Nervous Water

by William G. Tapply

  I told her that he was just collecting a debt, and anyway, Roger Horowitz was not the kind of guy who lingered over lunch no matter who was buying, but after lunch I had an appointment and wouldn’t be back to the office, so she might as well take the afternoon off.

  Julie opened her mouth, then closed it. She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I will.”

  When I got to Marie’s, I looked around the crowded dining room and saw an arm wave from a booth in back. I went over and slid in across from Horowitz. He was talking on his cell phone. He held up a finger at me, mumbled something into the phone, then clicked it off and stuck it in his jacket pocket.

  He craned his neck and looked around, and Sophie, our regular waitress, a dark-eyed business management major at Northeastern, appeared almost instantly at our table. “Ready to order now, guys?”

  Horowitz, of course, ordered the lobster ravioli. I asked for a spinach salad.

  When Sophie left, Horowitz said, “Spinach salad? You turning into some kind of vegetarian freak?”

  I shrugged. “I grilled ribeyes last night, for your information. I happen to like spinach salad. Besides, it’s got bacon in it.”

  He shook his head. “Since Evie came along,” he said, “I hardly know you.”

  “Same old me,” I said. “Maybe marginally healthier.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “and all settled down, verging on henpecked. You still go fishing whenever you want?”

  “I never went fishing whenever I wanted. I want to go fishing all the time. And I’m not henpecked.”

  Sophie put a basket of bread on our table. Horowitz fished out a slice, ripped it in half, poured a little olive oil on his bread plate, swabbed the bread in it, and stuffed it into his mouth.

  I broke off a piece of bread and dipped it in oil for myself. The oil had rosemary and another herb I couldn’t identify in it. I decided I could make a meal on Marie’s bread and oil.

  We talked about the Red Sox until Sophie brought Horowitz’s lobster ravioli and my spinach salad. We ate in silence for a few minutes.

  Then between bites Horowitz said, “You know your cousin is the dentist’s third wife?”

  I nodded. “The previous one died of an asthma attack. He had another one before her who was the mother of his two kids.”

  “Hazen told you about the second one, died in Madison, huh?”

  “Yes. I got the details. Hazen was very cooperative.”

  “He was?”

  I smiled. “He was okay. Answered my questions. He seems to respect you.”

  “You don’t know what happened to the first wife?”

  “She died, too. Hurley has bad luck with wives.”

  He shook his head. “The first wife committed suicide. Hazen didn’t tell you that?”

  “No, he didn’t. Suicide, huh?”

  Horowitz consulted his sheet of notes. “Hurley and his family were living in Arlington at the time. This was back in eighty-four. One Tuesday morning in October after the dentist went off to work and the kids left on the school bus, the wife—her name was Loretta—she closed the garage door, started up her soccer-mom van, sat behind the wheel, and swallowed half a bottle of Valium. The daughter—Rebecca—she found her mother when she got home from school. Called her father. Hurley. The dentist. He went home, then called the cops.”

  “There was an investigation, of course,” I said.

  “We investigate all suicides,” he said. “As you know.”

  “And?”

  “And the ME signed off on it. No question it was a suicide.”

  “Was there a note?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’d it say?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have those kinds of details, Coyne.”

  “So you don’t know why she did it?”

  “Why do most people?”

  “Most people don’t,” I said.

  He smiled. “Depression. Despair. What I understand from reading the studies, it’s more what’s inside their heads than what’s going on in their lives. Bad brain chemistry. Almost anything can set it off.”

  “I’d like to know what set off Loretta Hurley.”

  “Too late to ask her,” he said.

  Sophie cleared away our plates and brought our coffee. We declined dessert.

  “So Hurley’s had three wives,” I said, “and two of them are dead.”

  Horowitz looked at me.

  “At least two,” I said.

  “I didn’t say that,” he said.

  Fifteen

  I walked home from Marie’s through the heavy smoggy city air, and by the time I got there I was drenched in sweat. Henry feigned indifference to my arrival until I fished a Milk-Bone out of the box in the kitchen cabinet. Then he ambled over and sat in front of me and gazed up at me with adoring eyes.

  I opened the back door, and Henry took his Milk-Bone out to the garden. Then I climbed out of my law-office suit, showered, and put on my college-campus outfit—chino pants, light cotton shirt, sneakers.

  By now it was quarter of three. My appointment with Grannie Webster was at four. I figured by the time I walked down Charles Street to the parking garage, picked up my car, and navigated the midweek, midafternoon city traffic, it could take close to an hour to get to Cabot College in Brookline. It was only over on the other side of the city, but there were no shortcuts to Brookline. No matter how you went, there were traffic lights and taxicabs and delivery trucks and commuting automobiles evacuating the city.

  I snagged a bottle of water from the refrigerator and went out back. Henry was lying on the cool flagstones in the shade of the picnic table, watching a downy woodpecker hammer at the suet feeder.

  “You want to come with me?” I said to him.

  His raised his head and perked up his ears and stared at me, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t hesitate. He scrambled to his feet, trotted to the back door, and pushed at it with his nose.

  I didn’t know if Grantham Webster liked dogs. But I was pretty sure he’d like Henry.

  I overestimated the time it would take to get there. Typical. I’ve squandered many weeks of my life sitting in my car waiting for the time of an appointment to arrive because, to be on the safe side, I’d given myself an extra fifteen or twenty minutes that I didn’t need just in case I had a flat tire or ran into a detour.

  I pulled into the visitors’ parking lot next to the Student Services building at Cabot College a little after three thirty. The campus, if anything, appeared more deserted than it had been the previous day. This time there were just two other cars in the lot.

  I let Henry out and told him he could run around if he wanted provided he stayed close and came when I called him. He gave me his look that meant “You got it, boss,” and proceeded to squirt on every shrub and tree trunk he could find.

  I followed the diagonal pathway across the rolling green lawn to the building that housed the Cabot College English Department, and when I got there I called Henry in and told him to heel.

  The English building, like the rest of the campus, was hushed and apparently deserted. We climbed the stairs to the second floor and turned down the corridor to Webster’s office.

  His door was half open, and I could see that he was seated in his high-backed desk chair facing his computer with his back to the doorway, just as he had been the first time I was there.

  I rapped lightly on the door and said, “Mr. Webster? Grannie? I know I’m early. If you’re busy, I can wait.”

  I noticed that the computer screen that he was looking at was blank. Odd.

  I pushed the door open, stepped in, and said, “Hey, Grannie, are you okay? I can—”

  And that’s when, more or less simultaneously, Henry growled, I sensed a movement beside me, something hard smashed against the back of my skull, a sudden piston of fiery pain slammed through my brain and into my eyes, and Henry yelped. The room swirled around m
e, and I stumbled and fell forward, and I banged my forehead against something hard on the way down.

  Behind my eyes a white light flashed with the suddenness of an explosion, followed instantly by a sharp, jarring, echoing pain in the center of my brain. Then the light dimmed into a kind of pink afterglow, and my brain turned to cottony fuzz.

  My cheek lay on the scratchy carpet. I didn’t want to breathe. I knew it would hurt too much.

  I was aware of movement near me. Then something hard pressed against the back of my head. I wanted to pull away from it, but I had no will to move.

  I heard the unmistakable snick of a revolver’s hammer being cocked next to my ear.

  I could only wait.

  Then the pressure of the gun barrel went away.

  A minute later I heard the door close.

  The next thing I knew I was lying facedown on the carpet with both the front and the back of my head throbbing and Henry licking my cheek.

  I touched my forehead. My hand came away with blood on it.

  I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, tried to shake the dizziness out of my head, and crawled over so I could sit back against the wall. I closed my eyes against the pounding pain in my head, and when I did, my stomach churned. I opened my eyes and forced them to focus on a painting on the wall. I took a deep breath and swallowed back the bile that kept surging up in my throat.

  Henry lay down beside me and plopped his chin on my lap. He looked up at me with worried eyes. I patted his head and he turned up his face to lick my hand.

  I noticed that the wooden chair in front of the desk had tipped over onto its side. That, I guessed, was what I’d hit when I fell forward.

  I wondered, vaguely, how Grannie Webster had moved so fast from behind his desk that he could whack me on the head when I stepped into his office. Come to think of it, why would he want to hit me? And why hadn’t he pulled the trigger when he had his gun pressed against my head? Okay, I was early for our appointment, but…

  I wasn’t thinking straight, I realized that.

  Then I noticed that Webster was still sitting in his chair looking at his blank computer screen.

  I pushed myself to my feet. My head began to spin. I took a gulp of air and steadied myself against the wall until the dizziness passed. Then I went around the desk to where Webster was seated.

  He was slouched in his chair with his chin on his chest. A splotch of red the size of a tea saucer glistened on the front of his shirt.

  Oh, shit.

  I knelt in front of him. His eyes were open and unblinking. I pressed two fingers against the side of his neck. There was no pulse.

  I touched the blood on his shirt with my fingertip. It came away wet.

  My head still throbbed, but my mind, suddenly, was very clear.

  I fished my handkerchief from my pocket, used it to pick up Webster’s desk phone, and called 911. When the woman answered, I said, “My name is Brady Coyne. I’m at Cabot College. The English department building, second floor, office number 203. A man is dead. Grantham Webster’s his name. He’s a professor here.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “He was shot in the chest. I couldn’t find a pulse. His eyes are open. I’ve seen dead people before.”

  “Okay, sir,” she said. “You wait there, please. Don’t touch anything. This is an office, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wait outside in the hallway, then. Somebody will be there right away.”

  “This happened recently,” I said. “The blood is still wet.”

  “Right,” she said. “Sit tight.”

  I replaced the phone on its cradle and went out to the hallway. Henry followed behind me. I noticed that he was favoring his left hind leg. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, and Henry sat beside me. I moved my fingers over his left leg and hip, and when I touched a spot on his upper joint, he flinched and yelped. There was a little swelling there. I prodded around gently. Henry looked at me and whined, then turned his head and licked my hand where I was touching him.

  The son of a bitch must have kicked Henry. Hit me on the head, okay. Fair enough. But you better not kick my dog.

  I fished out my cell phone and dialed the secret number that Roger Horowitz had given me. It was his cell phone number, and he’d admonished me to use it only in emergencies. He’d made it clear that it was a great honor and privilege to be made privy to this special phone number, and I better not abuse it.

  He answered with a growl. “What?”

  “It’s Coyne,” I said. “Got a homicide for you. Guy was shot in the chest, and not very long ago.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Cabot College. It’s in Brookline. English Department building, second floor. I called 911 already. Guy’s name is Grantham Webster. Cassie Crandall’s ex-boyfriend. I had an appointment with him at four. He said he expected to have some news for me. I got here early, and he was dead when I got here. Whoever did it was still here. Whacked me on the head and kicked Henry and thought about shooting me but didn’t. He got away.”

  “He kicked Henry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bastard,” muttered Horowitz. “Don’t suppose you saw who it was, huh?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t see anything.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  I looked at my watch. It was ten after four. “Fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”

  “It took that long for you to call it in?”

  “I was out for a minute. Then I was, um, groggy. Disoriented. Still am a little.”

  “Well, shit,” he said.

  He was thinking that in fifteen or twenty minutes, whoever had shot Grannie and hit me would be long gone.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Yeah, good,” said Horowitz. “If the local cops get there before me, just tell ’em what happened and they should wait for me. I’m on my way.”

  As it turned out, three or four uniformed Brookline cops plus a middle-aged woman with an automatic weapon holstered on her hip and a badge on her belt, who I assumed was a local detective; two EMTs pushing a collapsible gurney; Roger Horowitz and Marcia Benetti, his partner; and two people from the medical examiner’s office all arrived at the same time about ten minutes later—a dozen or so people hustling down the narrow carpeted corridor.

  They all stopped outside Webster’s office door where Henry and I were sitting. Everyone looked at Horowitz. This was a homicide, and the state police were in charge.

  He took one look at me and said, “Somebody attend to this man.”

  One of the EMTs, a Will Smith look-alike who told me his name was Arthur, knelt beside me, took my blood pressure, listened to my heart and lungs, shone a miniature flashlight in my eyes, asked me my name and what day it was and who was the current president of the United States. He swabbed the wound on the back of my head and the gash on my forehead with something that stung like hell, then bandaged both places.

  “You’ve got a hard head, sir,” said Arthur.

  “Yes,” I said. “People keep telling me that.”

  He smiled. “How do you feel?”

  “Not that bad. A little dizzy. My head hurts.”

  He nodded. “You got a couple nice bumps. How’d you manage to get two bumps, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “Somebody hit me on the back of the head. I fell forward and I guess I smashed my forehead on the chair or the desk or something.”

  “They bled quite a bit,” said Arthur. “I put some butterflies on the one on your forehead. You’ll probably end up with a scar. You might want to get stitches.”

  I touched my forehead. A bandage ran from my hairline diagonally down toward my left eye. “I guess it’ll be all right,” I said.

  “I don’t think you got a concussion,” he said. “Still, wouldn’t be a bad idea to get you to the hospital.”

  “No hospital,” I said. “I’m fine.”
r />   The EMT shrugged. “Up to you,” he said. He looked at Henry. “Your dog okay?”

  “I think he got kicked,” I said. “Left hind leg, up on his hip.”

  He scratched Henry’s forehead. “How you doin’, poochie?”

  “His name’s Henry,” I said. “He doesn’t like being called a pooch. He’s a purebred Brittany.”

  “Sorry.” Arthur fingered Henry’s leg, which elicited a soft whine, then looked up at me. “Just a contusion, I’d say. I’m no vet, but I don’t think anything’s broken. When you get home, give him an aspirin.” He patted Henry’s head, stood up, and smiled. “You’ll want some aspirin, too.” Then he turned and went into Webster’s office.

  A minute later Marcia Benetti came out of the office and scooched down beside me. “Roger wants me to babysit you until he’s ready to talk to you.”

  “I don’t need babysitting,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She cocked her head and frowned at me. “Listen, are you okay?”

  “Me? Sure. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “People tell me that all the time.”

  The team from the ME’s office, a paunchy man wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a younger Asian woman with two cameras around her neck, were waiting outside the office door. Horowitz and the Brookline officer were inside with the EMTs.

  The uniformed local cops, I assumed, had been dispersed to search the building and to secure the perimeter of the crime scene.

  A short time later, the EMTs came out of the office. Horowitz poked his head out and said something to the ME and his partner, and they went inside.

  The EMTs headed down the corridor and disappeared around the corner. Going outside for a smoke, maybe.

  “You’ve been with Horowitz how long now?” I said to Benetti.

  “Five and a half years,” she said.

  “That has to be a record for him.”

  She smiled. “He’s a grouchy bastard, but he’s the best. We get along. We’ve worked it out.”

  Flashbulbs were going off in Grantham Webster’s office. Marcia Benetti sat on the floor beside me. Henry slept between us. She absentmindedly stroked his back.