“But he hasn’t threatened you,” I said.
She smiled. “No. Not physically, or financially, or anything. Not Howard. Oh, there are all those phone calls. When I’m not home, he’ll fill the entire tape on my answering machine. Promising to change and in the same sentence threatening to jump off a bridge. It’s all crazy. I’ve had my number changed, had it unlisted, but Howard’s got connections. He finds it out. And sometimes he comes to my apartment building, banging on the door, yelling up from the street. He sat on my front steps all night a couple times when Walter was there. The only time I can relax is when I’m here or on a trip with Walter.”
“He doesn’t belong to SAFE, does he?”
“Howard?” She laughed. “As far as I know he’s never touched a gun.”
“It still sounds pretty frightening,” I said.
She shook her head. “Howard West doesn’t frighten me. He makes me furious, and he drives me nuts sometimes. But I’m not afraid of him. He’s—well, actually, he’s probably like the guys who are leaving those messages. He’s a coward.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I keep reading about these stalkers…”
She laughed. “He’s not like that at all. I know Howard West.”
“He doesn’t know about this place?”
“Whew!” she said. “I hope not.”
“It takes time.”
“I know,” she said.
“You’ve got a good lawyer?”
She nodded.
“I wasn’t looking for business,” I said quickly.
She patted my hand. “I didn’t think you were.”
12
I WAS WIDE AWAKE at six-fifteen the next morning. Back in the city, I tend to sleep late, probably because nothing there seems worth getting up for. Give me a taste of clean country air and a day on a trout river, and sleeping seems like a waste of time.
I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt and stumbled into the kitchen. Diana was seated at the table sipping coffee and reading a magazine. She looked up and smiled at me. “Coffee?”
“You bet. I’ll get it.”
I went to the coffee machine and poured myself a mugful. I took it to the table and sat down across from her.
“Sleep well?” she said.
“Like a bear in January. Where’s Wally?”
She jerked her head in the direction of the front door. “Walking with Corky. He hardly slept last night. He shrugs all this stuff off, but it eats at him. His producers, apparently, really are giving him a hard time. I guess some of their sponsors are getting fidgety.”
“Boy,” I said, “they don’t waste any time.”
“What’s going on, Brady? These past few days…”
I shrugged. “The gun lobby is pretty upset. They figured Wally for a solid ally, which makes him the worst kind of traitor in their eyes. They’ve threatened to mobilize some kind of boycott of his TV sponsors.”
“Can they do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’ll probably all go away. The NRA, along with its local arms like SAFE, is one of the best-funded and most sophisticated pressure groups in the country. They’ve always been very successful. If that bill should become law, it would be like them to blame it on Wally. That’s probably what’s got him worried.”
Diana smiled down into her coffee mug. “Walter never really worries. He sees things as challenges, not worries. About all he’s told me about this assault weapon business is that he’s satisfied he did the right thing, and if his sponsors drop him they’d be doing the wrong thing. I’ve gotten the impression that his producer would like him to make some kind of retraction on television, or at least say something that would fudge the issue. He would never do anything like that. So,” she said with a smile, “he’s walking in the woods. Going to church, he calls it.” She looked up at me. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Over easy,” I said. “But you don’t—”
At that instant from somewhere outdoors came the sharp crack that I instantly recognized as a rifle shot. There was a pause, and then several more in quick succession.
Diana and I sat there for a moment looking at each other. Then she whispered, “Oh, Jesus.”
She leaped up from the table, and I did too. We ran outside. I followed Diana around to the side of the house.
“Walter!” she screamed.
There was no answer.
She yelled again and again, and then Corky came bounding out of the bushes. He was wagging his tail, happy to see her. He rolled onto his back beside her, squirming in anticipation of having his belly scratched.
Diana scooched down beside him. “Where’s Walter? Come on. Corky. Let’s find Walter.”
Corky scrambled to his feet and looked at her, and I would swear he understood exactly what she was saying. He turned and headed back into the woods. Then he stopped and looked at us, as if to say, “You guys coming, or what?”
We followed him through the thick undergrowth for about a hundred yards. Then we heard Wally moan.
“Walter!” Diana yelled.
We found him sitting on the ground, hunched over, hugging himself with his knees drawn up tight to his chest. Diana ran to him and knelt down beside him. “Honey?” she said.
Wally looked up at her. His face was wet with perspiration. “I’m okay,” he mumbled.
“Let me see,” I said. I squatted beside him. “Let’s try to he down,” I told him.
Diana and I helped him onto his back. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. His breath came in quick shallow gasps.
A dark wet blotch was spreading across the front of his shirt. It looked like he’d gotten it in the stomach.
Diana leaned close to his face. “Honey?” she whispered.
“Hey, babe,” he mumbled.
She looked at me. “What do we do?”
“Get a blanket. Call an ambulance.”
She ran back to the house.
I wiped his face with my handkerchief. “How’s it feel?” I said to him.
“Hurts like hell,” he mumbled through clenched teeth.
I carefully unbuttoned his shirt and opened it. The bullet had struck him just above and to the left of his navel. It made a neat black hole from which blood was seeping steadily, and I didn’t see how it could have missed vital organs on its way through him.
I helped Wally roll onto his side. The exit wound in his back was bigger and uglier and had bled profusely, judging by the black puddle that had already soaked into the leaves under him. I took off my own shirt, balled it up, and held it tight against the ragged hole in his back. “Hang on, old buddy,” I told him.
Diana returned with a blanket, which we spread over Wally. She cradled his head on her lap. “The ambulance is on its way honey,” she said.
He opened his eyes and tried to smile. “They got me,” he said.
“Who?” I said. “Did you see them?”
His eyes closed again. “Oh, shit,” he moaned. He gagged, turned his head to the side, and vomited weakly.
Diana wiped his mouth and beard with the corner of the blanket. “Oh, baby she whispered. “Don’t die, baby.
I bent close to him. “Wally, did you see who shot you?”
“Gotta rip up all those fuckin’ stakes, Brady,” he mumbled. “Gotta save the Swamp.”
His head lolled to the side. His eyelids drooped and his eyes rolled up and his mouth hung open slackly. Diana whispered, “Oh…”
I pressed my fingers against the side of his throat. It took me a moment to find the flutter of his pulse. It felt like the panicky beating of an insect’s wings.
I looked up at Diana. Her eyes were wide.
“He passed out,” I said, “He’s lost blood. He’s in shock. How soon before that ambulance will get here?”
She shook her head back and forth rapidly. “I don’t know. I gave them directions. They seemed to know where we are. They said they were on their way.” She bent down and kissed Wally’s damp forehead. “Hang on, big fe
lla,” she whispered. She laid her cheek against his bushy black beard.
Far in the distance I heard the wail of a siren. I remembered all the wrong turns one could take, how even with Walt’s map I had gotten lost trying to find his cabin. I recalled the ruts and mud of the roads. Wally could die while the ambulance wandered through the woods getting stuck in potholes.
I told Diana to hold the makeshift compress against the wound in Wally’s back. Then I jogged back to the cabin and started down the dirt road.
It seemed forever, but it was probably only a couple of minutes later when the white van appeared. I waved my arm for it to follow me, then trotted back to the cabin. It pulled up on the lawn. Three EMTs in white jackets leaped out. “What’ve we got?” one of them said.
“Gunshot wound in the stomach. This way.”
I led them into the woods to the place where Diana was kneeling beside Wally.
Within a minute or two they had him bandaged and on a stretcher and were carrying him through the woods back to the ambulance, one EMT on each end and the third holding up a bottle with a tube snaking down to Walt’s arm. A plastic oxygen mask was strapped over his nose and mouth. They loaded him into the back. Two of the EMTs climbed in with him. The third slammed the door shut behind them and slid in behind the wheel. Then the vehicle spewed dirt from its rear tires and disappeared down the muddy road.
I stood there staring down the roadway. After a few minutes I heard the wail of the siren. It faded, then died.
Diana was beside me hugging my arm. “It was all so sudden,” she said quietly.
“Where’d they take him, do you know?”
“North Adams. There’s a hospital there. I’m going.”
“I think we should wait. The police will be here.”
“The hell with them,” she said. “I’m going to be with Walter.”
“You’re right. The hell with them. Let’s go.”
13
I DROVE AND DIANA huddled against the door, and we didn’t talk at all during the half-hour or so that it took us to drive down out of the hills to the hospital in North Adams. I figured we were both thinking the same thing.
Wally would he dead when we got there.
We jogged from the parking lot to the main entrance of the hospital. Inside, a young woman sat behind a counter chewing gum. She smiled and lifted her eyebrows when Diana and I approached her. I said to her, “Walter Kinnick.”
She turned to face her computer terminal with her fingers poised over the keyboard. “Can you spell it?
“He would’ve just got here. In an ambulance.”
“Emergency?”
“Yes.”
She pointed toward an elevator bank. “First floor. Go left and follow the signs.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Everybody in the emergency room seemed to be occupied with emergencies, but I finally got the attention of a gray-haired nurse.
“Walter Kinnick,” I said to her. “He just came in by ambulance.”
“I’m not—”
“Gunshot wound,” I said.
She nodded and smiled quickly. She had a pumpkin-shaped face and a gap between her front teeth. She reminded me of Ernest Borgnine. “We didn’t have his name,” she said. She seemed much friendlier than most of the characters Ernest Borgnine played. “He’s in surgery.” She gestured off to her left. “You can wait in there. I’ll make sure the doctor knows you’re here.”
“Is he okay?” said Diana.
The nurse shrugged. “I don’t know, miss. I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait.”
A television was mounted on a wall bracket in the waiting room. A mid-morning soap opera was playing loudly on it. There were ten or a dozen other people in there, also waiting. Most of them were staring vacantly at the TV show.
Diana and I sat down. She let out a long breath. I put my arm around her shoulders. “All we can do is wait,” I said.
“I’m very frightened,” she said.
“I know. Me, too.”
I found a six-month-old copy of Sports Illustrated. I paged through it from back to front, looking at the pictures, then put it down, glanced around, and spotted a coffeepot. I got up and poured two Styrofoam cupfuls. I handed one to Diana, who looked at me and nodded.
The coffee had the consistency of maple syrup.
I flipped through an old New Yorker, pausing at the cartoons, which didn’t seem that funny.
We had been sitting there for an hour or so, me glancing through magazines and Diana staring up at the television, when a voice said, “Ah, excuse me?” I glanced up. He was a nondescript guy, receding hairline, plastic-rimmed glasses, middle-aged paunch, wearing baggy corduroy pants and a short-sleeved blue shirt.
“Yes?” I said.
“You’re with the gunshot wound?”
“Yes. Is he—?”
“I’m the sheriff” he said. He held his hand out to me. “Mason.
“Brady Coyne,” I said, shaking his hand. “This is Diana West.”
Mason glanced at Diana and nodded. “Ma’am,” he mumbled.
“How is he, do you know?” said Diana.
Mason shrugged. “No idea, miss,” he said. “They tell me gunshot wound, I gotta come see what’s up. They didn’t say he was—” He cleared his throat. “Anyways, I need to know what happened. You can start by giving me his name.”
“Walter Kinnick,” I said. “He—”
The sheriff nodded quickly. “Okay. Sure. I know who he is. He’s got the Palmer place up there in Fenwick, right?”
“Yes,” said Diana.
Maybe they didn’t have cable in that part of Massachusetts. Still, Mason must have known that Wally was a television personality. But I figured that, like most rural folks, he made it a point to be staunchly unimpressed with wealth or fame. Wealthy and famous people keep getting lost in the woods. They don’t know how to change flat tires. They wear impractical clothes.
To the locals, Wally wasn’t the television guy. Wally was the guy who bought the Palmer place up in Fenwick, and probably paid more for it than he should have, and just used it for vacations now and then. A city boy. An outsider.
Mason squatted down in front of us. “That where it happened?”
Diana nodded. “Outside. In the woods.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Wally was out walking with the dog,” I said. “We were inside. We heard shots. When we got out there, he was on the ground. He was hit in the stomach.”
“You see or hear anything besides the gunshots?”
“I don’t—”
“Anybody? Somebody running? Voices? Noises in the woods? A vehicle? The sound of a vehicle starting up?”
I shook my head.
“No,” said Diana.
“How many shots?”
“Three or four,” said Diana. “Real close together.”
“Actually,” I said, “I think there was one shot, then a pause, then three or four after that.”
Mason shrugged. “Who called it in?”
“I did,” said Diana.
“When you heard the shots?”
“We ran outside. Corky—that’s my dog—he led us to him. Walter was on the ground in the woods. When we realized he had been shot, I went back and called.
“But you didn’t actually see anything.”
“No,” she said.
“Mr. Coyne?”
I shook my head.
“Was Mr. Kinnick conscious?”
“Yes. He passed out before the ambulance arrived.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He said, ‘They got me.’”
“Is that all?” I nodded. “I asked him what he meant, who got him, but he didn’t say. He mumbled some things that made no sense. Then he passed out.”
“What things that made no sense?”
“I don’t exactly remember. References to things he and I did as boys. We grew up together. It seemed to me he was hallucinating.”
“But m
aybe he saw who did it.”
I shrugged.
Mason was still squatting down in front of us. He shifted his weight, then glanced from Diana to me. “And you two?”
I frowned. “What?”
“How are you related? To Kinnick, to each other.”
“I’m his lawyer,” I said. “Diana’s his…”
“Friend,” she said.
“And what were you doing there?” he said to me.
“At the cabin? A little vacation. We were fishing.”
“The three of you.”
I nodded. “The three of us.”
“The Deerfield, huh?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “I hear it’s been fishing good. So what do you figure happened?”
“Somebody hid in the woods and tried to assassinate him,” I said. “It’s pretty obvious.”
Mason smiled. “Who’d want to go do something like that?”
“Somebody who belongs to the Second Amendment For Ever,” I said. “See, Wally testified in favor of a gun-control bill last Monday SAFE brought him in to testify against it, but he ended up supporting it.” I shrugged.
Mason scratched his chin. “That’s quite a theory, Mr. Coyne.”
“He’s been getting anonymous phone calls. I heard one of them on his answering machine yesterday. Said he was a traitor to SAFE. It was a death threat.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And Gene McNiff threatened him right after he testified and then a gang of SAFE guys followed me and Wally to the Dunkin’ Donuts on Tremont Street and attacked Wally, and…” I let out a deep breath. “Jesus. It’s obvious.”
Mason put his hand on my arm. “Calm down, there, Mr. Coyne. Just relax.
“Look,” I said, “if it’s not one of the guys who threatened him on the phone, it’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think? The way I understand it, every gun-totin’ member of SAFE figures Walt Kinnick’s their biggest enemy in the world, and one of them figures he’s going to serve the cause, so he calls up Wally and tells him he deserves to die for his treachery, and next thing you know Wally’s been shot in the gut with a gun.”
Seventh Enemy Page 8
