Page 46 of Thin Ice

"Who gave you this number?" Tierney didn't say hello at 5:15 a.m. I wouldn't either.

The voice on the line was dry and flat. In the background, I heard a TV. It was loud, like people who are a little hard of hearing keep it.

"It's from people I work for," I said. "They don't want anything from you. I know that doesn't mean much from a stranger at five in the morning. You can hang up and I won't call back. I just wanted the chance to ask you something."

A pause, and the click of a lighter. "You're dodging the question."

He needed more before he'd give me anything. One try.

"My name is Elias Ward. I work for a protection firm called The Guardians. The league retained us to look at some history around the Carolina team during the years you were there."

"I wasn't there."

"You were there from 2012 to '14, Mr. Tierney. They listed you as protocol technician on an embedded project with an outside company. You filed a workers' comp claim in 2013 for repetitive strain."

He didn't hang up, but all I heard was the TV in the background. A weather forecaster predicted a sunny day.

"Ray Halloran was trying to reach one of the players before he died," I said. "He didn't get through. I'm trying to finish the call for him."

"Ray's dead."

"Yes."

"I read the obituary." I heard clinks like ice rattling in a glass. "Cardiac event. The man had pancreatic cancer eating him alive, and his heart just quit one night, all on its own, two days after he got chatty." The dry voice remained flat. "Sure."

Through the wall behind me, faint, I heard Maddie Brickner's voice: Rise and grind, old man. Seconds later, the soft double thump of feet hitting the floor.

"The threshold sessions," I said. "When you ran them, who set the loading numbers? Was that you, on site, based on what the athlete gave you that day? Or did someone send them to you?"

He was silent while I heard a voice talking about rain three days from now.

"Are you a cop?"

"No. I used to teach movement science. Some of your old company's papers are still on my shelf."

"I don't talk on calls I didn't place," he said, and the line went dead.

I stood and looked out the living room window while the sky over the Colchester turned the color of dishwater. In my notebook I scrawled the date, then 5:15: first contact, Tierney, terminated from his end, duration 1:54.

Under it I wrote the only thing the call had actually given me. He hadn't refused to talk. He'd refused to talk on a phone he didn't dial.

Nolan left the bedroom at half past five wearing sneakers.

"Park," he said. "You're coming. It's your job."

We left the Colchester through the service entrance into air that hadn't cooled overnight. There was dew on every windshield on the block. We climbed into the SUV, and I drove.

He directed me into the park and west, past the golf course, the park roads curving empty under lamps still burning. The humidity rested in the hollows as a layer of fog.

Nolan suggested a slight detour. Near the top of a long rise, he said, "Pull off here a second."

I did. He got out slower than he'd let anyone at the rink see, and I walked around to stand next to him at the crest of the hill.

The hill fell away to a massive basin dotted with grand fountains, lit from under the water. Behind us the St. Louis Art Museum rose in Beaux-Arts majesty with columns three stories high.

Beside Nolan stood a statue of a king riding a horse. "That's St. Louis himself. He's the only French king they made a saint."

"I didn't know there was a view like this in the city," I said. "It goes on for miles."