“Don’t beat up on yourself,” said Horowitz. “They fooled the cops, too.”
“Paul put his ring and watch on the guy,” I said. “That was to make Olivia’s ID work. And he dressed him in his clothes before he shot him. That was for my benefit. Those New Hampshire police probably never laid eyes on the real Paul Cizek. It wouldn’t matter if they eventually realized they’d made a mistake. The Cizeks would be long gone by then.”
“As it appears they are,” said Horowitz with a sigh. “How’d you figure this out?”
“I didn’t exactly figure it out,” I said. “Not really. But there were things that didn’t fit. Like Thomas Gall, the obvious suspect. I bumped into him once. He was upset, all right. He hit me. But I ended up feeling sorry for the guy. He just didn’t seem like a vicious killer. And it turns out that Gall and Cizek had gotten together a couple of times on Plum Island, had a beer. A neighbor of Paul’s overheard them talking. It sounded like the two of them were scheming something. I figure Paul told Gall that he was going to take care of Glen Falconer. Glen would be the one Gall hated the most, so that’d satisfy him. He wouldn’t need to kill Paul to get the vengeance he wanted.”
“So if it wasn’t Gall…”
“I thought of Eddie Vaccaro, of course,” I said. “Turns out he died before Cizek. And that raised the question of who killed Vaccaro. Russo, logically. Except I know for a fact that Russo was still looking for Vaccaro around the time the ME says he was already dead. So not only did Vaccaro not kill Paul Cizek, but…”
“I getcha,” said Horowitz.
“I was thinking of Olivia, too,” I continued. “You always suspect the spouse, and people fool you, but Olivia loved Paul. I’m sure of that. Even if she knew he was shacking up with Brenda Falconer, I couldn’t see her as a killer. Anyway, I thought, if it wasn’t any of them, who could it be? Which led me to conclude that it wasn’t anybody. Paul’s not dead. He’s not a murder victim at all. On the contrary.”
“In which case,” said Horowitz, “that body belongs to somebody else. Which is where this conversation started. And the question is, who?”
“Like I told you,” I said, “I don’t know. But I’d check the whereabouts of some of Paul Cizek’s old clients.”
“Victor Benton,” Horowitz told me on the phone the next morning. “Turns out he’s been missing since Monday. The fingerprints matched.”
“Victor Benton,” I repeated. “The day-care guy who Paul Cizek defended.”
“Child molester, kiddie porn. A vile son of a bitch. Nobody thought Cizek could get him off. But he did.”
“And then he killed him,” I said. “He killed Eddie Vaccaro, too. Paul was doing justice. Killing the bad guys, making up for the fact that he’d defended them successfully.” I took a breath. “I forgot to mention before. There’s an old pickup truck parked beside that cottage in New Hampshire. You should have your forensics guys check it.”
“The vehicle that ran down Falconer, you think?”
“I’d be surprised if it’s not.”
I heard Horowitz chuckle.
“This is funny?” I said.
“Not hardly.” I heard him blow a quick breath into the phone. “We found a Chevy station wagon parked in the outdoor lot by the international terminal at Logan. It was registered to Victor Benton.”
“That’s the car Paul and Olivia used, you think?”
“Sure. He must’ve convinced Benton to go visit him in New Hampshire, where he murdered him. Then he scooted in Benton’s car. You and her went up there and found Benton’s body dressed in Cizek’s clothes, wearing Cizek’s jewelry, established that it was Cizek, and you drove her home, the grieving widow. Then after you left, he came by in Benton’s car, picked her up, and they drove to the airport. Thing is, none of the airlines have any record of either of them taking a flight.”
“Fake passports, huh?”
“Probably. Or maybe they didn’t go overseas at all.”
After I got home and out of my office clothes that evening, I called Alex. When she answered the phone, I said, “I’ve got a story for you.”
“Don’t, Brady,” she said. “Please.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say what you don’t mean.”
“Okay,” I said. “What I mean is, I miss you terribly and I want to fix things. But I do have a story for you.”
I heard her sigh. “I had to leave the other night. I just felt… I don’t know. Like it was never going to work. I’m sorry.”
“Love is never having to say—”
She laughed. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
“We’ve got to try to make it work,” I said.
“I know.” She hesitated. “So do you want me to come over?”
“More than anything.”
“Shall I bring some lentil soup?”
“I love lentil soup.”
“Brady—”
“Okay. I’ll say what I mean. I don’t particularly like lentil soup. But I love you.”
“Do you really have a story for me?”
“I’ve got a story, all right.”
27
BRENDA FALCONER CALLED ME on the last Wednesday in July to tell me that Glen had finally died. “His organs were shutting down, one by one,” she told me. “Roger and I had already pretty much agreed that he should be taken off life-support. Yesterday his heart stopped and they couldn’t get it started again.”
“I’m sorry” was all I could think of to say.
Alex and I attended the memorial service at Ste. Anne’s Episcopal church in Lincoln on the following Saturday. It was a small, private gathering. I saw none of Roger’s old political or business cronies. We sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and the priest read some Scripture and gave a short homily on the subject of dying young and unexpectedly.
There were no eulogies for Glen.
Roger and Brenda sat alone in the front pew, and when the service ended, Roger leaned heavily on her as she helped him up the aisle. In the month or so since I’d last seen him, Roger appeared to have aged twenty years.
Alex and I met them outside. Brenda caught my eye. She lifted her eyebrows, a question and a request, and I nodded. I saw no purpose in mentioning Paul Cizek’s name.
Roger’s eyes were red and watery, and from the way he mumbled I suspected that he was taking tranquilizers. I didn’t mention the fact that the police had examined the pickup truck beside Paul Cizek’s cottage in New Hampshire and found traces of paint that matched the bicycle Glen had been riding when he was hit. I didn’t know if the police had talked with him about it. If they hadn’t, it certainly wasn’t up to me.
Brenda said she was going to stay on in the big house in Lincoln to look after Roger, at least for awhile. If she saw that as penance for what she might’ve perceived as her sins, it was understandable. She’d told me she was attracted to weak, needy, and dependent men. Roger now appeared to qualify admirably.
I reminded her that Glen’s estate would need settling. I told her to call the office within the next couple of weeks and we’d get going on it.
While Brenda and I talked, Roger leaned on her arm and stared at the ground. Once in awhile he looked up at her and nodded vacantly. She called him “Roger” with what appeared to be genuine affection, and he called her “dear,” and it occurred to me that at least one good thing had resulted from Glen’s death.
There was no return address on the envelope, but it was postmarked from Key West. I sat at my kitchen table and tore it open. At the top of the first page of the letter, Olivia Cizek had written, “Somewhere in Florida, sometime in August.” Her handwriting was small and precise.
Dear Brady,
An explanation is overdue, I know. Or an apology. I lied to a lot of people. But lying to you was the worst. You were very kind to me.
I’m feeling guilty enough. But I want you to know that I had nothing to do with what Paul did, right up to that night when
we went to his place in New Hampshire. He did not tell me he was going to fake his death on his boat. He certainly didn’t tell me he planned to murder three men.
When he called that night, I thought he was a ghost. I guess I was so stunned I would have agreed to do anything. He made it sound simple. There would be a dead man at his cottage. You, dear Brady, knew how to get there. All I had to do was get you to take me up there. I’d say the body was Paul. After that we’d be together again.
It didn’t seem wrong when he explained it. I didn’t ask any questions. Like I said, I was so surprised and dazed I couldn’t really think. I just called you, and you know what happened after that.
You must think I’m quite a liar, or a great actress. I’m not. Not really. All the emotions I felt that night were real. The whole thing was crazy. I guess I was a little crazy—first hearing Paul’s voice, then hearing his plan, and then, dear God, seeing that body. I was in a daze the whole night. The lies just came out the way Paul had given them to me.
I knew he’d gone over the edge, of course. But I denied it to myself. And even after it was over, I kept trying to deny it. He killed evil men. That’s what he said. They deserved to die, to pay for their crimes, and I tried to convince myself that it was okay, that he had made justice happen.
But it didn’t work. I know what he did—and what I helped him to do—is wrong. I’m glad I know that. It means I’m not crazy.
I knew he was having an affair with somebody, although I tried to deny it. He told me it was with the wife of that drunken driver he defended. He saw it as a kind of revenge, or retribution, as if that made it okay. I can forgive the affair. But I can’t forgive him for doing it out of malice instead of love.
Anyway, Brady, now I’ve left him. I don’t know where he is. Wandering around the Caribbean in his sailboat, I guess. He’s a man without a country and without a family and without a career, and even though I know he’s done horrible things, I feel sorry for him. But I can’t be with him.
I’m staying with friends for now. They know everything. I’m afraid they’ll get in trouble if I’m found here, so I guess I’ll have to move on pretty soon. Some day I know I’ll have to face up to my part of it. I won’t be able to live this way much longer. I’ll need a lawyer, so you can expect to hear from me again.
But I’m not quite ready. Not yet.
I hope you can forgive me.
She had signed it, “Very fondly, Olivia.”
I called Horowitz, and he came by my office the following afternoon to pick up Olivia’s letter. He read it, smiled, and said, “Oh, well.”
“Now what happens?” I said.
“Oh, I’ll turn this over to the feds. We’ll see.”
“He could get away with it?”
“He’s roaming around the Caribbean on a sailboat? I guess he could.”
“What about Olivia?”
“Everyone’d like to get her story. Be good if she’d turn herself in. She might not even be prosecuted. Not under the circumstances. It wouldn’t take a Paul Cizek to get a jury crying over her story. Hell, even you could get her off.”
“Thanks, pal,” I said. I shook my head. “It’s not right, though. Paul murdered three men. And he betrayed a lot of others.”
“Like you.”
“Yes,” I said. “Like me.”
Horowitz shrugged. “The feds’ve got their priorities. Nobody’s exactly clamoring for blood in this case. I’d guess that unless Cizek does something stupid, sooner or later everybody’ll forget about it. Nobody’s mourning the deaths of a hit man, a child molester, and a drunk driver.”
“Doesn’t that piss you off?”
“It doesn’t matter if it pisses me off, Coyne. That’s the thing that guys like Cizek need to remember. Do the job. That’s all. Feelings just get in the way.” He jabbed my shoulder with his forefinger. “You too. You should remember that.”
I nodded. “I guess you’re right.”
At 8:00 A.M. on the day before Labor Day, Joey and a gang of his old high-school friends backed a rented Ryder truck up to Alex’s Marlborough Street apartment. They had her stuff loaded onto the truck by eleven, and by six that afternoon it had all been unloaded into her new place in Garrison, Maine.
We ate takeout pizza and drank sodas on Alex’s deck, and then the boys piled into the truck and headed back for Boston.
Alex and I lingered on the deck. We sipped the housewarming champagne I’d brought and propped our heels up on the railing and watched the color fade from the western sky.
“Your balcony faces east,” she said quietly. “You can watch the sun come up. My deck faces west. I see it set. What do you make of that?”
“It’s probably profoundly significant,” I said. “But damned if I know why.”
“One of these days,” she said a minute or two later, “we’re going to have to figure it out.”
“The significance of east and west?”
“No. What we’re gonna do.”
I reached for her hand. “I can’t just chuck it all,” I said.
She gave my hand a squeeze.
“I’ve got my clients, my friends, my routines. It’s usually not stimulating. But it’s my life.”
“I understand,” she murmured.
“And once in a while I get a—a case. Like Paul Cizek. And it’s stimulating as hell.”
“That’s okay, Brady,” said Alex.
I turned to face her. “I didn’t want to tell you until I’d worked it out,” I said. “I’ll be closing my office on Fridays, beginning in October. It’ll mean working a little harder the rest of the week, at least for awhile. But most of the time I should be able to drive up on Thursday evenings. It’s only two and a half hours.”
“So we’ll have long weekends together?”
“Things might come up,” I said. “But, yes. That’s my goal. Thursday night through Sunday. If that’s okay.”
“And if I have to write in the mornings sometimes, that’s okay with you?”
“There are lots of streams and ponds around here to explore,” I said, “and you’ll have firewood that needs splitting and various domestic chores that will require the attention of a handy person such as I. I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
“It’s not exactly starting over again in Montana,” she murmured.
“Maybe some people can do this sort of thing all at once,” I said. “Paul Cizek tried. He couldn’t make it work. Even Thoreau, when he lived at Walden, kept going home to visit his mother in Concord. I just don’t think it’s that easy, leaving everything behind. Anyway, I know me. I have to feel my way along.”
She leaned toward me and kissed me under the ear. “So how does it feel so far?” she whispered.
“It feels like a commitment,” I said.
“Scary, huh?”
“No,” I said. “Actually, it feels just right.”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Brady Coyne Mysteries
CHAPTER 1
I’D PICKED UP MY Globe at Leon’s store and was bumping over a Maine dirt road on a Saturday morning in late August, taking the long way back to Alex’s house, when I spotted the woman shuffling along up ahead of me. Her head was bent forward and her shoulders were humped over, and she moved painfully slowly. She wore high-top canvas sneakers and a loose-fitting brown dress that hung to her ankles. Sweat made a dark patch between her shoulder blades, and her long black hair was tied loosely back with a pink ribbon.
When I pulled up beside her, I saw that she was hugging a yellow dog against her chest. I stopped and leaned over to the open window on the passenger side of my secondhand Jeep Wrangler. “Can I give you a lift?” I said.
When she turned and lifted her head to look at me, I saw that she had skin the color of dark Maine maple syrup and cheekbones like Lena Horne. I admit I was a bit startled. Stereotypic thinking, maybe. But I didn’t recall ever before seeing an African-American of any description in the western Maine countryside, never mind o
ne who was quite beautiful.
She gazed straight into my eyes. Hers were the color of hot fudge, wide-set and slightly uptilted, with tiny crinkles at the corners. She had a narrow aristocratic nose and a wide mouth. She was, I guessed, around forty.
After a moment of taking my measure, she nodded. “My dog’s sick,” she said softly. “Thank you.” In her voice I heard the hills of western Carolina, or maybe Tennessee, not the sandy back roads of Maine.
I yanked up the emergency brake, got out of the Jeep, and went around to hold the door for her. I braced her elbow and helped her climb in, closed the door, then went around and got behind the wheel.
She was bowing over the dog on her lap, whispering to it. It was about the size of a springer spaniel, a mongrel with a long pointy nose and floppy ears. It lay limply on her lap, panting rapidly with its tongue lolling out and its eyes half closed.
I reached over, patted its head, then touched its nose, which felt dry and hot. I’ve been told that a healthy dog’s nose should be cool and moist, although that may be a myth.
“His name’s Jack,” said the woman. “He’s just a puppy.”
Jack lifted his head and gave my hand a halfhearted lick, then let it fall back onto the woman’s lap. “How long has he been sick?” I said.
She looked up at me. “He started vomiting last night. And he voided right where he lay. He can hardly stand up.”
“You were headed for the vet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s about three miles from here.”
“Yes, sir. I know. I have to get him there.”
I put the Jeep in gear and started up. It was only about seven-thirty on that Saturday morning, but already the oppressive late-summer heat had begun to gather in the piney woods, and the dust that hung over the roadway had smeared on her sweaty forehead. Her pink ribbon had come loose so that her hair hung in damp ringlets around her shoulders.
Close to the Bone Page 20
