Muscle Memory (7 page)

From the location of the blow—and here Horowitz had touched the back of his head delicately with the tips of his fingers—the ME speculated that she’d been hit from behind. A vicious blow that dented and splintered her skull.

“He hit her when she turned her back on him,” I said.

Horowitz nodded. “We figure they’d been in the living room—maybe sitting on the sofa, judging from where her body fell—and then she got up and turned to leave the room. She might’ve started for the kitchen where there’s a phone when he hit her.”

“Right side of the head, did you say?”

He nodded. “From behind, a right-handed blow.”

“What’d he use?” I said.

“A brass sculpture. A replica of Rodin’s
The Thinker.
Weighs five or six pounds.”

Mick, who’d been staring down at the table the whole time, looked up. “Kaye gave that to me for my birthday a few years ago.” He smiled quickly. “It was sort of a joke between us. Kaye used to tease me about, you know, going off half-cocked, not stopping to think. We kept it on the coffee table. Sort of to remind me to—to think before I did something.”

“Mr. Fallon,” said Horowitz, “are you right-handed?”

Mick turned to me.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Mick. “When I played ball, I had a decent left hand, though.”

“Did you find prints on that statue?” I said.

Horowitz shrugged. He didn’t know—or wasn’t saying. I figured if they’d pulled Mick’s prints off that sculpture, they would’ve arrested him.

“What about the other weapon?” I said.

“Carving knife,” said Horowitz. “It matched a set of cutlery on the kitchen counter.”

I tried to imagine it. When Kaye gets up off the sofa and turns her back on him, the killer bashes her head with heavy sculpture. She falls to the floor, mortally wounded. Not good enough. He goes into the kitchen, finds a knife, comes back, stabs her, and then cuts her throat for good measure. What kind of rage drives somebody to do that?

I guessed they hadn’t found Mick’s prints on the knife, either.

I knew what Horowitz was thinking, of course. I’d have thought the same thing. Mick was angry and depressed over his divorce. If that wasn’t enough, he owed big gambling debts, not to mention back taxes, and he faced possible criminal charges with the IRS.

Plus, of course, whenever a woman is murdered, her spouse is the first and most logical suspect.

Throwing the detective out of Skeeter’s and then holding a knife at his friend’s throat didn’t exactly make Mick look innocent, either.

But Horowitz wasn’t arresting him. He had told us Mick wasn’t an official suspect, though I was positive Horowitz suspected him.

I could almost believe Mick would hit her. I’d seen how easily she could provoke him, and he had a quick temper. But I couldn’t see him sustaining his anger long enough to go find a knife, come back, and do what he did. That just wasn’t Mick.

“You know Gretchen Conley?” said Horowitz to Mick.

He nodded. “Kaye’s best friend. Friend of mine, too. At least she was.”

“What do you mean?”

Mick shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since—since Kaye and I split. For all I know Gretchen doesn’t like me anymore.”

The two women had been college classmates, Mick said, and their friendship had deepened over the years. Now they were best friends and confidantes. Before Mick and Kaye separated, they used to go out to dinner or a movie with Gretchen Conley and her husband almost every week. When their kids were younger, the two families had taken vacations together.

Horowitz told us he’d interrogated Gretchen Conley at length. She and Kaye had agreed to meet at six-thirty on Monday evening for dinner at Aigo’s, a little restaurant in Concord, the town where Gretchen lived. Getting together for dinner on Monday evenings had become a ritual for the two women ever since Mick had moved out over a year earlier.

When they’d talked on the phone the previous afternoon to confirm their dinner date for Monday, Kaye had seemed upset.

“Upset about me,” said Mick.

Horowitz shrugged.

Gretchen had arrived at Aigo’s at six-thirty. She went upstairs, took a table, had a glass of wine. When Kaye hadn’t shown up by seven, Gretchen phoned her at home. There was no answer, so she assumed Kaye was on her way. She went back to their table, had a second glass of wine.

But by seven-thirty she was worried. Kaye was always on time, and if something had come up to make her late, she would’ve called the restaurant.

So Gretchen phoned again and still got no answer. She tried again at eight. Then she left the restaurant and went home. She was concerned, but she figured that Kaye had a lot on her mind and something had come up. Still, it was odd that she hadn’t called. Gretchen kept phoning Kaye’s house and getting no answer.

Finally, she drove to Kaye’s home in Lexington, arriving a little after ten o’clock. She rang the bell several times, and when there was no response, she used her key and entered through the front door.

“The door was locked?” I said.

Horowitz nodded. “That’s what Mrs. Conley said.”

“And she had a key?”

“Yes. She said Mrs. Fallon had been away on vacation back in February. She’d given her friend a key so she could water the plants and feed the cat.”

I looked at Mick. He nodded. “She’d do that,” he said.

“Mrs. Conley pushed open the front door,” Horowitz continued. “She called Mrs. Fallon’s name, received no answer. She stepped into the foyer. She said she noticed that all the downstairs lights were on. Then she saw the blood.”

I tried to imagine what it must have been like for Gretchen Conley. She saw the blood, then she saw the body. So much blood from such a small body. The carpet was soaked, spatters on the wall and some of the furniture, and Gretchen suddenly feeling dizzy, nauseated, thinking she was going to faint, leaning against the wall, then sliding to the floor, hugging her knees and taking deep breaths until her head cleared, and after a while, standing up and staggering down the hall into the kitchen, where she knew there was a telephone, holding her hand beside her face, trying not to look at Kaye’s body, all that blood…

She dialed 911, Horowitz said, told them where she was and what she’d found, gave them her name, and agreed to stay there. Then she went out, sat on the front steps, and waited for the police.

“There was a half-filled glass of white zinfandel and an empty bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale on the coffee table,” said Horowitz.

Mick, of course, was a beer drinker.

“Any prints on the bottle?” I said.

“We don’t know yet.”

The locked door meant whoever it was either had a key or Kaye had let him in. Him or her. It had to be someone she knew. She poured herself a glass of wine, fetched him a beer. They sat on the sofa.

“What else?” I said to Horowitz.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

“What about Gretchen Conley?” I said. “You know where she was Sunday night?”

He nodded. “Says she was out to dinner and a movie with her husband and another couple. We’ll check it out, of course.”

Mick sat beside me in the booth, his face wet, staring down at his hands, which were grappling with each other on the tabletop.

Horowitz was leaning back, peering at Mick. “So who’d want to kill your wife, Mr. Fallon?” he said. “Help me out here.”

“I don’t know.” Mick turned to me. “It wasn’t me, if that’s what he’s thinking. I didn’t kill Kaye.”

“If you did,” said Horowitz, “it’ll go a lot easier for you if you tell me now.”

“I didn’t fucking kill her.”

“Can you tell me why you assaulted a police officer here tonight and then held Mr. O’Reilly at knifepoint?”

Mick shrugged. “I was just having a beer. I got a lot on my mind. I guess I—I don’t know. Something snapped. I lost it.”

“You’ve got a quick temper, Mr. Fallon?”

“That’s enough,” I said. “My client has already told you he didn’t kill his wife.”

Horowitz shrugged. “So where were you Sunday evening, Mr. Fallon?”

“My client will not answer that question at this time,” I said.

“I wasn’t there,” said Mick. He turned to me. “I
wasn’t.
”

Horowitz grinned quickly at me. “Okay. So, Mr. Fallon. Give me a hand here, then, okay? Can you think of anybody who might have reason to murder your wife? Somebody who could’ve done this thing?”

Mick shook his head.

“Answer it for the tape, Mick,” I said.

“No,” he mumbled. “I can’t think of anybody. But if I ever find them—”

I grabbed Mick’s arm. He looked up at me, and I shook my head.

Horowitz frowned and exchanged a glance with Benetti. Then he turned back to Mick. “Boyfriend, maybe?” he persisted. “Ex-lover?”

“Christ, no.”

“Maybe an enemy of yours, Mr. Fallon? Someone who wanted to get to you, send you a message. Revenge, maybe.”

Mick shook his head. “I don’t know.” He turned to me. “Brady…”

“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell him, Mick.”

Mick told Horowitz how he gambled, owed a lot of money.

“Your wife didn’t like that,” said Horowitz.

“No. She hated it.”

Horowitz nodded. “You were about to be divorced,” he said. “You stood to get cleaned out.”

Mick shrugged. “I didn’t care.”

“What about insurance? Was your wife insured?”

“Sure. We’re both insured.”

“Life insurance?”

Mick nodded.

“Each other’s beneficiaries?”

“Look,” said Mick, “I didn’t kill her.” He turned to me. “Brady, do we have to…?”

“That’s it for now,” I told Horowitz. “My client is tired and upset. No more questions tonight.”

Horowitz nodded. “Terminating the questioning at, um, two-oh-seven
A.M
.” He nodded to Benetti, who clicked off the tape recorder. Then he fixed Mick with that annoying Nicholson grin. “Stick close to home, Mr. Fallon,” he said. “We’ll want to talk with you some more.” He turned to me. “Got it?”

“I got it,” I said.

Benetti whispered something to Horowitz, who nodded and turned to Mick. “You gotta do something, I’m afraid.”

Mick shrugged. “Whatever.”

“We need you to identify the body for us.”

Mick turned to me and frowned. “This guy some kind of joker, or what?”

“No,” I said. “It has to be done.”

Mick gazed up at the ceiling for a minute. Then he said, “Yeah, okay. I want to see her.”

Horowitz gave us a ride to the morgue where Mick did his duty. Then a state cop took us over to my apartment. We got in my car, and I drove Mick back to Somerville over the quiet city streets. There had been a spring shower while we’d been inside Skeeter’s, and the roads glistened in my headlights. Mick didn’t say anything, and neither did I, until we pulled up in front of his place.

Then I turned to him and said, “You okay?”

He snorted a quick laugh out of his nose. “Oh, sure.”

“That had to be rough.”

He shrugged. “I’m just kinda numb, man. It ain’t making any sense to me. It ain’t real.” He turned his face away from me.

“Mick,” I said after a minute, “I hope you’ve got a good alibi for last night.”

He was staring out the side window. “He thinks I did it, doesn’t he? That Horowitz?”

“You’re a logical suspect. Give me an alibi and you won’t be.”

“I was home watching television.”

“Anybody with you?”

“No. No one’s ever with me.”

“Talk to anyone on the phone?”

He turned to look at me. In the glow of the streetlight that filtered down through the leafy maples that lined the street, I saw that his face was wet. “Brady, I couldn’t even tell you what I saw on TV. I was just thinking about Kaye, missing the hell out of her, remembering all the good times, all the things we did together, me and Kaye and the kids when they were little, just driving myself nuts. That’s what I found myself doing tonight, too, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Being alone like that. That’s why I went to Skeeter’s. Just to—to get away from myself.”

“You’ve got to be prepared—”

“I know,” he interrupted. He reached over and gripped my arm. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said softly. “I didn’t do it. But if I ever get my hands on who did…”

I nodded. “I know how you feel, Mick. We’ll figure it out.”

He smiled quickly. “No way you know how I feel.”

B
Y THE TIME MICK
shambled into his apartment and I’d driven back to mine, the sky was starting to turn from black to purple. The sun would rise in an hour or so, and I hadn’t been to sleep yet.

When I got upstairs, I shucked off my clothes and flopped down on my bed. I was exhausted, but too wired from all the adrenaline to sleep. So I lay there staring up at the ceiling, fragments of thoughts and hypotheses ricocheting around inside my skull, while the sky outside brightened and lit my bedroom and a bunch of sparrows began chirping out on my balcony.

Eventually I dozed off. When I woke up, it was nearly ten in the morning. I felt more tired than before I’d slept. I staggered out of bed, put on some coffee, and tried to call Mick. I let it ring about a dozen times before I gave up.

When I’d left him off at his place at around four in the morning, he’d been muttering and slurring his words, and it wasn’t from booze.

I showered, climbed into my office clothes, and tried him again. Again, no answer.

I tried to imagine what it must be like, having your wife brutally murdered and being considered a suspect. Mick had been right: I had no idea. But I understood that it could make a man crazy.

“What’s the point?” Mick had mumbled as we’d driven along the slick streets to his apartment in Somerville. “It’s not enough that Kaye’s gone, but I gotta tell my kids that their mother’s been murdered and everybody thinks I did it? Fuck this.”

So instead of heading for the office, I drove to Somerville and found a parking slot on Mick’s street.

Some climbing pink roses were blossoming on the wrought-iron fence in front of the three-decker next door to Mick’s. I stopped and bent over to take a whiff. When I straightened up, I heard a sudden buzzing noise directly behind me. I whirled around, then smiled. A ruby-throated hummingbird was hovering in midair, so close I could’ve reached out and touched him. He paused there—sizing me up, I thought, trying to decide whether I was friend or foe or flower—then darted away.