Snake Eater (7 page)

“Yes.” I stepped back, then remembered Terri. “Cammie, this is my friend Terri Fiori.”

Cammie nodded. “Hi.” They shook hands.

We went down to the shop. I opened the door and went in. The two women followed behind me.

“Be careful not to touch anything,” I said to them.

Daniel was sprawled on his back near the woodstove. He looked shrunken and pale and incredibly still, lying there on the floor in a lake of his own dark blood. The feathered end of an arrow protruded at an angle from his midsection. It had sliced through his T-shirt and entered his body just above his navel, then penetrated upward under his rib cage, neatly avoiding bone along the way. About a foot of arrow was visible. Since hunting arrows are usually thirty inches long, I figured a good foot and a half had sliced its way up through Daniel’s diaphragm and into his chest cavity.

He had bled vastly from the entry wound. The front of his T-shirt was drenched, and a puddle the size and general shape of a bathtub surrounded his body. Broadheads are designed to maximize bleeding, and this one had done its job. An animal shot with a hunting arrow generally dies from blood loss, except when a lucky shot happens to nick its heart.

I guessed, in Daniel’s case, that his assassin had got off a lucky shot. There was no way that arrow hadn’t punctured his heart.

I squatted beside him, careful not to step in the congealed blood. His eyes were open and glazed and staring upward. He was obviously dead, but I pressed my fingers under his jaw anyway, seeking a pulse. There was none.

I got up, went to the phone beside the cash register, and dialed 911. I told the cop who answered that we had a dead body and gave him the address.

After I hung up, I turned to Cammie and Terri. They were standing by the doorway watching me. Terri had her arm around Cammie’s shoulders.

“They’ll be here in a minute,” I told them. “Let’s wait outside.”

The three of us sat on the front steps of Daniel’s shop. I smoked a cigarette. Cammie and Terri sat close to each other. Terri still had her arm around Cammie and was holding her hand. The September sun filtered through the big maples that overhung the building. Somewhere behind us a few crows argued.

“Any thoughts?” I said to Cammie.

“Oakley,” she murmured after a moment.

“Come on,” I said. “So he arrested Daniel. That doesn’t mean—”

“I can’t think of anyone else.”

“Can you remember anything Daniel ever said that might make you think someone would want to murder him? Somebody other than Oakley, I mean?”

“No.”

“When do you think it happened?”

“Sometime after midnight. We were together last night until about then. We started to watch
Saturday Night Live
, but I was tired so we shut it off after the first couple of skits. Daniel walked me back to my place, kissed me goodnight, and I went right to bed. He mentioned he had a few things to clean up, that he’d be up for a while. Daniel would often go to the shop late at night. You know, to take inventory, work on his accounts, stack the shelves, look after the bait tanks. When he was working on his book, that’s where he went. He didn’t sleep much. He was always restless at night.”

“But he didn’t hint that he might be meeting somebody?”

She shook her head.

I looked hard at her. “He was running out of grass, wasn’t he?”

She shrugged. “He still had some.”

“But he knew he’d be needing more.”

“It worried him, yes.”

“Did he say anything about finding a source?”

She gazed away from me. “Not really.”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes returned to mine. “He was trying to cut back. To parcel out what he had left. He talked about having to do something. You know Daniel. He never complained. But he knew he couldn’t live without his medicine. And he wouldn’t buy it from a dealer.”

“Nothing more specific than that?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“And you didn’t hear anything last night? A car, voices?”

“My studio’s way out back. I was asleep.”

At that moment we heard a siren’s wail racing toward us. Then a police cruiser came careening into the parking area in front of the shop. Two uniformed cops emerged unhurriedly. Neither of them was Sergeant Oakley.

I stood up and went to meet them. “Brady Coyne,” I said. “I made the call.”

They both nodded. Neither offered his hand or his name. The younger of the two, a compact, dark-haired guy in his twenties, wandered over to where Cammie and Terri were sitting on the steps.

“What’ve we got?” said the other cop, a paunchy guy about fifteen years older.

“Daniel McCloud has been killed. With a hunting arrow. He’s in there.” I jerked my thumb backward, indicating his shop.

“McCloud, huh?” The cop shook his head. “Nice guy, McCloud. I usta buy bait from him.” He looked over my shoulder toward Cammie and Terri. “The black one’s his lady friend. Who’s the other one?”

“She came with me.”

“And you, Mr. Coyne?”

“I’m Daniel’s lawyer. Cammie called me. She’s the one who found his body. I drove up from Boston.”

“Boston, huh? What’s that, two hours on the pike?”

“I made it in an hour-forty.”

“How come she didn’t call us right away?”

I shrugged. “I guess she was pretty upset. Confused, you know?”

“She should’ve called right away.”

“I know.”

“She see anything?”

“She says no.”

“And you?”

“I went in and looked at his body. He’s dead.”

“Shot with an arrow, huh?”

I nodded.

“Well,” said the cop, “we’ll just sit tight until the detectives get here and try not to mess up the crime scene.”

At that moment I heard another siren, and a moment later an unmarked sedan pulled in beside the cruiser. It was followed shortly by an ambulance, then a state police cruiser, then another unmarked sedan.

For the next hour or so, state and local police, forensic experts, EMTs, photographers, and medical examiners swarmed around Daniel’s place. Cammie, Terri, and I each had our own detective to question us. Mine was Lieutenant Dominick Fusco, a tall swarthy guy with thick, curly iron-gray hair. He told me he knew my friend Horowitz, a state cop from the Boston area.

I told Fusco that Daniel was both my client and my friend and I couldn’t think of anybody—aside, possibly, from Sergeant Oakley of the Wilson Falls Police Department—who didn’t like him. I said that I didn’t think the bait and tackle business was likely to create murderous competition.

I also told him that Daniel used marijuana for medicine, and that his homegrown year’s supply had been confiscated by the police in July, although the case against Daniel had been dismissed. Fusco said he knew all about that, and the implication was clear. They’d be checking out all the local drug sources closely.

Fusco told me that it looked as if Daniel’s killer had ransacked the little office in back of the shop. He asked me if that suggested anything to me. I said robbery, obviously. He said there was still money in the cash register and it didn’t look as if anything had been stolen from the shop.

If it wasn’t robbery, then nothing suggested itself to me.

Otherwise, Fusco didn’t tell me anything. And I didn’t have much to tell him, either.

After a while the EMTs wheeled a stretcher out of the shop. A lumpy black bag was on the stretcher. It was loaded into the back of the ambulance, which then drove away. It didn’t bother to sound its siren.

And, one by one, the various police cruisers and sedans pulled away. Fusco was the last to leave. He had taken notes as we talked. I had given him both my office and home phone numbers.

He tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Coyne,” he said.

“Anything I can do, let me know.”

“You can count on it.”

He turned to go to his car. I said, “I’ve been thinking.”

He stopped. “Yeah?”

“I don’t think he was shot with a bow.”

Fusco smiled. “No?”

“No. The angle of that arrow. Assuming he was standing up, to shoot him, you’d have to be lying on the floor.”

“That’s pretty elementary, Mr. Coyne.”

I shrugged. “Guess so.”

“They didn’t shoot him,” he said. “Somebody rammed that arrow into him.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “He was standing there in front of him, or maybe beside him, and he grabbed that arrow with both hands and just shoved it in as hard as he could.”

Fusco nodded. “Raises all kinds of questions, once you think of it that way, huh?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “you have any further insights, or hypotheses, or questions, or anything, you be sure to let me know, okay?”

“You bet,” I said.

W
E WERE STILL STANDING
there, a few minutes after the last official vehicle had left, when a banged-up old Ford pickup chugged to a stop in the driveway.

“Oh, gee,” muttered Cammie.

A vastly overweight black man climbed out the passenger side and a powerful-looking swarthy guy got out from behind the wheel. Cammie met them halfway. The three of them formed a huddle with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They leaned forward so that their foreheads appeared to be touching. I could hear the low rumble of the black man’s voice. It sounded as if he was praying.

After a few minutes, they straightened up. Cammie took each man by the arm and led the two of them back toward where Terri and I stood.

“Brady Coyne, Terri Fiori, this is Roscoe Pollard”—indicating the fat black man—“and Vinnie Colletti. Daniel’s dear friends.”

I stepped forward and shook hands with each of them. Roscoe’s eyes were large and dark and damp. “Hello, brother,” he said softly in a deep bass voice.

Vinnie, who was shaped like a linebacker, said nothing when we shook. His eyes refused to meet mine.

Each of them nodded shyly at Terri.

“I called Vinnie and Roscoe right before you got here,” Cammie said to me.

“You should’ve called sooner, sister,” said Roscoe, who I took to be the spokesman for the two men. “We’re only twenty minutes away. You shouldn’t have been alone.”

Cammie nodded. “I know. It was…I guess I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I called Brady right away, he said he was coming, and…” She shrugged.

“You’re Daniel’s lawyer,” said Roscoe to me. Up close, I saw that he was fat like a sumo wrestler. All that flesh was composed of great mounds of muscle.

“Yes,” I said to him. “His lawyer.”

“You got him out of jail.”

I shrugged and nodded.

“Daniel talked about you. He liked you.”

“I liked him, too.”

He dipped his head in a kind of a bow. “Thank you for coming.”

I nodded.

“We got here as fast as we could,” he said to Cammie. “The, um, all the official vehicles were already here. We decided to wait till they left. No sense of confusing things.”

Cammie smiled and nodded.

Roscoe turned to me. “Me and Vinnie live up the road a ways. Turner’s Falls. We were with Daniel over there. We were family. We helped him build this.” He waved at the shop and the house. “We hung around with him. Shooting the shit in the shop. Fishing, hunting, catching bait.” He shook his head.

I understood that Roscoe and Vinnie had chosen to wait for the police to leave before they made their appearance. Their motives, I figured, were their own business.

“Let’s go up to the house,” said Cammie. “We’ll have coffee.”

The five of us went up to the house. Cammie, with her arms around the massive backs of the two big men, looked like a child between them.

We took coffee out onto the deck. Cammie sat staring dry-eyed off toward the river. It would take a while to sink in. Roscoe and Vinnie said little. Vinnie Colletti, in fact, had barely uttered a word since he arrived. Neither Terri nor I tried to disturb the somber mood. We all sat there with our own thoughts.

Sometime later we heard the sound of a motorcycle moving fast toward the house. Cammie jumped up without speaking and walked quickly around to the front.

Roscoe and Vinnie exchanged smiles. They remained on the deck.

Terri and I followed behind Cammie. As we got there, we saw a helmeted man skid a big Harley to a stop in the driveway. He leaped off his bike, took off his helmet, and held out his arms to Cammie. She ran to him and hugged herself against him. He held her for a long time. They swayed back and forth, and it was hard to tell who was comforting whom.

He was a tall, very thin man with a deeply creased face and a scraggly beard. He murmured into Cammie’s ear. I noticed that Cammie was crying against his shoulder.

After several minutes the man lifted his head and noticed me and Terri. He whispered something to Cammie, who turned to look at us. Then she stepped out of his embrace, took his hand, and led him to us.

“Brady Coyne, Terri Fiori, this is Brian. Brian Sweeney.”

Sweeney held out his hand to me and we shook. He dipped his head shyly and murmured, “Mr. Coyne.” Then he turned to Terri and smiled. “Ma’am,” he said.

“Brady is Daniel’s lawyer,” said Cammie. “And friend.”

Sweeney nodded. “He’s mentioned you,” he said to me. He turned back to Cammie. “I came just as soon as I got your message. Sorry I wasn’t quicker.”

“Brian lives in Vermont,” said Cammie. “He doesn’t have a phone. You have to call the general store.” She moved beside him and snaked her arm around his waist. “Brian is Daniel’s best friend in the world.”

“What in hell happened?” he said.

“Someone shoved a hunting arrow into his heart,” I said.

“Jesus,” Sweeney muttered. “They know who?”

“If they do they’re not saying.”

“An
arrow
?”

I nodded. “Yes. I saw it.”

Up close, I could see that Sweeney was younger than I had at first thought. Early forties at the most, I guessed, about the same age as Roscoe and Vinnie. Barely twenty when he prowled the jungles of Indochina with Daniel. But already his hair was thinning and his skinny body was growing stooped and lines were etching themselves on his face. Under its ruddy sunbaked surface his skin seemed dull and sickly.