Scar Tissue

by William G. Tapply

  Jake leaned to me and whispered, “Look at her. Isn’t she fantastic?”

  I nodded. “Remembering when Kennedy was shot isn’t everything.”

  He went to her, bent down, and touched her shoulder. “Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down for a while,” he said.

  Her eyes blinked open, then darted from Jake to me. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I just closed my eyes for a minute. Rude.”

  I smiled. “Don’t be silly. Go have a nap.”

  She rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I don’t want to sleep. I’m afraid I’ll dream. I’m afraid when I wake up …” Her eyes brimmed, and she cried.

  Jake put his arm around her and helped her up. She didn’t resist. He led her over to the staircase. “Be right back,” he said to me.

  I sat on the sofa and poured myself a mug of coffee, and a few minutes later Jake came back down. He took the chair across from me. “She’s a wreck,” he said.

  “How about you?”

  He nodded. “Sure. Me, too. We’ve been up all night.”

  “So, why don’t you go lie down?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “It’s a fucking nightmare, Brady. It’s like I’m watching this happen to somebody else, you know?” He poured himself some coffee. “I really appreciate your coming out. Sharon does, too.”

  “I wish there was something I could do.”

  “You can find Brian for us.” He shook his head and laughed ironically. “Sorry.” He blew out a breath. “Just being here for us, that’s a help. It really is. I needed someone to talk to. Sharon thinks you’re God. It’s like, if Brady’s around, everything’s got to be okay.”

  “I can’t make this okay, Jake.”

  “I know. I wish you could.”

  We sipped our coffee in silence. Jake slouched forward in the chair—his head bowed down and his forearms on his knees cradling his mug in both hands—taking an occasional, absentminded sip. After a while, he looked up at me. “It’s Friday night, for God’s sake. I bet you’ve got a date.”

  I smiled. “I think I do.”

  “Evie?”

  I nodded.

  “There’s no sense hanging around,” he said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “We’ll be all right,” he said. “If anything happens, I’ll let you know. You go ahead. Sorry to drag you out here for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” I said. I drained my coffee mug, put it onto the table, and stood up. “Say good-bye to Sharon for me. I expect to be close to home all weekend. You’ve got my number. Please keep me posted.”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  Outside, the rain had stopped. The clouds were skidding across the sky, and here and there patches of blue showed through. The temperature had dropped about ten degrees, and it was feeling like winter again. I hoped Phil had enjoyed a shadowless day down there in Punxsutawney and had tracked down a sexy young groundhog. Maybe he was already shacked up with her, deep under the ground where, if the sun peeked out before evening came, he wouldn’t see it.

  The freshening breeze sliced through my topcoat. I figured the wet roads would freeze once the sun went down. It would be a good night for automobile accidents.

  The police aren’t always forthcoming with the families of victims, I knew, so I decided to drop in at the Reddington police station before I headed home. I took the two-lane north-to-south road from Jake’s house. I passed apple orchards, horse farms, stubbly cornfields, and conservation land.

  Reddington had been settled by farmers sometime in the 1700s. They raised corn and squashes and apples in the fertile valley of the Reddington River. Then in the early days of the American industrial revolution, the village transformed itself into a mill town. They built a dam across the river and used its power to run their machines. Gunpowder had been the main product.

  Today, Reddington is a Mass Pike commuter town, remarkably devoid of commerce. There’s a hospital, three or four churches, one elementary school, a 7—12 high school. A couple of bookstores and restaurants and convenience stores are clustered around the community college in the northwest corner of town, and there’s one strip mall for the supermarket, the bank, the dry cleaner, the take-out pizza joint, the video rental, the pharmacy, and the camera store. I passed a garage and a gas station and a couple of farm stands, now closed for the season, on my way from the Golds’ house to the village green, where the police station shared space with the town offices in the big barnlike old New England town hall.

  I parked out back and went in.

  A uniformed officer sat behind a glassed-in booth like a ticket-seller at a movie theater. She was thirtyish, I guessed, with clear, fair skin, an angular face, and straight blond-streaked brown hair in a no-nonsense short cut that showed her ears. A plaque on the left breast pocket of her uniform shirt read V. WHYTE. When I cleared my throat, she looked up at me and smiled. She had enormous gray-green eyes and a fetching little gap between her front teeth.

  “Can I help you, sir?” she said. Her voice came at me through a round perforated metal plate set into the bottom of the glass.

  I bent down to speak into it. “I’m here to see Chief Sprague.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “No. It’s about the accident last night.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You from the media or something?”

  “No. I’m the Golds’ lawyer.” I fumbled a business card out of my wallet and held it against the glass.

  She squinted at it, then said, “Hang on a minute.”

  She picked up a telephone, spoke softly into it, then looked up at me and said, “Okay. The chief’s with somebody, but he said for you to wait.”

  The door to the left of her booth buzzed, and I opened it and went into an empty waiting room. It was small and sparsely furnished—ten or a dozen plastic chairs, a couple of end tables strewn with magazines and newspapers, a pay phone on the wall beside the door, and a coffee urn on a scarred wooden table in the corner.

  A cluster of framed black-and-white photographs hung on the inside wall. I wandered over to look at them. The police bowling team, half a dozen head-and-shoulder shots of police officers, and several team photos showing the same middle-aged man surrounded by boys and girls in shorts and soccer jerseys. Jake had said that Chief Sprague coached Brian’s soccer team.

  I peered at the photos and found Brian in each of them. Brian Gold had always been small for his age. He knelt in the front row in each photo, the way they always arranged it—tall kids in back, short ones kneeling in front. It didn’t look as if Brian had aged or grown from one photo to the next. He looked eight years old in the oldest photo, and in the most recent one, he still looked about eight.

  Hell, they all looked young. They all were young. It took me back to when my boys, Billy and Joey, were that age, back to a time when I lived in suburban bliss with my ex-wife, Gloria, and watched my kids play Saturday-morning co-ed soccer.

  Not that blissful, actually.

  Brian Gold looked younger even than the other kids on Chief Sprague’s soccer team. Brian was a cute boy—the word handsome didn’t work, but pretty wasn’t right, either. He had his mother’s black hair and big, dark eyes and delicate, almost-but-not-quite feminine features, but he was long-legged, and you could see how he might grow into Jake’s gangly body.

  Now he was somewhere in the Reddington River, under the ice. Brian Gold would not grow into any body whatsoever.

  “Somebody helping you?”

  I turned. A police officer was standing behind me. He was in his mid-thirties, I guessed, a big redheaded guy with a friendly Huck Finn face.

  “I’m all set,” I said. “Just waiting to talk to your chief.”

  “Anything I can do?” said the officer. “The chief’s pretty busy. It might be a while.”

  “That accident, huh?” I said.

  He nodded. His nameplate read L. MCCAFFREY. He pointed at one of the soccer pictures. “That’s Jenny Rolando, there, and that’s Bri
an Gold.”

  Jenny had flashing dark eyes and blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had a terrific smile. She was standing directly behind Brian in the most recent photo. She was one of the tall ones. When I squinted at the picture, I could see that her hand rested on Brian’s shoulder.

  “I knew Brian,” I told McCaffrey. “I’m the family lawyer.”

  “Lawyer, huh?”

  I shrugged. “Friend. Today, I’m their friend.”

  “Boy,” he said. “Something like this, they can use all the friends they’ve got.” He shook his head. “I was first on the scene.”

  “Last night? The accident?”

  He nodded. “Helpless damn feeling, knowing those two kids were down there—”

  At that moment, V. Whyte, the female cop from the ticket-seller’s booth, came in. She was taller and lankier than she’d looked sitting behind the bulletproof glass. “Beware of the coffee,” she said to me. She ignored McCaffrey. “I’ll check on the chief for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She went through a door in the back of the waiting room.

  I turned to McCaffrey. “That accident,” I said. “You didn’t see—?”

  He held up his hand. “I’m not supposed to talk about it. You’ll have to talk to my boss.”

  I shrugged. “I understand.”

  “Well,” said McCaffrey. “If you’re all set, I got work to do.” He held up the thick manila folder he’d been carrying. “Paperwork, you know?”

  I smiled. “I know it well.”

  He went out through the same door the female officer had used. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat in one of the plastic chairs. It was spectacularly uncomfortable, so I stood up and sipped my coffee, which was spectacular, too, if you liked crankcase grease.

  I put the coffee cup back on the table and wandered over to the window. Darkness had begun to seep in over the Reddington village green. Yellow lights glowed from the windows of the colonial houses across the way. Soon Groundhog Day would be over.

  I tried sitting again. The chairback stopped right where my shoulderblades began. It was molded in a way that forced me to hunch my shoulders.

  V. Whyte came back. She had changed out of her uniform into a pair of Levi’s, a red sweater, and a hip-length black leather jacket. “The chief knows you’re here,” she said. “He’ll be with you. It might be a while.”

  I thanked her again, which earned me an over-the-shoulder smile as she walked out.

  I stood up, went to the pay phone, fished some quarters from my pocket, and called Evie Banyon’s office at Emerson Hospital in Concord, where Evie was the assistant to the administrator.

  When she answered, I said, “Happy Imbolog.”

  “Brady!” she said, and I don’t think the delight I heard in her voice was wishful thinking on my part. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Anything you can say out loud?”

  “Goodness, no. What’s Imbolog?”

  “Groundhog Day, honey,” I said. “A joyous pagan holiday. The orgy begins at sundown.”

  “It does?”

  “It does this year. It requires a barrel of mead, a sacrificial goat, and at least one virgin.”

  “Nuts,” she said. “I’m fresh out of virgins.”

  “I just wanted you to know that I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m out here in Reddington.”

  “Reddington,” she repeated. “Shining the light of truth and justice into every corner of the land, are we?”

  “That’s me,” I said. “Have briefcase, will litigate.”

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m extremely bummed, actually. I’m not sure I’ll be very good company tonight. Maybe we should—” At that moment two men emerged from the corridor. “Gotta go, honey,” I said to Evie. “I’ll call you when I get home, okay?”

  “You’re the boss,” she said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  One of the men was Chief Sprague. I recognized him from the soccer pictures. He was about my height, maybe twenty pounds heavier, late thirties, early forties. Light brown hair in a military razor cut, rimless glasses, round, open face, thick neck, big shoulders. He was wearing his uniform—pale blue shirt, dark blue necktie, trousers that matched the tie, spitshined shoes. The tie was pulled loose at his throat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms.

  I recognized the man with him, too. It was August Nash, the district attorney. Nash was a small, fiftyish guy with thinning gray hair, bifocals, and a mouthful of man-made teeth, a relic of his career as a shifty little left-winger for his college hockey team. He was one of those Boston guys who never left town—Central Catholic High, criminal justice major at Northeastern, Boston College Law School. I’d opposed Gus Nash a few times when he was an ADA, and I knew him to be smart, scrupulous, and a helluva tough prosecutor. There were rumors that the state Democratic party was trying to convince Gus to run for attorney general in the fall election. If he did, I guessed I’d probably vote for him.

  Nash and Sprague had their heads tilted toward each other, and they were talking intently as they crossed the waiting room.

  Gus Nash saw me and smiled. “Hey, Brady. What’s a slick city lawyer doing in a little hick town like Reddington?” He turned to Sprague. “Ed, do you know this scoundrel?”

  The chief shook his head and held out his hand to me. “Ed Sprague,” he said. “You’re waiting to see me, right?”

  I shook his hand. “Right. And don’t worry. I’m not all that slick.”

  “That tragedy over on River Road, huh?”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head. “Two wonderful young people. Just a shame.” He turned to Nash. “We should probably talk some more, huh, Mr. Nash?”

  “Yes,” said Nash. “I’ll call you.” He clapped my shoulder. “Brady, good to see you again. It’s been too long. How’s about I buy you a drink sometime.”

  “Why not?” I said. “I rarely pass up a free drink.”

  After Nash left, Sprague turned to me and said, “Let’s go to my office.” He waved toward the coffee urn. “Coffee?”

  I shook my head. “Tried it.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  I followed him down the short corridor. Along the right wall were several closed doors. One was labeled MEN and one WOMEN. The others had small square windows of glass sandwiched around wire mesh. Conference rooms, I guessed. Or interrogation rooms, if they ever actually hauled in criminal suspects worth interrogating in sleepy little Reddington.

  On the left was a big open room, the cops’ bullpen. I guessed it had been a couple of parlors in the original Victorian layout, but now the wall separating them had been removed. There were six or eight metal-topped desks piled with manila folders, in- and out-boxes, computers and telephones, and the walls were lined with gray chest-high steel file cabinets and copiers and fax machines and wastebaskets. Officer McCaffrey, the big redheaded cop, was sitting at one of the desks. He was hunched forward with his elbows on his desktop and his chin in his hands, staring at his computer monitor.

  Sprague had the end office, which was in the back corner of the building. It might once have been a downstairs bedroom. Waist-high maple wainscoting was topped with a mural-like wallpaper depicting a Revolutionary War scene. Tall double-wide windows on two walls looked out over the Reddington village green, and a big square oak desk sat in the corner between them. One inside wall was dominated by a fieldstone fireplace, which was set with birch logs waiting to be fired up.

  “Nice office,” I said.

  Sprague shrugged. “I practically live here. Might as well try to make it homey.”

  Above the mantelpiece hung a print of pintail ducks bursting into panicky flight from a salt marsh on a wintry dawn. I jerked my head at it. “Do you hunt?” I said.

  He smiled and shook his head. “
I like birds.”

  The fireplace was flanked by built-in bookcases. They held worn leather-bound volumes—Dickens and Trollope, Hawthorne and Melville, Whitman and Eliot, Plato and Aristotle, Dante and Machiavelli, Cicero and Aquinas, Darwin and Adam Smith.

  I slid out his copy of Moby Dick and thumbed through it. “I’ve been trying to read this for years,” I said.

  “I plowed through it in college,” he said. “Took me an entire weekend. It was hard going. I keep thinking I should try it again, see if I can figure out what all the fuss is about.”

  A dozen or so framed photos hung on another wall. They all showed Ed Sprague shaking hands with somebody. I recognized Bill Weld, Ted Kennedy, Rick Pitino, Nomar Garciaparra.

  If it weren’t for the photos, I could’ve been in the office of a college professor.

  The floor was covered with the same industrial-beige wall-to-wall carpeting as the corridor outside. Along one wall stood a faded upholstered sofa. Facing the desk were two wooden armchairs. Sprague waved at them, and we each took one.

  He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and said, “So you know our DA, huh?”

  I nodded. “I’ve opposed him a few times.”

  “He’s a good prosecutor.”

  “Yes,” I said. “A worthy adversary.”

  Sprague smiled. “So how can I help you, Mr. Coyne?”

  “I’ve just come from visiting with Jake and Sharon Gold. You knew Brian?”

  “Sure. I know everyone in Reddington. It’s a small town.”

  “You coached Brian’s soccer team, huh?”

  Sprague shrugged. “I’m not married myself. I like kids.”

  “The accident last night …”

  “Bad one,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “Real bad. I was there all night and all morning.” He stared out the window. “It makes you want to cry. For those kids, for their parents, for all of us. Just another goddamn senseless thing, Mr. Coyne. Teenagers, automobiles, alcohol. I visit the schools every spring around prom time, preaching the same old sermon. I go to driver’s ed classes with my statistics and slide shows and horror stories. Reddington’s a small town. There were less than a hundred kids in last year’s graduating class. But you know what?” He peered at me through his schoolteacher glasses.