“He didn’t hate them. He just never felt he needed one. He thought I did.”
“Do you have a license for it?”
Cammie shook her head. “Daniel said it was none of anybody’s business. Anyway, he said it wouldn’t be such a good idea. I do have a—I’ve been arrested. You have to get permits from the local police, you know.”
“Oakley?” I said.
She smiled. “You know how he felt about Oakley.”
“You could get in a lot of trouble, lugging that around.”
“I don’t lug it around. I just keep it on me when I’m around here alone, that’s all. When Daniel was here, I kept it beside my bed. I feel better with it. For now. For a while.”
She tucked her little weapon back into the holster at the small of her back.
Terri and I took the back roads home, through South Hadley, the self-proclaimed asparagus capital of the world, through Granby and Belchertown and Pelham and New Salem, heading north parallel to the Quabbin Reservoir, through the dark rural parts of Massachusetts. On Route 2 a few trucks whanged past us. Their backdrafts tugged at my steering wheel. Terri and I didn’t talk much. I found some jazz on a Worcester radio station. They were playing a Miles Davis album. His trumpet had never sounded more blue.
“You’ve been awfully good to Cammie,” I said to Terri.
“She’s hurting a lot more than she shows.”
“Does she talk to you about it?”
“Not really. She talks about Daniel. He was more like a father to her than…”
“I guess he saved her life.”
“That’s how Cammie sees it. He was her life. It’s like she really doesn’t have one now. But she’s strong. I think she’ll be okay.”
I reached across the front seat and squeezed Terri’s leg. “Well, you’ve obviously been good to her.”
She laid her hand atop mine. “My nurse’s training,” she said.
As we approached the Acton turnoff, Terri said, “Brady, I think I want to sleep in my own bed tonight.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“Alone, I mean.”
I shrugged.
“I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” I lied.
“I want to get Melissa first thing in the morning.”
“I thought your mother had her for the weekend.”
“It’s what I want to do, okay?”
There was an edge to her voice that I had never heard before.
She kissed me hard and long at the door to her building, and I said, “Sure you don’t want me to stay?”
“Not tonight.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“Do you understand?”
“No.”
She put her arms around my neck and her cheek on my shoulder. “It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
“I really do want to get Melissa.”
“Sure, but—”
“Okay. I want to be alone.”
“You mean, you want to be apart from me.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Fine.”
“Try to understand, Brady. Cammie and I did a lot of talking. It’s been a… an unsettling day.”
“No problem.”
“You don’t understand, do you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She tipped her head back and looked into my face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
She tried to smile. It wasn’t convincing.
She kissed me and pressed against me. I held her tight. After a long time she gently pulled away. “Tonight,” she whispered, “I need to be alone. Just tonight. Okay?”
“You got it,” I said.
She hugged me quickly, then fumbled in her purse for her keys. “Call me?”
“I will.”
“Good night, Brady.”
“Night, Terri.”
I walked back to the parking lot. When I got to my car, I turned to wave to Terri. But she had already gone inside.
10
I CALLED TERRI ON Tuesday. “How’s the weekend look?” I said.
“Not that good. I—”
“Don’t give me an excuse, hon. You don’t have to.”
She hesitated. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I was going to tell you I was all tied up with Melissa. It’s true, but it’s not the point. I’ve been all tied up with Melissa plenty of times and you’ve been a part of it. I don’t want to get into lying or making up excuses with you, Brady.”
“You don’t have to. I’m a big boy.”
“My feelings for you haven’t changed.”
“But?”
“But… my feelings are making me nervous. I need space.”
“I guess,” I said, “true love is when both people feel the need for the same amount of space at the same time.”
“I always thought it was when you stopped feeling that you needed space.”
“No,” I said. “Everybody needs space.”
I ended up spending the first day of my weekend space with my friend Doc Adams. We drank beer and played chess in his backyard in Concord, and toward the middle of the afternoon Doc mentioned a local pond that, he had heard, the state stocked with trout every September. Nobody seemed to fish there, Doc told me. Doc wasn’t much for fly-fishing himself. He thought it a pretty yuppi-fied sport, actually. He tried it a few times, and on one especially windy afternoon on the Deerfield River he drove a hook beyond the barb into his earlobe. I yanked it out for him—Doc never uttered a peep—and that was enough fly-fishing for him. But he loved to eat fresh-caught trout and he wondered if a man who claimed to be a good fly-fisherman might be able to harvest a meal from this secret pond of his.
Doc even volunteered to paddle the canoe and clean the fish afterward as well, should I get lucky.
The surface of the pond was littered with crimson and yellow maple leaves, which skittered around like toy sailboats ahead of a light puffy breeze. We saw lots of migrating birds—ducks in the coves and warblers in the pondside bushes—and I managed to catch a dozen or so fat ten-inch brook trout on gaudy little wet flies. We kept six and brought them back to Doc’s house on Old Stone Mill Road. Doc sautéed them in butter with tarragon and shallots while his wife, Mary, and I drank wine and kibitzed. Mary asked about Terri. I told her that Terri was tied up with her daughter for the weekend. Mary cocked her head and looked at me sideways. I shrugged. She didn’t pursue it.
The trout were delicious. Doc asserted that we could’ve caught twice as many using spinning gear. We argued our respective definitions of sport.
Mary said she knew a young sculptress, recently divorced. I told her I didn’t think I was interested. She smiled and said she thought as much, but figured she should mention it.
Sunday morning I called the house in Wellesley. I wanted to say hello to Joey, my younger son. The answering machine took it. Gloria asked me to leave my name and number and the time of my call. I declined her invitation.
I tried Billy, my other son, at his dorm room at UMass. No answer.
So much for family ties.
I spent the afternoon rummaging distractedly through the weekend paperwork that Julie had stuffed into my briefcase. That evening around suppertime Cammie called. “Can you come to a party next Saturday afternoon?” she said.
“Yes. Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Dress casual.”
“Gladly.”
“They’re releasing Daniel’s body on Tuesday.”
“Do they have any new evidence?”
“If they do, they’re not sharing it with me.”
“I’ll give Lieutenant Fusco a call,” I said, “see what he knows. I’ll be there Saturday.”
“Please bring Terri.”
“I’ll try.”
After a hesitation, she said, “Is something the matter?”
“I don’t know. A boy-girl thing, I guess.”
She chuckled. “Tell her I’ll be very
sad if she doesn’t come.”
“I’ll tell her exactly that.”
And I did. I said, “Cammie will be very sad if you don’t come.”
“You don’t need to do that, Brady,” said Terri. “Of course I’ll go with you. I hope you’d be sad if I didn’t go.”
“That’s the truth. I missed you this weekend.”
“Wow,” she said softly.
“Wow?”
“That’s about the most vulnerable thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I don’t always say what I’m thinking.”
“Maybe you should try it more often.”
I pondered that bit of advice after I hung up with her. I concluded that, on the whole, it was dangerous advice.
I called State Police Lieutenant Dominick Fusco on Monday morning. He was unavailable. I requested he return my call. He didn’t. I tried again Tuesday, and then on Wednesday. Finally, on Thursday afternoon, Julie buzzed me and said that Lieutenant Fusco was on the line.
I pressed the blinking button on my console and said, “Coyne.”
“Fusco,” he said. “What can you do for me?”
“I was just wondering how the Daniel McCloud investigation is going.”
“That’s what I figured. That’s why I didn’t call you right back.”
“Well…”
“You haven’t got anything for me, right?”
“Right.”
“Mr. Coyne,” said Fusco, “we don’t normally feel obligated to share the progress of our investigations with citizens. If we did that, we’d have no time for investigating.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Daniel McCloud’s murder is not the only case on my agenda just now, Mr. Coyne. Here’s how it works, okay? You got something for me, you make sure I know it. That’s your duty as a citizen, lawyer or no lawyer. If I come up with something, I’ll probably pursue the hell out of it. But it’s possible I might not have the time or the inclination to share it with you. Get it?”
“This conversation we’re having here is what you call effective public relations,” I said. “Right?”
“My job,” said Fusco, “ain’t relating to the public. My job is arresting them when they break the law.”
“Be nice, then, if you’d do your job.”
I think Fusco and I hung up on each other simultaneously. Goes to show what happens when you say what you’re thinking.
Terri and I had to park about a quarter of a mile from Daniel’s house on Saturday afternoon. Daniel’s friends had turned out in force. I hadn’t realized he had that many friends. The roadside was lined with parked vehicles. Battered old pickups, mainly, with a few battered old sedans, most of them Fords and Chevvies. My BMW was one of the few unbattered vehicles in the bunch.
Terri and I walked to the house holding hands. We wore jeans and flannel shirts and windbreakers and sneakers. Twins. Terri looked especially terrific in jeans. The way she squeezed my hand and bumped shoulders with me as we walked was terrific, too. It occurred to me that maybe she had satisfied her need for space for a while.
We weaved our way among the guests as we made our way toward the back of the house. I guessed there were close to a hundred people milling around Daniel’s property holding plastic glasses or beer cans. I didn’t recognize anybody, but several of them said, “Hey, how ya doin?” to me and Terri anyway. Rural good-neighborliness.
The bar was set up on the deck behind the house. That’s where we found Cammie. When she saw us she smiled and came over. Brian Sweeney was with her. His hand was wrapped around a beer can, and the stub of a dead cigar was wedged into the corner of his mouth. Cammie had her arm tucked through his.
She exchanged quick kisses with Terri and gave me a big hug. Sweeney shook my hand and gave Terri a little courtly bow.
“Thanks for coming, you guys,” said Cammie.
“Wouldn’t have missed it,” I said.
A man about Sweeney’s age grabbed his arm. Sweeney whirled around, yelled, “Holy shit,” and embraced him. They wandered away, their arms across each other’s shoulders.
Cammie watched them for a moment, then turned back to us. She smiled. “Nothing tighter than army buddies,” she said. She cocked her head at me. “Maybe later we can do some business?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
Cammie turned to Terri, bent, and whispered something to her. Terri nodded. “Let me borrow her for a minute, okay?” said Cammie to me.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
The two of them wandered away. Cammie had her hand on Terri’s shoulder. I had the feeling they were discussing me.
So I found myself standing there on the deck. I was surrounded by people, but I was alone. I spotted Roscoe Pollard and Vinnie Colletti. Roscoe noticed me and waved. I waved back. I found several big washtubs full of ice and Budweiser. I went over and fished out two cans. I weaved through the people toward Cammie and Terri. The two women were leaning their elbows on the deck railing, staring off toward the river and talking softly, their heads close together. I pressed the cold beer can against Terri’s neck. “Hey!” she squealed. She spun around and glared at me. I held up the Bud. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks.”
She took the can and turned back to her conversation with Cammie.
I shrugged and wandered off the deck and out into the yard. I started to head toward the knot of people that included Roscoe and Vinnie, then changed my mind. I felt like an outsider.
So I stood there. I sipped from my beer and lit a cigarette.
A hand squeezed my elbow. “You get the cold shoulder, there, Mr. Coyne?”
It was Sweeney. I smiled. “From the ladies?” I nodded. “Looks like it. And it’s Brady, okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
We found ourselves sauntering away from the crowd in the yard, headed more or less in the direction of the river. Sweeney, I guessed, like Daniel, was not comfortable in crowds.
“Listen,” said Sweeney as we walked. “Daniel told me about how you kept him out of jail that time. It woulda killed him, you know?”
“I didn’t really do much, truthfully,” I said. “They dropped the charges before I could do anything.”
“Well, he sure appreciated it.”
He stopped walking to light a wooden match with his thumbnail. He ignited his cigar butt. “Hard to believe,” he puffed.
“Daniel?”
He exhaled and nodded.
“That he’s dead, you mean.”
He shrugged. “Not so much that. I guess I never find death hard to believe anymore. How it happened, I mean.”
“An ugly way to go.”
He turned to face me. “There are uglier ways, Brady. Believe me. What I hear, that was pretty quick. What I mean is somebody getting the drop on him like that. I never saw Daniel with his defenses down.”
“It’s been a long time since you guys were in the jungle,” I said.
“Don’t matter. You never lose it.” He removed the cigar from his mouth and took a long draft from his beer can. “You heard anything?”
I shook my head.
“No suspects, no evidence?”
“No,” I said. “I talked to the state cop in charge a couple days ago. Lieutenant Fusco. Not very forthcoming. Doesn’t seem to me they’re getting anywhere. They questioned you, didn’t they?”
“Me?” he said. “Yeah. State cops dropped by. Vermont cops. I’m living up there in the sticks. Kinda like Daniel. Little place in the woods. Catch some fish, shoot some deer.” He smiled. “You don’t get the jungle out of your system, you know? Anyways, they asked me about who might want to kill him. How the hell would I know?”
“You said you’d check around with the men from your team,” I said.
He nodded. “I am. Most of ’em are here.” He shook his head. “Hard to figure, though. I mean, somebody in command, sure, there’ll be times when you want to kill the guy, if you know what I mean. But that’s just the stress of it. Daniel brought us through.”
“What about Roscoe and Vinnie?”
Sweeney turned his head and spat a flake of tobacco onto the ground. “Yeah,” he said, “they were with us. Damn good soldiers. Good men, Roscoe and Vinnie.”
“They’re not… sick?”
“The Orange? Nope. They were the lucky ones.”
“And they were close to Daniel, huh?”
“We all were close with each other. Daniel was our glue.”
“He was a pretty lovable guy, from what I could see,” I said.
Sweeney stopped and leaned back against the trunk of an oak tree. “Lovable,” he repeated. He smiled. Sadly, I thought. “Well, he was, yes. But Daniel could fool you. You meet Daniel, you think he’s this gentle teddy bear. Which he was. But in the jungle he was like some other kind of animal. I mean, a fucking predator, you know? He was completely comfortable, tuned in to every sound, every smell. He could tell you whether it was a monkey or a VC just by the sound of something moving a bush. And he could kill like no man I ever knew.”
I nodded. “I guess that’s how you survived.”
“Were you over there, Brady?”
I shook my head.
He grinned. “Probably marching around in the streets, huh?”
I shrugged. “I did some of that, yes.”
“I never hated Jane Fonda, myself,” said Sweeney. “Figured most of you people just wanted us home. We wanted the same damn thing.”
“That’s how I felt about it.”
“Old Daniel,” said Sweeney, “he could be an animal in the jungle. But he wasn’t an animal. He was a man.” Sweeney chuckled softly. “The old Snake Eater.”
“Snake Eater? Daniel?”
He nodded. “It was a term of honor. Actually, it’s kind of a general name that’s sometimes used for Special Forces guys. The Snake Eaters. Like Green Berets, except we all thought that was dumb. We never called ourselves Green Berets. But Daniel, that sonofabitch actually ate snakes. They taught us how to survive in the jungle, see? How to kill a snake and skin it and eat it raw. But Daniel, he already knew that. He did it when he was a kid. He’d eat any damn thing. Grubs and ants and leeches. I saw him do it. He kept tryin’ to get us to do it, too. Ants I got so I could swallow. Never could get a leech down, though. No problem for Daniel. See, we were all taught how to eat all this stuff, but Daniel actually did it. He used to say, compared to the rest of it, raw snake was a ‘farkin’ delicacy.’”
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