“What about those pictures?” I said. “What’s going to happen to them?”
“They’re all the evidence we got.”
“Roger,” I said, “Nash threatened me with a court order to open my safe. I would’ve refused. I would’ve gone to prison before I’d let those photos out of my hands.”
“They’re out of your hands now, Coyne.”
“And they could be used as evidence in court?”
“If it comes to that, sure.”
“What about those kids?”
“They’re our only witnesses.”
I shook my head. “Do you realize—?”
Horowitz gave me his evil Nicholson grin. “You think I like the idea of parading a bunch of sweet teenagers on the witness stand, making them tell the world how they fucked strangers for gas money?”
“It’s not like they were posing for those photos,” I said. “They didn’t know Sprague was hiding in the bathroom with his camera. You make them testify, let the tabloids get ahold of those photos, it would wreck their lives, and their parents’, too.”
He shrugged. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“So now what happens?”
“Stone and me, we’re shaking some trees, having conversations with all the sick bastards whose faces—and other body parts—appear in those photos. Dropping Nash’s name, letting the implications sink in. We’ll see what happens.”
After Horowitz left, I opened my safe and took out the manila envelope Jake had given me. I removed the photographs, put my wastebasket between my knees, and tore each of them into pieces the size of postage stamps.
There were copies of those photos on the disk Brian had taken off Sprague’s computer, I knew. But still, ripping them up felt good.
Sharon called me a couple of days later. “I haven’t thanked you,” she said.
“You don’t need to, Sharon. How’s it going?”
She hesitated. “It’s hard. Brian—he’s very ashamed of what he did. He’s having a rough time. And I know I’m not helping any. I keep finding myself being angry with him. What he put me through. And about Jake, of course. It’s the wrong way to feel, but I can’t help it.”
“I suspect it’s a pretty natural way to feel,” I said.
“He won’t leave the house or talk to anybody. He refuses to go back to school.”
“Understandable.”
“He’s got to get on with his life,” she said. “We both do.”
“It’s going to take time. You both need to talk to somebody.” I hesitated. “Has Brian told you—?”
“He told me everything, Brady. It was the first thing he did when you and those two officers brought him home the other night. He came in, and we looked at each other, and then we hugged each other and cried, and then he said he had to talk to me, and he had to do it right then before he lost his courage. I know it was harder for him to tell me than it was for me to hear it. I was just so—so happy to see him, to know he was alive.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“They’ve finally released Jake’s body,” she said. “Brian and I, we’ve decided not to have any kind of service or anything. Jake wouldn’t have wanted it, and we can’t put ourselves through it anyway. We’re going to spend some time with my mother in Wisconsin. We’re leaving on Sunday.”
“How does Brian feel about that?” I said.
“He thinks it’s a good idea, putting distance between himself and Reddington. Anyway, Brian and my mother have always gotten along great.” She laughed quickly. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stand it, though. Mother will wear me out.”
“While you’re there,” I said, “you should both find somebody to talk to. Besides your mother, I mean. You shouldn’t put it off.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s important, I know.” She hesitated. “Anyway, Brady Coyne, I just wanted to say thank you. You’ve been a good friend. It’s very awkward talking to you now. You know all our secrets. So if you don’t hear from us for a while, please remember that we love you.”
“I know,” I said. “Me, too.”
She cleared her throat. “Well, good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Sharon,” I said.
Benny Goodman was tootling on the stereo and a vat of corn chowder was simmering on the stove. It was Saturday night, and Evie and I were sitting on the floor in my living room. She was leaning back against the sofa, and I was sitting cross-legged in front of her. Her bare foot was in my lap. I’d wedged cotton balls between each of her toes, and I was painting her toenails. I’d picked a glittery purplish-blue color, which she okayed on the grounds that it was still winter and she wouldn’t be wearing sandals in public anytime soon.
It was delicate work, and I was focused on the task, holding her foot steady with my left hand while I painted with my right.
She was humming along with Benny’s clarinet and sipping from a glass of wine.
“I thought I’d lost you,” I said. I bent close to her foot and blew on the wet polish. “You were acting …”
“Distant,” she said. “Bitchy.”
“Yes.”
“I had a great time with Mary at the museum and down at Foxwoods,” she said after a minute. “And all the time, I was thinking, Brady would never do this. He’d hate it. All we do is lay around the house, eat, make love, watch old movies. We don’t do anything. We don’t go anywhere. We don’t have any fun. That’s what I was thinking.”
“I always thought we had fun,” I said.
“Of course we do,” she said. “We have plenty of fun. But it’s always the same kind of fun. What happens when eating and making love stops being so much fun? Anyway, that’s how I was thinking when I was with Mary. Brady and I, we’re in a rut, I was thinking. This is all it’s ever going to be. Eating and drinking and screwing every weekend until we can’t taste our food and we get too old to screw.”
“You should’ve said something,” I said.
“I did,” she said. “And you confirmed what I was thinking. You said you hated casinos.”
“Well, I do.”
“And shopping and concerts and the beach … and everything I like to do.”
I slid my hand up her leg. “Not everything.”
She picked up my hand and gave it back to me. “Be serious,” she said.
“Must I?”
“For a minute. Let me finish.” She paused to take a sip of her wine. “When I heard on the TV that you’d shot that man in your office, and then I kept trying to call you and got no answer, I realized that I was stuck with you. With all your faults, with all your—your guy shit—I loved you. And it pissed me off. Do you understand?”
“No,” I said.
She sighed. “I was wondering why I couldn’t’ve fallen in love with a man who’d take me to casinos and concerts, who’d go shopping with me. I was thinking there had to be such a man out there, and if you and I split, I’d eventually find him.”
“There probably is. Maybe you’d be happier—”
“Oh, shush,” she said. “Are they dry yet?”
I touched one of her freshly painted toenails with the tip of my finger. “Yes. And they look great.”
“Then come here.” She patted the floor beside her.
I moved around so that I was leaning against the sofa next to her.
She grabbed my hand with both of hers, squeezed it tight in her lap, and laid her head on my shoulder. “I finally figured it out,” she said softly. “The things I don’t like about you are also the things I love about you. I couldn’t stand a man who’d follow me around while I shopped. Men who need casinos and concerts to be stimulated and entertained aren’t my kind of men. I like a man who’s happy just being with me, who finds me all by myself sufficiently stimulating and entertaining.”
“You,” I said, “are an endless source of entertainment and stimulation.”
“Well,” she said, “I happen to like casinos and concerts and museums, but I can enjoy them
without you, and I’d enjoy them less with you if I didn’t think you were having as much fun as I was. And I like you, and I don’t need other forms of entertainment to be happy with you.”
“I don’t mind museums that much,” I said. “I like art. Watercolors, especially. I wouldn’t mind—”
She jabbed her elbow into my ribs. “Oh, shut up. Listen. Do you want me to take up fly-fishing, join you everytime you go?”
“Well, if you want to …”
“Tell the truth.”
“I like fishing with Charlie and Doc and J. W.,” I said. “But if you want to try it sometime, maybe we could …”
“I don’t,” she said. “Maybe I’d do it if I thought it would make you happy. But it wouldn’t. Not really. Not if you knew that’s why I was doing it. You’d rather go off with your guy friends and do guy things, and that’s okay with me. It really is.”
“What you really mean is, you want to go off with your girl friends and do girl things, and you don’t want me tagging along, being miserable.”
“Or being jealous, or worrying about me.”
“Jealous? Me?”
She laughed. “So now do you understand?”
I shook my head. “Of course not. I couldn’t begin to understand you. You are puzzling and fascinating and thoroughly mysterious.”
“Thank God,” she said.
The vernal equinox—the first day of spring—came on a Wednesday, along with a driving rain that utterly failed to dampen my spirits. I celebrated the turning of the seasons by telling Julie to hold my calls for the afternoon. I had important business to attend to.
I called Charlie McDevitt and Doc Adams and J. W. Jackson and made fishing plans with each of them. Doc and I were going to spend a week hiking in to some mountain trout streams in the Pisgah National Forest in western Carolina at the end of April. I convinced Charlie that it was time we revisited the Beaverkill and Willowemoc in the Catskills, and we made reservations for five days at the Roscoe Motel for the middle of June. J. W. and I decided to enter the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby in September. He and Zee insisted on putting me up for the week in the guest room of their new house on the dirt road overlooking the salt ponds by State Beach.
It looked like a good year.
I flipped through some new fly-fishing catalogs and old American Angler magazines for a while, and then I laced my fingers behind my neck and put my head back and closed my eyes and daydreamed.
A little later, when I looked out the window, I saw that the rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up and the sun was peeking through the cracks.
Spring!
It was around four o’clock. If I left now, I could get to Stoddard’s before they closed. I needed a couple of new fly lines and some spools of tippet material and—
Just then my phone buzzed.
I picked it up. “This better be good,” I said to Julie. “I told you to hold my calls.”
“Lieutenant Stone is here,” she said. “He says it’s important.”
I sighed. “Okay.”
Julie brought Chris Stone in. When she started to ask if we wanted coffee, I quickly shook my head. She shrugged and closed the door behind her.
I shook hands with Stone. “What’s up, Chris?”
“I only got a minute, Mr. Coyne, but I wanted to be sure you heard it from me first.”
“Heard what?”
“It’s one of those good-news bad-news things,” he said. “Gus Nash’s lawyer wants to make a deal.”
“A plea bargain?”
He nodded. “Me and Roger, we’ve been puttin’ the screws to those people in those photographs. Made it clear we want Nash, suggested we might give’em immunity in return for their depositions.”
“And they turned over on Nash.”
He nodded. “On the photos and the blackmail. Can’t touch him on the murders, though.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“We make the deal, avoid a public trial,” he said. “Keep those photos, those kids out of it. That’s Nash’s leverage.”
“What happens to him?”
“It’ll probably shake down to three or four years, maximum security, no special considerations.”
“That’s not a lot,” I said. “Hell, he hired a guy to kill two people, and he was prepared to kill several others, including you and me.”
“Yeah, but we can’t make the case.” Stone shrugged. “Law enforcement officer, big DA involved in kiddie porn? His colleagues in Cedar Junction will make that an extremely unpleasant few years.” Stone blew out a long breath. “Anyway, that’s what’s happening. Figured you had a right to know.” He hesitated. “That’s only part of the reason I wanted to see you.”
“What else?”
“To thank you. You were right. You and Horowitz. You both always told me my head was up my ass, and I guess it was, because if it hadn’t of been, maybe I would’ve listened to you. Gus Nash used people. He was using me. I should’ve stuck with Horowitz, listened to him. He’s the best. I could’ve been a good cop.”
“You are a good cop, Chris,” I said. “When it came down to it at Sprague’s house that night, you did the right thing. And Roger tells me you’ve been working your ass off on this case.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but for me it’s personal, see? I just want to nail Nash. Horowitz says a cop should never let it get personal.”
“It’s not supposed to be personal for lawyers, either,” I said. “But sometimes you can’t help it.”
Sharon Gold’s letter came to my office on the second Thursday in April. It was postmarked Madison, Wisconsin, and written on pale blue notepaper with a dark green fountain pen.
“Dear Brady,” it began.
I wanted you to know that Brian and I are doing all right. We stayed with my mother for a week or so, and then we agreed that it would be better if Brian and I found a place of our own. We weren’t ready to go home. So we’re now renting a little house on a lake. It’s very pretty and peaceful here, and the neighbors are friendly and don’t ask questions about us.
Brian has enrolled in the local high school. He’s made some new friends, and he didn’t have much of a problem catching up on his schoolwork. He’s a very good student, you know.
We’re both seeing psychiatrists. I still have dreams, and I know it’s going to take a while, but I can see the improvement. It’s going to take a long time for both of us. But we’re getting there.
I’m temping at an advertising agency in Madison. I go to work every day, and it looks like they want to hire me. It’s not a lot of money, but it could turn into a career, and I think I’m going to accept it.
Brian and I have decided we’re not going back to Reddington. I know you can understand that.
I’ll be calling you one of these days to arrange things for us. I’m going to put the house up for sale and have all our stuff shipped out here. This feels like the right thing to do, and Dr. Benning and Brian’s doctor both agree with us.
We want to thank you for everything. You are a dear friend and a sweet man and we will never forget you.
She signed it, “Love, Sharon and Brian.”
ALSO BY WILLIAM G. TAPPLY
THE BRADY COYNE NOVELS
Muscle Memory
Cutter’s Run
Close to the Bone
The Seventh Enemy
The Snake Eater
Tight Lines
The Spotted Cats
Client Privilege
Dead Winter
A Void in Hearts
The Vulgar Boatman
Dead Meat
The Marine Corpse
Follow the Sharks
The Dutch Blue Error
Death at Charity’s Point
NONFICTION
Bass Bug Fishing
A Fly-Fishing Life
The Elements of Mystery Fiction
Sportsman’s Legacy
Home Water
Opening Day and Oth
er Neuroses
Those Hours Spent Outdoors
OTHER FICTION
Thicker Than Water (with Linda Barlow)
SCAR TISSUE. Copyright © 2000 by William G. Tapply.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information, address St. Martin’s Press,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
eISBN 9781429981484
First eBook Edition : February 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tapply, William G.
Scar tissue / William G. Tapply.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-26679-0
1. Coyne, Brady (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Traffic accident investigation—Fiction. 3. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.A568 S28 2000
813’.54—dc21
00-040229
First Edition: October 2000
Scar Tissue Page 24
