Irish Parade Murder

by Leslie Meier

  Whatever happens, she told herself, don’t get out of the car. It was her only protection from her pursuer. Heart pounding, her hands gripping the wheel, she waited for the driver to step out of the squad car. The flasher lit up the area around the two vehicles in a rhythmically pulsing blue light, one moment bright as day, the next complete darkness. It dazzled and confused her, and prevented her from seeing inside the squad car. Its driver’s-side door was away from her, and she didn’t see the driver exit the car; the sheriff seemed to materialize out of thin air right next to her car door. He seemed huge, looming above her seated position, standing only inches from the car.

  “Step out of the vehicle,” he said, his voice muffled by the closed window but audible.

  “There’s no need. I’m not going anywhere,” said Lucy, raising her voice to be heard. “Call nine-one-one for me.”

  “You’re resisting arrest,” warned the sheriff. “I’d be within my rights to use force.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” said Lucy. “I’m not resisting arrest. I accepted your escort and was driving to the Tinker’s Cove Police Department when you swerved ahead of me and caused this accident.”

  “I’m warning you. Get out of the car, and raise your hands above your head.”

  Lucy stared straight ahead, mute and still, like a frightened rabbit.

  The sheriff bent down and pressed his face close to the glass window. “I’ve got all night,” he snarled. “You can’t get away. We might as well get this over with.”

  “Is this how you dealt with Gabe McGourt?” she asked. “Did you pull him over? He probably figured he didn’t have anything to fear from you, so he would have pulled off the road, figuring you were going to have a nice, friendly chat. But you were two steps ahead of him; you knew he was guilt-stricken about killing Melanie, so you decided it was too dangerous to keep him around. He was slipping away from you, getting out from under your control. What if he confessed? Then the whole cover-up would be exposed, and you’d be finished.”

  “Gabe was killed in a terrible accident when his truck was booby-trapped by Rob Callahan,” said the sheriff.

  “Rob is innocent. You’re the killer. You killed him and set his truck on fire to cover up the evidence. It worked; there wasn’t enough of him left to determine a cause of death, and you had a handy fall guy in Rob Callahan, the new guy in town.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Nonsense. It’s well known the two were rivals for Rosie Capshaw’s affection.”

  “Not according to Rosie,” said Lucy. Her attention was caught by a gleam of light in the rearview mirror, and she realized it came from her house, up there on top of Red Top Hill. She hadn’t gotten very far at all before the sheriff stopped her. From the yellowish cast, she thought it must be the bug light on the porch, the light they left on all night for kids coming home late, to welcome friends, and for anyone in need of help.

  Playing the rabbit wasn’t working for her, she decided. It certainly hadn’t worked for the rabbit she’d spotted on the lawn a few days ago, frozen in place as a red-tailed hawk swooped down and grabbed it in its talons, carrying it away.

  The sheriff’s radio was cackling, and he shifted his weight uneasily, aware that failing to respond would cause concern back at the department. “Get out now,” he growled, reaching for his gun.

  It was now or never, decided Lucy. She had to act. Grabbing the door handle, she flipped the lock and threw all her strength into the door, slamming it into the sheriff’s gut and knocking the gun out of his hand. She caught a glimpse of him scrabbling around to retrieve it as she ran as fast and hard as she could, running for her life, not looking behind her. She could hear him grunting and groaning, his feet thumping on the blacktop. She tried to zig and zag, fearing that he would shoot her in the back, and praying that he was smart enough to know that the sound of a shot would alert the neighborhood.

  She was breathing hard, her chest hurt, and her legs were cramping as she fought her way uphill, but she kept on, one foot at a time, inching closer to home and safety. Her eyes were fixed on the yellow light, and she began yelling—yelling for help. It was then that she hit a muddy patch and began to slip, and the next thing she knew, she was flat on her face. Her hands stung, her shoulder was on fire, she was completely winded and couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t get up.

  The sheriff was grabbing her arm, attempting to lift her, and she shrieked in pain. He didn’t stop; he grabbed her harder and pulled her to her feet, attempting to pull her hands behind her back to cuff her. She twisted and wriggled; she kicked his shins, she spat in his face. He whacked her with a baton, and she fell to her knees, unable to resist. Every part of her hurt; she was struggling to breathe, and he was on top of her, pushing her onto the tarmac. Her cheek was pressed against the filthy, gravelly road, and her vision was blurry, but she could still see the yellow light, her porch light, glowing steadily. “I’m coming home,” she whispered, as he yanked her to her feet, hooked his arm around her waist, and began dragging her back to his car.

  Her only defense was to adopt passive resistance, making herself a dead weight. He was panting, struggling, and sweating despite the cold temperature, when he was suddenly illuminated by a spotlight. “Drop your weapon and release the woman,” ordered a familiar voice. It was Barney’s; she’d know it anywhere.

  “It’s okay,” protested the sheriff. “I’m Sheriff Murphy, and I’m arresting a perpetrator . . .”

  “Drop the gun and release the woman,” repeated Barney. “You’re under arrest.”

  “There’s been a misunderstanding . . .” The sheriff let go of her, and Lucy dropped to the ground. He instinctively reached for his holster, finding it empty, and a single shot rang out, a warning. Realizing he had no other option, Murphy raised his hands over his head.

  He was immediately apprehended by Officer Todd Kirwan, who had him neatly cuffed in a few seconds. “You have the right to remain silent . . .” he began, walking him back to the car.

  Barney Culpepper was attending to Lucy, cautioning her not to move and reassuring her that the EMTs were moments away.

  “How?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

  “Your phone.”

  “Dropped . . .”

  “You must’ve hit nine-one-one because it picked up everything. We were on the way right from the get-go.”

  She could hear the siren; the ambulance was coming. Far down the road, the yellow light was still burning, and a figure was running down the hill. It was Bill, she realized, as her eyes closed and she slipped into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  Sometime later, after she’d been x-rayed and IV’d and given painkillers, she was comfortably tucked under a heated blanket in the emergency room at the Tinker’s Cove Cottage Hospital. Bill was beside her, holding one of her bandaged hands and apologizing profusely.

  “I saw the blue lights and figured it was a traffic stop, one of those speeders that go roaring by all the time. I never dreamed it had anything to do with you. But then I heard more sirens and thought it must be an accident, so I decided to see what was going on down there at the bottom of the hill. I thought it might be one of the neighbors and maybe I could help. But then I saw your car hung up in the woods, and I thought you’d managed to crash the SUV . . .”

  “I’m a good driver,” protested Lucy.

  “Yeah, but things happen. Could’ve been a deer or a moose and you swerved to avoid it.”

  “If only. It was terrifying.” She shuddered at the memory of the sheriff’s leering face, pressed against the car window. “You can see evil. I saw it in his eyes.”

  “I should’ve got off my butt sooner. I can’t believe this was all happening to you on our own road.”

  “I could see the porch light. It gave me hope.”

  “I should’ve realized it was you. I saw the blue lights right after you left the house.”

  “It’s okay, Bill.”

  “You forgive me?”

&nbs
p; Lucy was saved from answering by the arrival of Todd and Barney, both holding their caps in their hands. They shook hands with Bill, then turned to Lucy.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Barney.

  “I’m pretty drugged up,” she confessed. “Feeling no pain.”

  “And no broken bones,” added Bill.

  “Just soft-tissue damage, which is just as painful.” She sighed. “But I’m grateful to be alive, which I wouldn’t be if you hadn’t come when you did.”

  “We owe you guys a big debt,” said Bill, his voice breaking.

  “We’re the ones who owe Lucy,” said Todd, twirling his hat. “We’d been investigating the sheriff. The DA was getting a lot of complaints about him, but we could never get anybody who was willing to testify. They wouldn’t even file an official complaint; they were too afraid of him. We finally got the break we needed yesterday. The ME found a bullet lodged in Gabe McGourt’s spine, and it matched the sheriff’s handgun. I was actually on the phone with DA Aucoin working out how to arrest Murphy when your nine-one-one call came in. It was all we needed. The problem was getting to you fast enough.”

  “In the nick of time,” said Lucy, smiling. “It was great hearing Barney’s voice coming out of nowhere.”

  “I wanted to kill him,” admitted Barney. “When I saw him mauling you like that, I wanted to beat him to a pulp.”

  “There’s nothing I hate more than a crooked cop,” said Todd. “We’re entrusted with so much power—life and death sometimes—and we need to respect it. Our job is to protect people, pure and simple. To serve.”

  “Yeah.” Barney nodded. “That’s the motto on our shields, and it means to serve the people, the citizens, not ourselves.”

  “So you have an open-and-shut case against Murphy?” asked Bill. “Because I can see him getting some fancy lawyer, and next thing you know he’s back on the job.”

  “Believe me, the DA is going to work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Todd. “And now that he’s been arrested, I think people will get braver about coming forward. He was operating a pay-to-play system, and everybody knew it. If you applied for a job, you were advised to make a donation to the Sheriff’s Benevolent Fund. It was supposed to provide help for widows and the orphans of department employees, but it mostly went to Murphy. There were also compulsory donations taken from the paychecks of department personnel, and he collected ‘supervisory fees’ whenever the prisoners went out on a work detail. He even got a kickback from his admin, Nora. The money just poured into his pockets, and now he’s going to have to account for it all.” He turned to Barney. “But the worst crime, of course, was killing Gabe McGourt. We’ve got the physical evidence. What we don’t have is the motive.”

  Lucy’s eyes were closing, but hearing this, she rallied. “Gabe felt bad about killing Melanie Wall and wanted to confess.”

  Todd saw the implications right away. “And that would have revealed the sheriff’s involvement in a cover-up.”

  Lucy managed a nod before her head began to droop.

  “We should go,” said Barney. “Lucy looks like she’s having trouble keeping her eyes open.”

  “Yeah, she’s going to spend the night, just as a precaution,” said Bill.

  “Well, take good care of her,” said Barney, clapping Bill on the shoulder.

  “I will,” promised Bill, but Lucy didn’t hear him. She was already fast asleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lucy was still pretty fuzzy-headed the next morning when she was released from the Tinker’s Cove Cottage Hospital and Sara came to take her home.

  “You’re all over the news,” Sara told her, as she helped her mother with her jacket. Lucy’s injured arm was in a sling, so she could only use one sleeve; the other hung empty. She couldn’t zip the jacket because of the sling, but Sara was able to fasten a few buttons at the top and bottom. “This will have to do. Good thing it’s not too cold out today.”

  “Are there reporters outside?” asked Lucy, aware that she didn’t look her best. Her face was swollen from the cuts and scratches, she had a black eye, and her hair was a mess.

  “There was a WCVB truck here when I came,” said Sara, going over to the window, “but it’s gone now. Your fifteen minutes of fame must be up.”

  Lucy glanced at the clock on the wall, which read a few minutes past ten. “They’re over in Gilead, for the arraignment. It’s big news when a sheriff is arraigned on murder charges.”

  Sara sighed. “Yeah, but will he actually go to trial? And if he does, will the jury actually find him guilty? Seems to me these guys always manage to get off. Cops hardly ever get convicted.”

  Lucy looked out the window at the milky sky and the bare trees, their branches like skeletons. “I’ll testify,” she said.

  “Do you think they’ll believe you? You’re part of the fake news.”

  Lucy looked at her daughter, struck by the fact that she was so cynical at such a young age. “Things are going to change, I really believe it. People are going to demand an end to corruption and abuse of power, in this county anyway.”

  “We’ll see,” said Sara, picking up her mother’s big bag. “Gee, this is heavy. What’ve you got in here?”

  “My life’s in that bag,” said Lucy, suddenly panicking. “My phone—is my phone in there?”

  Sara looked, rummaging through the contents. “No.”

  “I’ll bet they took it for evidence,” said Lucy. “I’ll need a new one. We can stop on the way home . . .”

  “Later.” Sara was firm. “There’ll be plenty of time for that. Right now, you need to get home and rest.”

  “Not without a phone.”

  Sara sighed, yanking the string on the call button to summon a nurse. “Okay, okay. I’ll get one of those cheap burners for you.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. Now let’s get you home.”

  “Okay,” said Lucy, willing for once to let her daughter take charge. With conditions, to be sure—but actually she was grateful for Sara’s bossiness.

  The nurse arrived and insisted, over Lucy’s protests, that she had to be transported by wheelchair to the exit, where Sara would be waiting in the car. “That’s how we do it,” she said, making it clear that there was no point in arguing. Lucy shrugged and sat in the chair, while Sara went ahead to fetch the car.

  The elevator was slow, so when the automatic lobby doors slid open, Sara was just pulling up in her aged Corolla. The nurse pushed Lucy’s wheelchair right up to the car and insisted on taking her arm and helping her seat herself in the passenger seat. She shut the door and tapped the car, indicating it was okay to go and waving as they drove off.

  “What a lot of fuss,” fumed Lucy. “I’m perfectly able to walk. It’s my arm that’s hurt.”

  “It’s because of insurance,” said Sara, with a naughty grin. “Don’t think they really care about you.”

  Somewhat chastened, Lucy found herself tearing up. “I’m glad to be alive, I was really scared. The cops and the EMTs and the nurses—they were all terrific.”

  “I know, Mom,” said Sara, her voice breaking as she gave her mother’s hand a squeeze. “I don’t want to even think about what could have happened.”

  The sun went behind a little cloud, and the day darkened, and Lucy’s spirits plummeted. “Why didn’t your dad pick me up?” she asked.

  “Oh, because Gram came home, first thing this morning, all upset. I guess she and Kate had some sort of falling out.”

  Lucy found herself perking up. “Really?”

  “Yeah. It happened just when the hospital called and said you were ready to go home, so Dad sent me. He and Gram were going at it when I left.”

  “So is she mad at Dad or at Kate?”

  “I don’t know.” Sara braked for the traffic light on Main Street. “I think both of them.”

  Lucy mulled over the possibilities as they continued on their way. Edna wasn’t usually one to make a fuss; if anything, she was too
passive having spent most of her life with a loving but somewhat overbearing and authoritative husband. Everything in their household revolved around Bill Sr. and his comfort: Nobody ever sat in his recliner or attempted to touch the TV remote, meals were provided on his timetable, and menus never included broccoli or what he termed “weird stuff” like kale or quinoa. In other words, thought Lucy, Edna had really been more of a servant than an equal partner, albeit a willing one. So it was rather difficult to imagine what had finally set her off. Had Kate gone too far, perhaps inquiring about her income or savings? That was the sort of thing Edna would have found intrusive. Or had she resented Bill’s concern for her, believing he was trying to stifle her and control her just as she was finally trying her wings?

  Those were her thoughts as they drove along Route 1, but when they turned onto Red Top Road she had a sudden panic attack. “That’s where it happened,” she said, spotting bits of crime-scene tape tied around a few trees. “I drive by this spot every day,” she added. “I’m going to have to relive the whole nightmare.”

  Sara slowed the car. “It was a nightmare, but one you survived, Mom. You’re a strong woman. You’ll be fine.”

  Lucy turned away from the scene of the accident and looked up the hill, where their house stood tall, with its peaked roof and towering chimney. It was a safe haven, with strong walls that protected them from hurricanes and blizzards. It was a place where she and Bill had created a loving family, supporting each other and their children from physical danger and emotional slings and arrows, too. “I can’t wait to get home,” she said.

  “We’re almost there,” said Sara, as they climbed the last few feet to the top of the hill and turned into the drive.

  “Uh-oh,” said Lucy, spotting Kate’s rental car parked at an odd angle in the driveway and perking up. “This should be interesting.”

  When they stepped inside the kitchen, Sara and Lucy could hear raised voices coming from the family room. Their eyes met while Sara helped Lucy out of her jacket; then they went straight through to the next room, where Bill was waving a paper in front of Kate’s face. Edna was sitting on the sectional sofa, her arms wrapped across her chest, looking small and stricken, with Zoe beside her. She made room for Lucy, who took her place and wrapped her good arm around her mother-in-law’s shoulder.