Shadow of Death (26 page)
I
glanced down the hill to the front of the church. A few stragglers were milling around down there. Among them were Harris and Dub Goff. With their thick beards and bald heads they were easy to spot. They were talking to Officer Somers and his partner. Limerick police officer Paul Munson was standing there with them. I wondered if he spent as much time in Limerick, where he belonged, as he seemed to in Southwick.
glanced down the hill to the front of the church. A few stragglers were milling around down there. Among them were Harris and Dub Goff. With their thick beards and bald heads they were easy to spot. They were talking to Officer Somers and his partner. Limerick police officer Paul Munson was standing there with them. I wondered if he spent as much time in Limerick, where he belonged, as he seemed to in Southwick.
As I watched, Harris and Dub shook hands with all three officers, turned, and started across the street. They were heading in my direction.
I instinctively ducked behind the thick trunk of a stately old beech tree.
The Goff men stopped at a red pickup truck that was parked beside the road across from the church. Dub climbed in behind the wheel. Harris opened the other door, hesitated, and before he got in, he looked up. He was a hundred yards away, but it felt like his gaze bored directly into my eyes.
After a moment, he bent down, said something to his
brother, and got into the truck. I watched as it pulled away and headed north as all the other vehicles had gone, past the cemetery and out of town in the opposite direction from their garage. On their way to Helen's, I assumed, for the post-funeral reception.
brother, and got into the truck. I watched as it pulled away and headed north as all the other vehicles had gone, past the cemetery and out of town in the opposite direction from their garage. On their way to Helen's, I assumed, for the post-funeral reception.
I stayed where I was, behind the trunk of that big beech tree. I was feeling furtive. I'd learned something interestingâand maybe dangerous.
Bobby Gilman and the Goff men were brothers. When I asked Harris Goff about Bobby the day I found Farley Nelson's body, he could have told me. It would have been logical. The fact that he didn't struck me as enormously significant.
I'd decided what I had to do next, and I didn't want anyone to see me doing it.
I waited for Officer Somers and his partner and Officer Munson to get into their cruisers and drive away. They, too, were apparently headed for Helen's reception.
Munson drove away in the other direction. Back to Limerick, I assumed.
I lingered there in the cemetery for several more minutes. The streets were empty. The village of Southwick appeared deserted.
I looked at my watch. It was about ten after three. I figured the Goff brothers would feel obligated to linger at Helen's reception for at least an hour. To be on the safe side, I guessed I better finish what I had to do by four.
I followed the path down the hill and out of the cemetery. When I got to the main road, I turned right and headed back to the general store, where I'd left my car.
A CLOSED sign hung in the door of the store. Evidently the entire town had closed down for Farley's funeral.
I went around to the back. My car was the only one left in the lot. I unlocked it, took my new cell phone from the glove compartment, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. Then I locked up the car.
I eased around to the front of the store and looked up and down the main street. Not a single vehicle was on the move. Not a single person strolled on the sidewalks. Not a single light shone from the windows of the inn or the real estate office across the street.
Good.
I turned up the collar of my jacket against the chill. The rain had stopped about the time the minister bade us to go in peace, but the autumn air was damp and chilly, and the dark layer of clouds hung low and ominous overhead.
I walked quickly, and it took less than five minutes to get to the Goff brothers' garage.
The doors to the two bays were down. A CLOSED sign hung in the door to the office. No lights shone from any of the windows of the garage, or from the windows of the apartment on the second floor, either.
From somewhere deep inside the building, I heard muffled voices and music. I guessed the Goffs had left their radio turned on.
So far, I was quite certain no one had seen me.
I walked slowly around the side of the building. I didn't know what I was looking for. I wanted to be able to recognize it, whatever it was, when I saw it, so I tried to keep my mind empty of expectations and alert for anomalies. I wandered through the backyard and around to the big side lot where several dozen vehicles in varying states of disrepair huddled together. Smashed up rusty wrecks, most of them, although a number of them seemed to be in pretty fair shape.
Then I stopped. A newish black Volkswagen Beetle three rows back had caught my eye.
I stared at it. Something was out of place. An anomaly indeed.
What the hell was it?
It took me a minute to figure out what I'd noticed.
The inspection sticker.
Many of the vehicles in the lot bore no license plates, including that Volkswagen. But they all had inspection stickers on the windshield.
The sticker on that Volkswagen was rectangular and had been stuck in the bottom corner of the windshield on the passenger side.
The inspection stickers on all the other vehicles in the Goffs' lot were square and had been affixed to the top middle of the windshield behind the rearview mirror.
I checked the car nearest me, a ten-year-old Ford Taurus. The square sticker behind the mirror had been issued by the state of New Hampshire.
All of the cars in that lot had square New Hampshire stickers behind the mirror.
All except the black Volkswagen.
I edged around the vehicles and stood beside the Volkswagen.
The rectangular inspection sticker in the bottom corner of the windshield had been issued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Albert Stoddard was from Massachusetts. He drove a Volkswagen Beetle.
Except Albert's beetle was green. This one was black.
I walked slowly around the car, looking carefully. And
across the top edge of the right-side taillight I saw what I was looking for.
across the top edge of the right-side taillight I saw what I was looking for.
A torn strip of masking tape.
I took out my car keys, knelt down, and scraped away some of the black paint from the bottom of the right rear fender.
Under that shiny black paint was a layer of green paint.
This was Albert's car.
I blew out a breath. Okay. Up to this moment, it had all been hypothetical, a tenuous connection between Albert Stoddard and the Goff brothers based on my discovery in the graveyard that the Goff men were brothers, or half brothers, of Bobby Gilman, and that Albert might have been with Bobby on the mountain that Columbus Day over thirty years ago when the blizzard blew in.
Now the connection was concrete. Albert's car was here, in the Goffs' yard. They had repainted it to conceal its identity.
If the Goffs knew where Albert's car was, it was reasonable to conclude that they knew where Albert was.
I looked at my watch. Twenty-five minutes to four.
I gave myself twenty more minutes. Then I'd walk back down the main street to my car where it was parked behind the general store, and I'd get the hell out of Southwick, New Hampshire, and let the cops deal with it.
Before finding Albert's VW, I'd figured that if Harris or Dub caught me wandering around their property, I could talk my way out of it. If they had nothing to hide, I had nothing to fear.
But now I knew they
did
have something to hide.
did
have something to hide.
Now, if they found me here â¦
I had no idea what they'd do. I didn't intend to be there to find out.
I had twenty minutes. I'd leave no later than five minutes to four. Assuming the Goff men lingered a courteous hour at Helen's reception, that would give me a cushion. I didn't want them even to see me walking along the sidewalk on the way back to my car from their place.
I remembered my cell phone.
I took it from my pocket, turned it on, and pecked out the number for Roger Horowitz's cell phone. He had given me this number a couple of years earlier. “Don't use it,” he'd said. “If you do, it had better be good.”
This, I figured, was good. This was what Horowitz wanted. This, if I wasn't mistaken, was about the murder of Gordon Cahill.
I pressed SEND and held the phone to my ear.
It bleated weakly, two or three pitiful little hesitant rings. Then nothing.
I looked at the little screen on the phone.
“Call failed,” it said.
Great.
I stuck the phone back in my pocket. So much for modern technology. The damn thing worked fine when I didn't need it.
Okay. Twenty minutes.
Think, Coyne.
Behind the Goffs' house at the rear of the yard on the edge of the woods I remembered seeing an old aluminum house trailer. I went to it.
It was small as mobile homes go, no more than twelve feet long, with rounded corners that were supposed to give it an aerodynamic look. Unlike most so-called mobile homes, this
model had been designed actually to be towed behind a vehicle.
model had been designed actually to be towed behind a vehicle.
Now it was up on cement blocks, and weeds and vines and briars grew against it.
I walked around the trailer. There were two small windows and a door on the side facing the woods. I tiptoed up and peered into the windows, but they were so dirty I couldn't see anything inside except shadows.
I tried the door. It wasn't locked, but the latch was rusty, and it took my full strength to turn it.
The door swung open with a loud metal-against-metal squeal.
I poked my head inside.
There came the quick, soft scurry of panicky rodents. Otherwise it was dead quiet.
I stepped inside. In the dim light that filtered in through the filthy little windows and half-open door, I could see that nobody had been in there for a long time. A thick layer of dust and a liberal scattering of mouse turds and scraps of half-chewed cardboard were scattered over the linoleum floor and the cheap built-in kitchen table and the Formica counters and the two narrow pull-down beds.
It smelled of must and dust and rot and abandonment.
“Albert?” I said softly. “Anybody here?”
Nobody answered.
I opened the cabinet doors, and the door to the tiny bathroom, and the doors to the two narrow closets.
Nothing.
I stepped outside into the Goffs' back yard.
I couldn't tell whether I was disappointed or relieved. I wasn't sure what I'd hoped to find.
A clue, at least.
Albert Stoddard's dead body at most.
Whatever it was, I hadn't found it.
Now what?
I went back to the house and walked slowly all the way around it. The cellar windows were boarded from the inside with plywood. The entire first floor of the building was occupied by the two bays with the auto lifts and the office to the garage. Two doors opened into the office areaâone from the front, and one in back. I tried them both. Both were locked.
The radio or television that the Goff brothers had left on was loudest and clearest in the back right corner of the house.
I stopped there and pressed my ear against the wall. I decided it was a television. It sounded as if it was in the cellar.
Why the hell did they have a TV in the cellar?
Okay, maybe it was a finished basement. Maybe they had a den or a bar or a pool table down there, although Dub and Harris Goff somehow didn't strike me as the kind of guys who'd have a pine-paneled rec room in their basement.
I kept my ear against the wall, and in a moment when there was silence from the television, I thought I heard a different sound.
A human sound. A moan, or a groan, or a weak voice.
Then the television began blaring again.
My imagination? Maybe I'd heard the hum of an oil burner kicking on.
I listened some more, but all I heard were television noises.
Up to now I hadn't done anything wrong.
Now, I decided, I was going to break and enter Dub and Harris Goff's house.
If I was wrong, and if I got caught, I'd have some explaining to do.
What the hell. I was a lawyer. We lawyers are good at thinking on our feet.
Good at lying, some people would say.
An old wooden bulkhead was attached to the back of the house. I lifted one of the heavy doors and stepped down. When I pulled it shut behind me, the darkness was almost complete. I carefully felt my way down the five or six wooden steps that stopped at a metal door. I felt for the knob and tried it. It wasn't locked. I pushed it open and stepped into the cellar.
It was pitch-dark. I fumbled around on the inside wall, found a light switch, and flicked it on.
Four bare bulbs, no more than forty-watters, cast dim yellowish light into a shadowy, dank, cobwebby basement. It had a low unfinished ceiling, fieldstone walls, and a dirt floor. It was full of junkâold furniture, piles of lumber, a bench jumbled with hand tools, shelves loaded with paint cans, stacks of cardboard boxes, a disassembled motorcycle.
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