Haunted Hearts

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “Yeah, well now I’ve got somethin’ to tell Ronnie when she gets home.” Ollie turned back to the television. “You and Donovan making like a couple of drunken cowboys right there on Berkeley Street. Wait’ll Ronnie hears about that.”

  McGuire said the words without thinking, as though they had been set in a trap, and Ollie had pulled the trip wire. “Ronnie’s not coming home tonight.” He watched Ollie’s reaction from the door, surprised at his own words. I’ve been wanting to say them for a week, he thought.

  “What the hell’re you talking about?”

  “She’s not coming home tonight, Ollie. She told me in a note she left on the table. She’ll be here in the morning and she’s going to tell you where she’s been all these other nights. And with whom.”

  McGuire watched Ollie swallow, watched his mouth work as though he were chewing around fish bones. “Get out of here,” he said.

  “Ollie, it’s true . . .” McGuire began.

  “Get out of here!” Ollie’s voice was a rasp, a cry of rage muted by his inability to rise and strike out.

  “You want to talk?”

  “I want you out of here! Out of my house! Get out!”

  McGuire walked slowly down the hall. He’s known all along, he realized. In one small corner of his mind, the truth has been there all along, begging him to look at it, and he hasn’t been able to see it until now.

  He lay on the bed in his room, still dressed, watching his mind leap back and forth between the events of the day, from the probable murder of Orin Flanigan to the explicit infidelity of Ronnie Schantz.

  Donovan said Flanigan had been struck on the head. Flanigan’s car was left in a public place twenty miles from the river. And the body had been in the water for several days.

  Then: Ollie knows about Ronnie. He’s lying down there, unable to move, unable to hit the wall or even get drunk, for Christ’s sake.

  What the hell happened? McGuire asked himself. Something happened to send things out of control, and I don’t know what it was, don’t even know when it happened.

  He recalled Susan Schaeffer in the Harvard Yard church that afternoon. He remembered the expression on her face as the waves of organ music washed over her and the trees moved in the breeze beyond the windows. He saw her there now, imagined himself with her, and the image relaxed him, soothed him. There was a sense of past tragedy about her that haunted McGuire, and he wanted to know, needed to know, the secret of her sadness. Everybody’s daily sadness.

  He glanced at the clock radio; it was over two hours since he left Ollie. Had he fallen asleep?

  He rose from the bed, walked to the top of the stairs, and listened. He heard nothing. He walked downstairs and along the darkened hall. A sliver of light shone beneath Ollie’s door. McGuire pushed it open to find Ollie staring at him.

  “I thought I told you to get out,” Ollie said in a voice like cardboard, flat and gray.

  “You want me out, I’m out.”

  “How long’ve you known?”

  “For sure? About a week.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Her art teacher.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “How long’ve you known?”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “You had to be kidding yourself. You had to wonder about all those times she wasn’t here when she said she’d be.”

  “I just . . .” Ollie moved his head, avoiding McGuire’s eyes. “Ronnie’s never had much time on her own. It’s either been me chasing my ass around town with you, and she’s back here hopin’ I’m not wearin’ a body bag the next time she sees me, or it’s been me lyin’ in this bed like a friggin’ piece of dead meat, with her spending all her time keepin’ me clean and fed. So when she got out and started her painting class, it made me feel good, made me feel not so guilty . . .”

  “You hate her?”

  “What kind of question is that? Goddamn right I hate her. I’d like to rip her head off. His too.”

  “And mine?”

  “You got in my way and I could, maybe I would.” He avoided McGuire’s eyes again. “Maybe I would.”

  “You want something to help you sleep?”

  “Yeah, a thirty-eight slug in my fuckin’ head.”

  “What do you want me to do?” When Ollie refused to answer, McGuire stepped closer to the bed. “Ollie, you have to deal with it. She’s going to make you deal with it. So what do you want me to do? You want me to be here when she gets home?”

  Ollie closed his eyes. Cry, goddamn it, McGuire wanted to say, but no tears came. “Leave us alone when she gets here. Maybe later, maybe afterwards, we’ll talk. You and me. And her, if she’s still here, and she wants to.”

  “She didn’t say she’d leave, Ollie.”

  Ollie whispered something, his eyes still closed.

  “What?” McGuire asked, leaning even closer.

  “I said she already has.”

  McGuire stood up. “You want the light off?” and when Ollie refused to answer, McGuire flicked the switch and climbed the stairs again.

  A soft click wakened him, and he lay in the darkness, holding his breath until he heard the front door open and close gently. He glanced at the clock radio, where the numerals 5:47 glowed, and he listened to Ronnie’s footsteps walking down the hall to Ollie’s room and returning to the foyer, where the bottom step of the stairs creaked with her weight.

  He opened the door just as she reached the stair landing.

  “Hello,” she said, as though she expected to greet him there.

  “Is he sleeping?” McGuire asked. In the dim light he could see she was without makeup.

  “Yes.”

  “I told him.”

  “Did you?” As though McGuire had told her what he had eaten for dinner the previous night.

  “Are you surprised?”

  “I’m surprised it took you so long. To tell him.”

  “Do you want me to stay? Be here when he wakes up?”

  “No, I don’t.” She resumed walking, across the landing towards her bedroom. “This is between Ollie and me. It has always been between Ollie and me.”

  McGuire returned to bed, rose at seven, showered, and dressed in a sweater, slacks, and tweed jacket. Downstairs, about to leave, he paused at the front door, hearing the sounds from Ollie’s room. A soft voice speaking. Another voice crying.

  He stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

  Over eggs, toast, and coffee at a Boylston Street diner he read the Globe’s account of Orin Flanigan’s death, describing him as a prominent local lawyer. The body had been discovered by two street people searching the riverbank for discarded soft-drink bottles. Police suspected foul play. Orin Flanigan was survived by his wife, Nancy. A daughter, Wendy, had predeceased him. Results of an autopsy would be revealed today. Funeral plans were pending.

  There was nothing in the story about Flanigan’s rented car being located so far from the body. McGuire thought about that, and about Flanigan’s unopened luggage in the trunk. There was something important about it all, something he knew would elude Donovan. Donovan had elbowed and kissed his way to full lieutenant. The elbowing had pushed aside less-aggressive colleagues who were slow to seek credit for their achievements; the kissing had been directed towards Eddie Vance in the form of flattery and an inclination for performing the dirty work that Vance preferred to avoid. Donovan knew the politics of his job better than anyone McGuire had ever met. He was blind, however, to other aspects, like the ability to see beneath the surface of things. McGuire remembered Oscar Wilde’s observation that, while many were lying in the gutter, some were looking at the stars. No matter where Donovan may be lying, McGuire suspected, he would never think of looking at the stars.

  It was almost ten when he reached the law office. Secretaries and junior lawyers stood in small knots, ma
ny of the women with their eyes red-rimmed from crying, all of the men with stricken, ashen faces. When he called Richard Pinnington’s office, the secretary informed him that Pinnington was in a meeting with the senior partners and had left instructions not to be disturbed for any reason.

  McGuire made coffee, drank half a cup, tried to read some staff reports, finished none of them, and finally left his office to climb the stairs to the executive floor.

  Someone was sorting papers at Lorna’s desk, a middle-aged woman McGuire did not recognize. “Yes?” she said when McGuire paused in front of Lorna’s desk.

  “Who are you?” McGuire said.

  “I’m filling in for Ms. Robbins,” the woman said. “From a temp service.”

  “Lorna’s not in?” McGuire said.

  The woman pointed with a pencil towards Orin Flanigan’s office. “I believe Ms. Robbins is in there,” she said. “With some police officers. Detectives, actually.”

  “I’ll wait,” McGuire said, and he sat on one of the side chairs. The woman looked at him with disapproval for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders and resumed her work.

  Within minutes, Lorna Robbins emerged, clutching a handkerchief. She was followed by Donovan, a younger, round-faced detective McGuire didn’t recognize, and two uniformed officers carrying cardboard boxes stuffed with files. The younger detective held what appeared to be a black leather-bound address book in his hands.

  At the sight of McGuire, Lorna veered towards the desk and stood staring at the telephone.

  Donovan thrust his hands in his trouser pockets and looked back and forth between Lorna and McGuire. “Hey, Burnell, look at this,” he said to his younger partner. “See, this is what happens to cops, they act like assholes too often. They lose half their pension, so they gotta take work as a hired hand for a bunch of ambulance chasers.” He looked over at Burnell, who was watching McGuire with an expression that said the young detective was as indifferent to Donovan’s taunts as McGuire appeared to be. “’Course, you get in a place like this, you get a few side benefits if you want ’em.”

  McGuire looked across at Lorna, who was stroking the telephone receiver with her fingertips.

  The temporary secretary seated at Lorna’s desk continued shuffling files, absorbing everything she heard.

  “How are you doing?” McGuire asked Lorna.

  “She’s doing all right, and you’re not to speak to her,” Donovan said.

  McGuire rose from the chair and took a step towards Lorna. Donovan moved between them.

  “I want to see you, McGuire,” he said. “At Berkeley Street. You want to bring a lawyer, bring one. But you’ll need more than one of these corporate-law types.”

  “I’m not a suspect and you damn well know it,” McGuire said.

  “Not up to you to decide.”

  “You want to ask me questions, ask me now.”

  “When I’m ready.” Donovan looked at his watch. “And I’ll be ready about three this afternoon. So be there.”

  “The hell I will,” McGuire said.

  Donovan smiled, and McGuire was surprised not to see ice crystals on his teeth. “Oh, you’ll be there. I’m bettin’ you’ll be there.” He rested his hand lightly against Lorna’s back. “You ready, Ms. Robbins?”

  Lorna nodded and, still avoiding McGuire’s eyes, permitted Donovan to guide her across the reception area, followed by the other detective and the two police officers, who struggled with their boxes of files.

  Instead of returning to his office, McGuire took the elevator down to street level and walked up to the Common, where he found a cast-iron bench below the rise leading to the State House. He sat there for almost an hour, staring out towards the Frog Pond and the Public Garden beyond, aware that his subconscious was shaking out much of what it had accumulated in the past two days, separating it in a sieve-like manner. But when he rose to return to the law office, nothing new was evident to him yet, and he told himself to give it time, give it all time.

  The light on McGuire’s telephone was flashing when he returned to his office, indicating a message on his voice mail.

  “Come up and see me, soon as you can,” Richard Pinnington’s voice growled through the receiver. McGuire made a pot of coffee, drank a cup black while staring at the wall over his desk, and finally, twenty minutes after entering his office, climbed the elegant central staircase again, and walked down the carpeted hall to Pinnington’s office.

  Pinnington was in shirtsleeves, seated at his desk, with the harbour behind him shining in the September sun. Across from him, sitting upright in their chairs with pads of lined yellow paper on their laps, were Charles Pratt and Fred King, the firm’s two senior partners. Pratt, a descendant of one of the firm’s founders, who practiced corporate law, was a thin, gaunt man, who reminded McGuire of a stork. King was round-faced and boyish in appearance, and specialized in trademark registrations. McGuire wondered how someone could devote their entire career to judging the legality of something as inconsequential as a trademark, even if it meant earning an annual salary of a half-million dollars or more. King threw McGuire a tight smile. Pratt glanced at him, then down at a pad filled with neat handwriting.

  “Been waiting for you,” Pinnington said. “You know Charlie and Fred.”

  McGuire nodded at the two men. “Got the right man for the job,” Fred King said, and the tight smile reappeared.

  “Don’t know if he’ll take it,” Charlie Pratt said in a scratchy voice. He had thin gray hair and bony hands, whose transparent skin revealed a network of blue veins.

  “Close the door, will you?” Pinnington said.

  McGuire closed the door, returned to the group, and seated himself in the remaining empty chair next to Pinnington’s desk.

  “You want a drink?” Pinnington asked. He gestured towards his sideboard, where crystal decanters with brass medallions saying Scotch, Rye, Cognac, and Vodka sat among matching crystal tumblers.

  McGuire shook his head.

  “Good man,” Fred King said. “You’re drinking alone, Dick.”

  Pinnington grunted, set aside a half-empty glass, and looked at his notepad like an actor taking a last reading of his lines before the curtain rises. “The police have seized some of Orin’s files,” he said.

  McGuire was about to say he already knew, but held back.

  “We might have sought an injunction, but that would have been misinterpreted,” Pinnington went on. “Case like this, homicide, we can’t be seen as obstructing justice. No matter what our motives are.”

  “They have any ideas?” McGuire asked. He knew, recalling Donovan’s cockiness and instructions to McGuire, that they must.

  “Apparently they do.” Charlie Pratt’s eyes didn’t leave the notepad. “It may have something to do with the assignment Orin gave you last week.”

  “How much do they know about that?” McGuire said.

  King began to speak, but Pinnington interrupted, raising his voice to talk over the other man. “They know you were doing legitimate investigation work on behalf of a very circumspect lawyer.”

  Pratt shifted in his chair. McGuire waited for Pinnington to continue.

  Pinnington scratched the back of his head absently. “We have two concerns here. Our primary and overriding goal is to get to the bottom of Orin’s murder and see that whoever is responsible for it is tried, convicted, and punished.”

  “You hear anything more about Nancy?” King asked Pinnington.

  “Only that she’s under her doctor’s care. She was . . . well, you can imagine the scene at the house last night.” Pinnington bit his bottom lip and nodded, as though agreeing with his own assessment.

  Pratt turned and looked directly at McGuire. “Our other concern is protection of the firm’s name.”

  McGuire shifted in his chair. “How,” he said slowly, looking at each of the three men in turn
as he spoke, “could the reputation of this law firm be at risk in a murder investigation?”

  “Key question,” Pinnington said. “The answer is, there’s no proof that it is. But there are some hints that it could be.”

  “Such as?”

  Pratt, who had been looking McGuire up and down as though estimating his age and weight, cleared his throat, a signal that he wished to speak. “Orin Flanigan may have been having a liaison with someone he should not have been.”

  “If he was seeing somebody behind his wife’s back, I don’t think that’s so scandalous, is it?” McGuire said. “I mean, this firm’s got a good reputation, but nobody expects you all to be monks.”

  “It’s more than that.” Pratt looked down at his notepad.

  Pinnington picked up the cue. “You’re familiar with the Schaeffer woman?” he said.

  McGuire nodded.

  “Susan Schaeffer may have been an unofficial client of Orin Flanigan’s,” Pinnington said.

  “What’s unofficial mean?” McGuire said.

  “It means he was performing services beyond his everyday duties for the firm,” Pratt said. “There could be a fairly severe conflict-of-interest as well. In any case, he was doing work without payment.”

  “Without payment in coin of the realm,” King smirked. “Ms. Schaeffer may have been paying him in other ways.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute.” Pinnington sat forward in his chair and began shuffling through several sheets of paper.

  “Neither do I,” McGuire said.

  “What makes you say that?” Pratt was looking at him, the older man’s eyebrows lifted in speculation.

  “Totally out of character for Orin,” Pinnington said before McGuire could speak. “I’d stack Orin up against any lawyer in this town when it comes to ethics, personal or professional.”

  “Look.” McGuire directed his words at Pratt. “If Orin Flanigan was doing unofficial favours for somebody, it may get him in trouble with you people, but it’s hardly a criminal act. And if he’s been having an affair with . . . with some woman, well, that puts him on the same team with half the people in town, no matter how much it might surprise you guys. So where’s the danger to your reputation? Is it this conflict-of-interest thing? Is it something else, something bigger?”