“You mean he just keeled over?” Detective George Terry, of the Miami Police Department was quizzing Ray Hendrix the Rams head trainer. They were in a small office outside the dressing room of the University of Florida stadium. The Rams had been using the university’s athletic field for their pre Super Bowl practice. The detective was trying to get a lead on what had happened to Max Aries.
Hendrix said, “Yeah. He had just come off the practice field.”
“Did he complain of anything, like pain or dizziness?”
“No. He might have been a little dehydrated from playing in this heat. He drank most of the bottle of Gatorade.”
Terry said, “Where’s the Gatorade jug?”
Hendrix said, “It’s not one of those big jugs. Each player has an individual bottle.”
“Do you still have the bottle Aries drank from?”
Hendrix shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll see if I can find it.” He called an assistant trainer over and asked him if he could find Max’s Gatorade bottle.
Five minutes later the trainer came back with a case of Gatorade bottles. Some were full, some part filled, some empty. “No one knows which is Max’s, but he did drink all his, so it’s probably one of these empties.”
Hendrix said, “What’s all this interest in the Gatorade?”
The detective said, “I’m just trying to find out why a perfectly healthy athlete would suddenly pass out. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was something in the Gatorade. We’ll send these bottles to our lab and have them test the contents. Even the ones that are empty have enough drops of Gatorade so we can run tests on it.”
The detective said he’d like to see all the assistant trainers. Hendrix went out into the dressing room and returned with five other men.
Detective Terry said, “Is this your entire staff?”
Hendrix said, “Actually, we have six assistants, but I can’t find the sixth man.”
The detective said, “Which of you gave Max Aries his Gatorade?”
Each of the assistants turned and looked at the others. One said, “He’s not here. He’s the one we can’t seem to locate.”
Hendrix said, “These five men and I came down with the team from Cincinnati. The sixth man, the one we can’t locate is not on our regular staff. He’s taking the place of our staff trainer who couldn’t make the trip because he had a serious auto accident just before we flew down.”
“How did you happen to hire the guy that’s substituting?”
Hendrix looked puzzled. “You know, the guy came to the dressing room and said the general manager had told him to report to me. He said he was one of the U of Florida football trainers. I never checked. Maybe I should have.”
Detective Terry nodded. “Yeah. Maybe you should have.”
“Do you think he had something to do with Max’s disappearance?”
“I have a strong feeling that you’re going to find that the sixth trainer—if he’s actually a trainer—has nothing to do with the U of Florida, and that your general manager didn’t send him to you. And furthermore, when we test those bottles we’re going to find that one them had Gatorade that was spiked.”
“Spiked?”
“Poisoned.”
The detective went on. “We couldn’t trace the ambulance that showed up either.”
In a small room in a farmhouse sixty miles from Miami, Max Aries lay in a deep sleep. Heavy chains were wrapped around his body locking him to the bed in which he lay. There were no windows in the room. Seated by the bed was a bearded man who looked like he weighed three hundred pounds. Thick muscles bulged out of the T-shirt he wore. In his lap was a rifle.
Responding to a knock on the door, the man got up, unlocked it admitting another man wearing a bandana on his head. He held a syringe with a needle. He gestured with his chin to Max. “He still asleep Gino?”
Gino said, “Like a baby. He hasn’t moved in the past hour. I’m surprised he’s still alive after all the junk they put in that drink.”
“Yeah, but we’re not takin’ no chances he’ll wake up. Just to make sure, I’ve got a shot of some heavy dope I’m gonna inject in his arm.”
He rolled up Max’s sleeve and plunged the needle into the skin of Max’s arm. Max did not wince or give any sign that he felt the needle.
“That should hold him. In about ten minutes we’ll have the concrete ready.”
Gino laughed. It was a deep belly laugh. “You’re makin’ him a pair of concrete slippers? Why don’t we just shoot him?”
The other man said, “I agree, but this is the way Big Mike wanted it. He thinks killing him would leave a bloody mess that might be traced. This way we take him out in the boat and deep-six him. He won’t be found by anything but the barracuda.”