Muscle Memory (23 page)

Some spicy aroma would be wafting in from my kitchen, and I’d go to check it out, and it would be lentil soup or twice-baked potatoes or vegetarian chili, something full of vitamins and minerals and low in fat and cholesterol, something delicious even though it was good for me.

Well, Alex wasn’t there on this Monday evening in June, and she hadn’t been since she’d moved to Garrison, Maine, two years earlier, and now it had been nearly ten months since I’d seen her—Labor Day, to be precise, which was when I’d driven out of her driveway for the last time.

Ten months, and I still hadn’t figured out exactly what happened.

I climbed out of my suit and into a pair of jeans, found a bottle of Blue Moon in the refrigerator, and took it out onto my balcony. I flopped into an aluminum chair, tilted back with my heels up on the railing, balanced the bottle on my stomach, and closed my eyes.

All the way home from Concord, while part of my mind rode the rhythms of Stevie Ray’s guitar, the other part had flipped randomly through the facts of Kaye Fallon’s ectopic pregnancy, looking for insight and connection to her murder.

It still kept coming back to Mick.

He was my client, innocent or guilty. All the objective evi­dence pointed to guilty. But he’d told me he didn’t do it, and I wanted to believe him.

I sipped my Blue Moon and watched the gulls cruise on the thermals and the ferry inch across the harbor, and when the bottle was empty, I set it on the concrete floor of the balcony and let my eyes fall shut.

When I woke up, darkness had seeped in over the harbor. Blinking airplane lights were circling over Logan, and the pinpricks of other lights showed out on the islands.

I pushed myself out of my chair, went into the kitchen, heated a can of Hormel beef stew, and ate it from the saucepan at the table.

Then I called Horowitz at his secret number.

“You in the middle of dinner or something?” I said.

“Oh, hell, no,” he said. “This is a perfect time for you to interrupt me, Coyne. I was sitting here watching TV with my wife, and we were just saying, Wouldn’t it be great if Coyne’d call again, because, hell, we haven’t talked to him since this morning, and here we are, just the two of us, and when was the last time we had any time together, and it’s really just too fucking weird, being relaxed, having actual time to ourselves here without somebody like Coyne buggin’ me.”

“Okay,” I said. “Catch you later.”

I hung up and lit a cigarette.

The phone rang thirty seconds later. “This better be good,” said Horowitz.

“Kaye Fallon was pregnant.”

“The hell she was. I saw the ME’s report.”

“She had an ectopic pregnancy. Emergency surgery at Emerson Hospital in February.”

“Ectopic—”

“That’s a fertilized egg in the fallopian tube.”

“Christ, Coyne,” he growled. “I know what an ectopic pregnancy is. I mean, I didn’t go to a fancy Ivy League college, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know anything.” He was silent for a moment. “She was pregnant, huh?”

“It means she was having an affair.”

“No shit, Sam Spade. So, okay. Tell me what you know.”

I told him how Mick had mailed me the Blue Cross/Blue Shield form and about my conversations with Gretchen Conley and Dr. Allison.

“So Mick found out,” said Horowitz. “Went to her house to confront her, blew his stack, and whacked her with that statue.”

“
The Thinker
,” I said. “That was the statue. I don’t think he found out about the pregnancy until after Kaye was already dead.”

“How so?”

“Why else would he send me that form when he did?”

“Hmm,” said Horowitz. “Go on.”

“He mailed it to me the day before he disappeared. He got it in the mail, figured out what it was all about, and that’s probably when he blew his stack. Maybe he wanted to kill Kaye when he saw it. But he couldn’t even if he wanted to, because someone else had already done it. Anyway, I think he’s got an idea who her lover was. I think that’s what Mick’s doing now. Tracking down the guy who was having this affair with Kaye. That’s who probably killed her, not Mick.”

“Save it for the courtroom, Coyne. You gotta have your head up your ass way past your shoulders not to see that this is just one more finger pointing at your client.”

“Maybe it is,” I said. “Still, it’d be good to know who this lover is, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure. So you gonna tell me? That why you called? You got an actual piece of useful information for me?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know who it is. I’ve already told you about Will Powers, that kid who used to be her student, who might’ve been stalking her, and I also mentioned Ronald Moyle, the principal of the school where she taught. But Kaye Fallon probably knew a hundred guys who thought she looked pretty good. Hell, any guy would think Kaye Fallon looked good. Your witness there, Mitchell Selvy, he told me he liked looking at her. And there’s that Down’s syndrome guy, Darren.”

I heard Horowitz sigh. “Yeah, okay, so I guess I better talk to Mrs. Conley again. And that doctor—what was his name?”

“Allison. It’s a woman. Her office is in the John Cummings Building at Emerson Hospital.”

“Got it.” He paused, then said, “Uh, Coyne?”

“Yes?”

“I just want you to know. I’m gonna get my cell phone number changed, okay? And when I do, I’m counting on you to help me remember not to give it to you.”

Then the phone went dead.

When I stepped out of the shower the next morning, my door buzzer was ringing steadily. I wrapped a towel around my waist and went to the intercom, leaving wet footprints on the carpet.

I pressed the button. “I’m here. Who is it?”

“Sergeant Benetti. The lieutenant wants you to come down.”

“Christ, I just got out of the shower. What’s the—”

“Get dressed,” she said. “Make it quick.”

The last time Horowitz had come for me, Mick was holding Skeeter hostage. I guessed this had something to do with Mick, too.

I slipped into a pair of jeans and a cotton shirt, grabbed my cigarettes and a car mug full of coffee, and took the stairs down to the lobby. Horowitz’s Taurus was parked directly in front of the door with the back door hanging open for me. I slid in, and before I could settle back, Benetti had peeled away from the curb.

Without preamble, and without even turning in his seat, Horowitz said, “Guy name of Watts.”

“I don’t know any Watts,” I said.

“Darren Watts. Ring a bell?”

“Darren? Oh, the Down’s syndrome guy in Lexington. What about him?”

“Why the fuck do you think I came for you?” said Horowitz. “You think I wanna buy you breakfast? He’s dead, that’s what.”

I blew out a breath. “Darren? Homicide?”

“Don’t know. Unattended death. Lexington cops called it in. I mean, one day you mention this guy’s name, the next day he’s dead, and I figured, friend of Coyne’s, another God damn dead body in the same neighborhood, maybe he’d like to join me, help shed a little light on the subject.”

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

Benetti had the flasher blinking and the siren wailing, and she weaved and darted expertly among the early-morning traffic. Morning rush hour was coming into the city, not going out the way we were, and she made good time.

A jogger had spotted Darren’s body facedown in the pond where he liked to fish. That’s all Horowitz would tell me. Then he turned to the side window, and neither he nor Benetti said anything all the way to Lexington.

There were three Lexington cruisers and a medical examiner’s van parked at awkward angles alongside the road just around the corner from the Fallons’ house when we got there. A small cluster of gawkers had gathered where the jogging path led into the woods. They were being held at bay by three or four uniformed officers. I noticed a gray-haired woman sitting on the ground crying into her hands. She was wearing a flowered housedress and bedroom slippers. A younger woman was kneeling beside her with her arm around her shoulder.

I followed Horowitz and Benetti along the path and down to the pond, where a couple of uniformed cops stood with their backs to the water. About ten feet from shore, two men in shirtsleeves stood thigh-deep in the water. They were bent over Darren’s body.

Horowitz spoke to the cops, then went to the water’s edge. “Hey,” he said.

One of the two men straightened up, shielded his eyes, nodded, and waded to shore. He was tall, bald, big-beaked, and stoop-shouldered. “Drowned,” he said.

“Accident?” said Horowitz.

The tall man shook his head. “Not unless you can figure how he might smash in the back of his own head and then fall facedown in three feet of water, not to mention explaining where the finger bruises on his neck and throat came from.”

Horowitz turned to Marcia Benetti. “Take Mr. Coyne back to the car and keep him humored till I get there.”

“Wait a minute—” I began.

But Benetti grabbed my elbow and led me away.

I sat in the backseat. She sat behind the wheel, looking out the window.

“You don’t say much,” I said to her.

“No,” she said.

“What’s your partner thinking?”

“I don’t know.”

Fifteen minutes later, Horowitz strolled back. Instead of coming over to where I was waiting, he went to the woman in the housedress, who was still sitting on the ground. He squatted down directly in front of her, and I saw her head lift up to look at him. I heard the rumble of his voice, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. The woman was shaking her head. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she made no effort to wipe them away.

After a few minutes, Horowitz patted her arm, stood up, and came to the cruiser. He slid in beside me. “Mrs. Watts,” he said. “Divorced lady. Darren was her only child.”

I blew out a breath. “What happened?”

“Looks like someone whacked him from behind, then held his head under water.”

“When?”

“ME figures he’s been dead around twelve hours.”

“So it happened early last night.”

Horowitz nodded.

“She didn’t report him missing?” I said.

“She says he stays out late most nights, doesn’t come in till after she’s gone to sleep. He’s a big boy, she says. Twenty-six years old. She tries to treat him like an adult. Doesn’t ask where he’s been or what he’s been doing, and he doesn’t tell her. He likes fishing. That’s about all she could say.”

“If he stays out at night,” I said, “he might’ve seen who killed Kaye.” I thought for a moment. “Or—”

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Horowitz.

“Or Darren might’ve done it,” I finished.

Horowitz tapped my knee. “Got a question for you.”

I nodded.

“You were out here the other day.”

“Yes. Saturday.”

“You talked with Darren Watts.”

“Yes. I told you. He acted strange. Angry, afraid, or something. Got very agitated when I mentioned Kaye Fallon. He ran away from me, and when I followed him to the pond, he swung his fishing rod at me, chased me away.”

“My question is this,” said Horowitz. “Who’d you tell about this?”

I thought for a minute. “Well, you. And I think I mentioned it to Gretchen and Lyn Conley, and—” I stopped and looked at Horowitz.

“Fallon,” he said. “You talked to Fallon on the phone.”

“Yes. I mentioned it to Mick, too.”

Horowitz nodded and proceeded to question me about every detail of my two encounters with Darren, first at the Fallons’ house and then at the pond. He made me remember everyone I’d told about seeing Darren. Then I had to go back all over it again for him.

When we finished, he gave me his quick, cynical grin. “Why not do everybody a favor, Coyne. Hereafter, mind your own fucking business. Okay?”

“You think I—?”

“I hope you got a good look at young Mr. Watts’s body, pal, because this one’s on your head.”

Horowitz stayed at the crime scene in Lexington, and Marcia Benetti drove me back to my apartment. I didn’t try to make conversation with her. I was trying to get my mind around the possibility that Mick Fallon had murdered his former neighbor, Darren Watts. I knew what Horowitz was thinking: either Darren had killed Kaye, and Mick had figured it out and taken his revenge, or Darren had seen Mick kill his wife and Mick had killed the witness.

Either way, Mick was a helluva suspect. And I was the one who’d put Darren Watts into his mind.

Horowitz was probably right. Everyone would be better off if I’d just stick to wills and divorces.

Around noontime, Lyn Conley called me at my office. “Just thought you’d want to know,” he said. “Kaye’s going to be waked Wednesday at the Douglas Funeral Home in Lexington. Visiting hours’ll be three to five and seven to nine. Funeral’s Thursday at ten
A.M.
at the Immaculate Conception Church. It’s in today’s paper.”

“Gretchen told me you were helping Danny and Erin with the arrangements,” I said.

“The least I could do, I guess.”

“So how are they handling it?”

“I was with them when they saw her. That was pretty rough. But I think it got them over a hump. Made it real, you know? They’re good, solid kids. They’ll be okay.” He hesitated. “It’d sure help if Mick was around, though.”

“It sure would,” I said. I saw no purpose in mentioning Darren Watts to Lyn. “Did Gretchen tell the kids that I talked with Mick?”

“Yeah. Hard to tell how they felt about that.”

“Knowing he’s alive…”

“I don’t think they ever allowed themselves to think he wasn’t. Or Kaye, either, for that matter, until they saw her body.”

“Right,” I said. “Well, I appreciate your calling. I guess I’ll see you at the funeral. I’m not much for wakes.”

He laughed humorlessly. “Me neither. Who the hell likes wakes? Oh, we’re having a kind of reception at the house afterwards. After the interment, I mean. I think it would mean a lot to the kids if you dropped in.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

T
HE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CHURCH
was an imposing old brick structure—well, I guess all Catholic churches are imposing, at least to non-Catholics. This one had wide front steps that descended directly to the sidewalk, as if to lure in all passersby. Rhododendrons and azaleas in spectacular bloom grew against its granite foundation, and it was flanked by a pair of towering elms which had somehow been spared from the Dutch elm epidemic.