Willows and Parker Box Set

by Laurence Gough

  Willows ran out of the den with Parker right behind him.

  They found the dog belly up in the fishpond, blood leaking from a stab wound to the chest.

  They found Gary Silk hiding in the cabbage patch, tangled up in the netting Frank had strung to keep away the birds.

  “I’m Farmer McGregor,” said Willows. “And you must be Peter Rabbit.”

  They found the .25 calibre Star that had been used to shoot Oscar Peel where Pat Nash had thought to hide it — under an oversized down pillow on Gary’s custom-made kingsize water-bed. The bed had a mirrored headboard inset with a row of mother-of-pearl buttons that made it vibrate, revolve, tilt at different angles and otherwise attempt to compensate for Gary’s sexual inadequacies, real and imagined.

  Frank and Pat Nash and Randall DesMoines and Ginger the hooker had been herded downstairs to the living-room. Randall had the floor, was explaining how he’d salted room 318 with the hypo and the spent .22 calibre shell he’d picked up the night he’d been shot, and why he’d felt it was necessary to take Moira’s body back to the Vance Hotel, instead of just rolling her up in a carpet and dumping her in an alley. When it became clear that Randall had done all this in the hope of framing whoever had shot him, Willows interrupted his monologue to show Gary Silk the murder weapon.

  Gary didn’t seem to take Willows seriously when he told him where the gun had been found. “Who the fuck you think you’re kidding!” he yelled. Then he looked at Pat Nash, and what he saw in Nash’s eyes made his face flush with blood and then turn white with rage.

  “You set me up, you goddamn prick!”

  “Where the hell did that come from?” Frank said, staring in bewilderment at the gun.

  Pat Nash edged a little closer and told him how, on the night of the murder, he’d pretended to stumble and had picked up a rock and thrown it into the ocean, then stuck the Star in his back pocket. Frank grinned wryly.

  Life, no matter how long you lived it, was full of surprises.

  Willows was confident that the bullet retrieved from Oscar Peel’s body would match the rifling on the Star. He still didn’t have a motive, but he was sure he had more than he needed for a conviction. He charged Gary with second-degree murder and read him his rights, asked him if he understood what had been said.

  “Fuck you,” said Gary.

  Willows assumed that meant yes.

  *

  There are no sidewalks on Drummond Drive, just wide, grassy, well-tended boulevards. Paterson parked his plum-colored Porsche on the grass beneath a streetlight and walked slowly down the road towards the wrought-iron gate. Limestone chips crunched beneath his feet. His heart pounded in his chest. The sky was clear and there was a cool breeze coming in from the sea, but he was sweating, short of breath, felt as if he’d run all the way across town instead of driving.

  He was halfway up the driveway before he noticed the squad cars parked in front of the house. He hesitated, tripped over his own feet and at that moment a uniformed cop stepped out from behind a shrub. The cop ran his flashlight up and down the length of Paterson’s body and then held the beam steady on his face.

  “Is there a problem, officer?”

  The officer asked him who he was and what he wanted. He reached down deep and, in a moment of inspiration, found what he was looking for.

  “My name’s Anthony Morgan. I’m Mr Silk’s lawyer.”

  Paterson slipped the pigskin driving glove off his right hand, fumbled for his wallet. He handed the cop one of the business cards he’d taken from the desk in Morgan’s office. The cop studied the card for a long moment and then spoke into his walkie-talkie. There was a lengthy pause, a burst of static.

  “You can’t go into the house. You want to see him, you’re gonna have to wait until after he’s booked.”

  Paterson nodded. He cleared his throat. “Hey,” he said, “do I look as if I’m in a hurry?”

  He held out his hand. The cop returned the card. He turned and walked stiff-legged down the driveway, past the big iron gates. He reached the road, took a few more steps, and let go of the briefcase.

  Eighty million dollars’ worth of heroin and the .22 calibre Ruger that had fired the spent shell found by Jack Willows at the death scene at the Vance Hotel hit the asphalt with a dull thud.

  Paterson climbed into the Porsche and started the engine. It was time to take the long ride home.

  A quarter of an hour later, Willows and Parker and a dozen uniformed policemen led Gary Silk and his entourage down the steps of the house on Drummond Drive towards the cluster of waiting squad cars.

  They were halfway down the steps when Willows saw Tracy Peel walking across the lawn towards them. In the darkness, he thought at first that she was the girl in the Orange Julius uniform they’d found sleeping on the front porch.

  Pat Nash saw his cousin and was stunned. He stopped dead in his tracks. Tracy’d asked him where he was going that night. Fool that he was, he’d told her. The cop behind him stumbled and cursed, grabbed him by the arm and pulled hard, dragged him down the steps.

  Tracy strolled across the driveway, past the squad cars and Gary’s Cadillac. She reached into her purse.

  Willows saw the gun come up. He yelled a warning, snatched at his revolver. A button tore loose from his jacket and rolled slowly down the stairs.

  Tracy was very close now, no more than a dozen steps away. Pat Nash kneed Gary in the stomach and then head-butted him head over heels down the steps. Tracy Peel got off her first shot. Dirty orange flame spouted from the muzzle of her dead husband’s .45. The recoil almost made her drop the weapon.

  Frank grunted, clutched his stomach and dropped to one knee.

  “Not him!” yelled Nash. His hands were cuffed behind his back. He jerked his chin towards Gary, not realizing that’s who she’d been shooting at in the first place.

  A cop ran down the steps directly at Tracy, into her line of fire. He was yelling at her but all she could hear was the heavy boom of the gun, the pounding of her heart. The .45 lurched in her hand. A bullet smacked into the stone wall of the house.

  Willows had her in his sights. He’d never shot a woman before. She was maybe ten feet away. Time slowed right down to a crawl. He thought about the way she’d looked on the chesterfield in the basement suite on Brock Street, her baby cradled in her arms as it suckled at her breast. Both of them expressionless, watching him. The barrel of the .45 swung towards him. She wasn’t looking at him, probably didn’t even see him. A part of his mind registered that all she wanted was Gary, she probably didn’t even see him, was going to shoot right through him. Time sped up.

  Willows cried out.

  The .45 exploded in his face.

  Willows shot Tracy Peel in the chest.

  Parker, standing so close to Willows that they were touching, fired twice. Tracy Peel staggered sideways. Willows kept seeing the baby, couldn’t bring himself to shoot again. Oikawa stepped in front of him. Parker fired a third round. Tracy Peel, hit four times, fell to her knees. As she was falling, she yanked the trigger one last time.

  Gary Silk regained his feet. He watched, fascinated, as the cops pumped round after round into the woman who was trying to kill him.

  He saw everything but her last shot, the one that hit him.

  Blood sprayed from his ears and nostrils and mouth, the back of his head. He thrust his right arm straight out in front of him and then toppled over and all five foot six inches of him hit the granite steps and lay still.

  In a way, Gary’s theory of gunshot wounds had proved correct. Under certain circumstances, catching a bullet didn’t hurt at all.

  Oikawa got to Tracy Peel first. He pried the .45 out of her hand.

  Frank sat cross-legged on the stairs, clutching his belly, blood leaking from between splayed fingers. A Siamese cat was licking his face. Frank looked as if he wanted to burst into tears.

  Pat Nash stared into the void. He was thinking about the way Gary Silk had taken the head shot and then, dead on his
feet, thrust out his arm as if wanting to shake hands. If Gary’d gone straight to hell, had he made it home before his body’d hit the steps? Had that hand reached out to press the flesh with Oscar Peel? Nash watched Willows apply mouth-to-mouth to Tracy Peel. Gary Silk lay on his side. The bullet had hit him just above the right eye. Little waterfalls of blood ran down the steps. Nash dipped his shoe and smeared blood across Gary’s nice white pants. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. He kicked Gary in the ribs, sent him tumbling off the steps and into an azalea bush. Branches snapped. A burst of shiny red petals fluttered lightly to the ground. A bald guy taking pictures yelled something at Nash. The cat ministering to Frank lifted its head and skittered up the steps and disappeared into the house. The night air shuddered with the thin screech of sirens. Somebody shoved Nash in the small of the back and he stumbled and then regained his balance and started down the steps.

  Tracy was staring up at the big black bowl of the sky, her face, what he could see of it, pale and empty. Nash yelled at her to hold on. The cop who had him in an armlock said, “Shut the fuck up, you’ll wake the goddamn neighbors.” Nash grinned at him. Tracy was a tough cookie — he was sure she’d pull through okay. Frank had killed her husband and Gary had ordered it done. She got herself a hot shot lawyer and an all-male jury, she’d be out in eighteen months, two years max.

  The cop gave him a boost up into the paddy wagon. He sat down on a metal bench. The door slammed shut, steel on steel, plunging him into darkness.

  A squad car tore chunks out of the lawn as it backed out of the driveway, making room for the ambulance.

  Parker pulled Willows away from Tracy Peel. One of the ambulance attendants slapped an oxygen mask across her face. He ripped her blouse open. She’d taken four hits, all of them potentially lethal. He checked her pulse. Another night without a miracle.

  And in the spacious back seat of Willows’ gleaming black 1943 Oldsmobile, Inspector Homer Bradley, revolver cradled uselessly in his lap, shut his weary eyes and dreamed of brighter and much greener days.

  25

  Tuesday night, the sixth of September.

  Jack Willows sat cross-legged on his living-room floor, a dismantled graphite Maryat fly reel laid out in front of him on a sheet of yesterday’s paper. He’d stripped the line from the reel, and it lay in loose coils upon the carpet.

  Izaak Walton had used a fly line made of twisted strands of horsehair — preferably from the tail of a stallion. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, lines were made of silk saturated in oil in a small vacuum and then, to achieve a harder, more impervious surface, baked in an oven for ten hours at one hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

  Modern lines are made of synthetic fibres with a plastic coating. The line on the carpet was a single taper floater with a sixty-foot head and braided nylon core. It had been designed for salt-water use. Willows planned to spend the next couple of days in his waders, fishing the coastal estuaries for sea-run cutthroat trout.

  The buzzer rang. He drank some Cutty, continued to clean and grease the reel. The buzzer sounded again. He unfolded his legs and stood up and went over to the intercom.

  Parker.

  He buzzed her in and went over and opened the door, returned to his reel and his drink. A few moments later he heard the elevator’s rising drone and then the hushed murmur of the elevator doors sliding open and Parker’s footsteps in the hall.

  She was wearing black cords, a white blouse beneath a sleeveless black cashmere sweater. She turned slowly around, a pirouette, and said, “Nice outfit?”

  “Terrific.”

  “You don’t think the pants are too tight?”

  “Maybe just a little.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  He began to reassemble the reel. Parker crouched down beside him. He caught the fragrant, earthy scent of her perfume. She smelled the whisky. He fitted the two halves of the reel together and spun the handle. The ratchet clicked smoothly.

  Parker sat down beside him on the carpet. Their knees touched and she moved slightly away, so there was a gap between them of perhaps a quarter of an inch.

  “Know what I think?”

  “Almost never,” said Willows.

  “I believe that deep down inside, there’s a part of us that no one else can ever touch. And that when it comes right down to it, we’re all alone, each and every one of us. There are times when I think about that and have a very hard time dealing with it. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about, Jack?”

  Willows didn’t look up, wouldn’t meet her eye.

  “I called you all weekend long,” said Parker. “I left a dozen messages. Monday morning, you weren’t at your desk. Bradley told me you’d phoned in sick.”

  She paused for a moment, decided to take the plunge.

  “She call you?”

  “Who?”

  “Sheila,” said Parker. “Your goddamn wife, who the hell do you think I’m talking about?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “It’s September the sixth, Jack. The first day of school and your kids are still in Toronto. You’d think if she was going to call, she’d have done it by now.”

  Willows started winding the fly line back on to the reel. He went slowly so the loose coils wouldn’t tangle. The ratchet clicked off the seconds.

  “Doing anything this evening?”

  “Not really.”

  Parker stood up, walked into the bathroom. She left the door open. The shower thundered. A few minutes later Willows heard the soft pad of her bare feet on the carpet as she went into the bedroom. He put the reel away in its soft leather case. The bedsprings creaked.

  In the kitchenette, the refrigerator throbbed and hummed and then the cycle ended and the apartment was impossibly quiet, impossibly still.

  She had been lying on her belly, but when Willows entered the room she turned on her side, facing him. He knelt on the floor beside the bed. She reached out to him, put her arms around his neck and drew him close. His fingers traced a constellation of tiny beauty marks on the perfect curve of her hip. Her skin was smooth and firm, cool to the touch. He travelled down the length of her, a long and languorous journey.

  He kissed her eyebrows, the bridge of her nose, her ears, her cheeks, her neck. He felt the hurried thump of her pulse beneath his lips.

  A jumbled collage of his children playing and working and laughing and crying swept across his vision, and was swept away.

  Parker’s eyes were dark, liquid. He kissed her lightly on the mouth and for the first time in a very long time, slipped outside of himself and was lost.

  *

  In the soft pink light of dawn, Parker gave Willows a present, a small box wrapped in gold paper and garnished with a bow.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it.”

  Willows fumbled with the ribbon, lost patience and snapped it with his fingers.

  She’d given him a Richard Wheatley dry fly box made of brushed aluminum. He opened the lid. Inside were six small compartments, each about an inch square, with a hinged lid of clear plastic and a spring that made the lid pop open when a tiny lever was pressed. The box held about two dozen flies and it was full.

  “Very romantic.”

  “Well, you’re a pretty romantic guy.”

  “Who chose the patterns?”

  “The clerk helped.”

  Willows snapped the box shut. “Thank you, Claire.”

  Parker smiled. Rainbow in a snowstorm. His heart leapt.

  If you enjoyed Willows and Parker Investigate, please share your thoughts by leaving a review on Amazon. The mysteries continue with Serious Crimes, the fourth book in the Willows and Parker series.

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