Chapter 9 The CD
Brooks eased himself out of the scoreboard opening into the dusk. He was afraid of heights and this wasn't easy for him, but he knew he had no other choice except to stay up there overnight. He held on for dear life as he lowered himself slowly. "Don't look down, don't look down," he kept telling himself. He'd have loved to have just slid down but that would have resulted in a severe burn to his hands from the friction of the cable sliding between his palms. So instead he descended hand over hand, the strong computer cables easily supporting his weight. His hands and feet locked onto the cables in a death grip.
When he reached the ground he looked up and felt proud of his accomplishment. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" he thought. As he exited the school football field he had to walk by the entrance to the scoreboard. A thick lock was on the clasp of the door. A piece of paper was stuck to the door. He walked over to it and removed it. It read MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS AND STAY OUT OF WHERE YOU DON’T BELONG. He crumpled up the paper and through it in the trash. "You've just made this my business," thought Brooks angrily. It still confused him – why would a maintenance man get so upset about this? If anything he would have just climbed up to tell him to leave the scoreboard. In fact if a school worker locked a kid in there on purpose he probably would have gotten in some real trouble. “Something strange is going on here,” thought Brooks, “I’ve stumbled on something that someone didn’t want me to see.” Brooks got on his bike and headed home for dinner.
On Friday night, he and Brad headed to Tosa West. It was probably about 15 miles away and it was dark outside too, so Brad's dad offered to drive the boys to the game. "I can't believe you are going to see the enemy," he joked with the boys on the way over. "It's advance scouting - tonight Tosa West plays Kenosha, and next week Kenosha plays East." explained Brad. "I knew there must be some good reason to go into enemy territory," said Brad's dad. He dropped them off and they arranged to meet him 1/2 hour after the game ended in the parking lot.
They arrived at the school parking lot at the exact time the Kenosha bus pulled up. The coaches and players got off the bus as Brad and Brooks watched. An older guy got off the bus last. He had on a red nylon jacket with the name RUSSELL on it in white lettering and a baseball hat that said KENOSHA on it. The boys realized it was Coach Russell - coach of the Kenosha team.
A guy with long hair, a mustache and a yellow hat on walked up to him and tried to hand him a manila colored mailing envelope. He appeared to be agitated and kept trying to put the envelope into the older man's hand. Now it was the coach's turn to get agitated. He was walking towards the school locker room area being followed by the guy with the long hair. He pointed towards the parking lot and then at the guy. The coach reached out, grabbed the envelope and threw it about 10 feet away.
The envelope spun to the ground and split open. CD's went flying across the ground. The man with the long hair appeared upset as he quickly tried to gather the CD’s and get back to his car to leave. The envelope had landed on the ground and skidded across the pavement until it came to rest alongside the base of one of the parking lot lights. The man had missed getting one of the CD's as it was obscured from his vision behind the light's base.
Brooks went over to it and picked up the CD. TOSA EAST COACH'S OFFICE was the title on the CD. It was written on the CD in red pen.
Brooks looked up to find the guy that had been talking to the coach. He saw the man nearing his white SUV so Brooks started running over to it. Brooks made it to the parking lot just in time to catch the guy squealing his tires as he left the parking lot.
"Oh well," thought Brooks. Brad caught up to Brooks. "What is that?" he asked. Brooks looked at the disk, "Hm, it’s a CD for a computer. TOSA EAST COACH’S OFFICE - that’s strange. I wonder what it is," said Brooks.
Brad didn't think too much about it, as he was anxious to get into the game. He always got very excited during sporting events. Brooks put the disk in his jacket coat and the boys headed into the game and saw Tosa West destroy yet another team. Kenosha played relatively well, but Tosa West had all of the answers. Marc Ille easily beat them throwing for 309 yards and 5 touchdowns. 42-7 was the final score. But they just didn't do anything special.
On the way out, Brad said "It just sort of looks like they go through the motions. There is no real athleticism there - its just they are at the right place at the right time."
Brooks couldn't resist taking that opportunity to tease Brad, "Sort of like how Ripken was there at the right time last summer?" Brad rolled his eyes as Brooks erupted in laughter. Last summer during a neighborhood picnic in Brooks’ backyard Brad was teasing Ripken by putting a dog treat in the back pocket of his swimming trunks and walking around the yard. Brooks was going to take a picture of Ripken walking behind Brad to get the treat, up on his hind legs, but Ripken decided to grab the treat through Brad's trunks with his mouth and take off running. Unfortunately, Brad's trunks came with the treat and Brooks had snapped the picture of Ripken yanking down Brad's trunks and the most embarrassed look on Brad's face. It was the highlight of Brooks’ summer and he never missed a chance to let him forget about it.
Brad's dad dropped Brooks off at his house. "Thanks Mr. Klemz" said Brooks. "See you tomorrow Brad!" Brooks headed up to his house.
He put his hands in his pocket and felt the CD. The event in the parking lot and the CD had slipped his mind during the game. His curiosity was high to see why Coach Russell had been so agitated over it. He popped it into his computer. He found the disk on the computer drive and double clicked on it. A video player opened and the date popped up "9/5". The video started playing - it was just an empty office with a computer on the desk and some notepads on the top of the desk. Suddenly, Brooks got a sinking feeling in his stomach- he knew that office. It was Coach Vitrano's. Now the title on the CD made sense. On the video there was some noise and the door opened into the empty office. Brooks recognized Coach Vitrano and then was taken aback to see himself on his computer! Coach Vitrano and Brooks walked into the room on the video. Brooks started getting a very creepy feeling - it was video of the day that Brooks had shown up to drop off Ally's acting bag. It looked like it was being filmed from behind Coach Vitrano's desk. He continued watching the scene unfold as the entire demonstration the coach had done that day was on the video. On the video Brooks left the Coach's office but it continued playing as Coach Vitrano started to design plays. Brooks slid the bar on the video forward to 45 minutes into it. Coach Vitrano and Jeff Kopish were going over the starting plays that they were going to use this Friday night. He and Jeff were talking about the defenders they were going to face and had decided to throw it deep to the receiver on the right side of the field. “Holy smokes – if a team were to get this information before they played Tosa East, it’s no wonder they are getting beaten like they are!”
Brooks heard his dad click off the TV. His dad was a big hockey fan and the game had just ended that he was watching. "What are you up to, son?" his dad, Steve, asked as he walked by. Brooks responded, "I think I'm figuring out what is happening to the Tosa East football season." His dad asked, "What do you mean?" "Take a look at this, Dad." Brooks started the video gain - showing the Coach and Jeff going over the plays.
His dad stared at the screen in disbelief. "Where did you get this from?" Brooks explained how he had found it in the parking lot at the game, and how a guy was trying to shove an envelope full of these CD's into Coach Russell's hand. Coach Russell used to be Coach Vitrano's coach when we were in High School. They are very good friends. No wonder he didn't want to see these tapes. Did you tell Coach Vitrano about this?" "No" said Brooks. “I didn't see him tonight - we were at Tosa West, remember?" "Right," said his dad. "What time is it?" Brooks looked at the computer and told him 10:20.
His dad clicked on the TV to the local news. The sports segment had just started.
The reporter started, "In local high school sports - the big news of the night - Tosa West wins again, powered by a very strong effort by Senior Quarterback Marc Ille." They showed some highlights of the game and then switched to Tosa East footage - "On the other side of town, things were not so good as Tosa East loses again. First play of the game - Tosa East tries to hit wide receiver Randy Edgar streaming down the right sideline - INTERCEPTED!" His dad turned to Brooks - "Looks like somebody else saw that video too." Tosa East lost the game 35-3.
His dad flipped the TV off. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "I'm getting to the bottom of this," said Brooks. His mind was already spinning with ideas. "Well be careful, and let me know if you need help with anything. Remember, there's lots of evil in the world. Try to avoid it." "Will do, Dad. Thanks. I'll let you know how it goes."
Brooks felt different emotions, anger that someone was stealing the East game plan; creeped out that someone had taped him without his knowing it, yet also strangely excited about having a mystery to work on and to solve. Before Brooks went to bed he texted Brad - someone's taping coach V's office and giving them 2 other schools. tell u more Monday
When Brooks got to school, Brad was standing by his locker. "What's going on??" Brooks explained to him what he'd seen on the CD. Brad was stunned. "Holy cow - that explains everything! I knew the Raiders weren't that bad! Did you tell the coach yet?" "Not yet," said Brooks. I want to investigate this a little more without having him go ballistic and possibly ruin any clues. I want to figure this out. Let's meet at my house after school and we can start the investigation." "Deal" said Brad.
School couldn't end fast enough for the boys. They drove their bikes back to his house at full speed.
Brooks' room was pretty cool. One of the walls was covered in a blackboard material that allowed Brooks to write things on it in chalk and wipe it clean when he was done. Ally had been in his room last week and drew a window on the wall and had a shark looking through the window at Brooks. He had no time for that now, he had a job to do. He erased the window and the menacing looking cartoon shark. He wrote in big letters - THE CASE OF THE STOLEN SEASON.
"Brad let's just start rattling off facts we know and things we have to do. I’ll write them down and we can divide up the work so we can solve this faster." Brad was good for some easy groundwork, but he knew he had to do the sneakiest stuff and most of the legwork himself. "Let's start with people involved. Coach Vitrano, Tosa West coaches and players, guy who handed the CD's to the coach at Tosa West." “You think Coach Vitrano is involved?” asked a bewildered Brad. “Of course not, but he is involved, it’ll help to have his name up there – if nothing else we can see who might want him hurt,” said Brooks. “Makes sense. I guess we can keep Coach Russell off that list - he's definitely not involved after what your dad told us and how he refused to take those CD’s,” said Brad. "True, but he might know the guy that was trying to hand him those CD's" said Brooks. "Good point," responded Brad. "Well if you are going to put him on that list, you should probably put every other coach on there that Tosa East plays this year." "Done," said Brooks. "Now let's talk about what we know. We know that there is a camera in Coach Vitrano's office somewhere. I can look at the video again and figure out where the camera was placed in order for it to have shot at that angle. We also need to know what was on the rest of those tapes that the guy was able to pick up after they fell out of that envelope when Coach Russell threw them." "Brooks, I just realized something," said Brad, " that guy with the CD’s was the same guy that we saw at the Tosa East game. He was talking to the Falcon's coach after the game. Remember his long hair and hat?" Brooks did. He created a title on the blackboard SUSPECTS and put "GUY WITH LONG HAIR AND HAT" under it.
Suddenly, it hit Brooks like a ton of bricks! In the computer store - Marc Ille had been watching a game on the big computer monitor across from the cash register. Or was it not a game; was it a tape that Coach Vitrano had been watching and breaking down? Brooks had thought he'd heard his voice on the video, but couldn't figure it out.
Brooks recounted what he'd had transpired at the computer store to Brad. "Put Trojan Computer under SUSPECTS," Brad said. Brooks did it. "What else do we know?" asked Brooks. "Well we know that Tosa East loses all of their games..." "AND TOSA WEST WINS ALL OF THEIR GAMES!" the boys said in unison. It was coming together quickly. "Brad. Take a guess who owns Trojan Computers,” Brooks said. "Bill Trojan?" joked Brad. "Interesting guess, but no. A guy named Gunther Arno." Brad still wasn't catching on. "Guess what Marc Ille's mom's name is," asked Brooks. "Mrs. Ille?" he responded. "Close" said Brooks, "Mrs. Ille-Arno. She's been remarried." "Arno....Ille....you mean Marc Ille's dad owns Trojan Computers?" Brooks was proud of Brad for catching on so quickly. "Well, his step dad owns it,” Brooks corrected.
"Let's go back to the long haired guy," said Brad. "When did we see him?" Brooks answered, "Right after the Falcon game at Tosa East, and then right before the Tosa West and Kenosha game." "And who does Tosa East play next week - Kenosha." Brooks was again impressed at his friend's thought process. So he goes to games after he's given information to a team that beats Tosa East. And he's at the game before it starts to see the coach who Tosa East plays the next week. Go get me that Raider schedule on my wall!" Brad hopped up and crossed the room.
"We have a date with a long haired chap at Marquette High School next week,” said Brad. Brooks smiled.