Outwitting Trolls

by William G. Tapply

  “You have Charles Nichols in there?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “His daughter-in-law and granddaughter are with him, I believe,” I said. “Would you mind telling Mrs. Nichols that I’m here? My name is Brady Coyne.”

  “Coyne?”

  “Yes. I’m a friend.”

  “All right,” she said, breaking her streak of monosyllables. Then she pulled her face back, and the door shut and latched with a solid-sounding click.

  A minute or two later the door opened again, and Sharon and Ellen came out. Both of them were red-eyed. Their faces looked swollen.

  Sharon came over to me and put her arms around my waist and pressed her face against my chest. I patted her shoulder and mumbled something inane like “It’s all right. It’s okay.”

  Ellen stood there hugging herself and shaking her head. She looked bewildered.

  After a minute, Sharon pulled back and looked up at me. “Thank you so much,” she said.

  “I haven’t done anything,” I said.

  “You’re here.” She found my hand with hers and gripped it hard. “Come on. There’s a waiting room over there. Let’s go sit.”

  Sharon tugged me over to a closed door. It opened into a little room with two sofas, three or four soft chairs, and a coffee table with a dozen or so old magazines scattered over it.

  Sharon sat on one of the sofas and pulled on my hand to signal to me to sit beside her.

  Ellen stood awkwardly inside the doorway. “Why don’t I go get us something to drink,” she said. “Mr. Coyne? Coffee? A Coke?”

  “A Coke would be good,” I said.

  “Mom?”

  Sharon looked up at Ellen. “A Diet Coke, dear. Thank you.”

  After Ellen left, Sharon slouched back on the sofa and gazed up at the ceiling. “It’s absolutely surreal,” she said. “I thought nothing could be worse than what happened to Ken, finding his body, being accused of it—but now? Wayne? I don’t know how to feel, Brady. I don’t—I’m numb. That’s how I feel. I mean, here we are in this hospital, and poor Charles should be getting our attention, our prayers. But my son is dead. Could anything be worse than that?”

  “What did Horowitz tell you?”

  “It was Marcia who did the talking,” Sharon said. “She just said that somebody had shot Wayne in his house up there, and that you were the one who found him.” She turned her head and frowned at me. “Why were you there, Brady?”

  “Wayne called me,” I said. “Said he had something he wanted to show me.”

  “What was it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. I was going to ask you if you had any idea.”

  “Me?” She shook her head. “No. Not a clue. Who’d want to kill him?”

  “According to the police up there,” I said, “Wayne was dealing drugs. He’d make a lot of enemies doing that.”

  Sharon shook her head. “It’s surreal. I haven’t seen Wayne for a long time. I can’t even picture him in my head. That’s how long it’s been. At least with Ken, we’d been talking, and I felt like I knew him. With Wayne, I didn’t even have that. I love him just as much, you know?”

  “I do know,” I said. I put my arm around her shoulder, and she kind of snuggled against me.

  A minute later Ellen pushed open the door and came in. She handed cans of Coke to each of us—Diet in a silver can to Sharon and regular red to me. Then she sat on the sofa across from us with her own can of Diet. She looked at me. “What happened to Wayne?”

  “Somebody shot him. I don’t know who or why.”

  “You found him?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re the only one of us who’s seen him or even talked to him in such a long time,” Ellen said. She looked at Sharon. “It’s been years.”

  Sharon nodded. “Since he went off to school.”

  Ellen turned back to me. “Do you think Wayne…?”

  “I only saw him once when he was…alive,” I said. “It’s not like I knew him.”

  “I was thinking about what happened to Daddy,” she said.

  “The New Hampshire police don’t think there’s necessarily any connection,” I said.

  “No connection?” asked Ellen. “They think both of them being murdered is just a coincidence? I mean, first Daddy and then Wayne? Really?”

  “Aside from the fact that they were father and son,” I said, “there was nothing similar about their…about what happened.”

  “But,” she said, “I mean, they were father and son.”

  “A father and a son,” I said, “who had been out of touch with each other—and with the other members of their family—for a long time.”

  Ellen nodded. “Yeah, I guess.” She looked up at the round clock on the wall. It was after one o’clock in the morning. “Mom,” she said, “I’ve got classes tomorrow morning. I don’t know—”

  “Go, honey,” said Sharon. “Go home, get some sleep. You can’t do anything here.”

  “You’re going to stay?”

  Sharon shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “I can be with you.”

  Sharon smiled. “I’m okay, dear. Really. Go ahead. I’m so grateful you came here. If…when…your grandfather wakes up, I know he’ll be pleased.”

  Ellen stood up. “You’ll keep me posted on Grampa?”

  “Of course.” Sharon stood up, and the two women hugged each other.

  When they stepped apart, I saw that both of them had wet eyes.

  “I better get going, too.” I turned to Ellen. “I’ll walk down with you.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Thank you. That’s nice.”

  Sharon came over to me, smiled, and gave me a hug. “You’re a wonderful friend,” she said. “I appreciate all that you do. This, tonight, was special.”

  “You have my numbers,” I said. “Call anytime, for any reason.”

  She smiled. “I guess that’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it?”

  “It’s fine. I’m glad.” I patted her back. “I’m so sorry about all of this…what you’ve had to go through.”

  “Well,” she said, “if it wasn’t for you and Ellen, I don’t know what I’d do. It’s just horrible. My husband, and now my son. You can’t imagine. I feel like I’m going to be all right, though, I really do.”

  “You’re a tough lady,” I said. I looked at Ellen. “Ready?”

  Ellen and Sharon hugged again, and then all three of us left the waiting room. Sharon went over to the ICU door and rang the bell, and Ellen and I went to the elevator.

  Outside the hospital entrance, I said to Ellen, “Where’d you park?”

  She pointed to an area not far from where we were standing. There were three or four cars there. “Mine’s the old beat-up Honda.”

  “I’ll walk you over,” I said.

  She hooked her arm through mine. “Thank you. That’s sweet.”

  “How are you holding up?” I asked. “This has to be pretty tough for you, too.”

  “I’m doing okay,” she said. “I’ve been so focused on Mom that I guess I haven’t thought much about me.”

  “It’s going to hit you,” I said.

  She squeezed my arm. “When it does, can I call you?”

  “I’m not sure what good I could do, but…”

  “You’re a kind man,” she said. “I feel like I can talk to you.”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “You can call me if you want. Of course.”

  We arrived at Ellen’s car. It was an old sand-colored Honda Civic with missing hubcaps and a long scrape along its side. A graduate student’s car. She leaned back against it. “I feel awful about Wayne,” she said. “I was having bad thoughts about him. I even told Mom that I thought Wayne could’ve been the one who…” She shook her head.

  “Who killed your father?”

  “Yes. And now…”

  “You feel guilty about what you were thinking?” I said. “Is that it?”

  “Kind of. I mean, what it really
is, I feel bad about saying those things to Mom, putting thoughts like that in her head.”

  “It’s not like you knew what was going to happen,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “Still, having those thoughts, and then this happening…” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys. She turned, unlocked her car door, and slid in behind the wheel, leaving the door open. She looked up at me. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve got things on your mind.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I was just thinking about Sparky.”

  “Wayne’s cat, you mean?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I don’t know what they do with the pets of murder victims.”

  “They’ll probably put her in a shelter.” Ellen buckled her seat belt, turned the key in the ignition, and put on the headlights. Then she shut the car door and rolled down the window. “Well, Mr. Coyne, thanks for everything.” She waggled her fingers at me.

  I waved. “Drive carefully.”

  She rolled up her window, backed out of her parking slot, and pulled away.

  I watched her turn at the hospital exit. Her brake lights flashed, and then she pulled out of the parking lot onto the street.

  I went over to my car, slid in, and fished out my phone. I held it in my hand for several minutes, trying to figure out what the right thing was. Then I dialed Roger Horowitz’s cell number.

  It rang several times. Then he said, “Jesus Christ, Coyne. Do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s after one o’clock in the morning,” I said. “I figured you’d be sleeping.”

  He sighed. “Not fuckin’ hardly. Me and Benetti are here in my office conferring. We just got off a conference call with a New Hampshire detective named Wexler, who you met, and now we’re putting our heads together, comparing notes, trying out hypotheses, and making up scenarios. What detectives do, even sometimes at one o’clock on a Monday morning. So whaddaya want?”

  “I just wanted to leave you a message.”

  “Well,” he said, “ain’t this better? Now you get to talk to me.”

  “It would be easier to leave a message,” I said. “I’m uncomfortable with the ethics of this.”

  “Christ,” Horowitz said. “Spit it out, willya? Whaddaya want?”

  I took a breath and blew it out. “I want to tell you who killed Ken Nichols and his son, Wayne.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “You got it figured out, huh?”

  “I think so.”

  “Us cops, we ain’t smart enough—but Mr. Lawyer knows.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Forget it.”

  “Take it easy,” said Horowitz. “We can use all the help we can get, believe me. Who is it? Who’s our killer?”

  “Ellen Nichols,” I said, “and that’s all I’m gonna say.”

  Twenty-four

  Horowitz was silent for a moment. Then he said, “The daughter, huh?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “He thinks it’s the daughter,” he said, and then I heard Marcia Benetti’s voice in the background, though I couldn’t tell what she said.

  “Benetti wants to know what makes you think it’s her?” Horowitz said to me.

  “Means, motive, opportunity,” I said.

  “Thanks a lot. You think maybe you could be a little more specific?”

  “That’s all I want to say,” I said. “You figure it out, see if I’m right.”

  “Bullshit,” he said. “Come on, Coyne. Help us out here.”

  “Dumb me,” I said. “I thought with a little guidance, like, say, giving you the name of the bad guy, you could figure out the rest of it.”

  “You’re an officer of the court,” he said. “Look. Why don’t you come on over, we can talk about it. Me and Marcia, we’re here at my office, just around the corner from your house. You can drive over from that hospital and park right in front. We’re only about an hour from Fitchburg. Marcia brewed up a nice pot of coffee, and we got a box of fresh doughnuts from the Dunkin’ on Cambridge Street. They’re still warm. We got plain, glazed, jelly, apple-and-cinnamon, and this place reeks of coffee and doughnuts. Ain’t your mouth watering?”

  “It sounds great.” I hesitated. “Ellen knew about Wayne’s cat.”

  “Huh?”

  “Why I think it’s her. Wayne Nichols had a cat named Sparky. She claims she hasn’t seen or even talked to her brother since he went off to college, but she knew he had a cat named Sparky.”

  “So how’d she know that?”

  “Bingo,” I said, and with that, I snapped my phone shut. No “Good-bye,” no “Nice talkin’ to you.” Just like Horowitz.

  It felt great.

  I found an FM station playing smoky wee-hours-of-the-morning jazz on my car radio, and my mind drifted on the music as I drove east through the darkness on Route 2. The music was sexy and moody, and it made me think about Alex. Sexy, moody Alex.

  I wondered what would become of us.

  Some wisps of fog materialized and dissipated in my headlights. The speed limit was fifty-five, and I kept the needle on sixty. The last thing I needed was to get snagged in a speed trap. Traffic was light on the highway—now and then a big twelve-wheeler rammed past, and a few automobiles came up fast from behind and then pulled around me. I stuck to the right lane, grooving on the radio music, and pretty soon I was turning off Storrow Drive onto Charles Street. I wasn’t even tempted to hook onto Cambridge Street and go to Horowitz’s office. Already I felt that I might’ve nudged my toe over the fuzzy ethical line by giving him Ellen’s name.

  Besides, it was way past my bedtime.

  I pulled into my parking garage, nosed my car into its reserved pay-by-the-month slot, shut off the lights and the ignition, got out, locked up, and headed down the ramp for the door that opened onto Charles Street. The lights inside the garage were dim and yellow, and they cast spooky, distorted shadows against the dirty walls. My footsteps echoed, and somewhere in the depths of the big concrete structure water was dripping on the hood of a parked vehicle. It made a rhythmic ping-ping sound.

  I was about to push open the door and step out onto the Charles Street sidewalk when a voice behind me said, “Hold it there, Mr. Coyne.”

  It was a woman’s voice, at once soft and assertive.

  “Ellen?” I asked. I stopped and started to turn to look at her.

  “Don’t turn around,” she said. “I’m pointing a gun at you. Back away from the door.”

  “You’ve got a gun?” I asked. “Jesus, Ellen. What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “Please don’t play dumb,” she said. “Don’t insult my intelligence.” I heard a soft mechanical click, the unmistakable sound of a pistol’s hammer being cocked. “Step back from the door, please.”

  I did what she said. “You followed me here?”

  “All the way from Fitchburg.”

  “Why? What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me how you figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?” I asked. “Look. We’re both tired. It’s been a hard night. I just want to go home and go to bed. I bet you do, too. You’re upset. Hard to blame you. Your father getting murdered, and then your brother, not to mention your grandfather in the hospital. Let’s just forget about this. A good night’s sleep, and the world will look a lot different. Go on. Go home.”

  “I wish it was that easy,” she said, and I thought she actually did sound regretful. “You should’ve just minded your own business.”

  I turned around to look at her. She really did have a gun. It was a revolver with a short barrel, and it was pointed at my midsection. I guessed it was the same weapon that had killed Wayne.

  “I told you not to turn around,” she said.

  “You were planning on shooting me in the back?”

  “It was the cat, huh?”

  I shrugged.

  “You had some kind of suspicion,” she said, “or you wouldn’t have tried to trap me like that.�
��

  “I was just fishing,” I said. “If you’d said ‘Who’s that?’ when I mentioned Sparky, that would’ve been the end of it.”

  “Now I’ve got to kill you, you know,” she said.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “You stabbed your father,” I said. “You shot your brother in the chest. How did it make you feel, killing people like that?”

  Ellen mumbled something so softly that I couldn’t understand her.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I said it didn’t bother me,” she said softly.

  “It’s like torturing those pets in the kennel, huh?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not talking about this anymore.” Ellen gestured at me with her gun. “Move away from the door. Over there. Do it now.”

  I figured she intended to shoot me. Why not? She’d already killed two men, and she admitted that she didn’t mind doing it. As I eased away from the door that opened to the street, I tried to figure a way out. The hammer on Ellen’s pistol was cocked. All she needed to do was touch the trigger to blow a hole in me. Her revolver looked like a .38. It would make a big hole, and even though snub-nosed revolvers are notoriously inaccurate, from where Ellen was standing, it would be hard to miss.

  I could make a move on her. Fake left, go right. Or I could try to run away. Or I could drop, go into a roll, hit her at the knees. Or I could just make a bull rush at her and hope she panicked and forgot to shoot, or shot wildly, or, if she hit me, that it wasn’t in some vital spot and wouldn’t stop me.

  Maybe twenty years ago a quick evasive flight—or a sudden attack—would’ve worked. Maybe not. Twenty years ago I was stronger and faster…and stupider.

  I moved away from the door, keeping my eyes on the handgun she was holding. I figured as long as I could keep Ellen talking, she wouldn’t be shooting.

  “So after you left the hospital,” I said, “you pulled over and waited for me to go by, and then you eased in behind me, huh?”

  She nodded.

  “Because you made a mistake about Wayne’s cat.”

  “You tricked me,” she said. “That won’t happen again.”

  We were standing in the entryway to the parking garage. On the wall behind me was the big glass-fronted door that opened onto Charles Street, which was empty of traffic now at two o’clock on this Monday morning. On one side was the curving ramp that led up to the second floor. Directly behind Ellen was the opening to the dimly lit first floor of the garage, where rows of cars were parked.