Out Cold

by William G. Tapply

“No.”

  “Yeah. Maybe we can lift some prints off it. Where are you now?”

  “In my kitchen.”

  “On a cordless phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take me out back and tell me if you see any boot prints in the snow.”

  I went out onto the deck. “It’s pretty much trampled down out here,” I told her. “Between Henry and me. Plus the snow settled a lot under the sun today. If this guy came into the yard, there aren’t any good prints that I can see.”

  “How could he not have come into your yard?”

  “He might’ve just opened the gate and given Henry a whistle. The lock’s broken. I’ve been meaning to get it fixed. If he had a Milk-Bone, called him a nice pooch, my stupid, trusting dog would’ve gone right to him with his tail wagging.”

  “If we were CSI,” said Mendoza, “we’d probably send a team over anyway. But we’re not, so we won’t. You going to be at your office this afternoon?”

  “Yes. I’m late already.”

  “Bring that photo with you. I don’t have to tell you not to touch it. Leave it right there in its baggie.”

  “Okay.” I hesitated. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Maybe. What?”

  “If you talk to Evie, don’t mention this. It would freak her out.”

  “It should freak you out,” she said.

  “It does, believe me. Just don’t tell her, okay?”

  “Fair enough. As long as you promise to behave yourself.”

  I crossed my fingers. “I promise.”

  “You understand what this means, don’t you, Mr. Coyne?”

  “What?”

  “Now we’ve got a definite connection between Maureen Quinlan’s murder and what happened to Dana Wetherbee. It’s no coincidence that Sunshine was killed. She was killed because of what happened to Dana.”

  “I do understand that,” I said. “I’ve assumed it all along.”

  “Well,” said Mendoza, “me, too. But now we know.”

  After I hung up with Mendoza, I patted Henry some more and told him that I was sorry, but he wouldn’t be spending any unattended time in the backyard until further notice.

  I had a padlock in my desk drawer. I took it out back and locked the gate in the wall that opened into the back alley. Obviously, if anybody really wanted to get into our yard, he could climb over the wall. But there was no sense in making it easy for him.

  Back inside, I put the plastic baggie containing Sunshine’s copy of Dana Wetherbee’s morgue photo into my briefcase.

  Then I said good-bye to Henry, told him I wish he’d bite strangers instead of sniffing their crotches, and went to work.

  Outside my office window, the streetlights had come on and the late-afternoon pedestrians were swarming over the Copley Square sidewalks. I’d managed to make some phone calls and clean up some paperwork, but the image of some killer patting Henry and stapling that plastic bag onto his collar was never far from my mind.

  I was thinking about heading home to hug my dog and kiss my girlfriend, or kiss my dog and hug my girlfriend, when Julie tapped on my door and stuck her head inside. “Detective Mendoza’s here for you,” she said.

  “Good,” I said.

  She pushed the door open and Mendoza came in. I started to stand up, but she waved me back in my chair and sat across from me. “So how you doing?” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m angry. But I’m not scared.”

  “You promised,” she said.

  “Sure. I won’t do anything stupid. I promise. You promised, too.”

  “I won’t say anything to Evie,” she said, “as long as you keep your promise.”

  I reached into my briefcase, took out the plastic bag with Dana’s photo in it, and put it on my desk. “Here it is.”

  She picked up the baggie by its corner and looked at the front and back of the photo. Then she fished a plastic evidence bag from her jacket pocket, put the baggie with the photo into it, wrote on it with a black Sharpie, and put it into her attaché case. “Good,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Then, instead of getting up to leave, she put a manila folder on my desk.

  “What’ve you got?” I said.

  “Ms. Banyon giving us an ID on that girl’s body this morning cleared away the log jam. Now we’ve got two autopsy reports. Figured you’d be interested. Figured I owed you. You and Ms. Banyon.”

  “You do owe us,” I said, “and I am interested.”

  She opened the folder and glanced at what was inside. Then she looked at me. “Maureen Quinlan,” she said. “Sunshine. No surprises. Unequivocally a homicide. She drowned in her own blood from a lacerated trachea. Basically, her throat was ripped open, wounds consistent with a broken bottle. Slivers of green glass recovered from the wound. She was damn near decapitated. Layman’s terms. I’m summarizing here. She had a BAL of point-oh-seven.”

  “BAL,” I said.

  “Blood alcohol level. Point-oh-seven, a woman her size, about one-twenty, is certainly buzzed, but not what you’d call falling-down drunk. A few highballs, three or four glasses of wine in an hour, hour and a half. She was probably just getting started when it happened.”

  “She told me she was fighting it,” I said. “The drinking.”

  “She was fighting a losing battle that night.”

  “Sunshine,” I said. “A sad person. Big black cloud over her. Irony.”

  “Yeah.” Mendoza puffed her cheeks and blew out a breath. Then she flipped through the sheets of paper in the folder. “Anyway, we got autopsy results on the girl, too.”

  “Dana,” I said.

  “Yes. Dana Wetherbee. The M.E. hasn’t verified her identification, but…” Mendoza smiled quickly, then cleared her throat. “He estimates she was between fourteen and seventeen years old. She had a miscarriage. Died from blood loss due to a ruptured uterus. The M.E. noted an anomaly of sorts. Blood tests, or however they do it, hormone tests, maybe…anyway, they indicated the girl was two or three months pregnant when she died. But it appeared that the fetus had, well, outgrown her uterus, and that’s what the M.E. thinks caused the miscarriage.”

  “What do you mean, outgrown?”

  “The fetus was too big,” she said. “It was like a five-or six-month fetus in a two-or three-month uterus, is how the M.E. described it when I talked to him. The girl’s insides couldn’t keep up with the growth of her fetus.”

  “How does he explain that?” I said.

  “He didn’t have a theory,” she said, “and I certainly don’t. Miscarriages aren’t uncommon, and they happen for many reasons.”

  “Maybe it’s just, she was so young, an immature body, narrow hips or something….”

  “Yeah,” said Mendoza, “maybe. Except there was something else.” She hesitated. “This girl, Dana, she was taking clomiphene.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a fertility drug,” she said. “It stimulates hormones so the brain sends messages to the ovaries, instructing them to produce eggs.” She cleared her throat. “That’s what I got from the M.E. I might not’ve explained it right, but you get the picture.”

  “Would this stuff, this…what was it?”

  “Clomiphene.”

  “Right. Clomiphene. Would the fact that she was taking clomiphene account for the size of the fetus?”

  “The M.E. didn’t think so,” said Mendoza. “He said it shouldn’t have any effect on the growth rate of the fetus. It might produce multiple fetuses, but that apparently wasn’t the case here.”

  “Okay, wait a minute,” I said. “If she was taking a fertility drug—”

  “Bingo, Mr. Coyne,” said Saundra Mendoza. “She was pregnant all right, but she wasn’t exactly knocked up. If she was taking clomiphene, it’s pretty compelling evidence that this little girl was trying to get pregnant.”

  I got home before Evie that evening. I figured, after a week in Arizona, her office would be a zoo, not even to mention the turmoil she had to be feelin
g after viewing Dana Wetherbee’s body.

  So I had a pitcher of martinis waiting for her, and as soon as she’d changed out of her school clothes, as she put it, and was comfortable in some baggy sweatpants and a ratty sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders—on Evie, a very sexy outfit—I led her into the living room and poured her a drink.

  We sat on the sofa. She turned sideways and put her bare feet in my lap.

  I kneaded and massaged her feet, which usually made her moan and mumble as if she was about to have an orgasm. But tonight she didn’t react very much except to say, “That’s nice. Don’t stop.”

  It was hard not to tell her about finding Dana’s photo—the one I’d given to Sunshine—stapled on Henry’s collar. Evie and I don’t have many secrets. We generally share, whether it’s good or bad, happy or sad, triumphant or embarrassing. But I couldn’t think of a single good reason to share this with her.

  “Lieutenant Mendoza dropped by this afternoon,” I said instead. “The M.E. finally did the autopsy. Dana was taking something called clomiphene.”

  “That’s a fertility drug,” said Evie.

  “Yes.”

  “Hm,” she said. She took a sip of martini.

  “My sentiment exactly,” I said.

  “Makes no sense,” she said. “Why would she be taking fertility medication?”

  “I guess she wanted to get pregnant.”

  “Is that what they think caused her miscarriage?” she said. “The clomiphene?”

  “According to the M.E., no.”

  Evie was shaking her head. “Dana was just this sweet, virginal child. An innocent. A serious student, went to church, took care of her little brother, very scared about her mother, wouldn’t say boo to anybody.”

  “People change,” I said. “After her mother died…”

  Evie shrugged. “Yeah, but still.” She drained her martini glass, reached for the pitcher on the coffee table, refilled it, and took a sip. She looked at me over the rim over her glass. “I made a few calls today.”

  “What calls?”

  “Some old friends at Emerson.”

  “About Dana?”

  She nodded.

  “And?”

  “I talked to Barbara,” she said, “who was one of Verna Wetherbee’s nurses at the time she died, and I talked to Ginny in records. I got Ben Wetherbee’s old address in Westford, but it turns out he doesn’t live there anymore. Searched the Massachusetts White Pages on the Internet, couldn’t find any listing for Benjamin Wetherbee. Barbara told me that Verna’s parents used to visit sometimes. Ginny looked up their names for me. Richard and Shirley Arsenault. Dana’s grandparents. They were living in Edson, Rhode Island. Tiny little town halfway between Woonsocket and Providence. I checked. They still live there.” She took another sip of martini.

  “So did you call them?”

  “No. I’m…I haven’t quite figured out what to say to them.”

  “Just do it, honey.”

  “You mean now?”

  “Well,” I said, “I suppose you could just give the information to Saundra Mendoza, let her do the dirty work.”

  “I can’t do that. It wouldn’t be right. It should be me telling them. A friend. Not the police.”

  “So why wait?”

  She hugged herself. “I’ve got to think it through.”

  “You’re probably better off just playing it by ear,” I said. “Thinking things through is overrated.”

  Evie was nodding. “I looked up their number,” she said. “I picked up the phone to call them half a dozen times today. But I kept thinking, what do I say? I mean, how do you tell them that their granddaughter is dead?”

  “You want me to do it?”

  She slapped my leg. “I most certainly do not.” She unfolded herself from the sofa, stood up, drained her martini glass, and headed for the kitchen.

  I heard the mumble of her voice from two rooms away.

  Five minutes later she came back into the living room.

  I arched my eyebrows.

  She shook her head.

  “What happened?”

  “Mrs. Arsenault was…cagey.”

  “Cagey how?”

  “I can’t put my finger on it. Evasive. Distant. Mistrustful. I didn’t want to just come out and tell her Dana was dead. I mean, what was she doing here in Boston, in our backyard? Why was she pregnant? I didn’t know what she knew. So I told her who I was, from Emerson Hospital, and Shirley—Mrs. Arsenault—she said she remembered Dana mentioning me. I said I heard about Verna, Mrs. Arsenault’s daughter, how sorry I was, and I’d been meaning to check in with Dana, see how she was doing. And Mrs. Arsenault, she interrupts me right there and says, Well, Dana’s not here right now.”

  “Right now?”

  She nodded.

  “So Dana was living with her grandparents?”

  Evie nodded.

  “Sounds like she was expecting Dana to return.”

  “I don’t know,” said Evie.

  “So did you tell her Dana was dead?”

  She shook her head. “No. I chickened out. It just didn’t seem right, over the telephone, you know?”

  “But don’t you think—?”

  “God damn it, Brady.”

  “What?”

  “I know you would’ve done it better.” Evie was glaring at me, clenching and unclenching her fists as if it was taking all of her will power not to slug me.

  “I didn’t mean that, honey.”

  “Sure you did. You always know what to do. Sometimes you’re such a…a fucking lawyer.”

  “Ow,” I said. “That hurts.”

  “Tough.”

  I patted my lap. “Come on. Relax.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t want to relax. And don’t you dare patronize me.”

  “I wasn’t patronizing you.”

  “Second-guessing me,” she said.

  “I wasn’t second-guessing you, either, honey.”

  “Yeah, you were.” She blew out a long breath. “Okay, maybe you’re right. Maybe I should’ve just flat-out told her. If I’d told her that Dana was dead, I might’ve gotten somewhere with her. Maybe she’d’ve explained it. You’re right. But I didn’t. I was a wimp, okay? I crapped out. It seemed as if she didn’t trust me, and I felt like, if I pushed her, she’d just hang up on me and then I’d never be able to talk to her again. So I let it go.”

  “You played it by ear,” I said.

  “That’s right.” She was still scowling at me.

  “Sounds like you handled it perfectly.”

  “You think?”

  “This way,” I said, “she’ll be comfortable talking to you again. You always know when to push, when to pull back. That’s what makes you so good at your work. You’ve got excellent instincts.”

  “I do,” she said, “don’t I?”

  “Absolutely.” I opened my arms. “Come here.”

  “No. I’m mad at you. You’re such a damned know-it-all.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. “I’m a truly bad person. But I really think you need to sit on my lap.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Of course not. You can do anything you want to do. You are the architect of your own future. You are the captain of your own ship. You are the mother of your own invention. You are the sunshine of your own life.”

  Evie rolled her eyes. She was trying not to smile.

  “You are the tears of your own clown,” I said.

  Then she did smile.

  I patted my lap. “Please?”

  “That’s more like it,” she said.

  Thirteen

  I spent most of Tuesday morning and half of the afternoon in the courthouse in Concord, mostly waiting around in the lobby, but eventually trying to convince Judge Kolb that just because Bob Perry, my client, had gotten a hard-earned raise and an overdue promotion at the bank, it didn’t entitle Nancy Perry, from whom Bob had been divorced for eleven years, to more al
imony.

  After all that, the judge ended up sending us home to work it out, and by the time I left my car in the Copley Square parking garage and strolled across the plaza to my office, it was approaching five o’clock in the afternoon. The rush-hour cars and taxis on Boylston Street were puffing thin clouds of exhaust into the chilly air, and the streetlights were winking on, and the slush on the sidewalks was beginning to freeze.

  Julie was talking on the telephone when I walked in. I gave her a wave, and she wiggled some fingers at me. I hung up my coat, poured myself a mug of coffee, slouched on the waiting-room sofa, and began thumbing through the November issue of Gray’s Sporting Journal.

  After a few minutes, Julie hung up. “So how’d it go?” she said.

  I shrugged. “I accrued a whole bunch of billable hours, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Judge Kolb sent you home, told you to go back to the drawing board, huh?”

  I smiled. “Right as usual. How about you?”

  “Without you hanging around pestering me all day, I got a lot done. Your messages and your mail are on your desk.” She jerked her head in the direction of my office. “You ought to take a look at them before you leave.”

  “That,” I said, “is exactly why I’m here. I could’ve gone straight home, patted Henry, kissed Evie, changed my clothes, poured myself a drink, put my feet up and relaxed, basking in the certain knowledge that I’d earned it. But even after a full and exhausting day in court, a dedicated attorney’s work is never done.”

  Julie rolled her eyes.

  I took my coffee into my office and sat at my desk. In her usual fastidious fashion, Julie had printed out a log of the day’s calls, annotating each entry with the phone number, the caller’s name, the time of the call, and the message, plus Julie’s own commentary: “Ignore this one;” “I took care of it;” “He’ll get back to you;” “Beware: This one’s a nutcase;” “She sounds neurotic;” “Can’t afford us.” Like that.

  I’d learned to heed Julie’s instincts. In the years we’d been together, she’d proved to be an uncanny judge of potential clients and the merits of their cases.

  As I ran my finger down the list, I stopped at a 617-area-code number with no name beside it. The call had come at 10:35 in the morning. Julie’s comment: “Cell phone. Wouldn’t leave her name. Wants you to call.”