Hell Bent

by William G. Tapply

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”

  “If anything occurs to you,” I said, “give me a call, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Will do.”

  It was a drizzly, gray early-November Friday afternoon. Close to quitting time. Outside my office window, the maples had all dropped their leaves. Their branches were black and skeletal against the shiny wet pavement of the plaza, and the light-activated lamps on their steel poles glowed soft orange in the premature dusk. The people on the pathways walked with hunched shoulders and turned-up collars.

  I was just tucking some papers into a manila folder when the intercom on my desk buzzed.

  I hit the button and said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Epping are here to see you,” said Julie, leaving me no choice, even though they didn’t have an appointment.

  “Sure,” I said, knowing that Doug and Mary were probably standing there watching Julie’s reaction to my end of this conversation. “Good. Bring ‘em in.”

  A minute later Julie was holding my door open for the Eppings.

  I took one look at them and smiled. They wore identical outfits—droopy canvas hats, yellow slickers over navy blue sweatsuits, and wet sneakers. They looked bedraggled and forlorn.

  “It’s not funny,” said Doug.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Have a seat.”

  “We’re drenched,” said Mary. “We’ll ruin your furniture.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Please.” I gestured at the sofa, and they both sat. “Want some coffee? Sorry, I don’t have any brandy to offer.”

  “Nothing,” said Doug. “We don’t want to take up your time. Just wanted to give you a report.”

  I took the chair across from them. “Picketing in the rain? You’ve got to be nuts, both of you.”

  Doug was shaking his head. “Four solid days. Cold, raw, nasty days. It spit snow Wednesday afternoon in Nashua. Today it drizzled. We walked back and forth in front of the AA Movers office on Outlook Drive from nine thirty or ten every morning til four or four thirty every afternoon. And you know what?”

  “I’m guessing that Nicholas Delaney has not written you a big check and issued a public apology.”

  “It’s way worse than that,” said Mary. Her white hair hung out of her hat in damp ringlets. “Outlook Drive turns out to be this dinky dead-end street that goes down to some warehouses on the Merrimack River. An alley more than a street. Sometimes a big truck or a moving van goes by. Once in a while a few workmen come or go. The first day we were there, they looked at us and shook their heads. After that, they haven’t even noticed us. There are no pedestrians going by, no traffic.”

  “I mean,” said Doug, “nobody ever goes into the AA Movers office. Not a single customer all week. Of course. You want to hire a mover, do you go to their office? No. You call them, and they go to you.”

  “So,” said Mary, “what we’ve been doing is stupid and a big fat waste of time, and we’ll be lucky if we don’t end up with pneumonia.”

  “I’m ready for Plan B,” said Doug. “I just wanted you to know.”

  “What’s Plan B?” I said.

  “He’s not serious,” said Mary.

  “She doesn’t believe me,” Doug said. “I’m dead serious.”

  “He says he’s going to murder Mr. Delaney,” Mary said.

  “You might as well start planning my defense right now,” said Doug.

  “Listen to your lawyer,” I said. “Don’t do it.”

  “You’re not taking me seriously, either,” he said.

  “No,” I said, “actually, I am. I believe you. I take you very seriously. People have committed murder for far flimsier reasons. Please don’t do it.”

  “You expect us to continue picketing?”

  “I never thought Doug Epping was a quitter,” I said.

  “I’m not,” he said. “Okay. I won’t murder anybody. Not yet, anyway. I’ll keep at it until that dirtbag prick bastard sonofabitch Delaney talks to me. Far as I’m concerned, I’ll die of old age right there on his steps, and when they write it up for the newspapers, they’ll have to mention why I was there.”

  “You with him?” I said to Mary.

  “I’m not crazy about his language,” she said, “but I love his passion.” She reached over, patted Doug’s leg, and smiled at me. “Don’t you?”

  “I do,” I said. “It deserves to be rewarded.”

  “I don’t care about my stupid furniture anymore,” Mary said. “Getting some kind of justice seems way more important. So, yes. Absolutely. Till death do us part. I’m with my man on this. Maybe we’ll die together on Nicholas Delaney’s doorstep. Let him explain that.”

  “I hope you’re going to take the weekend off, at least,” I said.

  “We are,” said Mary. “We plan to pamper ourselves. We’ll spend a lot of time sipping wine and nibbling cheese in our Jacuzzi. We have this wonderful tub in our new condo with a big window overlooking the waterfront. And we will dine out and rent movies and sleep late and get ourselves geared up for another week of picketing. We figure sooner or later somebody’s bound to notice us.”

  “I hope it’s sooner,” I said.

  “Amen to that.” Doug stood up. “Well, we just wanted to fill you in,” he said. “And I needed you to talk me out of committing murder.” He held out his hand. “Thanks for listening.”

  I shook hands with both of them, made them promise to keep me updated on their progress, and sent them home to their Jacuzzi by the window overlooking the waterfront in Charlestown.

  After they left, I said to Julie, “See if you can reach Molly Burke at Channel Nine in Manchester for me. She should answer her cell.”

  Julie cocked her head at me for a moment, then grinned and gave me a two-finger salute. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  I went into my office and sat at my desk, and a minute later my console buzzed. “I’ve got Molly Burke on line two,” said Julie.

  “Good work,” I said. I hit the blinking button and said, “Molly?”

  “Hi, handsome,” she said. “I hope you’re calling for a favor.”

  Three years earlier I had handled Molly’s sexual harassment case against her supervisor during her internship at a local-access cable network on the Massachusetts North Shore. We managed to get the pig fired plus a modest settlement and heartfelt public apology from the cable company, and even though I took my usual percentage out of the settlement, Molly insisted that she’d always owe me for giving her back her dignity.

  Now she was a popular newshound on New Hampshire’s biggest TV channel. She was pretty and vibrant and personable and smart. People liked to talk with her. She handled hard news and human-interest stories with equal professionalism. She worked hard, did all her due diligence, and had a bright future. I was proud of her.

  “Not really a favor,” I said to her, “although if it works out, it will make me very happy. I think I’ve got a story for you.”

  Alex showed up at exactly seven that evening lugging big shopping bags. She had brought a sushi assortment from a Japanese restaurant in Arlington, along with some hot-and-sour soup, salad with ginger dressing, and a bottle of sake.

  We warmed the sake and drank it from tiny porcelain cups without handles. We dipped the sushi in soy sauce mixed with wasabi, topped them with slices of fresh ginger, and wrestled them into our mouths with chopsticks.

  Alex didn’t care for the unagi, the eel. I loved it. I, on the other hand, gave her my share of the squid—ika. We both gobbled the tuna and salmon maki rolls.

  Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt. Between the two of us, we ate it all, and Henry, ever watchful from his post under the kitchen table, had to settle for the fortune cookies from which I’d extracted, but didn’t bother reading, the paper fortunes.

  Our one concession to our occidental culture was after-dinner coffee, which we were sipping in the living room when my house phone rang. I went to the kitchen, picked it up, checked the caller ID, and saw that it was sta
te police homicide detective Roger Horowitz calling from his cell.

  I pressed the Talk button. “Detective,” I said. “I bet this isn’t a social call.”

  “Detective Benetti is on her way to pick you up,” he said. “She should be there in about ten minutes. Be ready.”

  I started to ask him what was going on, but he’d already hung up.

  I put the phone down and went back into the living room. “That was Roger Horowitz,” I said to Alex. “His partner is on her way over here to take me someplace. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got to do it.”

  She nodded. “This isn’t the first time he’s done that.”

  “You remember.”

  “You and Roger Horowitz go way back. He’s always showing up unexpectedly or dragging you off someplace without explanation. Do you think you’ll be gone long?”

  “Hard to say,” I said. “You’ll wait here?”

  “Sure. Henry and I will find a movie to watch.” She looked at me. “Roger Horowitz is a homicide detective. That means it’s got something to do with …”

  I nodded. “With a homicide. Most likely, yes.”

  “Gus, you think?”

  I shrugged. “As usual, he didn’t give me a hint. If I can, I’ll call you when I know more.” I bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Then I found a jacket in the hall closet and went out onto the front porch to wait for Marcia Benetti.

  A few minutes later the headlights of a dark sedan cut through the misty chill of the November evening and stopped in front of my house.

  I slid into the passenger seat beside Marcia Benetti. She’d been Horowitz’s partner for several years, probably because nobody else could get along with him. She was dark-haired and small-boned, with high cheekbones and big black eyes and a generous mouth. She looked about as much like a police officer as I looked like a sumo wrestler.

  “How are you?” I said.

  “Fine.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “Dead body,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Where?”

  “Acton.”

  “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but all this clever banter is exhausting me.”

  She glanced at me. “Sorry. I’ve been on the go since six this morning. I was looking forward to a quiet evening in my pj’s eating popcorn and watching TV with my family.”

  “Murderers are inconsiderate that way.”

  Benetti didn’t smile. “They sure are,” she said.

  “Where in Acton?”

  “I’ll show you,” she said. “Okay, Mr. Coyne?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Okay.”

  She headed west on Route 2. As we passed the exit to Route 128, she hit a number on her cell phone, put it to her ear, and said, “Fifteen or twenty minutes … yeah, he’s here … right. Okay.” A few minutes later she drove past the Best Western hotel where Alex was staying and the Papa Razzi restaurant next door where we’d eaten, then halfway around the rotary and into Acton on 2A/119. A few miles later she turned right at some lights, and a mile or so after that she pulled off the road into a parking area in some woods.

  There were at least half a dozen vehicles parked there—a couple of Acton cruisers, the rest unmarked. Some had their headlights on and their doors hanging open and their radios crackling from inside. Down a slope in the woods I saw some lights moving and flashing through the trees.

  A uniformed police officer stepped out of the shadows and shined a flashlight into the car window on Marcia Benetti’s side.

  She held her badge up to the window, and the cop moved away.

  Marcia opened her door. “Come on,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Her big cop flashlight lit a narrow dirt pathway that wound through the woods toward what I recognized as the gurgle of moving water. As we moved, the sounds of voices became louder and the flicker and flash of lights became brighter.

  Then we stepped into a clearing on the edge of a small stream. Eight or ten people, a couple of them in uniform, were standing in a cluster.

  Horowitz separated himself from the crowd and came over to us. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  “You didn’t give me much choice,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t. Come on. This way.”

  We approached the group of law enforcement officials. “Back off,” said Horowitz to them, and they all backed away.

  When they did, I saw the body lying there on the rocks and gravel and sand at the edge of the stream. He was sprawled on his belly. His legs and arms were bent as if he’d been running when he suddenly collapsed.

  I stood there looking down at the body. He was wearing faded blue jeans and muddy white running shoes, with a dark blue windbreaker. He had dark hair, cut short, and a small, compact body. I couldn’t tell how old he was.

  Horowitz knelt beside him. “C’mere, Coyne,” he said. “See if you recognize him.”

  I squatted beside Horowitz.

  He tugged on the dead man’s shoulder, rolling him onto his side. His head lolled strangely on the uneven bed of rocks.

  Horowitz shined his flashlight on the dead man. “Can you ID this man for us?” he said.

  The first thing I saw was the big pink gash on the man’s throat and the redness that had soaked the front of his shirt and jacket. His throat had been sliced open nearly to his spine and had emptied his body of blood.

  The second thing I saw was that the dead man was Pedro Accardo. His face was pale and shrunken, but there was no mistaking him.

  “I know who this is,” I said to Horowitz. “I half expected it. His name is Pedro Accardo.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive,” I said.

  He stood up. “Okay. Come on. We’ve got to talk.”

  I stood up, too. “I got a question,” I said.

  “I’m the question man, Coyne,” he said. “You’re the answer man. How it works.”

  “Whatever gave you the idea that I might know him?”

  “We’ll talk in the car,” he said.

  When we got back to the parking area, Horowitz pointed his flashlight at Marcia Benetti’s unmarked sedan and said, “Get in.”

  I got in the passenger side.

  Howowitz went over and spoke to one of the uniformed cops who was patrolling the parking area, then came over and slid in beside me.

  One of the Acton cruisers pulled out of the lot and drove away.

  Horowitz patted his chest, then pulled a notebook from an inside pocket of his jacket. He flipped it open. “Spell that dead man’s name for me.”

  I spelled Pedro Accardo. “He had no ID on him?”

  “If he did,” he said, “I wouldn’t’ve needed you, right? So you know him how?”

  “He was a friend of Gus Shaw’s.” I told Horowitz about meeting Pedro—Pete—at the Sleepy Hollow Café with Gus. I told him that Pedro and Gus were both members of a support group for people who came home from Iraq with posttraumatic stress disorder, and that the group was led by an older guy named Philip Trapelo, whom people called the Sarge. I told him that I’d talked with Trapelo about Gus because I was trying to figure out if Gus really had taken his own life. I also mentioned talking with Jemma Jones, who owned the camera shop where Gus had worked, and Herb and Beth Croyden, Gus’s landlords in Concord. The Croydens, I told him, had lost a son in Iraq. Ms. Jones’s husband had been killed over there.

  I told him how Pedro had called me the previous night implying that he knew, or believed, that Gus had been murdered. I told Horowitz that Pedro mentioned the name John Kinkaid and the number eleven, eleven, eleven, and that judging by the background noises, he was calling from a public phone and was unable to say very much.

  “He said he’d call me back at midnight,” I said. “He seemed to have more he wanted to tell me.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. He never did call me back.”

  “We figure he’s been dead between
sixteen and twenty-four hours,” said Horowitz. “He might’ve already been dead at midnight last night.”

  “Soon after he called me, then,” I said. I shuddered at the obvious possibility that talking to me had gotten Pedro murdered.

  “He died right there by that stream,” said Horowitz. “Bled out on the rocks and sand. Killer was standing behind him. Right-handed. Big sharp knife.”

  “And didn’t bother trying to hide his body,” I said.

  “No. This is a popular area. There’s a hiking trail and a picnic area. They expected him to be found.” He looked at me. “You were asking how I knew to call you.”

  I nodded. “Yes. Why me?”

  “He had your business card crumpled up in his hand.”

  “I left a stack of cards for Phil Trapelo to give out to his group,” I said. “Or he might’ve gotten it from Gus.” I frowned. “The killer left the card in his hand but stripped him of his wallet and other ID? Isn’t that a little strange?”

  Horowitz shrugged. “Not if he’s trying to send you a message, it isn’t.”

  “Me?” I stopped. “Oh. A warning, you mean.”

  “Maybe.” He turned and looked out his side window. “Aha,” he said, as a pair of headlights turned into the parking area and stopped.

  A minute later, a flashlight came bobbing through the darkness toward us.

  “Ah, yes,” said Horowitz with more enthusiasm that I’d heard from him since I got there. “Coffee. Doughnuts. Finally. All is well with the world.” He opened his door and stepped out.

  One of the uniformed cops was balancing a box in one hand and two large Styrofoam cups in the other. His flashlight was tucked in his armpit.

  “Here you go, sir,” he said to Horowitz. “One black, one with milk, no sugar. Two jelly, two glazed, two plain. Here’s your change.”

  “Take a doughnut and keep the change,” said Horowitz. “You can have anything but a glazed.”

  The cop took a doughnut. Then Horowitz climbed into the car, handed me one of the cups, and put the doughnut box on the bench seat between us.

  We both sipped coffee and munched doughnuts for a minute. Then, with his mouth full of glazed doughnut, Horowitz said, “So you think this Accardo got murdered because he knew something about what happened to Gus Shaw?”