Past Tense

by William G. Tapply

  My first thought was that Evie had killed him.

  She was kneeling there, pounding her thighs with her fists. Her face was wet with tears and her eyes were wild and her chest was heaving. Her breaths came in shuddering gasps. I knelt beside her and put my arm around her. She turned to me and burrowed her face into my chest.

  I held her tight in my arms. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s okay, baby.”

  “He’s dead,” she whispered. “Isn’t he?”

  I reached over and pressed two fingers up under Larry’s jawbone. I found no pulse. “Yes,” I said. “He’s dead.”

  Evie looked up at me. “I didn’t …”

  “I know, honey. Tell me what happened.”

  She pressed her palms over her eyes. I took out my handkerchief and handed it to her. She wiped her face and blew her nose, then balled the handkerchief up in her hand. “I ran out to the end of the dirt road,” she said. “I saw rabbits and quail along the way. I turned right on 6A, ran into town, hooked around a back road down to the ocean, and the sun came up and burned off the fog, and when I figured I’d gone about two miles, I turned around and started back. And I was just coming along here and … and I saw him. He was just … lying there. Like that. Like he is.” She looked up at me with wide, pleading eyes. “After what happened last night,” she said softly, “I was thinking, I was wishing he was dead. I thought about killing him, I really did.”

  “But you didn’t,” I said, although the thought still lingered that she might have. “Somebody else did. It’s not your fault. You didn’t see him on your way out?”

  She shrugged. “The sun wasn’t up then. It was shadowy and foggy, and I was running pretty fast, looking ahead for rabbits on the road. No, I didn’t see him. Maybe he was there then. His body. I don’t know.”

  “We’ve got to call the police. Can you do that?”

  She frowned at me. “Me?”

  “One of us should stay here with him.”

  “Not me,” she said. “I’m not doing that.”

  “Then you’ve got to make the call.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Dial 911. Just tell them that we have a dead person here. They’ll ask where you are and tell you to stay there. After that, come back here. Bring my cigarettes with you.”

  She nodded. “Want coffee?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I got to my feet, reached down, and helped Evie up. She held on to me.

  “You going to be all right?” I said.

  She shrugged.

  I kissed her forehead. “Go call the cops.”

  She gave me a quick hug, then started jogging to the cottage. She ran a few steps, then stopped and turned back to me. “I didn’t do it, you know,” she said.

  “I know.”

  She frowned, nodded, and headed to the cottage.

  After Evie disappeared around the bend, I squatted down beside Larry Scott’s body. The entire front of his shirt was soaked with blood. I touched it with my finger. It had just begun to coagulate. He hadn’t been dead for long.

  It looked like too much blood for a gunshot, unless he’d been shot in the back and the bullet had exited his stomach. If he’d been shot in the back, I figured he’d’ve fallen on his face. But he was lying on his back.

  A knife wound, I guessed. I bent and looked closer, and under the thick shiny blood I saw two rips in his shirt, one just to the left of his navel and another a bit higher, right under his rib cage.

  Whoever killed him had been standing directly in front of him, close enough to ram a knife into him. Twice.

  Who?

  Evie? I couldn’t believe it. Not Evie. Maybe she’d have squirted her pepper spray in his face if he’d approached her. The lawyer in me tried to be objective, but the Evie I knew was incapable of murder.

  Then I thought: How well do I really know her? Before yesterday, I didn’t even know her mother was from Maine, or that her grandfather was a lobsterman. Before yesterday I’d never heard of Larry Scott. She’d never told me about any of her old relationships or why she’d left her job in Cortland and gone to work at Emerson Hospital in Concord.

  I really didn’t know much about Evie Banyon’s life.

  But I knew her.

  Evie couldn’t stick a knife into anybody—even a man who had stalked her and haunted her until she thought she was crazy; who had finally driven her away from her home and her job; who had somehow managed to track her down here to Brewster on Cape Cod after being out of her life and her thoughts for more than three years.

  Evie?

  Evie wore her maple syrup–colored hair in a ponytail and got butter all over her face when she ate lobster and mocked herself with a funny, seductive, half-lidded Marilyn Monroe smile. Evie loved Monet’s paintings and Debussy’s music and Jane Austen’s novels and Jim Carrey’s dumb movies. She loved ducks and birch trees and daisies and cows. She loved jogging before sunrise and throwing a frisbee on the beach. She loved making love.

  She loved me.

  I squatted there, looking at Larry Scott’s body.

  Not Evie.

  If not Evie, who?

  She might have an idea, but I didn’t.

  I knew better than to move Larry’s body or tromp around the area. But I stood up and looked around. If there was a murder weapon nearby, I didn’t see it.

  After a few minutes, Evie came back. She’d pulled on a pair of blue jeans and one of my flannel shirts over her T-shirt, and she was carrying two mugs of coffee.

  She’d washed her face and brushed her hair. It looked like she was done crying.

  I stood up and took a mug from her. “You made the call?”

  She nodded. “They’re on their way.” She reached into her shirt pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes, and handed it to me. “Light one for me, will you?”

  I lit two cigarettes and gave her one. Evie was one of those lucky people who could smoke half a pack of cigarettes in an evening and then go for two months without wanting one. She liked to share a cigarette with me after we made love. We’d pass it back and forth as we lay on our backs looking up at the ceiling, blowing plumes of smoke into the darkness. Sometimes, when she was upset about something, or upset with me, she’d ask for a cigarette. She’d puff at it furiously until it was half gone, then stab it out as if she were angry at the ashtray.

  “So what’s going to happen?” she said.

  “The local cops will come, verify that there’s been a homicide. Then the state cops will come. They’re the ones who handle homicide investigations. They’ll separate us and ask us questions. This whole area”—I swept my hand around—“will be a crime scene.”

  “What kind of questions?” she said.

  “Everything,” I said. “You’ll have to tell them all about Larry.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “They’ll want to hear it all, and you’ll probably have to tell it several times.” I hesitated. “Don’t volunteer anything. Just answer their questions. You might want to have a lawyer with you.”

  She cocked her head and frowned at me. “Why would I want a lawyer?”

  I shrugged. “Their questioning might get pretty intense and confusing. A lawyer can help you through it.”

  “No offense,” she said, “but I don’t need a damn lawyer.”

  “Well, you know you can change your mind at any time. All you have to do is ask for one, and they’ll have to stop questioning you.”

  “Are you reading me my rights?”

  I shook my head. “No, honey. Just trying to tell you what’ll probably happen.”

  Evie took a quick drag on her cigarette, threw it down onto the dirt road, and ground it out under her foot as if she were squashing a poisonous bug. Then she folded her arms across her chest, turned away, and gazed off into the woods.

  I touched her shoulder, and she flinched away from me.

  So we stood there beside Larry’s body, and after a minute, sirens howled in the distance, and then two p
olice cruisers came barreling over the hilltop. Their sirens squawked as they skidded to a stop, and they left a billow of dust in their wake.

  Each cruiser held two police officers. Three of them got out, leaving the driver of the second cruiser behind the wheel to tend the radio.

  One cop went over and looked down at Larry Scott’s body. The other two approached Evie and me. One was a middle-aged guy with gray showing under his cap. The other was an olive-skinned young female officer who looked like she’d been cultivating the hard scowl on her face.

  The female spoke to Evie, then led her over to one of the cruisers. The gray-haired guy stood in front of me. “Sergeant Costello,” he said. “Brewster PD.”

  “Brady Coyne,” I said. “I’m a lawyer in Boston. We’re renting this cottage for the weekend.” I held out my hand.

  He didn’t seem to notice it. “I want you to come over and sit in the cruiser, sir. We’ve got to wait for the state police to get here.”

  “I know how it works,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’m sure you do, sir.”

  He led me to the second cruiser. Evie was sitting in the back seat of the first one. The doors were closed and the female officer was sitting in front. Evie was staring out the side window, and when I tried to catch her eye, she shifted her gaze to somewhere behind me.

  I climbed in the back. Costello put his hand on top of my head to steer me in, closed the door behind me, then got in front. He left his door open. A wire mesh separated us. He mumbled something that was not intended for my ears to the cop behind the wheel, who turned and grinned at him.

  After about five minutes I said, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes,” Costello said without turning around.

  A few minutes later two more cars rolled up behind us. They were both unmarked sedans, and they had not heralded their arrival with sirens. State cops in plain clothes.

  Costello got out and went over to talk to them.

  “Now what happens?” I said to the officer behind the wheel.

  He did not answer me.

  After a while Costello came back, slid into the front seat, slammed the door, and said, “Let’s go.”

  The driver managed to turn around on the narrow dirt road, and we headed into town. Costello spoke into the car radio. I couldn’t make out what he said.

  At the station Costello led me into a small room in the back. It had one square window high on the wall. It was covered with thick wire mesh. In the middle of the room stood a single rectangular steel table with six straight-backed wooden chairs around it. A big metal ashtray brimming with old cigarette butts sat on the table.

  “Have a seat, sir,” said Costello. “You can smoke in here if you want. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “Sure,” I said, “thanks. Black.”

  He shut the door behind him, and I didn’t need to check to know it was locked from the outside.

  A few minutes later he was back. He put a heavy ceramic mug in front of me and left without saying anything.

  It wasn’t bad for police-station coffee. I sipped it and smoked and sat there in the uncomfortable wooden chair. I assumed Evie was getting the same treatment in an adjacent room.

  I didn’t need my lawyer training to realize that we were both prime suspects. Dozens of people had witnessed Evie’s confrontation with Larry Scott at the restaurant. Several others had seen him beat me up in the parking lot. The police wouldn’t have much trouble learning that Larry had harassed Evie back when she was living in Cortland and that he’d tracked us down here to the Cape.

  Means, motive, and opportunity. Either or both of us had plenty of all three. I didn’t know anybody else who’d want Larry dead, but I didn’t know anything about him. I hoped Evie could come up with somebody.

  I waited nearly an hour before the door opened and two men came in. The bulky, bald-headed one introduced himself as state police homicide detective Neil Vanderweigh. He wore a gray summer-weight suit with a solid-blue necktie that he’d pulled loose. His collar button was undone. The younger blond guy was Sergeant Lipton. He wore a green sports jacket, gray slacks, pale blue shirt, no necktie.

  They both shook hands with me. Then Vanderweigh took off his suit jacket, draped it over a chair, and sat across from me. Lipton put a portable tape recorder on the table between us, then went over, leaned against the wall, and crossed his arms.

  “Any objection if we record this?” said Vanderweigh.

  I shook my head.

  He clicked the machine on, recited the date, time, place, and our names into it, then looked up at me. “Why don’t you just tell us what happened this morning, Mr. Coyne.”

  I told him about hearing Evie scream, running out of the cottage, and seeing her there with Larry’s body.

  He asked if either of us had touched the body. I told him I’d touched his bloody shirt with my fingertip, that was all.

  He asked what we’d done at the crime scene. I told him we’d each smoked a cigarette and ground out the butts on the dirt road.

  He asked several clarifying questions. They mostly had to do with time—what time Evie had left to go jogging, how long she’d been gone before I heard her scream, how long we’d waited before calling the police. I answered the questions as best as I could.

  He led me through the events at the restaurant the previous night, and it was clear he already knew all about it.

  “Did you threaten him?” said Vanderweigh.

  “I don’t recall threatening him,” I said.

  “You didn’t tell him to leave the woman alone—or else?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I said ‘or else,’ no.”

  “You don’t know what you said?”

  I shrugged. “I was angry. He was upsetting Evie. He shoved me and I went after him, and he punched me.”

  “You know that Ms. Banyon had a relationship with Mr. Scott in Cortland a few years ago.”

  “I only learned that last night.”

  “That he harassed her for almost a year?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “Did you kill Larry Scott, Mr. Coyne?”

  “No.”

  “Did Evelyn Banyon kill Larry Scott?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a lawyer,” said Vanderweigh. “Be precise, please.”

  I nodded. “To the best of my knowledge, Evelyn Banyon did not kill Larry Scott.”

  He smiled at my lawyerly precision. “When Ms. Banyon left to go jogging, did she bring a knife with her?”

  “No. She had some pepper spray.”

  “Why did she bring pepper spray?”

  “We were both concerned that she might encounter him.”

  “Scott?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you feared he might try to harm her?”

  I shrugged. “It occurred to me.”

  “Do you know for a fact that she didn’t bring a knife with her?”

  “No,” I said. “I guess I don’t. I stayed in bed.”

  “And you went back to sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you have no idea what she did between the time she left the bedroom and when you heard her screaming.”

  “I have a very good idea,” I said. “She told me.”

  “But she could be lying.”

  I sighed. “She’s not lying.”

  “In fact,” he said, “if you’re telling the truth, you really cannot tell us anything about Ms. Banyon’s actions this morning between the time she walked out of your bedroom and when you heard her screaming and came upon her with Scott’s body in the driveway, is that right?”

  “I am telling the truth,” I said.

  I wondered what they were asking Evie. Probably establishing the fact that she couldn’t account for my actions while she had been jogging in Brewster.

  They had themselves two excellent suspects.

  Vanderweigh led me through his questions again, and then Lipton came over and sat with us and asked
me the same damn questions. I asked for more coffee, and Vanderweigh went and got it. I’d had no breakfast, and I was feeling woozy and lightheaded. The coffee helped a little.

  It seemed like I’d been in there for several hours when there came a soft knock on the door. Lipton got up and went out of the room.

  He was back a minute later. He was holding a plastic zippered bag. He put it on the table between us. It held a knife. The blade was five or six inches long with a serrated edge. It looked like a steak knife.

  “Recognize this, Mr. Coyne?” said Lipton.

  “No. Is it the murder weapon?”

  “Maybe.” He glanced at Vanderweigh, then turned back to me. “It appears to match a set of knives from the kitchen in the cottage you were renting.”

  I said nothing.

  “It was found in the bushes about twenty feet from Larry Scott’s body.”

  “So it’s probably the murder weapon,” I said.

  “That remains to be seen,” said Vanderweigh. “Take another look at it.”

  I looked at it and shrugged. “We’ve only been in the cottage since night before last. We haven’t cooked or eaten there, except for cereal yesterday morning and sandwiches for lunch. We didn’t use any sharp knives. The woman who owns the place kept the key under the doormat. Anybody could’ve gotten in there.”

  They asked me a few more questions—the same ones they’d been asking me before—and then the two of them looked at each other, and Vanderweigh said, “Terminating interrogation at—” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “—at eleven forty-seven A.M.” He snapped off the tape recorder. “You’re free to go, Mr. Coyne, but I’ve got to ask you not to return to that cottage.”

  “Crime scene and all.”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “A couple days, anyway.”

  “So what’re we supposed to do?”

  “That’s up to you. Go home, if you want.”

  “All our stuff is in that cottage. My car’s there.”

  Vanderweigh nodded. “I’ll have one of the Brewster officers take you back to get your things. I’m afraid you can’t have your car for a while, though.”

  “You think we killed him somewhere else and transported his body to our driveway?” I said. “So we could find it and report it and make ourselves logical suspects?”