. “Do you understand?”
Marcy came to the chickenwire, hooked her fingers through it, and shook it. Behind her, Sarah and Grace were crying. Grace was on her knees beside Sarah’s lawn chair; her own had fallen over and lay in the dirt. “What are you doing?” Marcy shouted. “What in God’s name are you doing? And why are you doing it here?”
“Do you understand?”
What Terry understood was that he had been handcuffed and was now being read his rights in front of almost sixteen hundred staring people, his wife and two young daughters among them. It was not a dream, and it was not simply an arrest. It was, for reasons he could not comprehend, a public shaming. Best to get it over as fast as possible, and get this thing straightened out. Although, even in his shock and bewilderment, he understood that his life would not be going back to normal for a long time.
“I understand,” he said, and then: “Coach Frick, get back.”
Gavin, who had been approaching the cops with his fists clenched and his fat face flushed a hectic red, lowered his arms and stepped back. He looked through the chickenwire at Marcy, raised his enormous shoulders, spread his pudgy hands.
In the same rolling tones, like a town crier belting out the week’s big news in a New England town square, Troy Ramage continued. Ralph Anderson could hear him from where he stood leaning against the unmarked unit. He was doing a good job, was Troy. It was ugly, and Ralph supposed he might be reprimanded for it, but he would not be reprimanded by Frankie Peterson’s parents. No, not by them.
“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you before any questioning, if you desire. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Terry said. “I understand something else, too.” He turned to the crowd. “I have no idea why I’m being arrested! Gavin Frick will finish coaching the game!” And then, as an afterthought: “Baibir, get back to third, and remember to run in foul territory.”
There was a smatter of applause, but only a smatter. The leather-lung in the bleachers yelled again, “What’d you say he did?” And the crowd responding to the question, muttering the two words that would soon be all over the West Side and the rest of the city: Frank Peterson’s name.
Yates grabbed Terry by the arm and started hustling him toward the snack shack and the parking lot beyond. “You can preach to the multitudes later, Maitland. Right now you’re going to jail. And guess what? We have the needle in this state, and we use it. But you’re a teacher, right? You probably knew that.”
They hadn’t gotten twenty steps from the makeshift dugout before Marcy Maitland caught up and grabbed Tom Yates’s arm. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”
Yates shrugged her off, and when she tried to grasp her husband’s arm, Troy Ramage pushed her away, gently but firmly. She stood where she was for a moment, dazed, then saw Ralph Anderson walking to meet his arresting officers. She knew him from Little League, when Derek Anderson had played for Terry’s team, the Gerald’s Fine Groceries Lions. Ralph hadn’t been able to come to all the games, of course, but he came to as many as possible. Back then he’d still been in uniform; Terry had sent him a congratulatory email when he was promoted to detective. Now she ran toward him, fleet over the grass in her old tennis shoes, which she always wore to Terry’s games, claiming there was good luck in them.
“Ralph!” she called. “What’s going on? This is a mistake!”
“I’m afraid it isn’t,” Ralph said.
This part he didn’t like, because he liked Marcy. On the other hand, he had always liked Terry, as well—the man had probably changed Derek’s life only a little, given the boy just a smatter of confidence-building, but when you were eleven years old, a little confidence was a big deal. And there was something else. Marcy might have known what her husband was, even if she didn’t allow herself to know on a conscious level. The Maitlands had been married a long time, and horrors like the Peterson boy’s murder simply did not come out of thin air. There was always a build-up to the act.