Shadow of Death (21 page)
“We're all set,” said Sergeant Somers.
Munson looked at me. “You again.”
I nodded. “Me again.”
He turned to Bagley. “What's he doing here?”
“You're out of your jurisdiction, Sergeant,” Bagley said.
“I know this man,” said Munson.
“We'll be in touch with you if we need your input,” said Bagley.
Munson shrugged. “I just thoughtâ”
“Thanks anyway,” said Bagley.
Munson looked at me, then turned, got back into his vehicle, and drove away.
Somers went over to his cruiser, where his partner was waiting for him.
Bagley watched them for a minute, then turned to me. “The name Dalton Burke mean anything to you?”
I shook my head. “Should it?”
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a sandwichsized plastic bag, and held it up for me to see. Inside it was a wrinkled scrap of paper. “Dalton Burke” was printed in
pencil on it. “It was balled up in his hand,” said Bagley.
pencil on it. “It was balled up in his hand,” said Bagley.
“Farley's hand?”
He nodded.
“Means nothing to me,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Oh, well.” Bagley slid the plastic bag back into his pocket. “You can go, Mr. Coyne. I expect I'll want to talk with you some more.”
I fished out one of my business cards. “That's got my home and office numbers on it.” I remembered my new cell phone. I decided not to share that number with him.
He took the card, rubbed his thumb over the raised print, and stuck it in his shirt pocket.
I went around to the driver's side of my car and opened the door.
As I started to slide in, Lieutenant Bagley said, “Mr. Coyne.”
“Yes?”
“I knew Farley Nelson,” he said. “The old guy didn't have an enemy in the world.”
Before you came along
, he meant.
, he meant.
T
he road home from Farley Nelson's farm led me back through Southwick, and as I entered the village I realized that my stomach was growling. So I stopped in front of the general store, got out of my car, and went inside.
he road home from Farley Nelson's farm led me back through Southwick, and as I entered the village I realized that my stomach was growling. So I stopped in front of the general store, got out of my car, and went inside.
The same girl was behind the counter. Three or four people were gathered there, and they were all talking quietly. When I caught a look at the girl's face, I saw that her eyes were red.
I wandered around the back of the store and found a case with pre-made sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. I chose a ham and Swiss cheese on rye, took a can of Pepsi from the cooler, and brought them to the counter.
The people who were standing thereâan elderly woman and two younger menâstepped aside. I put my sandwich and Pepsi on the counter.
The girl pulled my purchases toward her and started to ring them up. Then she stopped and looked at me. “You're the guy who was here this morning, right? I gave you directions to Mr. Nelson's place.”
“That's right.”
“You found him, right? His body?”
I nodded.
“What happened?”
I shook my head. “He passed away. Heart attack apparently. That's all I know.”
“People are saying he ⦠he was killed or something.”
“I don't know about that. The police are looking into it.”
“Nobody would kill Mr. Nelson,” she said. “He never did anybody any harm.”
I nodded. “He seemed like a good man. I didn't know him very well.”
“Everybody knows Mr. Nelson,” she said. “Everybody's totally bummed.”
I paid for my lunch and went outside. A knot of people had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the store. They were talking quietly, and when they saw me, they stopped and looked at me. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I detected accusation in their expressions.
I got into my car. My newish BMW with its Massachusetts license plates suddenly felt showy and conspicuous. I was an outsider in this little New Hampshire village, a foreigner, an intruder in a fancy car.
I backed out and pulled away. The folks in front of the general store watched me depart.
I drove slowly, heading home but in no particular hurry to get there, or to get anywhere, really. Farley Nelson's death was a weight in my chest. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was responsible for it.
Thinking about Farley led to thinking about Gordon Cahill. I felt responsible for what happened to him, too.
The road out of town followed the meanders of a rocky
little stream. I had noticed it every time I drove into and out of Southwick, and every time I saw it, I had the same thought: Trout lived in that cold, bubbly mountain water. Native brook trout. They would be small and spooky, and now in late September, which was their spawning season, the males would wear crimson spots as brilliant as drops of fresh blood on their backs and bright slashes of orange on their throats.
little stream. I had noticed it every time I drove into and out of Southwick, and every time I saw it, I had the same thought: Trout lived in that cold, bubbly mountain water. Native brook trout. They would be small and spooky, and now in late September, which was their spawning season, the males would wear crimson spots as brilliant as drops of fresh blood on their backs and bright slashes of orange on their throats.
I spotted a narrow dirt side road that angled off the road I was driving on. It passed over the stream and disappeared into the woods on the other side. A good place to eat my lunch and ponder heavy thoughts.
I turned onto the dirt road, stopped just before the wooden one-lane bridge, picked up my ham sandwich and can of Pepsi from the seat beside me, and went down the sloping bank to the water's edge.
I sat on a boulder on the downstream side of the bridge, munched my sandwich, thought half-formed thoughts, and watched the water. The late-season currents swirled black and inscrutable around the rocks and flowed under the overhanging willows and alders. A few yellow poplar leaves drifted on the surface, brilliant spots of contrast against the dark water, and here and there an insect fluttered in the air and twirled in the eddies. I spotted none of those dimples or bulges that would betray a feeding fish, but the way an angler's subconscious mind works, I found myself studying how the top of the water moved, using those surface clues to imagine the unseen places below where trout might lie, and imagining myself easing into position so I could drift a fly to them.
Up at the head of the pool, the quick water funneled trout food through the narrow space between the granite bridge
abutments. The fish would line up along the seams between the fast and the slow water, and they'd gather in the area where the currents slowed and flattened out. Along the banks, in the soft water, they would lie in ambush and pick off whatever random edibles drifted along. A few fish would patrol the tail of the pool where the water quickened again, and there would surely be a trout or two lurking in the cushion behind that big midstream boulderâ
abutments. The fish would line up along the seams between the fast and the slow water, and they'd gather in the area where the currents slowed and flattened out. Along the banks, in the soft water, they would lie in ambush and pick off whatever random edibles drifted along. A few fish would patrol the tail of the pool where the water quickened again, and there would surely be a trout or two lurking in the cushion behind that big midstream boulderâ
“Hello, there.” The voice came from behind me. It was a woman's voice.
I turned and shielded my eyes. It was Helen, the woman who worked at the real estate office. It had only been a few days ago when I met her.
It seemed like months.
She was standing in the dirt road looking down at me with her hands on her hips. She was wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt and a red kerchief on her head. “Room for two fishermen in that pool?” she said.
“Come on down,” I said.
She picked her way down the bank and sat on a flat boulder beside me. “Noticed your car,” she said.
I nodded.
“Heard you were the one who found old Farley.”
I drained the last of my Pepsi. “He was sitting in a chair in his back yard,” I said.
“Stubborn old fool,” said Helen. “The doctors told him he had to slow down. But would he? Hell, no. If he wasn't chopping wood or chasing his dogs around, he was getting up before the sun and lugging his old twelve-gauge pump gun through the woods to get to his deer stand.” She shook her head. “He already had two heart attacks. They told him the next one would kill him.”
I nodded and kept gazing at the moving water.
“Rumor going around he was murdered,” she said.
I said nothing.
She shrugged. “Gossip gets going in this town, it takes a nuclear explosion to stop it. Old coot had a bad heart. It was going to happen sooner or later. I guess today was the day, that's all.”
“I'm really sorry about Farley,” I said. “I liked him a lot.”
“He was looking forward to seeing you,” she said. “Told me he was inviting you up, how you seemed interested in seeing his bass pond.” She touched my arm. “Mentioned he remembered something he wanted to tell you.”
“He didn't tell you what it was, did he?” I said.
“Nope. He was pretty proud of himself, though, I can tell you that. He worried about his memory, hated it when he couldn't recall something. I told him, you better write it down or you'll forget it again.”
Dalton Burke's name. That's what he remembered. He had written it down.
“He didn't tolerate being told what to do,” Helen said. “Ask him to do something, tell him it's for his own damn good, that's the last thing he'd do. Why do you think he smoked those smelly cigars, insisted on splitting his own firewood?”
I smiled. I had a vision of myself at eighty-something, if I lived that long, which was doubtful. I hoped I'd be splitting my own firewood.
“I'd say to him,” Helen said, “let somebody else do it. You've earned it. And old Farley, he'd just grin, and he'd say, âLive free or die, kiddo.'” She shook her head. “Stubborn old buzzard.”
“You must've been pretty close to him,” I said.
“He was my uncle, Mr. Coyne,” she said. “I cooked for him when he'd let me, which wasn't often. Mostly he just wanted to be left alone, do things his own way. Damned independent old Yankee.” She blinked. “I'm going to miss him, I'll tell you that.” She wiped at her eyes with the cuff of her flannel shirt. “Anyway, all I wanted to say was, Southwick's a funny town, and when folks get ideas in their heads, it's hard to get 'em out, and you shouldn't pay any attention to them.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“Well,” she said, “you show up in town, a stranger, a lawyer no less, in your expensive car, and you talk with Farley a couple times, and next thing you know, Farley has his heart attack and it's you who finds him. You see?”
I smiled. “They blame me?”
“How folk's minds work sometimes,” she said. “Just want you to know, my mind doesn't work that way. I feel bad, you're the one had to find him that way.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She stood up and wiped the dirt off the seat of her jeans. “I gotta go sell houses.”
“Can I ask you something?”
She glanced at her wristwatch. “Okay.”
“Does the name Bobby Gilman mean anything to you?”
“Well there's a name out of the past,” she said. “What do you want to know?”
“I know Bobby Gilman got lost on Monadnock and they didn't find his body for nearly a year. I know he was from Southwick. I know it was thirty years ago.” I shrugged. “Were there rumors about what happened?”
“Rumors?” She stared at the water. “Sure there were rumors. Small town like Southwick, there's always gossip.
There'll be stories about Farley circulating for the next week or two. Then folks will latch on to the next thing.”
There'll be stories about Farley circulating for the next week or two. Then folks will latch on to the next thing.”
“What were the rumors?” I said.
“You shouldn't give credence to rumors, Mr. Coyne.”
“I know that.”
She was quiet for a minute. “Folks wondered what happened that day. How Bobby got separated from those other boys. How he ended up on the other side of the mountain. Why all those searchers with their dogs kept looking in the wrong place.” She looked at me and shrugged.
“Those are questions, not rumors,” I said.
“Some folks held those other boys responsible for what happened to Bobby Gilman, that's all.”
“Any logical reason they should do that?”
“They were just your regular boys, Mr. Coyne. Maybe a little heedless, the way boys can be. So they lost track of Bobby out there in the woods in the snowstorm, or maybe in their hurry to get off the mountain they just forgot about him. You can blame them all you want, but they were just kids. It turned out to be a tragedy. But that didn't make those boys evil.”
“People were calling them evil?”
“It's not even worth considering,” said Helen. “I haven't thought about Bobby Gilman for years. I don't want to start now.” She stood up. “I really do have to get going.”
“What about Albert Stoddard?” I said.
She narrowed her eyes at me, then nodded. “Yes, he was one of those boys up on the mountain that day, if that's what you mean.”
“And Oliver Burlingame and Mark Lyman?”
“Them, too.”
“How about Dalton Burke?”
She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something. Then she closed it and nodded. “He was one of them, yes. They were just boys, Mr. Coyne. It was a long time ago. Best put to rest, if you ask me.” She held out her hand. “Really, I've gotta go. I'm late.”
I took her hand. “I'm glad you stopped.”
She shrugged. “Thought you might be feeling bad.”
“I was,” I said. “Thanks.”
Still am
, I thought.
, I thought.
After Helen left I sat on my boulder. Dalton Burke. Farley Nelson had been proud of remembering that name. He intended to share it with me.
Well, he did.
I wondered if Dalton Burke had died recently, as Oliver Burlingame and Mark Lyman didâaccidentally, or suddenly, or otherwise.
I watched the black water flow on by. No new insights presented themselves, so I got into my car and headed home.
Lieutenant Bagley had said that Farley Nelson didn't have an enemy in the world. That was obviously untrue. But it was possible that he hadn't had any enemies before I came along.
I didn't like thinking about that. I liked even less the fact that I couldn't share what I knew with the police.
Well, Bagley would undoubtedly get in touch with Roger Horowitz. They would compare notes. I guessed that between the two of them, they'd begin to find connections between the murders of Gordon Cahill and Farley Nelson. Things like that didn't happen coincidentally.
Albert Stoddard was the link, and I hoped Horowitz and Bagley would notice it.
Maybe Dalton Burke's name would help them.
I hoped so.
The more the police learned, the better I liked it. I wanted them to catch whoever had killed Farley Nelson. Maybe they'd locate Albert Stoddard. And if they scooped up Gordon Cahill's killer in the process, hooray.
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