Death at Charity's Point (21 page)

The policeman glanced at the car. “Sure. Okay. This way.” He gestured to the side of the road by a large sign announcing “Rest Area,” where I counted three cruisers, all with lights flashing and doors hanging open, four ordinary sedans, and an ambulance.

Elliott pulled up behind the ambulance and we climbed out of the car. We were on a paved parking area. Beyond that lay a grove of big pines, underneath which were scattered picnic tables and green trash barrels. At the far end of the parking area, close to the highway, stood a tight knot of men. We trotted toward them. A narrow river passed through a culvert under the highway there. Elliott shoved his way through the crowd, saying, “Excuse me. Please excuse me. I’m from the school. Where is he? Damn it,
let
me through, will you?”

I stayed close behind him as he wedged himself between two uniformed policemen.

“Oh, Jesus!” The Headmaster’s voice was a prayer.

The body of Harvey Willard lay on its back, legs in the slowly moving water, arms outstretched, head thrown back. His mouth gaped. His eyes stared up at the sky, which he couldn’t see. On his cheek I saw an ugly, reddish-purple bruise, the color and size of a ripe plum.

Beside him knelt a white-haired man with a black bag by his side. He was holding a stethoscope to the boy’s chest. Elliott and I stood with the quiet circle of policemen, watching.

“… dead, all right,” the old man was saying. He picked up Harvey’s arm, which moved stiffly, and he grasped the fingers one at a time and wiggled them. Then he gripped Harvey’s chin and pushed and pulled gently at it. He was talking to himself.

“At least twelve hours,” I heard him mutter. He stood up painfully. His thinning white hair contrasted strangely with the brick red of his face. He moved slowly to where we stood and spoke to a barrel-chested man with the shadow of a heavy beard.

“Sometime last night, I should say,” he declared wearily. “When your boys have finished taking their pictures you can move the body. Take it to the hospital. I’ll have to order an autopsy.”

The policeman nodded. “How do you figure it?” he asked the old doctor.

“Drugs, maybe?” He shrugged wearily. “Some small bruises on his throat. Big abrasion on his face. No broken bones that I can detect. Hard to examine him here. Could even be hit-and-run. He may be all mush inside. I’ve seen ’em like that. We’ll know soon enough.”

The doctor shook his head. His shoulders sagged. He pushed past us and climbed the slope. He looked as if he were mounting the stairs to go to bed after a long day. Elliott turned to the policeman who had been talking with the doctor.

“I’m Bartley Elliott,” he said. “Headmaster at The Ruggles School. This boy was a student of ours. I appreciate being called.”

The cop stared blankly at Elliott. “Oh, sure. Figured you were next of kin, so to speak. The kid had a wallet with the school as his address. You mind going to the hospital to make an official identification?”

“Ah, okay. That’s fine. This—” he turned and gestured at me “—is Brady Coyne. Mr. Coyne is an attorney. Friend of Harvey’s.”

The big cop studied me. “That so? You got any idea what this kid was doing out here in the middle of the night, Mr. Coyne?”

“No,” I said. “Harvey called me yesterday afternoon, wanted to talk with me today. So I came to the school to meet him.” I glanced at the body, which two white-coated men were moving onto a stretcher. “He didn’t show up.”

“Suppose he didn’t,” said the policeman. “What’d he want to talk to you about?”

“I’m not really sure.”

“Well, suppose we try to figure it out,” suggested the policeman. “Why don’t we come on over to my car and we can sit down, nice and comfortable.”

I followed him up the slope. “You go ahead and follow the ambulance, Mr. Elliott,” he said. “You can make the I.D. at the hospital.”

Elliott nodded to me and shuffled away.

The policeman introduced himself to me as Captain Kevin Shanley. He was, for the time being, the officer in charge. He led me to his police cruiser, which was angled off the highway. The lights on its roof were still flashing blue and red, both front doors hung open, and the radio was crackling. We slid into the front seat. Shanley shut off the radio. He found the stub of a half-smoked cigar in the ash tray, lit it, and looked at me.

“Now,” he sighed, “what’s your story, Mr. Coyne?”

I told him. I told him about George Gresham’s apparent suicide, Harvey Willard’s plagiarized paper, and the phone call I had received from him the previous day. Once he interrupted to say that he would want me to make a formal statement later.

When I had finished he said, “So what do you make of it?”

I spread my hands. “I don’t know. I
thought
I knew. I figured Harvey had something to do with George’s death, that somehow the suicide maybe wasn’t suicide at all, that Harvey had been caught cheating, and that he had—well, murdered George.” I shook my head. “Doesn’t look like we’ll ever know now, does it?”

Shanley’s thick black brows twitched. “Let’s go down to the station so we can take your statement,” he said.

I
RECOUNTED MY STORY
to Captain Shanley and a detective named Rossi. I was barely aware of the tape recorder on the table in front of me. They questioned me closely, and when Rossi said, “Where were you last night?” it occurred to me that I was being regarded as some sort of suspect. Despite my legal training and clear conscience, I felt the muscles in the back of my neck twitch and tense.

“I watched some TV and went to bed,” I said.

“What time was that?”

“Ten. Ten-thirty, I guess.”

“Anybody with you?”

“I live alone. I told you.”

“Anyone call you on the phone last night?”

“No.”

“What’d you watch?”

For an instant my mind saw only fog. I squeezed my eyes shut. “The news,” I said. “The Channel 2 news. It’s on at ten.”

Shanley and Rossi were staring at me.

“You think I did something to Harvey Willard?”

Shanley grinned at me. “I doubt it, Mr. Coyne. Why? Did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay. You can go. I appreciate your cooperation. If anything comes up, we’ll want to know where to reach you.”

I gave him my business card, scratched my home address and phone number on the back, and walked out of the police station into the May sunshine. I felt inexplicably elated, giddy. I paused at the bottom of the steps to light a Winston and savor the warmth of the sunshine.

A hand touched my arm. I whirled around. A young police officer stared into my eyes. He wasn’t smiling.

“Mr. Coyne?”

I nodded.

“Captain Shanley asked me to drive you back to your car.

I grinned stupidly, embarrassed at the relief I felt. These guys could make you feel guilty for something you didn’t do. They were very good at their trade.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Very thoughtful. Thank you.”

He turned out to be a pleasant guy, a rookie on the force who was accustomed to assignments like patrolling school dances and directing traffic and operating speed traps. And driving people to their cars. “It’s the shit work,” he said as he drove, “but somebody’s got to do it. Six years at Northeastern. I got a master’s degree in Criminal Justice, for God’s sake. And I get to help the cars out of the Itek parking lot at four-thirty in the afternoon. Know what I was doing while everyone else was looking at that kid’s dead body? I was on the switchboard. Master’s degree!”

I clucked sympathetically. My mind was elsewhere. I wanted to make sense of it all. Harvey’s death could have been an accident, a malicious trick of fate, I knew. But the logical part of me had to reject that, and I needed to give my mind some space to operate. I resolved that when I got back to Ruggles I would climb into my BMW and drive straight home to my cell at the Harborside apartments. I would pour some Jack Daniels into one of my square, thick-glassed tumblers with three or four ice cubes and put my feet up on the rusting wrought-iron railing of my little balcony and watch the sailboats slide across the ocean.

I’d probably do that for a long time.

And then, if I had any sense, I’d go out and grab a Big Mac and a shake with large fries to go, lug it all back home in a bag, turn on the tube, and watch a Kojak or Columbo rerun and try to get it through that lead-lined cranium of mine that I was a lawyer, not a detective. I would resolve to let the cops do their job, and I’d do mine. And when I went to the office the next day I’d get back to my work. I’d call Jenny DeVincent’s husband’s attorney and we would settle once and for all the matter of the custody of the Labrador retrievers.

And I’d erase from my mind the image of Harvey Willard’s dead, staring eyes and rigid, gaping jaw and the purpling bruise on his cheek. I’d try to forget the glossy eight-by-tens of George Gresham laid out on the chrome table.

I’d return to what made sense to me: the law.

I envied the chattering young cop beside me. Directing traffic seemed to me just the thing to keep a man’s emotions on an even keel.

Sooner or later I’d have to call Florence Gresham. It would have to wait. I didn’t know what I could tell her.

I took my copy of
Moby Dick
and a tumbler of Jack Daniels out onto my little balcony. I skimmed the book for the technical discussions of whales and whale hunting. I found the story of Ahab unbearably bleak. I watched the little sailboats and a couple of monstrous oil tankers move slowly across the harbor, and found it hard to imagine the days of the Nantucket whalers.

When I had sipped the last of the whiskey and crunched the last ice cube between my molars, I decided to do what I realized I had wanted to do ever since I had seen Harvey Willard’s dead eyes staring into the sky. I called Rina.

It took them several minutes to get her to the phone, and when she answered she sounded as if she’d been running.

“This is Miz Prescott,” she said.

“Hi. This is Brady.”

There was a pause. “Oh. Well, hi.”

“I hope you don’t mind my calling you…”

“No. No, that’s fine.”

“… but I was at the school this afternoon, and—well, I imagine you’ve heard about Harvey Willard—I was there. I saw him.”

Rina didn’t speak for a moment. Then she said, “We’re all in shock here. I’ve just been with his girlfriend. I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job of consoling her. Fact is, I could use a little consoling myself.”

“Me, too, I guess,” I said. “And I thought of you.”

“Well, okay,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Hey. I’m glad you called. I’ve been thinking of you a little bit, too.”

“You have?”

“Yes. Matter of fact, I was thinking I might call you. To tell you it would be okay with me if we saw each other again.” She hesitated. “Hell, I was going to tell you I
wanted
for us to see each other again. Is that too audacious of me?”

I laughed. “Audacious? No. Hell, no. That’s what I called you for.” I remembered the feel of her cold skin against the front of my legs.

“They’re saying he got picked up hitchhiking and somebody killed him. My God! Isn’t that awful?”

“Whatever happened, it’s awful.”

“Do you think it was something else?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, Rina. I’m just a poor country lawyer. Listen, how’s Friday?”

“Friday’s good. Great.”

“Dinner?”

“Wonderful. My treat this time, okay?”

“No way. There’s a limit to how much of this equality and liberation stuff an unreconstructed old chauvinist like me can take. Anyway, I’ll call it a business expense and write it off.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sure I can.”

“No, I mean, is that what it’ll be? A business expense?”

“We can talk about George a little, and we’ll try to figure out how Harvey’s death fits into it. I’ll tell you the story of George’s dead brother. You can tell me some more about the Ruggles folks. Then it’ll be a business expense. Get it?”

She paused. “I see.”

“Look,” I said. “I didn’t mean it that way. I want to see you. It’ll be good to see you. Very good.”

“That’s better. Much better. Where shall we meet?”

“I’ll pick you up. Okay?”

“Sure. I’ll be free around seven.”

“Seven it is, then.”

Her voice softened. “Sire?”

“Yes, my lady?”

“I’ve missed you.”

“Me too,” I said.

After I hung up the phone I poured myself another generous shot of Jack Daniels, dropped in a couple of ice cubes, and resumed my seat overlooking the harbor. I was glad none of the sailors far below me could see the silly grin on my face.

The next morning when I arrived at the office, Julie said, “My turn,” and brought me a mug of coffee. She even withheld her standard forecast of medical doom.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’m okay.”

“Right. Want to tell me about it?”

I told her, and when I finished she said, “Wow!”

“So now,” I said, “it’s in the hands of the police. Where it belongs. They know everything I know, and are a hell of a lot better equipped to handle it.”

She smiled. “I’m not sure they agree with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You had a phone call before you came in.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Clapp. The Medical Examiner.”

I felt my resolve beginning to drain out of me. “No kidding! What did he want?”

Julie cocked her head and grinned at me. “You’re leaving it all up to the police, right?”

“Ah, you know me. Anyway, he’s probably just going to rehash what I told the cops yesterday. What did he say?”

“You know they never tell me anything. Wants you to call is all. Shall I try to reach him?”

“Hell, yes.” The Labrador retrievers could wait.

There was something in Dr. Milton Clapp’s voice, a hint of urgency when he said, “Thank you for returning my call so promptly, Mr. Coyne,” that made me sit up straight.

“That’s okay, Doctor. What is it?”

“Something I think might interest you. I received a report this morning on an autopsy performed yesterday afternoon. Imagine my surprise when I read that the deceased was a student at the same school where your Mr. Gresham taught. Reminded me of you and the Gresham case immediately, of course.”