I think maybe Billy got ragging on the kid once too often and once too hard. Or it could’ve been the dad or the mom. Maybe it was over the way he milked the cows, or maybe he didn’t shovel the shit just right that one time, but I’ll bet the bottom line was baseball and plain old jealousy. The green-eyed monster. For all I know, the Cornholers’ manager told Blakely he might be sent down to Single A in Clearwater, and getting sent down a rung when you’re only twenty-when you’re supposed to be going up the ladder-is a damned good sign that your career in organized baseball is going to be a short one.
But however it was-and whoever-it was a bad mistake. The kid could be sweet when he was treated right, we all knew that, but he wasn’t right in the head. And he could be dangerous. I knew that even before the cops showed up, because of what happened in the very first game of the season: Billy Anderson.
“The County Sheriff found all three Blakelys in the barn,” Lombardazzi said. “Katsanis slashed their throats. Sheriff said it looked like a razor blade.”
I just gaped at him.
“What must have happened is this,” Joe said in a heavy voice. “Kerwin McCaslin called around for a backup catcher when our guys got hurt down in Florida, and the manager of the Cornhuskers said he had a boy who might fill the bill for three or four weeks, assuming we didn’t need him to hit for average. Because, he said, this kid wouldn’t do that.”
“But he did,” I says.
“Because he wasn’t Blakely,” Lombardazzi says. “By then Blakely and his parents must already have been dead a couple of days, at least. The Katsanis kid was keeping house all by himself. And not all his screws were loose. He was smart enough to answer the phone when it rang. He took the call from the manager and said sure, Billy’d be glad to go to New Jersey. And before he left-as Billy-he called around to the neighbors and the feed store downtown. Told em the Blakelys had been called away on a family emergency and he was taking care of things. Pretty smart for a loony, wouldn’t you say?”
“He’s not a loony,” I told him.
“Well, he cut the throats of the people who took him in and gave him a job, and he killed all the cows so the neighbors wouldn’t hear them bawling to be milked at night, but have it your way. I know the DA’s going to agree with you, because he wants to see Katsanis get the rope. That’s how they do it in Iowa, you know.”
I turned to Joe. “How could a thing like this happen?”
“Because he was good,” Joe said. “And because he wanted to play ball.”
The kid had Billy Blakely’s ID, and this was back in the days when picture IDs were unheard of. The two kids matched up pretty well: blue eyes, dark hair, six feet tall. But mostly, yeah-it happened because the kid was good. And wanted to play ball.
“Good enough to get almost a month in the pros,” Lombardazzi said, and over our heads a cheer went up. Billy Blockade had just gotten his last big-league hit: a homer. “Then, day before yesterday, the LP gas man went out to the Blakely farm. Others folks had been there before, but they read the note Katsanis left on the door and went away. Not the gas man. He filled the tanks behind the barn, and the barn was where the bodies were-cows and Blakelys both. The weather had finally turned warm, and he smelled em. Which is pretty much the way our story ends. Now, your manager here wants him arrested with as little fuss as possible, and with as little danger to the other players on your team as possible. That’s fine with me. So your job-”
“Your job is to hold the rest of the guys in the dugout,” Jersey Joe says. “Send Blakely…Katsanis…down here on his own. He’ll be gone when the rest of the guys get to the locker room. Then we’ll try to sort this clusterfuck out.”