Hell Bent

by William G. Tapply

She fished her cell phone out of her bag, frowned at the little screen, then flipped it open and said, “Claudia? … Hi. Sure, no problem. What’s up? … No, he’s not. I’m at a friend’s house, and … Not since yesterday … He seemed, you know, normal for him. Why? … What? Say that again?”

  Alex glanced at me as she listened. Then she closed her eyes, and I saw something that looked like horror spread across her face.

  After a minute, she said, “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll … sure. Of course. I’ll let you know. Please try to relax … Okay. Right. ‘Bye.”

  She snapped her cell phone shut and placed it gently on the table. “That was Claudia,” she said. “Gus sent her an e-mail. She didn’t get it until she got home from work today. It said, ‘I’m sorry for everything. I don’t think I can do this anymore.’ She’s been trying to reach him ever since then. He’s not answering his house phone or his cell phone. She …” Alex shook her head, and then tears welled up in her eyes. “Claudia’s pretty upset. I guess I am, too.”

  ” ‘I don’t think I can do this anymore’? That’s what he said?”

  Alex nodded.

  “And Claudia thinks …”

  “She’s afraid. Of what Gus might do. I am, too. It sounds like, you know …”

  I nodded. “When did he send the e-mail?”

  “She didn’t say. It was waiting for her when she checked her e-mails after supper tonight.”

  “When was that?”

  “Around six thirty.”

  I looked at my watch. It was a little before ten. “She’s been trying to reach him since then?”

  Alex nodded. “No answer.”

  “There’s a million explanations for that,” I said. “He’s out, his phone’s turned off, the battery’s run down, he just doesn’t want to talk to Claudia—”

  “Except for that e-mail,” said Alex.

  “It could mean a lot of things,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her that Gus was talking about starting his life over in Bali. That was a privileged conversation. “Try calling him,” I said. “Maybe he’s just screening Claudia.”

  Alex nodded. She picked up her phone, pressed some numbers, then put it to her ear. After a minute she shook her head. “He’s screening me, too, then.”

  I took out my cell phone. “His phone won’t recognize mine. What’s his number?”

  Alex recited it, and I dialed it. It rang five or six times before the telephone company’s recording invited me to leave a message. I declined the invitation.

  I looked at Alex and shook my head. “What do you want to do?”

  “I’m thinking about that e-mail,” she said.

  I nodded.

  She stood up. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m going to go find my brother.””

  Me, too,” I said.

  EIGHT

  A soft autumn rain was falling when Alex and I left the house. Mist haloed in the streetlights, and Mt. Vernon Street was slick and shiny. Alex reached for my hand and gripped it hard and held on as we walked down Charles Street to the parking garage where I paid by the month to stow my car.

  She found a soft-rock FM station on the radio, and then she leaned against the car door. She stared out the side window and hummed radio tunes in her throat, and we didn’t say much of anything to each other as we headed out of the city to Gus Shaw’s place in Concord.

  By the time we crossed Route 128 in Lexington, the rain had stopped, and a little less than an hour after we’d left my house on Beacon Hill, I steered onto the long curving driveway off Monument Street that led to the apartment over the carriage house that Gus Shaw was renting from Herb and Beth Croyden.

  I stopped in front and turned off the ignition. The sudden silence from the stilled radio seemed to fill the car.

  No lights shone inside or outside Gus’s apartment.

  “He’s not here,” said Alex.

  “Let’s go check,” I said.

  We got out of the car and climbed the outside stairway to the little porch at the second-floor entry above the garage. I knocked on the door, waited and listened, knocked again. Nothing.

  “Nobody home,” I said to Alex.

  Alex stepped up and banged hard on the door. “Gussie,” she called. “Come on. Open up. It’s just me and Brady.”

  We waited. There was no sound from inside. Nobody came to the door.

  “I know where he hides a spare key,” Alex said. She reached over the railing, moved her hand across the shingles that sided the carriage house, then showed me a house key. “Four over from the light, then four down,” she said. “He keeps it wedged up under a shingle.”

  She handed me the key. I unlocked the door, then gave the key to Alex. She stuck it back under its shingle.

  When I pushed open the door and started to step inside, I whiffed a familiar, unmistakable smell.

  It was burnt gunpowder.

  I turned to Alex. “You stay here,” I said.

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Please,” I said. “Just do what I say.”

  “But—”

  “Please,” I said. “Don’t argue with me.”

  “Something terrible has happened,” she said.

  I held her by the shoulders. “I’m going to go look,” I said. “You wait here.”

  She looked at me wide-eyed, then nodded. “Yes, okay,” she said. “Fine.”

  I pulled her to me in a quick hug, then went in. I closed the door behind me, leaving Alex out on the porch. Inside the apartment, the smell of cordite was stronger. It reminded me of the indoor shooting range where I sometimes practiced with Doc Adams on paper targets with human silhouettes.

  I felt around on the inside wall, found the light switch, and turned it on. I blinked against the sudden burst of light inside the doorway. When my eyes adjusted, I looked around.

  Gus was sitting in the shadows in a leather-backed armchair at his desk by the window at the end of the room. His arms were dangling at his sides, and his head was slumped onto his right shoulder. Even from where I stood inside the doorway, with Gus in the shadows over by the window, I could see that there was a lot of blood.

  Now mingled with the smell of a gunshot was another odor. I’d smelled it before. It was the dank odor of recent death.

  I put my hands in my pockets to remind myself not to touch anything. It was already too late to do anything about the doorknobs and the light switch.

  I went over to Gus, took a quick look, and turned away. My heart slammed in my chest. I swallowed hard, took several deep breaths, and forced myself to look again.

  The bullet had entered his head at the soft place behind his jawbone under his left ear and exited from the upper right side of his skull.

  The entry wound was small and black and round. A tiny dribble of blood had dried on Gus’s neck underneath it. The skin around the hole was red and blistery, and it looked like the hair behind his ear was singed.

  The exit wound was big and jagged and bloody, and I quickly averted my eyes from it.

  A square automatic handgun lay on the floor under Gus’s dangling left hand. I didn’t know enough about guns to identify it from where it lay, but I was willing to bet that it was the M9 Beretta that he’d waved at his wife and daughters, the gun he bought for a hundred dollars in Iraq and brought home in his duffel. The gun he told me he’d thrown into the Concord River.

  On the desk in front of Gus was a closed laptop computer, an empty glass, and a small paper bag. Inside the bag was a bottle. Without taking the bottle out of it, I pulled open the end of the bag with my fingertips and saw that it was a pint of Early Times. A little skim of amber liquid coated the bottom of the glass. The booze smell was strong.

  I went out onto the porch and closed the door behind me. Alex looked at me with big eyes.

  I shook my head and held out my arms.

  She blinked, nodded, and came to me. Her arms went around my chest, and she pressed herself against me and pushed her face against my sh
oulder.

  I held her tight. Neither of us said anything.

  After a minute, Alex leaned back and looked up at me. Her eyes were wet. “I want to see him.”

  “We’ve got to call the police.”

  “They’ll tell us to stay outside, won’t they?”

  I nodded. “They will. But you don’t want to see him, honey. Trust me.”

  She made a fist and punched my chest. “Don’t tell me what I want, Brady Coyne. I need to see my brother.”

  I looked at her. Fire sparked in her eyes. I remembered that fire. “Do you know what you’re going to see?” I said.

  “He’s dead,” she said. “He killed himself. That’s what his e-mail to Claudia meant.”

  “He shot himself,” I said. “It’s pretty bad. There’s a lot of blood. It looks like he drank a glass of bourbon, and then he shot himself behind the ear.”

  Alex narrowed her eyes at me. “If you’re trying to convince me not to go in there, it’s not working. Come with me, will you?”

  “Trust me,” I said. “You don’t want to go in there.”

  She pushed herself away from me. “I’m going in.”

  I looked at her, then nodded. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go with you.” I took her hand and we went inside.

  Alex stopped inside the doorway. “I can smell it,” she said. “Gunpowder. Something else, too.” She let go of my hand and went over to where Gus was sitting. I followed and stood behind her.

  She put her hand on Gus’s shoulder. She looked down at him and shook her head. “Oh, Gussie” was all she said. After a minute, she looked at me. “I’ve got to tell Claudia.”

  “The police will do that,” I said.

  “I should do it.”

  “Later, then,” I said. “First, if you can handle it, look around, see if you notice anything.”

  “Like what am I supposed to notice?”

  I shrugged. “You’ve been here more than I have. Is anything out of place? Anything missing? Anything here now that wasn’t here last time you were here?”

  She pointed at the bottle in the bag and the empty glass on the desk in front of Gus and arched her eyebrows at me.

  I nodded. “Early Times bourbon.”

  She nodded. “Bourbon was what he used to like. He stopped drinking a long time ago. He said it made him crazy. He told me he didn’t touch alcohol anymore. I didn’t think he even had booze in the house.”

  “This is still in its package-store bag.”

  She nodded. “As if he bought it for this occasion, you mean.”

  I shrugged. Then I noticed something. I bent closer to Gus. A light scattering of white flakes had fallen onto his shoulders and on the back of the leather chair he was sitting in. I looked up. In the angled plasterboard ceiling directly over Gus’s head was a round bullet-sized hole.

  “Look,” I said to Alex. I pointed at the ceiling.

  She looked. “What is it?”

  “I’d say it’s a bullet hole.”

  “It’s not…”

  “No. It can’t be the shot that killed him. That was at an angle, and the bullet …”

  She nodded. “I know. It would be distorted. It wouldn’t make a neat round hole like that. So what does it mean?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Jesus,” she muttered. “I’m imagining him holding a gun against his head, trying to pull the trigger, not being able to do it, moving the gun away and shooting up at the ceiling. Why? To remind himself that his gun worked? Or maybe, just at the last minute, he’s trying to shoot himself, but his hand refuses to cooperate, moves the gun away just as he pulls the trigger. It must have been deafening, going off right beside his ear … So maybe that does it… gives him courage or resolution or something … so then he puts the gun back against his head and … and this time he does it.” She squeezed my arm. “I can’t do this anymore, Brady. I’ve got to go outside now.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  She stood there looking at Gus.

  I took her hand. “Come on, honey. Let’s go.”

  She nodded. “Right. Okay.”

  We went outside and sat on the bottom steps. I took out my cell phone.

  “Calling the police?” said Alex.

  “I’m calling Roger Horowitz,” I said. “He’s a state homicide detective. He’ll handle it.”

  “Horowitz,” she said. “I remember him. Always crabby. You used to like him.”

  “I used to respect him,” I said. “Still do. He’s pretty hard to like, though over the years I admit that he’s kind of grown on me.”

  I accessed Roger Horowitz’s secret cell phone number in my phone’s memory and hit Send. He gave me this number several years ago, told me it was the one way I could always reach him, and warned me never to use it unless it was urgent, by which he meant that it related to a homicide.

  He answered on the third ring. “Christ, Coyne,” he growled. “It’s Friday night. Are you aware of that? I’ve been home from work less than an hour. I’m having a cup of tea, got my shoes off and my feet up on the coffee table watching TV here with my wife.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m here with the body of a man named Gus Shaw. It appears that he shot himself.”

  “You couldn’t call 911 like any other citizen?”

  “Not when I could call you.”

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “So where’s here?”

  “Concord. It’s an apartment over a garage off Monument Street. I don’t know the street number. The people who own it live in the house in front. Folks named Croyden.”

  “Your body’s inside?”

  “Sitting at his desk.”

  “So you’ve been in there.”

  “I’m here with Alex Shaw, Gus’s sister. We went in. We didn’t touch anything except the doorknobs and the light switch.”

  “Alex?” he said. “Your old girlfriend? That Alex Shaw?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I remember her.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s hard to forget. She remembers you, too.”

  “Jesus, Coyne. I can’t keep up with you. Evie’s in California, so you—”

  “None of your damn business, Roger.”

  He snorted a laugh. “You are a pisser. Okay. Sit tight. The Concord cops’ll be there in a few minutes, and the rest of the troops’ll be right behind them. What was the name of the people in the house?”

  “Croyden. Monument Street.”

  “Okay,” he said, and then, typically, he disconnected without a good-bye or a thank-you.

  Alex and I sat there on the bottom step of the wooden stairs on the side of the garage. She leaned her head on my shoulder, hooked an arm through mine, and put her hand on my leg.

  I gripped her hand, and in spite of the horror up there in Gus’s apartment, I found myself acutely aware of Alex’s breast warm against my arm and the length of her leg pressing against mine and her hair tickling the side of my face.

  After a minute, she stood up and fished her cell phone from her pocket. “I’m going to call Claudia now,” she said.

  “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Of course I don’t,” she said.

  She moved over to where I’d left my car, leaned against the side, pecked out some numbers on her phone, then pressed it against her ear. After a moment, I heard her speaking softly. From where I sat, I couldn’t hear what she said.

  A few minutes later Alex folded her phone and shoved it back into her pocket. She came back and sat on the step beside me.

  “You okay?” I said.

  She looked at me. Her face was wet. “I’m hardly okay,” she said. “That was hard.”

  “How’d Claudia take it?”

  “She seemed … I don’t know. Not surprised. She said some part of her had been expecting it for a long time. She said that ever since she got that e-mail from him tonight, she’d been assuming the worst.”

  A minute later we heard the distant, muff
led wail of a siren in the damp night air. It grew louder, and then suddenly the high beams of headlights cut through the darkness and a cruiser pulled up next to my car in front of the garage.

  A pair of uniformed officers got out and came over to where Alex and I were sitting. “You’re Coyne?” said one of them.

  I nodded. “This is Alexandria Shaw. It’s her brother up there.”

  He looked at Alex. “I’m going to ask you to come over to the cruiser with me, ma’am. You, sir, you stay with Officer Guerra here.”

  Alex turned to me. “Can’t I stay here with you?”

  I patted her leg. “They’re separating us. Eventually they’ll ask both of us a lot of questions, see if our stories match.”

  “Don’t you go anywhere without me,” she said.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  She stood up and looked down at me for a moment with big, liquid eyes. Then the cop touched her arm, and she turned and followed him over to the cruiser. He opened the passenger door and held it for her, and she ducked her head and slid in. When the dome light went on, I saw that a female officer was sitting behind the wheel. I was glad that they weren’t leaving Alex alone.

  I remained sitting there on the bottom step. Officer Guerra stood there with his back to me and his arms folded across his chest.

  After a while several other vehicles came up the driveway, and pretty soon the place was swarming with people. There were local cops and state cops, some in uniform and some in regular clothes, and there were other officials—technicians from the medical examiner’s office and forensics experts and some others that might’ve been reporters or maybe just nosy people with police scanners.

  After a while, a bulky guy in a dark suit, no necktie, came over to me. “You’re Coyne?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I’m Detective Boyle,” he said. He had a bald head and a fat face and small eyes. He had flipped open a notebook and was holding a pen in his other hand, as if he expected me to say something interesting. “State cops.”

  “I expected Horowitz,” I said.

  Boyle shrugged. “You got me. You’re the one who found the body, called it in?”

  I nodded.

  “You were in the apartment up there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you remove anything?”