Hell Bent (17 page)

A minute later the door opened and a woman came out. She looked about thirty. She had black hair cut very short, and dark Asian eyes, and skin the color of maple syrup. She wore khaki pants and a man’s blue Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

She had my business card in her hand. She glanced at it, then looked at me and held out her hand. “Mr. Coyne? I’m Jemma Jones. Are you going to sue me?”

I shook her hand and smiled. “Why would I do that?”

She shrugged. “That’s what lawyers do.”

“I just wanted to talk to you about Gus Shaw.”

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s go have coffee.” She turned to Phil. “I’ll be at the Sleepy. If you need me, I’ve got my cell with me.”

It was a five-minute walk from the camera shop on Main Street to the Sleepy Hollow Café on Walden Street. Neither of us spoke until we got there. Then Jemma said, “The patio or a booth inside?”

“The patio,” I said. “I met Gus here the other day. We ate on the patio. They have good muffins.”

She smiled. “They named this place for a cemetery. Did you know that?”

“The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,” I said. “Where Thoreau and Emerson and the other literary folks are buried.”

“Tourists always assume it’s from the Washington Irving story,” she said.

“We locals know better.”

None of the outside tables was occupied. We chose one near where Gus and I had sat a week and a half earlier. A waitress appeared instantly. I asked for one of their date-and-nut muffins and black coffee. Jemma Jones ordered a cinnamon-apple muffin and a pot of tea.

When the waitress left, Jemma said, “So you were Gus’s lawyer, huh?”

“I still am his lawyer.”

“Even though he’s dead?”

I waved my hand vaguely. “There are legal matters.”

“Because he committed suicide?”

“Because he’s dead.”

She turned her head and looked away, and when she looked back at me, I saw that her dark eyes brimmed with tears. “It’s my fault, you know.”

“What’s your fault?”

“That he … he killed himself.”

“He killed himself because of you?”

She nodded. “That day—Friday, it was, a week ago—he dropped a camera. I don’t know what happened exactly. He only had one hand, and I guess he was trying to handle it with his—his missing hand—and it fell on the floor. Cracked the housing and shattered the lens. Basically ruined it. Before I could stop myself, I yelled at him.” She looked up at me. “See, the thing was, I had stopped thinking about him as a man with only one hand. Mostly, you didn’t notice, and he had a way of keeping it hidden. His missing hand, I mean. Anyway, I yelled, said something like, ‘If you can’t be more careful, you can’t work with cameras.’” She shook her head. “I’m saying this to one of the best photojournalists in the business. So he looks at me, and I can see the hurt in his eyes, and he says, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ Then he just turned around and walked out of the store. And that was the last time I ever saw him.”

“You think that’s why he killed himself?” I said.

She shrugged. “Gus had a lot of baggage, all right. But I guess that’s probably what pushed him over the edge.”

“About what time was that?”

“What? When I yelled at him?”

I nodded.

“Around noontime, I guess. Maybe a little later than that.”

“So you weren’t surprised to hear that he’d committed suicide?”

Jemma leaned back in her chair and looked up at the sky. “I was shocked. But not surprised. If that makes any sense.”

“You think he was suicidal, then?”

“When I knew him?” She shook her head. “He didn’t seem suicidal. Oh, I knew about what was going on. Losing his hand. The PTSD. His wife filing for divorce. All the things that add up when you look back on it. He was depressed and paranoid and … he was a disaster, Mr. Coyne. But he always seemed to me to be a pretty tough guy, too. A fighter, you know?” She waved the back of her hand in the air. “I guess I was wrong about that. A little thing like getting yelled at, and he …”

“How well did you know him?” I said.

At that moment, our waitress came with our order, and Jemma Jones and I paused to butter our muffins.

She poured her tea from the silver pot into a cup, added milk and sugar, took a bite of her muffin, chewed and swallowed, sipped her tea. “How well did I know Gus Shaw?” She smiled. “I knew him pretty damn well, to tell you the truth.”

“You worked with him every day.”

“That, too.”

“More than that, then?”

She shrugged. “We were very good friends, Mr. Coyne.”

“You were … what? Lovers?”

“Technically, no, I guess not. We … I think we loved each other, but we didn’t … you know. We hadn’t got there yet. He had a lot of guilt about his wife and kids, and I didn’t feel too
good about loving a married man myself. So we were holding back. Trying to do the right thing. It wasn’t easy. We had a lot of chemistry, Gus and I. We’d both been through a lot. We understood a lot about each other without having to talk about it. We found each other, like two survivors in a shipwreck, and we just hung on.” She shook her head, picked up her teacup, took a sip. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s none of anybody’s business.”

“I’m a lawyer,” I said. “I’m discreet as hell.”

She smiled. “Well, I’ve got nothing to hide, really. We were secretive because of Gus.”

“He didn’t want his wife to know about you.”

“He didn’t want there to be anything to know about,” she said. “We really were just friends. Except we loved each other.”

“You said you’d both been through a lot,” I said.

“Gus lost his hand over there,” she said. “I lost my husband.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I hate that fucking war.” She narrowed her eyes at me, and I saw the passion in them. “There are victims everywhere. Not just American soldiers getting killed, the body bags you never see coming home in airplanes, but all the poor innocent Iraqis, the women and children and old people. And people like me and Gus, and Gus’s wife and kids and sister, and my dead husband’s parents and nieces and nephews, and his unborn children, and their children, and it goes on and on.”

I found myself nodding.

Jemma cocked her head and looked at me. “So Gus Shaw and I had all that in common. But don’t get me wrong. He was a helluva man, and I guess I would’ve loved him no matter what.”

“But it was a secret.”

“He wanted to do the right thing,” she said. “He wanted to be
honorable. So, yeah, we were a secret, but we really had nothing to hide.” She dropped her chin and looked up at me. “I think it would be best all around if it remained a secret, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Like I said, I’m very good at discretion. You went to his apartment, right?”

She smiled. “How’d you know?”

“The first time I went there with Gus, there were two empty mugs on his coffee table,” I said. “I figured somebody had been there.”

“Probably one of the mugs was mine,” she said. “I went over there a lot. Anyway, he didn’t have a lot of friends.”

“He told me he was in a support group.”

She nodded. “He was. I doubt if any of the people in his group were his friends, though. You have a different kind of relationship with people in your group. It’s personal and intimate, almost more intense than friendship. You need to keep it compartmentalized. You couldn’t imagine having a—an intimate relationship with a member of your group. It would be like a conflict of interest, you know?”

“You sound like you know this from personal experience,” I said.

“Me? Sure. After Burt was killed, I was in a group for a while. But there was too much anger in it for me. Justifiable anger, but still, I began to realize it wasn’t good for me, so I got out.”

“What about Gus’s group?” I said. “Did he talk about it?”

Jemma shook her head. “Not really. He wouldn’t. Not about any of the members, anyway. It’s a rule. What happens in the group stays in the group. If you’re in a group, you don’t talk about it to outsiders. I had the feeling that lately—I mean, toward the end—he’d gotten turned off by it.”

“Turned off how?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was like he stopped believing in what they did. Or maybe they started doing different things. Gus wasn’t very specific. Like I said, it was just a feeling I got.”

“Did he ever mention a guy named Pete?”

She shrugged. “Not that I remember. Who’s Pete?”

“A friend of Gus’s. Or an acquaintance, anyway. The time I met Gus here, this Pete was with him. I think he might be in the group. He’s somebody I’d like to talk to, that’s all.”

“You want to talk to everybody, huh?” she said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know what else to do.”

She smiled. “You don’t seem very well organized.”

“I’m looking for information anywhere I can find it.”

“And I’m not helping very much,” said Jemma Jones.

“You never know what’s going to be helpful,” I said. “I didn’t get to know him very well, but Gus seemed like an angry man to me.”

“Sure,” she said. “He was angry. That’s normal, isn’t it? How could he not be angry? You’d worry about him if he wasn’t angry.”

“Did you have any sense that his group was helping him?”

“I don’t know, to tell you the truth. Gus was very up and down. Moody as hell. Like I said, recently he seemed to be kind of turned off by it. Groups don’t always help, you know. Sometimes they do more harm than good.” Jemma reached across the table and gripped my wrist. “Your turn, Mr. Lawyer. What’s this all about, anyway?”

“This?”

“This conversation,” she said. “These questions. Why does a lawyer need to talk to everybody who might’ve known a man who killed himself? What’re you after?”

“I’m trying to figure out if Gus really did kill himself,” I said.

She looked at me. “You don’t think he did?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no opinion. I just want to know.”

“But I thought …”

“The police have concluded that he did,” I said. “All of the forensic evidence points to it.”

Jemma was frowning. “If he didn’t …”

“Right,” I said. “It means he was murdered.”

She shook her head. “Jesus.”

“So I’m wondering if you have any ideas about who could have done such a thing.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t. No ideas.”

“Gus had no enemies?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t think of anybody.”

I watched her face, looking for the lie, or the evasion, or just the hint of doubt.

Her eyes held mine steadily.

I finished the last bite of my muffin. “If anything occurs to you,” I said, “you have my card. Will you call me?”

“Sure,” she said. “Of course. I loved Gus Shaw. If somebody murdered him, I want to know it. I don’t like thinking he did it because I yelled at him.” She looked at her wristwatch. “I really should be getting back. Phil is barely competent.”

“Tell me how you and Gus found each other,” I said.

“You mean why I gave him a job?”

I nodded.

“One of the people in his group called me,” she said. “Said there was a new guy, used to be a photographer, needed a job. This person who called me, he’d been in my group. It was kind of a code that we helped each other if we could. So I said sure, I could always use somebody who understood cameras and photography. When he told me it was Gus Shaw, I was really interested.
I was familiar with his work. Gus was a pro. I figured he could do some workshops, bring some business into the store.”

“Who was this person?” I said. “The one who called you?”

Jemma shook her head. “I can’t tell you that.”

“That’s part of the code?” I said. “Keeping your identities secret?”

She shrugged. “It’s a very private, personal thing, being in a support group. That’s the only way it can work.”

“Sure,” I said. “I guess I understand.” I fished a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet and left it on the table. Then I stood up. “I’ll walk you back to your shop,” I said.

Jemma stood up and smiled. “Thank you.”

When we got there, she turned and held out her hand. “I enjoyed talking with you,” she said.

I took her hand. “Me, too.”

“I had this thought,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Well,” she said, “if somebody did murder Gus, and if you’re going around questioning people, second-guessing what the police said, aren’t you worried that the murderer will go after you?”

“Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t rock the boat?”

“Just—be careful, that’s all.”

I nodded and smiled. “I already thought of that.”

I
’d noticed a liquor store on the corner diagonally across the street from the camera shop. After I said good-bye to Jemma Jones, I crossed Main Street and went in.

A gray-haired woman was paying for two bottles of white wine at the counter. The clerk seemed to be the only employee there.

I looked at their selection of bourbons while the woman finished her transaction. When she left, I went over to the clerk.

“Find what you’re looking for?” he said. He wore a short-sleeve red shirt with
PATRIOT SPIRITS
and
MIKE
embossed over the pocket.

I showed Mike my business card. “I hope you can answer a couple of questions for me.”

He frowned at my card, then looked up at me. “You’re a lawyer?”

I nodded. “Do you know Gus Shaw?”

“Gus Shaw.” He looked up at the ceiling, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Used to work in the camera shop across the street?”

He shrugged.

“He lost a hand in Iraq,” I said. “Big guy, red beard.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I might’ve seen him around, but I don’t know him. Not a regular customer. I know all my regulars.” He hesitated. “Wait a minute. That the guy who committed suicide last week?”

“That’s him,” I said.

“There was a thing in the paper about that. It said he had post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

“It’s a disorder,” I said. “Not a syndrome.”

Mike shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”

“Were you working here that day? A week ago yesterday it was. Friday.”