Authors: William G. Tapply

Tags: #Suspense

Shadow of Death (25 page)

BOOK: Shadow of Death

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I put the photo face down on my desk. “I get your point,” I said.

He handed me another photo. When I turned my head away, he said, “Go ahead. Look at it. It's good for you.”

I couldn't help myself. I looked. This was also a color photo, although the dominant color was black. It showed Gordie's entire body. It had been deeply burned from head to toe. The skin was peeling away in places, revealing patches of yellow and red. Instead of fingers and toes, there were lumpy little blackened stubs.

I swallowed back the bile that rose up in my throat. “I hope to hell you don't plan on showing any of these to Donna,” I said.

“You think she'd change her mind about cooperating with us if I did?”

“I think she'd hate you forever.”

“I'm showing them to you,” he said. “I don't care if you hate me forever.”

“I've never seen anything worse,” I said. “Doesn't exactly make me think fondly of you.”

“You didn't see him in person,” he said. “I did.”

“I'm sorry.”

“So now I'm having these dreams,” said Horowitz. “About old Gordie. I keep seeing him this way.” He tapped the photos. “We were really good friends, you know. He told the worst goddamned puns you ever heard.” He smiled, and for once I saw no irony in it. “I'm worried I'm losing my objectivity.”

“Is that why you shared these damn pictures with me?” I said. “Hoping I'd lose
my
objectivity?”

“Bet your ass,” he said.

I shook my head.

“Give me something, Coyne.”

“What? You know everything I know.”

“Who hired you?”

I shook my head. “Go away, Roger. Leave me alone. And take your damn pictures with you.”

“I'll take 'em,” he said, “but don't you forget them.”

“How could I?” I said.

Evie brought home take-out ChineseâMoo Goo Gai Pan for her, beef and broccoli with fried rice for me. She ate with chopsticks. I used a fork. Pretty much the difference between us right there.

Horowitz's photos haunted meâas he'd intendedâand several times while we were eating I found myself holding an empty fork halfway to my mouth and staring off into the distance. Evie kept frowning at me, but she didn't say anything.

We had just put our plates on the floor for Henry to lick when my phone rang.

I made no move to answer it. Evie and I had a rule that we did not answer the telephone while we were eating.

“You might as well get it,” she said. “Talk to
somebody
, anyway.”

I arched my eyebrows at her.

She shrugged, then bent down for the dishes, which Henry had licked clean.

I went to my room and picked up the phone.

“It's Helen Madbury,” said the voice when I answered. “From Southwick.”

It took me a moment. “Oh,” I said. “Helen. I don't think I ever heard your last name.”

“It's my ex-husband's, actually. Did I interrupt your dinner?”

“We just finished,” I said. “What's up?”

“Farley's funeral is Wednesday. I thought you'd like to know.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Where and what time?”

“One in the afternoon at the Congregational church. That's the white one right there in the village. He'll be buried in the cemetery across the street. I'm having a little reception at my house after the interment. You're invited.”

“That's very kind,” I said.

“Farley liked you,” she said. “I assume you liked him.”

“I did. I liked him a lot.”

“Well,” said Helen, “I hope you can make it.”

“I'll try,” I said.

After I hung up with Helen, I went back to the kitchen. Evie and Henry were not there.

I found them both upstairs. Evie had changed into her nightgown and was under the covers reading a paperback book. Henry was curled up beside her.

I sat on the bed. “You look like you're ready to go to sleep.”

“Pretty tired.” Evie licked her finger and turned a page in her book.

“Hell,” I said, “it's only eight-thirty.”

“Long day.” She kept reading.

I didn't say anything.

Neither did she.

Finally, I said, “I just got invited to a funeral.”

“Mm,” she said. “That's nice.”

“Farley Nelson,” I said. “The old guy up in New Hampshire I was telling you about.”

“You didn't tell me much.”

“Well, I know. Iâ”

“Don't,” she said. “I don't want to hear your lecture about the sanctity of client privilege again. If you can't talk to me, fine.”

“Honey,” I said, “listenâ”

“No.” She snapped her book shut and plucked her glasses off her face, then turned and looked at me. “If you think I don't understand, you're not giving me very much credit. You think I want you to tell me confidential secrets?”

“It's more complicated than that.”

“No doubt,” she said. “Listen, Brady. For the past week or so you've done nothing but mope around. You are monosyllabic on those rare occasions when you speak at all. Mostly, you avoid me altogether, as if you think I'm going to hound you until you divulge classified information.”

“I wasn't aware of that,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“You lie to me.”

“I don't lie to you,” I said.

“Oh?” She shook her head. “You come home with bruises on your body and you tell me you fell down. That's not a lie?”

“I didn't want you to worry.”

“I'd appreciate it if you'd let
me
decide whether I should worry or not.” She blew out a quick, exasperated breath. “It's not exactly what I dreamed about when I imagined my ideal relationship, you know. I mean, deciding to live with you, to buy this house with you, to â¦ to share my life with you, it wasn't easy for me.”

“It was very easy for me,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Don't do that, dammit.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You're right. That was glib. It wasn't easy for me, either.”

“I envisioned a partnership,” she said.

“We have a partnership. A good one.”

“Not when you don't share your feelings. Not when something is obviously eating at you and you avoid me. Not when you lie to me whenever something happens to you. It makes me feel as if I'm the cause of it.”

“You're not the cause of it,” I said.

“Jesus,” she muttered. “I
know
I'm not the cause of it. I'm telling you how I
feel
.”

“Oh,” was all I could think of to safely say.

“That was your cue to tell me how
you
feel,” she said.

“I'm not very good at talking about my feelings,” I said. “Never have been.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Afraid? It's not about being afraid of anything. It's just how I am.”

“That's a damn cop-out, Brady Coyne. It's like saying, oh, well, I'm a child molester, but you shouldn't blame me. It's how I am.”

I smiled. “That's an interesting analogy.” I rolled onto my side and touched her face.

She turned away from me. “Don't.”

“I'm sorry,” I said lamely.

“Sometimes,” she mumbled, “being sorry just doesn't do the job.”

I lay back on the bed with my hands laced behind my head. I didn't know what to say.

After a minute, Evie turned to face me. Tears had welled up in her eyes. “I hate it that you make me whine,” she said.
“I'm not a whiner. I'm a strong independent woman, dammit. Do you see what's happening to us?”

“It's not easy,” I said. “We knew it wouldn't be easy.”

“Maybe this was a mistake.”

“This?” I waved my hand around the room. “Our place? Henry? Sharing our lives?”

She nodded.

“Is that what you think?” I said.

She looked at me with her wet eyes, then shook her head. “Sometimes I just don't know.”

“It's hard,” I said. “But it's worth it.”

“Living alone is easier,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “It's way easier. Emptier, too. Remember?”

“I remember.” She smiled softly. “Just tell me why you're so sad, Brady. Can't you do that?”

“Yes,” I said. “I can do that.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Roger Horowitz showed me some pictures today,” I said. “They were â¦ horrible. I can't get them out of my head.”

“Pictures of what?”

“Gordon Cahill's body. It was burned beyond recognition.”

“And you feel responsible, is that it?”

I nodded. “It's not rational. But I do.”

“That's why Roger showed them to you?” she said. “To make you feel responsible?”

“Yes.”

She reached over and squeezed my hand. “What else?”

“There's a lot of pressure on me,” I said. “Horowitz is trying to get me to â¦ to betray people who trust me. Part of me thinks I should do it. It's hard to know what's right.”

“And how does that feel?”

“Feel?” I said. “It makes me sick to my stomach sometimes, is how it feels. It keeps me awake at night. It's what causes me to â¦ to be inconsiderate of the people I love. It makes me not think very highly of myself.”

She nodded. “So what about that funeral?”

“I don't like funerals.”

“Are you going?”

“I don't think so.”

“Because funerals make you feel bad?”

I nodded. “I guess so.”

“You should go,” she said. “Funerals are good. They help people get a handle on their feelings.”

“Closure, you mean?” I said.

She shrugged. “Sure. Closure is a good thing.”

“He was a really nice old guy,” I said. “I mean, I hardly knew him. But I liked him.”

“Tell me about him.”

So I told Evie about Farley Nelson, how when his wife died he went to work in the general store so he could be around people, how everyone in the little town knew him and liked him, how he called me and asked me to go fishing in his bass pond, how he was murdered before I got there, and how I was the one who found his body.

Evie held my hand tightly in both of hers while I talked, and when I finished, she said, “You'll feel better if you go to his funeral.”

“Think so?”

“Absolutely.”

“Maybe I will, then.”

Evie smiled. “See? That wasn't so hard, was it?”

“What?”

“Talking about your feelings.”

“Is that what I did?”

“Sure.”

“Don't tell anybody, for God's sake,” I said. “I've got a reputation to uphold.”

TWENTY-SIX

W
ednesday dawned gray and sunless with a whiff of winter in the air. Perfect for a funeral.

Farley Nelson was on my mind.

Evie and I took coffee out to the garden, as we always did when it wasn't raining. We wore sweaters and held our mugs with both hands for warmth.

A downy woodpecker was hammering away at the suet feeder. Nuthatches and titmice were filching sunflower seeds from the hanging feeders, and a gang of goldfinches flocked on the thistle feeder. The finches had begun to don their more somber winter shade of olive.

I never tired of watching our birds.

“That funeral is today,” I said to Evie.

“You're going, aren't you?”

I nodded. “I feel like I should.”

“Yes, you should,” she said. “Want me to go with you?”

“No, honey. That's okay.”

Evie shrugged. “Up to you. I will, you know.”

“I know. Thanks. I'm fine.”

Henry, who had been snoozing under the table with his chin on my instep, lifted his head and looked at me. Sometimes I was positive he understood everything.

“You can't go,” I said to him. “You don't own a good necktie.”

At nine o'clock I called Julie and told her I'd be out of the office all day because I had to attend a funeral.

She said, “Likely story.”

“Evie thinks I should go.”

“Sure,” she said. “Blame her.”

Both sides of Southwick's main street were lined with parked vehicles. I found a place to leave my car in the lot behind the general store and walked from there to the Congregational church, a couple hundred yards down the street.

A police cruiser was parked directly in front of the church, and two uniformed officers were standing there. They sipped coffee from foam cups and nodded to the folks who were filing inside.

I recognized both of themâOfficer Somers and his female partner, who'd been the first on the scene when I called about Farley Nelson. When I walked past them, they both nodded without smiling. The female cop said something to Somers out of the corner of her mouth, and I could feel their eyes follow me as I mounted the church steps.

I was the guy who'd found Farley's dead body. That made me a suspicious character.

Helen Madbury was standing inside the door greeting people. When I walked in, she gave me a hug. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said. “It would please him to know you're here.”

Mechanical words. I figured she was saying the same thing to everybody.

It was quarter to one, fifteen minutes before the service was scheduled to begin, but already the place was packed. I didn't know whether they were all Farley's friends, or if the citizens of Southwick just considered attending funerals to be their civic duty.

A lanky woman with short white hair and sharp blue eyes whom I'd never seen before handed me a program. Another relative of Farley's, probably. A younger sister maybe. I saw some family resemblance.

She also thanked me for coming.

When I entered the church, heads swiveled around to check me out, then turned to say something to the heads next to them. To most of the citizens of Southwick, I was a stranger.

Or maybe they all knew who I was. That Boston lawyer who'd been snooping around. The guy who'd found Farley's body.

I found a seat on the outside aisle in the back pew on the right. The organist was playing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The townsfolk whispered among themselves. I didn't see any tears flowing. It was a somber occasion, but not a tragic one.

I spotted the Goff brothers about halfway to the front on the other side of the middle aisle. They weren't hard to spot. They were big men and seemed to take up a lot of room. They were wearing dark suits and appeared to have trimmed their beards.

They had their heads bowed, as if they were praying. I'd never seen Harris Goff without his baseball cap. His head
was balder than his older brother's, and it shone pink in the muted light that seeped down through the stained-glass windows. Both Goff men looked older in suits and ties than they did in grease-stained overalls and ratty T-shirts and work boots.

A cluster of teenagers were sitting a couple rows in front of me. One of them was the girl who worked at the general store, the one who'd given me directions to Farley's place. The girls wore dresses and heels, and they looked like grownups. The boys wore suits and neckties, but they still looked like kids.

I spotted Carol, Helen's partner at the real estate office, and Jeff Little, the innkeeper, and a couple of other familiar faces that I couldn't place.

Otherwise, they were all strangers to me, even if I wasn't a stranger to them.

I sat on the hard wooden pew, rolled the paper program in my fingers, and hummed along with the organ music. I always liked those old Protestant hymns.

I tried to think about Farley Nelson, to remember him properly on this occasion, but I hadn't known him very well. My thoughts kept turning to Gordon Cahill. I'd known Gordie quite well. The horrible images from Horowitz's photos kept popping up in my head.

I wondered when they'd turn what was left of Cahill's body over to Donna. I figured a funeral and a burial would help her push on with her life.

After a while the organ stopped playing, and a gray-haired woman in the robes of a minister walked slowly down the aisle. When she got to the front I noticed that Farley's casket was already there.

The service lasted less than an hour. Some familiar lines of scripture were read, a few familiar hymns were sung, and the minister delivered a short but touching homily about Farley and the full and God-fearing life he'd lived. It was evident that she'd known him well, and her words almost convinced me that there was a God to whom we should give thanks for allowing us to know people like Farley.

Then Helen Madbury went to the front and talked without notes about her uncle. She told a few stories that evoked quiet laughter from the congregation and made it clear that Farley would be missed and remembered fondly and gratefully but without tears. At the end of her talk, Helen reminded us that Farley would be buried in the cemetery across the street. She hoped we'd all attend, and she invited everybody to her house for refreshments afterward.

I figured everybody but me knew where she lived.

We sang another hymn, and the minister delivered her benediction, and then six men, a couple of them about Farley's age and the others a generation or two younger, toted his casket up the center aisle while we all sang “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Singing felt good, and I found that I remembered most of the words to all four verses.

The congregation recessed from the front to the back, so I was one of the last to leave. When I got outside, I saw that the sky had darkened and a few fat drops of cold rain had begun to fall. Typical.

The two police officers stood in the middle of the road, prepared to halt traffic, although there was none to halt, and the mourners were straggling across the street toward the cemetery on the hill. I followed along. Up front I could see the pallbearers leading the way.

We gathered in a big semicircle around the grave site. A
few umbrellas had sprung up. From where I stood in the rear, I couldn't see much, but I heard the minister recite the Twenty-third Psalm, words that never failed to move me. I was happy to observe that she stuck with the old poetic King James language. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. For Thou art with me.”

Nowadays they say: “ â¦ you are with me.” It would never sound right to my ears.

“ â¦ and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Then the minister's voice lifted, inviting us all to bow our heads and join in reciting the Lord's Prayer.

I bowed my head but kept my prayers to myself.

“Go in peace,” said the minister, and the folks began straggling back down the hill to the road. I moved under one of the big beech trees that grew here and there in the cemetery, leaned against the trunk, and waited for the crowd to disperse.

By the time the last of them had reached the foot of the hill, the first of them were already in their cars heading north out of townâto Helen's house, I assumed.

I waited there under the beech tree until I was alone in the cemetery. Then I started walking up and down the rows.

I'd covered less than half of the two or three acres of gravestones when I found Bobby Gilman's. It was a simple, gray polished granite stone, and even though it had stood there for thirty years, it looked shiny and new.

ROBERT ALTON GILMAN
August 7, 1958âJuly 16, 1972
Beloved Son of Andrew and Rebecca
Thy Will Be Done

I noticed that they'd used the day Bobby's body was found as the date of his death. He'd been up on the mountain for nearly ten months by then. I supposed it was as good a date as any.

I pondered Bobby Gilman's fate for a minute or two, but had no new insights. He'd barely turned thirteen when he got lost on that mountain in the sudden October snowstorm. He was close to turning fourteen when his body was found. All the rest was mystery.

As I turned and started to leave, the gravestone next to Bobby's caught my eye.

REBECCA COLE GILMAN
December 6, 1936âOctober 12, 1972
Beloved Mother Of
Robert, Harris, and Lyndon
With God's Angels Now

It took me a moment to process this information.

Bobby's mother had died just three months after her boy's body was foundâon the one-year anniversary of the Columbus Day when Bobby got lost on Mount Monadnock.

It was hard to believe that the date was a coincidence.

I guessed Bobby's mother had chosen October 12 as the day when she would join him in heaven.

Rebecca Gilman had two other sons besides Bobby.

Lyndon and Harris.

Lyndon was known by the nickname his kid brother had given him because he couldn't pronounce the word “brother.”

Dubber. Dub.

Dub and Harris Goff.

Bobby Gilman had been their brother.

BOOK: Shadow of Death

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