Haunted Hearts (18 page)

“And he was married.”

“Of course he was married.”

“And that didn't bother you?”

Instead of answering, she said: “I was married too, don't forget.”

“Just a couple of people having a fling?”

“Yes,” she said, and her voice carried a defiance that McGuire hadn't heard before. “No,” she said, when he didn't reply. “I've thought about this for a long time, and I don't think it was just a fling. I'm not sure I loved Thomas, to tell you the truth. He was the father of my children, he was my source of security, and all of that, but . . . If Thomas hadn't hurt me the way he did, if we had just kept things the way they were, I suppose I would have been content. But he didn't, and when Ross started doing all the things he did for me, I found him exciting.” She stared through the windshield as she spoke, her voice lower, as though she were speaking to herself. “Even when I found out what kind of person he was, the kind of person he
really
was, that was exciting too, I suppose.”

“What'd this guy look like?” McGuire asked. “Myers. What did he look like?”

“He's a bit overweight, he was always worried about his weight. And his hair, he was afraid of losing his hair. He'd comb it just so, and never let me touch it. I touched it once when he was driving, just a gesture of affection, and he got angry with me, he told me never to touch his hair.”

“Sounds like a total jerk.”

She smiled, without humour. “You never heard of anyone falling for somebody who turns out to be a jerk? Or maybe just a terrible bitch? You never heard of somebody trying to convince themselves that perhaps they haven't made a terrible mistake after all?”

Susan discovered that Myers's business school wasn't bringing in as much money as Myers seemed to be spending. Instructors were constantly complaining about receiving only partial pay for their services. Myers had two partners, one a lawyer, another a restaurant operator. He would often meet his partners over dinner with Susan, and she would listen to him describe the success of the business in terms she knew were not true. He would boast about the potential earnings of the school before asking for money, an infusion of capital to expand the business.

One day, Myers handed her a first-class airline ticket to Miami, leaving the following week, and he said he would meet her there. When she told Thomas of the trip, she said she would be traveling alone to attend seminars. Thomas said he was proud of her success. He insisted on driving her to the airport and kissing her goodbye.

In Miami, Myers met her with a bouquet of flowers, and they drove in a rented convertible directly to Hialeah racetrack. She found it all new and glamorous, especially when they sat in the VIP clubhouse area, where other men greeted Myers as though he were an old friend. Drinks were sent to their table, there was much laughter and teasing, and appreciative looks at Susan.

Myers lost several thousand dollars that day, but he drove back to their room at the Fontainebleau as though he had won every race. He lost a similar amount the following day, but on the third day he won a few hundred dollars, and as they returned to the hotel from the racetrack he was elated. On the way he stopped at an upscale mall to buy her a new wardrobe, pulling skirts and sweaters from racks and telling her to try them on, nodding his approval or shaking his head in rejection as she emerged from the dressing rooms.

Back in the hotel she checked the price tags and realized he had spent much more on gifts for her than he had won at the racetrack.

The next day she told him she didn't want to accompany him to the racetrack. She had come all this way to Miami and had yet to walk on the beach. He left her in a dark mood to visit the racetrack alone, but he called the room each hour, and had the hotel page her as she sunned herself by the swimming pool, saying he was coming right back, an edge of anger in his voice she had never heard before.

In the room, he accused her of many things, all of them vile. Of inviting men to their room in his absence, of visiting other men in their rooms, of removing her bikini top on the beach. When she began to cry, he became remorseful, told her he was sorry, and offered her a drink. He left the room, returning with a bracelet from the jewelry shop in the hotel lobby. He made reservations at the best restaurant in Miami for just the two of them. They would have a romantic dinner followed by a drive along the oceanfront with the top down, he said, and maybe there would be a big, bright, full moon shining on the water for them.

Two days later they arrived back in Boston, where everything had changed.

Thomas ignored her when she arrived home in a cab, leaving her to struggle with her luggage alone. When she asked where the children were, he told her they were staying with his mother. She saw the fury in his eyes and the constant shaking of his hands, and she knew why.

“Ross's wife told him about us.” She was looking through the windshield, as she spoke. The lights of Boston were ahead, a shining city in the darkness. “She called Thomas the day before we returned and told him everything. She had suspected me for quite a while, I suppose. When she had proof and knew I lived in Newton, she called every Schaeffer in town until she reached Thomas and told him.”

“How did you feel?” McGuire asked.

“Guilty. And angry.” She lifted her hand to touch her cheek. “What I had done was terrible. But Thomas had done it too. It wasn't revenge. I didn't set out to sleep with a man for revenge. I wasn't looking for revenge.”

“But you found it.”

“Yes.” She lowered her head. “He cried. He hit his head against the wall until I begged him to stop. For the first time in our marriage he struck me. He slapped me and knocked me to the floor. He asked me if I wanted a divorce, and I said no, I just wanted things right, they hadn't
been
right for so long. He had been drinking all day, and he drank some more. He went out to the garage, and while he was there I called the children on the telephone to speak to them, I missed them so much. When I hung up, Thomas was standing in the hallway with a rifle in his hands, pointing it at me.”

Her husband had purchased the gun that morning. He sighted along the barrel, mumbling to himself or to her, she never knew. She screamed and ducked below a table and he fired, shattering the window behind her. While he fumbled with the bolt action she ran to him, in part because he stood between her and the door. She hugged him and told him she was sorry, and he dropped the rifle and collapsed crying on the floor.

The police arrived, alerted by neighbours, and they arrested Thomas. Susan claimed that the gun had fired by accident, that he hadn't really meant to shoot her. He had been trying to frighten her, that was all. His lawyer claimed the trigger mechanism was faulty, and when he managed to have the charges reduced to attempted assault, Thomas was released on bail the following afternoon.

“Get out of there,” Myers told her over the telephone. The children had been sent to Thomas's parents for safekeeping. Susan was alone in the house. “Just get the hell out. I'll find you an apartment downtown. We'll get you settled there and later on you can have the kids with you. But don't stay. He's liable to shoot you again when he gets home.”

It made sense to her. Myers appeared concerned about her welfare, saying he was in the process of separating from his wife, but there were complications due to his business affairs. When she was settled downtown, he would join her. They would marry and she would never regret it. Some day, some time in the future, she would see that all of this pain and guilt had been worth it. But it was almost a year before Myers and his wife separated, and in that time she lived alone, except for visits from Myers. Meanwhile, her husband kept the children at home and sought temporary custody, claiming she had abandoned them. When she grew distraught over the charge, Myers told her not to worry, a good lawyer would straighten things out.

At the hearing, Thomas's lawyer, Orin Flanigan, submitted evidence that Susan had left the house without the children, who moved back with their father within days of her departure. Flanigan was brilliant in his presentation, citing precedents and opinions over and over to prove his case. Susan's lawyer offered only a weak defense against the accusation, and there was no surprise when the judge awarded Thomas custody of the children. Susan could have the children two weekends each month and for two weeks in the summer. The judge would review the arrangement in a year. The divorce was granted. Myers promised that he would appeal the decision, that he would hire the best lawyer money could buy. She would get her children back. He would do it for her.

“I had nothing,' she said. “No husband, no home, no children. I had only Ross and his promises.”

Susan was given $20,000 from the sale of the house. “Ross asked me to invest it in the business,” she said. “He said it was a loan, and he would pay me back with interest.”

“And you never saw a penny of it again.”

“No.”

McGuire thumped the steering wheel. “How could you be so stupid?” McGuire said. “How could you be so damn stupid?”

“You think I haven't asked myself that?”

“You screw up your marriage, you hurt your kids . . . I just can't understand how you could fall for this crap from a married man, a guy who sounds like he can't tell anything but a lie. You could have left him and started over again. Why can't women do that?”

“Men always say that, don't they?”

“Maybe men have got it right.”

“And maybe it's none of your business.” She spoke without looking at him. “Did you ever think about that?”

“Then why the hell are you telling me? Maybe it isn't any of my damn business. But you're the one doing the talking, aren't you?”

“I want you to know because I trust you, and that's very hard for me to do. I trusted Thomas, I trusted Ross, I trusted Orin, and now he's gone and I need to trust somebody, damn it.” The tears were flowing. “I need to trust somebody.”

McGuire recalled the afternoon in the church in Harvard Yard, when she reacted to the organist's curse with a sudden smile. He wanted to see that smile again.

“Do you want to hear more?” she asked him. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

“Sure.”

“Because this is the hardest part of all to talk about.”

A few months after she had moved into the downtown apartment, Myers suggested she might want to find another job. He gave many reasons. She was far too qualified for the work he was asking her to do. He was looking for ways to reduce overhead. She should gain wider experience.

He told her she had a wonderful mind for figures, and that her future lay in finance, probably banking or investment. One day he pulled her into his office from the hall and told her he had heard the Pinehurst Savings and Loan branch a block away was looking for someone in the securities department. When she protested she knew nothing about the business, he handed her a letter he had drafted, praising her ability as a student and identifying her as a top graduate of the Back Bay School of Business, specializing in financial management. He had already made an appointment for her to meet the manager that afternoon.

The S&L manager was impressed by Myers's recommendation, and Susan was hired immediately. To her surprise she enjoyed the work and the staff, and especially the customer contact. Soon many of the S&L's customers began asking for her, seeking her out because of her warmth, and her genuine concern about them. Many of the customers were older people, at or near retirement, searching for ways to maximize their investments.

A week later, Myers moved his business account there.

Soon after, Myers and his wife separated, and he and Susan moved to Marlborough Street in the most luxurious area of the Back Bay, a two-level condominium in an elegant brownstone. Myers took a new interest in Susan's children, and insisted on furnishing a guest room for them in the condominium. He took the children with him on weekend vacation trips, spur-of-the-moment long weekends in Florida or the Bahamas, where he bought them expensive gifts.

“You have to understand what I had given up for this man,” Susan said. They were on Boylston Street now. “My home, my children, so much of my happiness, in a way. And he could be charming. He knew how to combine romanticism with a kind of danger, I guess. I had been a sheltered little girl, and then a sheltered wife. When it all blew up in my face, I didn't know what I wanted anymore.”

“So you let some tough guy fool you with his gentle side.”

“It wasn't just that. I started feeling as if I had fewer choices to make. I would stay with Ross until I could decide where to go, what to do. That's what I kept telling myself.”

He became more manic, wilder in his moods. He brought her breakfast in bed some mornings, and wouldn't be seen until the early hours of the following day. He began lying to her and she began lying to herself, accepting his apologies and believing his promises to marry her.

He would surprise her with gifts for her and the children, when they were with her. But as his apparent generosity increased, his dark side grew blacker. Once, in a fit of rage, he slapped her so hard she was knocked across the bed and collapsed in a heap on the floor, crying and holding her face, while he stood over her and berated her, calling her a cheap slut and a terrible mother, telling her that Thomas should have shot her after all, then lifting her in his arms and setting her on the bed, soothing her, bringing a cold cloth for her bruised face and assuring her that he loved her, he
needed
her, but there was just so much pressure in his life.

“He was controlling you,” McGuire said. He was looking ahead, scanning the street as he always did.

“Totally. It was pathological. That's not my word. That's what the prison psychologist called it. I . . . What's wrong?”

McGuire had pulled to the curb and was staring through the windshield. Susan followed the line of his sight. There were few pedestrians. The air had grown cool and damp. The retail shops were closed and darkened. A man and woman were approaching, locked in conversation. Against the display wall of a menswear shop, next to a darkened service alley, a street beggar stood, wrapped in a blanket, smiling at the approaching couple.

“Is something wrong?” Susan said.

McGuire eased the car ahead, moving slowly, looking at the beggar as though willing the man to meet his gaze. He accelerated suddenly, swiveling his head from side to side. “Do you see a cop?” he said. They were moving down Boylston Street again. The traffic was light, and at the next corner McGuire swung right.

“Why do you want a policeman?” she said. “Tell me what's wrong.”

“We need a cop,” McGuire said. At the intersection he swung right again, down a deserted residential street. McGuire swore and the Chrysler accelerated again. “Keep your head down and hang on,” he told Susan.

“What are you doing?” One hand gripped the door handle, and she reached the other for the dashboard to steady herself. “What's wrong?”

They were almost at the next intersection. “Tell me if you see a telephone booth. Or a cop.” He turned right, heading back to Boylston again. “I might have to let you out at the corner.”

“Don't let me out,” she said. “I'm staying here. I want to see what it is that's turning you into a madman.”

McGuire glanced over at her. In spite of himself, he grinned at her face, the resolve in her expression.

McGuire braked to a stop, looked along the sidewalk, and accelerated again. The Chrysler swung onto Boylston, the rear of the car fishtailing with the sharp turn and the car's speed. “Get under the dashboard,” he said.

She did as he ordered, keeping her head just high enough to see what he was about to do. The street beggar was gone, leaving his blanket on the sidewalk like a shed skin. The man and woman who had been locked in heated conversation were nowhere to be seen.

McGuire swung the car into the darkened alley. He opened the door on his side of the car and shouted, his voice echoing between the brick walls, “Hayhurst!” and switched the headlights to high beams. In their sudden glare, a woman ran to huddle against the wall on the passenger side. A man stumbled towards her, away from the same street beggar who had been on the sidewalk in front of the menswear shop. The woman was frantic, panic-stricken. The man with whom she had been in such animated discussion two minutes earlier fell to his knees and began crawling towards her. The beggar stood with one hand raised to his eyes, protecting them from the glare of McGuire's headlights. In his other hand, he held a small black pistol.

“Stay down,” McGuire shouted, and he accelerated the car, keeping it to the left, on the side of the alley where Hayhurst stood, and away from the two tourists.

Hayhurst shot once towards the oncoming car. He turned to run, extending his hand back and blindly shooting at the car a second time. Then, with McGuire approaching, he flattened himself against the wall, arms outstretched, to let it pass. McGuire pressed the driver's side door open until it connected with the brick wall and dragged against it in a shower of sparks. The car's speed was almost thirty miles an hour when the door collided with Hayhurst, who screamed loudly enough to be heard above the sound of the car's motor. The force of the impact drove the door back against McGuire's shoulder, and he winced before braking to a stop and looking over at Susan. “You all right?” he asked, and she nodded, her cheek pressed against the glove compartment.

He squeezed out between the battered door of the car and the brick wall and trotted back to Hayhurst, who was rolling from side to side on the concrete alley, spewing foul words and phrases. One side of his face was bloodied, and one leg was twisted at an unnatural angle. McGuire ignored him until he located the Beretta. He moved the gun further away from Hayhurst's reach with his foot and returned to kneel next to him. Hayhurst was grimacing as he spoke. In the light of the car's headlights, reflected from the walls of the alley, McGuire saw the gold incisor tooth. “You are one sorry bad-ass,” he said.

Behind him he heard the man who had been scrambling away from Hayhurst shouting for police at the top of his lungs, trotting towards Boylston Street. Across the alley, Susan was assisting the woman to her feet, looking from her to McGuire and back again, as though trying to connect the two images, or simply to convince herself that it was all real, that she really had made some sort of metaphysical leap from the quiet security of McGuire's car to a violent street episode.

“We could make a hell of a team.”

McGuire handed Susan a coffee from the machine on the Criminal Investigations floor at Berkeley Street police headquarters.

She took it in both shaking hands. “No, thank you,” she said. “I want to get out of here.”

“We will. Soon.”

She was looking around, studying the faces of everyone she saw. “I don't want to be here.”

“If it matters, this kind of thing doesn't happen every day with me.” McGuire sat next to her. “If I had seen a cop around, if I carried a cellphone. . . .”

“Buy a cellphone,” she said.

“He might have killed them, you know.” The man and wife, McGuire had learned, were from upstate New York. They had been arguing because the woman felt her husband was flirting with a waitress at the restaurant they had just left. Now they were seated, holding hands and leaning towards each other, at Wally Sleeman's desk, providing him with a statement. “Even if I'd called right away, he could have shot them both and been gone.” An hour had passed since the Boston police arrived at the alley, brought by the husband's shouts and reports of gunfire. They found McGuire standing over the injured Hayhurst and watching his car's radiator leaking its contents onto the ground.

“What if that man, that Hayhurst character, had stayed in the middle of the alley, instead of trying to get out of your way?” she asked. “What would you have done then? Run him down with the car?”

“Sure.”

“You're serious? You would have killed him.”

McGuire looked away.

She stood up and walked to a window. When he followed her, she turned away, avoiding his eyes. “You don't have children, do you?”

“No.”

“I could tell. Something happens when you have children. A woman I knew told me that. She thinks it only happens to women, and maybe she's right. She worked as a nurse in the trauma ward of a hospital for three years. She loved it. People would arrive with broken bones, gunshot wounds, limbs torn off, and she would be right in there, ignoring the blood and gore, and the screams. She said it was the biggest rush she ever had, working the night shift in the trauma ward. Then she took a year off to have a baby, and when she returned she couldn't do it anymore. She was horrified by it all. She kept seeing these people as babies, like her own, I suppose, and she couldn't bear being in the same room with them.” She turned to look at McGuire. “I hate what happened tonight, all the violence and intensity. Hate it. I want nothing more . . .” She caught her breath, and began again. “I want nothing more than to hug my babies, my children. That's what Orin Flanigan said he would help me do, if he could. Find my husband and my children. I was so horrified tonight, and I looked at you and realized that you loved it. You've been so sweet to me, nicer than anyone else besides Orin. And then I see that side of you.”

“I did it for over twenty years,” McGuire said. “It all came back, I guess.”

She looked at him, saying nothing, then began scanning the faces of detectives and police officers as they passed.

“Joe.” Wally Sleeman was walking towards him, carrying a clipboard and pen. “Need your statement now.”

“What do you hear about Hayhurst?” McGuire said. “How's he doing?”

“Who cares?” Sleeman said. “Broken leg, cracked ribs, possible cracked pelvis. Cuts, abrasions, contusions. Listen, you could have backed over that son of a bitch a couple times and nobody would have complained. How the hell'd you spot him, anyway?”

“Just keep scanning the faces until something clicks. Who ever saw a street beggar with a gold tooth?”

“Never thought he'd be out in the open, working Boylston. We had everybody checking crack houses down along Atlantic Street, in that area. We were getting leads he was back on his home turf, and that's where Frank sent everybody. Nobody's checking street people. Face it, you got lucky.” Sleeman was watching Susan. “I'm taking your date back to my desk for his statement, ma'am,” Sleeman said to her. “Won't be five, ten minutes, then I'll need to talk to you, okay?”

Susan smiled and nodded.

“Nice,” Sleeman said when they reached his desk. “Gettin' friendly with her?”

McGuire said he hoped to.

“More luck,” Sleeman said. “The way I see it, McGuire, you're so lucky that the day it rains gold, you'll be carrying a fucking tuba.”