Muscle Memory

by William G. Tapply

  “Bad police work,” I said.

  “Agreed,” said Horowitz. “But it don’t change what Fallon did.”

  I nodded. “Okay. So then what happened?”

  “So after he tossed that cop out of the door, your client went back in, cleared the place out, snagged a knife off one of the booths, and grabbed Skeeter. He’s a big sonofabitch, huh?”

  “Yes, he’s very big,” I said. “But what—?”

  “We got him on the phone. He says he’ll only talk to you.”

  Outside the front door, a pretty dark-eyed woman, early thirties, I guessed, was holding a cellular phone to her ear. When she saw Horowitz she said, “He’s not talking.”

  “This is Coyne, Fallon’s lawyer,” he said to her. He looked at me. “Benny. Marcia Benetti. My partner.”

  She nodded to me and gave the phone to Horowitz, who handed it to me. “So talk to him, Coyne.”

  I frowned at Horowitz, then put the phone to my ear. “Mick?” I said. “It’s Brady.”

  I heard what sounded like a sob. Then Mick said, “Oh, Jesus, man. I really fucked up this time, huh?”

  “No problem, Mick. Is Skeeter okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s okay.”

  “Let me speak to him.”

  A moment later Skeeter said, “I’m okay, Mr. Coyne.”

  “You sure, Skeets?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  “Brady?” It was Mick. I guessed he’d grabbed the phone back from Skeeter.

  “I’m right here, Mick. I’m coming in, okay?”

  “I don’t know. Shit, man. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t do anything,” I said. “Just stay right there. I’m going to put the phone down now, and then I’ll be coming in the front door.”

  “Alone,” said Mick. “If anyone’s with you, I’ll…”

  “You better not hurt Skeeter. He’s my friend, and I’ll be really angry with you if you so much as scratch him.”

  “You better be alone. I trust you, man.”

  “Here I come. Don’t hang up that phone.”

  I handed the phone to Horowitz. “Stay tuned,” I said. I took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and stepped inside.

  Mick and Skeeter were behind the bar. Mick was standing behind Skeeter and had one arm across the much smaller man’s chest. His other hand was hanging down out of sight. I assumed that was the one that held the knife.

  “Let Skeeter go, Mick,” I said.

  “I didn’t hurt anybody. You know me, Brady. I don’t want trouble.”

  “I know that. No harm done. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “I just need to talk to you. Okay?”

  “We can do that, sure.” I approached the bar, lifted the hinged section, and held it up. “Go on outside, Skeets. Mick and I need to talk privately.”

  Mick did not let go of Skeeter. He lifted his hand. It held a steak knife with a serrated blade, and he pressed it against Skeeter’s throat. Mick’s eyes were red and glittery, and the hand that held the knife trembled. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I gotta think.”

  “You’ve got me now,” I said to him. “Just let Skeeter go, and you can hang onto me while we talk. All right?” I pointed at the phone on the bartop. “I’m going to tell them what’s happening.”

  Mick shrugged.

  I reached my hand slowly for the phone, keeping my eyes on Mick.

  “Okay?” I said.

  He nodded.

  I picked it up. “Horowitz, you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Skeeter’s coming out. Mick’s got his knife on my throat now, so don’t do anything stupid, please.”

  “You gonna bring out Fallon?”

  “Give us a few minutes.”

  “We ain’t got all night, Coyne. If you aren’t out of there in fifteen minutes, I’m calling in the SWAT team.”

  “No need for that.” I put the phone down and arched my eyebrows at Mick.

  He pulled his arm away from Skeeter, then patted him on the shoulder. “I’m real sorry, man. I never would’ve hurt you.”

  Skeeter looked up at him. “I never thought you would, Mick. Hell, you probably got my joint on the news. Best publicity I ever had, huh?” He tugged at the beak of his Red Sox cap. “Any TV cameras out there, Mr. Coyne?”

  I smiled. “I saw that nosy redhead from Channel 7. I’m sure she’ll want to interview you.”

  Skeeter grinned, then turned to Mick. “Don’t worry, Mick. I’ll tell ’em how you and I go way back.” He looked at me. “I ain’t gonna press charges or anything, Mr. Coyne. Mick was just feeling pretty low, and maybe I gave him a couple beers too many, you know?”

  “Thanks, Skeets. Now if you don’t mind…”

  “Sure. I’m outa here.”

  I picked up the phone. “Skeeter’s coming out now,” I said.

  “Gotcha,” said Horowitz.

  I clicked the Off button on the phone. I didn’t want Horowitz to overhear any privileged lawyer-client conversation.

  Mick and I watched Skeeter leave. Then I turned to Mick. “Okay, my friend. Talk to me.”

  Mick came around from behind the bar. He dropped the knife on the bartop beside the phone, then sat on a stool. He put his elbows on the bar and lowered his face into his hands.

  I sat beside him. “Tell me about it, Mick.”

  “You think I could mess up my life any worse?”

  “Ah, come on. No harm was done. Skeeter won’t press charges. Tell me what happened.”

  He lifted his head and looked at me. “I guess I—I just snapped, Brady. I’ve never been so damn depressed as I have since the other day. Kaye, refusing even to think about working it out, and then that crap about my gambling. I mean, it just feels like it’s all falling apart and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  I put my arm around his shoulder. “I’m going to help you through it,” I said. “There are things we can do, okay? We’ll get you a divorce settlement, we’ll get together with Ray Allen and file some amended tax returns, we’ll straighten out this evening with the police. Everything’s fixable. All right?”

  He nodded. “I guess I had too many beers. When that guy said he wanted to talk to me…”

  “That guy was a cop, Mick.”

  He let out a long breath. “I know, but…”

  “Did he announce himself, show you his shield?”

  “He just touched my arm, said he wanted to talk to me. If he had his badge out, I didn’t see it.” Mick shook his head. “I didn’t know what I was doing, Brady. It’s like it wasn’t me. I just—something exploded in my head, you know? I hope I didn’t hurt anybody.”

  “You didn’t,” I said, although I wasn’t sure that was true. I lit a cigarette and put my arm around his shoulder. “I’m going to smoke this butt, and you’re going to calm down, and then we’re getting out of here. Okay?”

  “You’ll stay with me?”

  “Of course I will.”

  When I finished my cigarette, I turned to Mick. “Before we leave, there’s one thing I need to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why did that cop want to talk to you?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I didn’t give him the chance to say. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking. Guess I blew it, huh?”

  “That you did.” I touched his arm. “We’ll straighten it out. Ready?”

  He nodded.

  I picked up the phone and hit Star 69. It rang once, and then Horowitz said, “Coyne?”

  “We’re coming out,” I said. “For Christ sake, don’t shoot me.”

  Four

  HOROWITZ’S UNMARKED CAR WAS parked in the alley right outside the door. When Mick and I stepped outside, a uniformed state cop grabbed his arms and Marcia Benetti cuffed his wrists behind him.

  Horowitz came around from the other side of the car. “Good work,” he said to me.

  “Take the cuffs off my client,” I said. “You’re not going to arrest him.”


  “Christ,” said Horowitz. “He assaults a police officer, he holds a man hostage at knife point. That’s not enough?”

  “Skeeter won’t press charges,” I said, “and if anyone ever tried to put that cop on the stand, a first-year law student would chew him up and spit him out. So don’t play games with me. Tell me what’s really going on here.”

  Horowitz glared at me for a minute. Then he shrugged. He was a homicide cop. Homicide cops don’t get involved in hostage situations. Not unless somebody gets killed. “I got some questions for your client.”

  “Well, fine,” I said. “All you’ve got to do is ask. Uncuff him, and we’ll go into Skeeter’s and sit down like civilized people. You can ask him your questions while you keep a couple of officers at the door so nobody interrupts us. How’s that?”

  Horowitz cocked his head and peered at me for a minute. He was a stocky guy with a perpetual five o’clock shadow, rimless glasses, thinning black hair, and old acne scars on his cheeks. When he smiled, which he did rarely and at unexpected times, he reminded me of Jack Nicholson.

  He didn’t smile this time. “I’ll want to tape our conversation.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  He nodded. “Okay.” He jerked his head at Benetti. “Uncuff him.”

  She took the cuffs off Mick, and we trooped inside and sat at a booth, Mick and I on one side with Horowitz across from us. Marcia Benetti pulled a chair up to the end of the booth and put a tape recorder on the table.

  Horowitz reached over and flicked it on. “It’s June first—no, wait, it’s turned into June second, and it’s, um, one-twenty A.M. This is Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Roger Horowitz, and with me are Michael Fallon and Brady Coyne, Mr. Fallon’s attorney, along with Officer Marcia Benetti. We’re at Skeeter’s Infield in Boston.” He looked at Mick. “Are you willing to answer some questions for me, Mr. Fallon?”

  Mick looked at me, and I nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  “Good,” said Horowitz. “So, Mr. Fallon. Can you tell us where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing for the past thirty-six hours?”

  “Come on, Lieutenant,” I said. “You know better.”

  Horowitz frowned at me, then shrugged. “Tell you what,” he growled. “Suppose I rephrase the question?”

  “Please,” I said.

  He looked at Mick. “Mr. Fallon,” he said, “can you think of anyone who’d want to murder your wife?”

  Somehow his question didn’t surprise me. If Horowitz was involved, it probably meant somebody had been murdered, and ever since he’d called me at home, possibilities had been bouncing around in the back of my head. Kaye Fallon had been one of those possibilities.

  Still, his words kicked me in the stomach.

  Mick stared at Horowitz for a long time. Finally he whispered, “What the hell?”

  Horowitz nodded.

  “You’re saying somebody…?”

  “She’s been murdered, Mr. Fallon. I’m sorry.”

  Mick turned to me. “What’s he trying to do?”

  “He’s telling you the truth, Mick. He’s not a pleasant man, but he’s a good cop. He doesn’t play games. Not with something like this.” I turned to Horowitz. “Is my client a suspect? Because if he is—”

  “Not at this time,” said Horowitz.

  Mick had tilted back his head, and he was looking up at the ceiling. Both of his fists were drumming on the table in front of him. When he dropped his eyes, I saw that they were red and watery. He stared at me, and I knew what he wanted from me.

  But I couldn’t deny it. Kaye had been murdered. I held his eyes and shook my head.

  Horowitz cleared his throat. “So, Mr. Fallon…”

  “Give me a minute with my client, okay?” I said.

  He nodded and slid out of the booth. Benetti clicked off the tape recorder, and the two of them went over and sat on stools at the bar.

  I touched Mick’s shoulder. “Don’t lie to me this time.”

  He nodded. Tears had overflowed his eyes and wet his cheeks.

  “You’ve got to tell me the truth,” I said.

  “I didn’t kill her,” he said, “if that’s what you want to know.”

  I peered into his eyes, then nodded. “Okay. You got anything to hide?”

  He shrugged.

  “If you do, tell me now.”

  “No,” he said. “Nothing you don’t already know.”

  “You don’t know anything about this?”

  He shook his head.

  “We better talk to the police, then, okay?”

  “I’m not up for this, Brady. Jesus…”

  “Somebody killed Kaye,” I said. “Let’s help them figure it out.”

  He looked up at me, then slowly nodded. “Sure. You’re right.”

  I glanced over toward Horowitz, caught his eye, and jerked my chin at him. He and Benetti slid off their stools and came back to the booth.

  After they’d sat down and got the tape recorder switched on, I said to Horowitz, “Tell us what happened.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll tell you what I can.” He leaned forward on his elbows and spoke in a low, matter-of-fact monotone, but now and then—at the oddest, least appropriate moments—he flashed his evil Nicholson grin. His eyes never left Mick’s face the whole time.

  Kaye Fallon’s body, he told us, had been discovered by Gretchen Conley, a friend of hers, at about ten o’clock on Monday evening. Kaye was lying on her back on the living room floor of her contemporary home—the home she used to share with Mick—in the Moon Hill section of Lexington. Preliminary observation by the medical examiner on the scene indicated that she’d been first bludgeoned and then stabbed. She’d been dead for about twenty-four hours, meaning she’d been killed sometime Sunday evening. She was fully clothed. She was wearing a short-sleeved jersey, a plaid kilt, pantyhose, no shoes. The front of the jersey was dark reddish brown from the dried blood, matching the stain on the carpet. The kilt was bunched up around her waist, but her pantyhose had not been pulled down and it did not appear that she’d been sexually abused.

  Kaye had a depressed skull fracture above and behind her right ear, Horowitz continued. She’d been stabbed several times in the torso, and her throat had been slashed. There were no defense wounds on her hands or arms. The ME guessed that the blow to the head, which came before the knife wounds, would’ve killed her, although all the bleeding indicated that her heart was still pumping when she’d been stabbed and cut.

  From the location of the blow—and here Horowitz had touched the back of his head delicately with the tips of his fingers—the ME speculated that she’d been hit from behind. A vicious blow that dented and splintered her skull.

  “He hit her when she turned her back on him,” I said.

  Horowitz nodded. “We figure they’d been in the living room—maybe sitting on the sofa, judging from where her body fell—and then she got up and turned to leave the room. She might’ve started for the kitchen where there’s a phone when he hit her.”

  “Right side of the head, did you say?”

  He nodded. “From behind, a right-handed blow.”

  “What’d he use?” I said.

  “A brass sculpture. A replica of Rodin’s The Thinker. Weighs five or six pounds.”

  Mick, who’d been staring down at the table the whole time, looked up. “Kaye gave that to me for my birthday a few years ago.” He smiled quickly. “It was sort of a joke between us. Kaye used to tease me about, you know, going off half-cocked, not stopping to think. We kept it on the coffee table. Sort of to remind me to—to think before I did something.”

  “Mr. Fallon,” said Horowitz, “are you right-handed?”

  Mick turned to me.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Mick. “When I played ball, I had a decent left hand, though.”

  “Did you find prints on that statue?” I said.

  Horowitz shrugged. He didn’t know—or wasn’t saying. I figured if they�
�d pulled Mick’s prints off that sculpture, they would’ve arrested him.

  “What about the other weapon?” I said.

  “Carving knife,” said Horowitz. “It matched a set of cutlery on the kitchen counter.”

  I tried to imagine it. When Kaye gets up off the sofa and turns her back on him, the killer bashes her head with heavy sculpture. She falls to the floor, mortally wounded. Not good enough. He goes into the kitchen, finds a knife, comes back, stabs her, and then cuts her throat for good measure. What kind of rage drives somebody to do that?

  I guessed they hadn’t found Mick’s prints on the knife, either.

  I knew what Horowitz was thinking, of course. I’d have thought the same thing. Mick was angry and depressed over his divorce. If that wasn’t enough, he owed big gambling debts, not to mention back taxes, and he faced possible criminal charges with the IRS.

  Plus, of course, whenever a woman is murdered, her spouse is the first and most logical suspect.

  Throwing the detective out of Skeeter’s and then holding a knife at his friend’s throat didn’t exactly make Mick look innocent, either.

  But Horowitz wasn’t arresting him. He had told us Mick wasn’t an official suspect, though I was positive Horowitz suspected him.

  I could almost believe Mick would hit her. I’d seen how easily she could provoke him, and he had a quick temper. But I couldn’t see him sustaining his anger long enough to go find a knife, come back, and do what he did. That just wasn’t Mick.

  “You know Gretchen Conley?” said Horowitz to Mick.

  He nodded. “Kaye’s best friend. Friend of mine, too. At least she was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mick shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since—since Kaye and I split. For all I know Gretchen doesn’t like me anymore.”

  The two women had been college classmates, Mick said, and their friendship had deepened over the years. Now they were best friends and confidantes. Before Mick and Kaye separated, they used to go out to dinner or a movie with Gretchen Conley and her husband almost every week. When their kids were younger, the two families had taken vacations together.

  Horowitz told us he’d interrogated Gretchen Conley at length. She and Kaye had agreed to meet at six-thirty on Monday evening for dinner at Aigo’s, a little restaurant in Concord, the town where Gretchen lived. Getting together for dinner on Monday evenings had become a ritual for the two women ever since Mick had moved out over a year earlier.