Outwitting Trolls (2 page)

To anyone who didn't know better, the four of us probably looked like some nice well-adjusted American family from the Boston suburbs, out for an authentic North End Italian dinner on this Saturday evening in April. There was the man, a tall guy, and sitting across from him his wife, still blond and pretty, an attractive couple, both of them fit and trim, somewhere in their forties. The college-aged son, although a little rebellious with his ponytail and scruffy beard and sunburn, was nevertheless clearly enjoying this get-together with his family, as was the pretty girl, small and quick, with flashing dark eyes and straight black hair, the boy's younger sister apparently, judging by the casual way they appeared to be ignoring each other.

We were sharing a platter of antipasto and a bottle of Chianti. Gloria, my ex-wife, was telling Gwen, our son Billy's friend from San Francisco (not his sister, not even close), about her new photography exhibit in a Newbury Street gallery, while Billy was telling me about the good trout fishing he'd had on a little
spring creek in east-central Idaho, where he was living and working these days.

Nobody had yet addressed what Billy—Gloria still called him William—had said when he told me he was coming home for a few days. He said, “I'm bringing a friend. Her name is Gwen, and we have something to tell you. Both of you. You and Mom.”

“A friend, huh?” I asked.

“Actually, yeah,” Billy said.

“A girlfriend, you mean.”

“A friend,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “you got something to say, why wait? Not that it won't be great to see you again, meet your friend Gwen. That will be excellent. But if you've got something to tell me, why not just spit it out?”

“We want to do it in person,” Billy said, “and we want you and Mom to both be there and hear it at the same time from both of us.”

Billy's use of the first-person plural wasn't like him. He'd always been a first-person singular type of guy. I was curious about what the two kids had to tell us. A few obvious scenarios played themselves out in my imagination.

So here we were, eating olives and hot peppers and artichoke hearts, prosciutto and salami and mozzarella balls, dipping our bread in saucers of olive oil and oregano, and sipping a musky Chianti at Mosca's Trattoria on Hanover Street, and whatever it was that Billy and Gwen had to tell us sat at the table with us like a shy elephant, impossible to ignore but pretending to be invisible.

I hadn't seen my number-one son for nearly two years—since two summers earlier when I had ten glorious days of fly-fishing in Montana and Idaho and managed to spend a couple of those days in his drift boat, splitting time with him at the oars. Billy
was a Rocky Mountain fishing guide in the summer and a ski instructor in the winter, and I envied him. When I was his age I was plowing through college and law school, hell-bent on starting my career and getting married and having a family and saving up for retirement.

Billy was hell-bent on having all the fun while he was young that I'd mostly postponed until I was middle-aged.

It had been even longer since I'd spent any time with Gloria, even though my former wife still lived in our old family house in Wellesley, a suburb of Boston, which was where I lived. We did talk on the phone now and then, mainly when one of our two sons—Joey, the younger, was a prelaw sophomore at Stanford—had some kind of issue, usually involving money, that required parental consultation.

Billy had started to tell me about his five-day float trip down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River through the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness when my cell phone vibrated against my leg. It felt like an angry bumblebee had gotten trapped in my pants pocket.

I fished out the phone and looked at it. unknown caller, the screen read. I didn't recognize the number. It had a 617 area code. Somebody local.

“Go ahead and answer it,” said Billy.

I shoved the phone back into my pocket. “I'm having dinner with my family,” I said. “It's Saturday night. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

“Maybe it's important,” he said. “One of your clients. If they're calling on a Saturday night, it's probably some kind of emergency, don't you think?”

I shrugged.

“Well,” he said, “who could it be?”

“I don't know.”

“Why don't you see if they left a message?”

I nodded and took out the phone. message waiting, it read.

I accessed my voice mail. A woman's voice said, “Brady? Where are you? I need you. This is Sharon Nichols. I'm…it's Ken. My husband. Ex-husband. He's…I'm at his hotel room. There's so much blood. Please. I don't know what to do. I'm kind of frantic. I definitely need a lawyer. Please call me.” She recited a number, the same one that appeared on my phone's screen.

It took me a minute to process what Sharon Nichols had said. Twenty-four hours earlier Ken Nichols and I had been drinking at a hotel bar, reminiscing about the days when we were golfing partners.

Now his ex-wife was calling from a hotel—the same one, I assumed—talking about Ken and blood and asking for a lawyer.

I snapped my phone shut and stood up. Billy, Gwen, and Gloria all looked at me. “I'm sorry,” I said. “This actually
is
an emergency. I'll be back in a minute.”

Gloria arched her eyebrows, and I could read her expression.
What the hell do you think you're doing?
it asked.
What's more important than dinner with your family?

“I've got to answer it,” I said to her. “I'm going outside and make the call.” After being divorced from Gloria all those years, I still felt obligated to explain myself to her.

I went out to the sidewalk. The dampness on the pavement from a soft April rain shower reflected the yellow streetlights and the red and green neon restaurant signs. I stood under the canvas awning and pecked out the number that Sharon Nichols had left.

She answered on the first ring. “Brady? Is that you?”

“It's me,” I said. “What's going on?”

“It's Ken,” she said. “He's—I think he's dead. He must be dead. There's blood everywhere.”

“You said you were in his hotel room?”

“Yes. It's—”

“The Beverly Suites in Natick?”

“Yes. How did you—”

“I had drinks with Ken there last night. Did you call the police?”

“No,” she said. “I called you.”

“Hang up and call the police. Dial 911. Do it right now. Okay?”

She hesitated. “But somebody killed him. Murdered him, I mean. Don't you see?”

“You want my advice,” I said, “you want me to help you, you want to consult with a lawyer, then do what I tell you, and that is, call the police. Do it now. You do want me to help you, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Will you be my lawyer?”

“Sure. I'm your lawyer, and I'm telling you to call the damn police. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Get out of that room,” I said. “Right now. Lawyer's orders. Don't touch anything. Step out into the corridor and stand outside the door to his room and call the police. Then wait there for them.”

“It's kind of late for that.”

“For what?”

“For don't touch anything.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Just get the hell out of the room.”

“Will you help me?”

“I am helping you. I'm giving you good advice. I'm telling
you to vacate that room and call the police, and I'll be there as soon as I can. What's the room number?”

“Um, 322.”

“I'm on my way.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

After I disconnected from Sharon Nichols, I stood there on the Hanover Street sidewalk watching the rain drip off the awning. I was remembering when we brought Bucky, our sick old beagle, to Dr. Nichols's veterinary hospital for the last time. Billy and Joey were just kids. Bucky had been part of our family for as long as either of them could remember.

A few months earlier, Ken had told me that Bucky's tumor was inoperable and it was just a matter of time. We'd nursed the old dog until he continually whined from his pain and could no longer get his legs under his hind end. He lost his interest in food—eating had always been Bucky's favorite activity—and I had to carry him outside and up and down the stairs.

When I told the boys that we were going to have to put Bucky down, and I explained how Dr. Nichols would do it with an injection, and how it wouldn't hurt, how Bucky would just go to sleep, they both said they wanted to be there. Gloria and I had a quiet argument about it. She thought they were too young to witness the death of a loved one, even if it was a dog. I thought it would be a good experience for them.

In the end, Gloria conceded. She admitted that she was probably projecting, that
she
certainly didn't want to be there, so on a Saturday morning in October, Billy, Joey, and I took Bucky to the vet's office. Ken and Sharon were both there, wearing white coats. I lifted Bucky onto the stainless-steel table. The two boys and I patted him and talked to him, and then Sharon held him and Ken slid the needle into his foreleg, and Bucky exhaled once and it was all over.

When I looked up at Ken and Sharon, both of them had tears in their eyes. I always liked that about them.

They had two kids, a girl, Ellen, who babysat for our boys a few times, and a son named Wayne, who was about Billy's age. Our kids all knew each other, though I didn't remember that they were friends.

Ken and Sharon got divorced a year or two before Gloria and I did. They sold their veterinary practice, including the animal hospital and the kennels, and I took care of the business end of it.

Ken relocated in Maryland. Sharon bought a town house in Acton and brought up her kids there.

All of that happened ten or eleven years ago, and except for a few of the typical lingering tax issues related to the sale of their business, I hadn't had any further professional or personal dealings with Sharon or Ken Nichols before my reunion with Ken the previous evening.

Now Ken had apparently been murdered in a hotel room on Route 9 in Natick, and Sharon had found his body, and I was the one she called.

I went back into the restaurant and stood beside our table. “I've got to go,” I told Gloria, Billy, and Gwen. “I'm really sorry.”

Gloria opened her mouth, then shook her head, picked up her wineglass, and took a sip.

“You gotta do what you gotta do,” said Billy. “We'll catch up later.”

“You want to tell us what it is you've got to tell us?” I asked.

“It'll wait,” he said. “Give us an excuse to do this again.”

“And we will,” I said. “Definitely.” To Gwen I said, “It was great to meet you. Next time I won't crap out on you, I promise.”

She gave me a terrific smile.

“Next time, okay?” I asked Gloria.

She nodded but did not smile.

I clapped Billy on the shoulder, turned, and left the restaurant. I'd walked to the restaurant in the North End from my town house on Mt. Vernon Street on Beacon Hill. It took about twenty minutes, which was as fast as a taxi could negotiate the one-way city streets even in the sparse Saturday evening traffic, so I walked home. When I got there, I let Henry out back to pee, gave him a bully stick, and told him I'd be back.

Then I walked down to the end of Charles Street, fetched my car from the parking garage, and pointed it at the Beverly Suites Hotel on Route 9 in Natick, where Sharon Nichols was waiting for me with the murdered body of her ex-husband, my old friend.

The Beverly Suites Hotel was one of the countless big-box commercial establishments that lined both sides of the Framingham and Natick stretch of Route 9. Before last night, I'd never been inside this one, nor had I felt deprived. Now it was twice in twenty-four hours.

I stopped under the portico by the front entrance, got out of my car, and gave my keys to an attendant. He gave me a plastic receipt with a number on it. I slipped it into my pocket and went inside.

An electronic bulletin board in the foyer spelled out the words welcome international association of veterinarians. I hadn't noticed it last night. Underneath the greeting was what appeared to be a schedule of events for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I noticed that on this evening, Saturday, the “annual banquet” was being held and the “keynote address” was being delivered in the Grand Ballroom. I guessed that the evening's festivities had recently ended, as a small throng of people wearing banquet-appropriate suits and dresses were lounging in chairs and on sofas in the lobby and in the bar area where I'd
met Ken. They were talking in small groups, sipping drinks, reading pamphlets and catalogs, or looking up at the baseball game that was playing on the wide-screen television on the wall.

I found a bank of elevators on the other side of the lobby, waited for one to open, got in, and pressed the number three button.

A moment later I was deposited on the third floor. A sign on the wall indicated that rooms 300–345 were to the right. Sharon Nichols had told me that Ken's room was number 322.

The detritus of room service littered the corridor outside some of the rooms—trays holding lipstick-stained glasses, empty wine bottles, cups and saucers, plates smeared with mashed potato and spaghetti sauce, balled-up cloth napkins.

When I turned the corner to where I expected to find police swarming the corridor outside room 322, I saw nobody.

The door to room 322 was closed. I knocked on it.

A minute later, the door cracked open. Sharon Nichols looked out at me. Then she opened the door wide. “Oh, Brady,” she said. “I'm so glad you're here.”

I hadn't seen Sharon Nichols in over a decade. She looked pretty much as I remembered her. Blond hair, cut a bit shorter now. Wide-set blue-green eyes. Tall and slender. An attractive woman in her late forties who could have passed for thirty-something, although now her eyes were red and swollen, and her face seemed to have collapsed in on itself, and she was hugging herself as if she were trying to hold her body together.

“The police haven't arrived yet?” I asked.

“I didn't call them.”

“I told you to call them.”

“Well,” she said, “I didn't. Please. Come in.”

“No,” I said. “You come out here. You shouldn't be in there.”

“I've been in here for most of the evening already,” she said. “Another few minutes won't do any harm. Come in, Brady. You should see it.”

Sharon was wearing a pale blue jacket, and under it an off-white silk blouse and a dark skirt that stopped a few inches above her knees. There was a reddish blotch—a dried bloodstain, it looked like—on the sleeve of her jacket.

I looked past her into the room, but it was dimly lit, and I couldn't see anything.

She stepped away from the door and held it open for me. I went in, and then I saw Ken. He was sprawled across the bed, as if he'd been sitting on the side of it and had fallen backward. He was wearing a maroon silk robe over a white T-shirt and gray suit pants. Black socks on his feet, no shoes.

There was a big splotch of dark blood on his chest and another just under his beltline, and more blood had puddled on the bedcover. His healthy golfer's tan was gone. Now his skin was the color of lard. He looked smaller than he had the night before. Deflated.

This was the man who'd been drinking martinis with me and reminiscing about the old days just twenty-four hours ago.

“Jesus,” I whispered. I turned to Sharon, who was standing there with her arms crossed over her chest. “Did you touch anything?”

“I touched him,” she said. “I tried to see if he was breathing. He wasn't. He was dead when I got here.”

“Come on.” I grabbed her arm and led her out to the corridor. Then I took my cell phone out of my pocket and showed it to her. “I've got a lot of questions,” I said. “I need to know everything. But first…”

I hit the speed-dial number for Roger Horowitz's cell phone.
In Massachusetts all homicides except those committed in the cities of Boston, Springfield, and Worcester fall under the jurisdiction of the state police, and Horowitz was a homicide detective with the state police, one of the best. He was a crusty sonofabitch, but he was also my friend, and a solid cop, and I trusted him.

“Who's this?” he said by way of answering his phone.

“Brady Coyne,” I said. “I've got a homicide for you.”

“Oh, goodie,” he said. “A homicide. Just what I wanted. What more could a guy ask for on a Saturday night. Hey, Alyse, honey. Guess what? It's your buddy Coyne, and he's got a homicide for me.” He blew a quick breath into the telephone. “Jesus, anyway.”

“I knew you'd be thrilled,” I said.

“Thrilled and delighted,” he said. “Alyse and I are here on the sofa in our living room watching an old Clint Eastwood movie on TV, eating popcorn, sipping hot cocoa. It's like the first evening we've had together in about a month. Clint's doing Dirty Harry, and I got my feet in Alyse's lap, and when the phone rang just now she was giving me a nice foot massage, and I was telling her, ‘Honey,' I was saying, ‘that feels awful good, and you shouldn't hold back on any impulse you might have to try it out on other parts of my poor old body, but wouldn't it be just perfect if Brady Coyne would call with a homicide for me and drag me away from here?'”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It was inconsiderate of this man to get stabbed to death on a Saturday night.”

“Stabbed, huh?”

“Yes. Two stab wounds. Plenty of blood.”

“There always is,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Beverly Suites Hotel on Route 9 in Natick. Room 322.”

“I know where that is,” he said. “So who's the vic?”

“A veterinarian named Ken Nichols,” I said. “Used to live in
Wellesley. Ten years ago he got divorced, sold his business, and moved to Baltimore. There's a big vet convention here at this hotel this weekend. The IAV. International Association of Veterinarians.”

“Never heard of 'em,” he said. “And you're there why?”

“Nichols's wife called me. Ex-wife, I should say. Sharon. She found him.”

“She's your client?”

I glanced at Sharon. She was leaning back against the wall watching me. I gave her a quick smile and a nod, which I intended to be reassuring.

“Yes,” I said to Horowitz. “She's my client. I've known her for a long time. We used to be neighbors. Both of them. Her and Ken. Our victim. I did the legal work for their business back when they were together and had the animal hospital in Wellesley. I was here last night, as a matter of fact. Had drinks with Ken.”

“Drinks, huh?”

“That's right.”

“And now he's dead.”

“Yes.”

“The wife,” he said. “She do it?”

“Ha,” I said.

“She called her lawyer,” he said, “not the cops, though, huh?”

“That's right, and I called you.”

“For which,” he said, “again, hey, thanks a lot. Makes my day, as Clint would say. Okay. You and your client, don't touch anything. We'll be there in a few minutes.” He disconnected without saying good-bye or thank you. Typical.

I snapped my phone shut and stuck it into my pants pocket. “The police will be here,” I said to Sharon. “So tell me. What time did you get here?”

“To Ken's room, you mean?”

I nodded.

“Nine o'clock,” she said. “We'd planned for me to meet him here at nine, and I was right on time.”

“Why?”

“Why did I come here, to Ken's room?”

I nodded. “The police will want to know.”

She looked at me. “I was early, actually.” Her eyes looked wet. She blinked a couple of times. “I waited in the lobby until it was nine o'clock. I didn't want to appear too eager. He had to go to the banquet. He was going to sneak out early.” She blew out a breath. “It was a…a date. A rendezvous. I was meeting my ex-husband in his hotel room. I was excited and nervous. Keyed up, like a high school kid with a hot date. It was silly—but exciting. Did he mention it to you last night? That we were, ah, getting together?”

I shook my head. “No. He said nothing about it. He was discreet.”

She nodded. “I'm glad.” She hesitated. “Did he mention me at all?”

“Not really. We talked about golf mostly. Nothing very personal. Guy talk.”

I glanced at my watch. It was a little after ten thirty. Sharon had been here with Ken—Ken's dead body—for about an hour and a half.

“He doesn't look like he just came from a banquet,” I said. “Silk robe, no jacket or tie. No shirt, even.”

She shrugged. “I suppose he changed. He said he was going to order a bottle of champagne from room service. It was a celebration. Maybe that's how you dress for a celebration.” She cocked her head and looked at me, as if she expected me to challenge her.

“A celebration,” I said.

She nodded.

“Of what?”

“Finding each other again after all these years, I guess.” She shrugged. “It was Ken's word. When we decided to get together, he said it would be a celebration. I liked that, you know?”

I looked at Sharon. I wondered if she'd killed Ken. Means, motive, and opportunity. She had them all. Well, I didn't know about her motive yet, but she no doubt had one. All spouses—and especially ex-spouses—have motives for murder. That's why they make ideal suspects.

At this point, at least, Sharon was the only suspect, although I remembered the bearded guy who'd pointed his finger at Ken in the lobby last night. Also, he'd had several calls on his cell phone that he didn't answer while I was there, but that had caused him to frown and glance around the room.

Still, Horowitz would focus on Sharon. She was the obvious suspect. As Horowitz liked to say,
The commonest things most commonly happen.
Spouses kill spouses on a regular and predictable basis, and there's no need for an investigator to complicate it. Occam's razor.

Sharon was looking at me with her eyebrows arched, and I had the feeling she knew what I was thinking. “So what happens next?” she asked.

“It's not unlike what you see on TV,” I said. “Lots of people. Confusion. State cops and local cops and forensics techs and maybe a county sheriff and a DA or two. They'll want to ask you a lot of questions. I'll be with you. I'll decide whether you should answer their questions or not, and if so, which ones. You'll do what I say. Okay?”

“Why wouldn't I answer their questions?”

“You know the answer to that,” I said. “It's why you called me in the first place.”

“Because it looks like I might have done it.”

I shrugged. “They'll want to know why you came here tonight, how you happened to be the one who found Ken's body, and why you called your lawyer instead of the police.”

“Do you mean
you
want to know?” she asked.

“I need to know everything,” I said.

“Of course you do.” She looked at me and smiled. “Ken and I might've been getting back together after all these years. He sent me a birthday card in the fall. It came out of nowhere. I mean, we hadn't talked, hadn't communicated, for, I don't know, years and years. Then I get this warm and friendly card, and on it he wrote something about how nice it would be to see me again. I didn't think too much about it. You know, it's like when you say, ‘How are you?' You're not really asking after anybody's health. You don't really expect an answer. You don't necessarily even care. It's just something you say. It doesn't mean anything. But then he sent a Christmas card, and on it he mentioned that he'd be coming up here for a conference in April and maybe we could get together. It made me curious. So I sent him a note saying sure, it would be nice to see him again. Then one evening he called me on the phone, and we talked for a long time, and it was as if we'd never split up. It was easy to talk to him. He called me again a week or so later, and it got to be that we talked on the phone two or three times a week, and pretty soon it began to feel, um, intimate. You know? I mean, here's this man I had children with, who I worked beside, who I shared a bathroom with, who I slept with for all those years. All the things that we had going for us, they were still there. I don't think they ever really went away. They were just, um, dormant, and talking with Ken reawakened all those things. The good memories. Why I once loved him. It was like a courtship, all those phone calls. It was kind of…it was sexy.” She looked
at me. Her eyes were brimming. She swiped her wrist across them. “I came here tonight to make love with my ex-husband in his hotel room. I felt like a teenager. I was very excited. I think he was, too.” She stopped and stared. “What are you thinking?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

“You believe me, don't you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You and Gloria,” she said. “After you got divorced, did you ever…?”

“No,” I said.

“So should I tell the police what I just told you?”

I nodded. “You should tell them the truth. You'll have to explain why you came here tonight.”

She hugged herself. “It's sort of embarrassing.”

“Embarrassment is the least of our worries.”

She nodded.

“Whoever did this,” I said, “Ken must have let him into his room. Him or her.”