Speak Ill of the Living (7 page)

Chapter 8

Eddie sat on the bumper of a red fire-pumper truck and sipped bottled water. The scene smelled of diesel exhaust from the six idling emergency trucks, and charred vinyl and seat foam, scorched paint and wiring, and burnt rubber from the Chevette, no longer Mighty.

Detective Orr was red-faced, as hot as the car.

“Tell me again, Eddie,” she demanded, “why you drove through a public park, nearly running over two Lowell High kids on their first date?”

“I missed them by ten feet.”

“That was an hour ago. What have you been doing all this time?”

Eddie went through the story again, slowly this time, with all the details. “And then when I got down into the manhole, I tried to call the police station, but my cell phone couldn't get a signal underground.”

She looked skeptical.

“It was the first chance I had to call,” Eddie insisted. “It's hard to dial and drive for your life at the same time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So then I had to feel my way through a conduit pipe on hands and knees for, oh, maybe two hundred feet, until I found another manhole and was able to climb up. It's slow down there, believe me—if you're not bumping your head into junction boxes, you're worried about getting electrocuted any second.”

She looked to her notebook. “This van—did you get the license number?”

“No Lucy—I mean,
detective
, uh…” Eddie thought back and pictured the van. “The front plate had no light, now that I think about it, and I never saw the back of the van clearly. But I'm pretty sure it was cream colored, maybe a Ford. Hmm, I guess I'm not sure of that.” Eddie was embarrassed; as a journalist he was supposed to be a professional observer.

The fire department had arrived by the time Eddie had gotten out of the manhole. They had quickly doused the visible fire in the car. Several firefighters had torn out what was left of the seats, to drown the tricky fire that could smolder in the flammable foam cushioning. Police investigators were taking photographs and measurements. Two officers bagged the spent road flare.

Eddie sighed. The Mighty Chevette was his only transportation. It had been an old junker, but Eddie had respected how the car carried on long past retirement age. He felt as if an old friend had died. He tried not to think about his own close call, but the smoldering car and the smoke stench in his clothing kept reminding him. Eddie's legs went rubbery every time he thought about his escape, and he felt a tingle of nervous electricity in his gut.

A young firefighter, barely eighteen, brought Eddie the Chevette's steering wheel. “We saved this,” he said. “Thought you might like to have it.”

The firefighter had a tiny hint of smile on his face, and Eddie wasn't sure if he was being ironic. No matter—Eddie wanted the memento. “Thanks. I'll take it.”

Detective Orr had a few more questions, about the route Eddie had driven, the speeds the chase had reached. Eddie answered honestly and as fully as he could.

When Orr was finished, she snapped her little cop notebook shut and wrinkled her brow at Eddie. She scolded, “Where did you get this knack for nearly getting killed?” It was a question from a friend, not an investigating officer.

Eddie held up the steering wheel and shrugged. There was no answer.

“I need ten more minutes here,” she said, “and then I'll drop you off at your house.”

Detective Orr walked away. Eddie sipped more water. He had been calm the entire time he had been crawling through the electrical tunnel, and when he was being interviewed by police. But now, as he looked at his charred car and smelled the poison smoke, his hands were trembling.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. With great difficulty, he retrieved it and checked the caller ID number. Local, but not a number he recognized.

“Hello?”

“Professor Bourque?” The idling fire trucks were noisy and Eddie wasn't sure he had heard what he thought he heard. He looked around, to see if anyone was playing a joke on him. “This is Eddie Bourque.”

“Ay, Professor! It's Ryan, from Intro to Journalism, man! I have a question about the mid-term assignments.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell, Ryan. Can this wait? You caught me at a bad time.”

“I can see that, that's why I'm calling. What did you have? Some kind of accident? The TV news says you drove through the park. That sounds fucked up to me, man, because you don't
sound
drunk.”

Eddie stood. “I am
not
drunk.” He looked around. “Where are you?”

“At home. You're on TV. I'm looking right at you.”

That's when Eddie saw the news van parked down the street.

When did Channel Eight get here?

Closer to the action, in the shadows near the sidewalk, he saw that a camera crew had set up a tripod. The camera was pointed straight at Eddie. His stomach tightened. He pictured the driver from the van at home, relaxing after a good night of killing, maybe eating crackers and wombat pâté, or sipping blood from a skull—whatever—and watching Eddie Bourque on the eleven o'clock news.

Now he knows he failed. He knows I escaped.

He had no idea what the driver looked like. In Eddie's imagination, the man went to bed in a ski mask. Eddie stared into the camera; he couldn't look away. He felt a paralyzing anxiety, as if his insides had suddenly liquefied and gushed out his feet, leaving a hollow tin replica of himself.

“Oh, dude! You're looking right at me,” Ryan said. He laughed. “That's creepy. Whoops! Now you're gone. They're onto the sports. Awwww! The Red Sox got
bombed
tonight.”

“So why are you calling, Ryan?”

“Well, dude—professor!—I was thinking that you might have undergone some sort of trauma in this car accident, and if that was the case—I mean, like, we
hope
it's not, but
if
—would the mid-term papers still be due next week?”

Eddie watched the TV news crew break down their equipment. “They're due,” he said.

“Aw man, it's just that I'm having a hard time finding a public meeting to go to, and, um…”

“Just find a city board dealing with a topic that interests you and you'll be fine.”

“That's the problem, professor!” Ryan said. “The only thing that interests me is
music
.”

“Try the liquor licensing board,” Eddie suggested. “Nightclubs go before those commissions to get permits for live music. Happens all the time.”

“You mean government controls our nightclubs?”

“Find the conflict,” Eddie told him, thinking about the conflict he had just escaped. “And tell both sides.”

***

The next morning, General VonKatz planted his hind legs on Eddie's forehead, boosting himself to get a better look at whatever he was meowing at out the bedroom window.

Eddie had a feeling he would be sore from the car crash, and that it would hurt to move. He stayed still in his bed and moved only his eyelids. The room was dim; it was too early to get up. A gray tail swished above his face.

“General,” he mumbled, “the human head is not a stepladder.”

Eddie heard a rustling from the front yard.

“Stupid raccoons.”

The General soon lost interest in whatever was outside, and jumped down.

“Thank you.”

Eddie woke sore a few hours later, like a runningback the day after a punishing game. His chest hurt from where he had slammed against the seatbelt. He swallowed five ibuprofen, set the coffee maker to brew his darkest Italian roast, and went out in a t-shirt and boxers for his
Washington Post
.

The air was cool and a steady breeze bent the top branches of his neighbor's sugar maples. Again, the paper was a mess, and Eddie wondered if raccoons could be destroying his morning read. He picked up what he could find of his
Post
and brought it inside.

At least I'm still around to read it.

He discovered a can of mixed grill in gravy in the cupboard, emptied it on a paper plate and set it on the kitchen table for General VonKatz. Usually, the cat ate on the floor, but what did it matter today? During the minutes Eddie had been trapped in the burning Chevette, he had thought he'd never see the General again.

Today's newspaper scavenger hunt had yielded sports, lifestyle and the main news section. The metro and classified were missing. He daydreamed through the paper, distracted by the memory of the man in the ski mask. Who was he? And why had he come after Eddie Bourque with such ferocity? Was it a case of mistaken identity?

Who the hell did he think I am?

Halfway through Eddie's second cup of coffee, he noticed the General staring at the front door. A second later came a lyrical knock, to the rhythm of “Shave and a Haircut—Two Bits!”

Eddie pattered in bare feet to the window, in time to see a yellow taxi drive off. He went to the door and opened it.

The woman on the top step was maybe forty-five, slim and attractive, but a little gray in the face, as if she had lived a hard life. She had high and prominent cheekbones, and dark green eyes outlined in black pencil and highlighted with aqua-green smears on the upper lids. Gray streaks ran through her wheat-colored hair, which was long and straight, hanging halfway to her waist. She wore new blue jeans, a wide black belt, cream-colored high-heeled shoes, and an orange tiger-striped blouse. A pink duffle bag was at her feet.

“Hi there!” she squealed in a cartoon voice an octave higher than Eddie might have expected from her tired, serious face. “I'm Bobbi.” She looked Eddie up and down. “Oooh! Look at them knees—bony as a pony! Does that run in the family? Dear gawd, I hope not.” She laughed.

Eddie looked down at his knees, and then squinted at the woman. “Huh? Wha?”

The woman stuck her hands on her hips and gave him an exaggerated look of disbelief.

“Eddie, it's me—Bobbi, your sister-in-law,” she said. She held up her left hand and wiggled the digits. There was a gold wedding band on her ring finger. “I'm your brother Henry's wife—we got hitched last spring.” She feigned a nasally, upper-class accent, “It was the
most
superb ceremony. The warden let me bring shrimp cocktail, at least on my side of the glass.” She laughed again.

“Henry mentioned he was recently married,” Eddie said, more to himself than to her.

“Of course he did, hon.” She tilted her head and batted her long black eyelashes. “I'm probably all he ever talks about.”

“Uhhh…”

She laughed. “Kidding you, Eddie—all your big brother talks about is chess. And, of course, he wants to know where I've gone recently that I can describe for him. He says you're real good at that, too.”

Eddie nodded, taking it in, trying to understand what she was doing here. “Yes. Sure.”

She stood on tiptoes and peeked over his shoulder into the house. “Isn't this about the time you should invite me in? We are
family
, after all.”

Chapter 9

The woman who said her name was Bobbi Anderson Nichols Bourque didn't drink coffee. But if coffee was all Eddie had—he checked the cabinets, it was all that he had—she would like it mixed fifty-fifty with milk, and eight sugars. To Eddie, the concoction was a sin against nature, but he counted out the sweetener and fixed it the way she wanted.

Bobbi didn't need the caffeine. Seated at Eddie's kitchen table, she launched into a breathless story about a man she saw on the bus from New York. “He had on that kinda hat, you know the kind, with the floppy brim and the fish hooks coming outta the sides,” she said, creating the hat in pantomime above her head.

“Uh, a fishing hat?”

She squealed, “Yeah, yeah! Let me get to that part!”

Eddie, feeling self-conscious, put on khaki slacks as she shouted the story from the kitchen. The point of the story, near as Eddie could figure over the next fifteen minutes, seemed to be that the man had worn a fishing hat on the bus.

The General watched the diversion from the morning routine from under the coffee table.

Eddie was patient during the man in the hat story, and he gleaned some useful information from her digressions. He learned that Bobbi was a divorcee living three miles from Henry Bourque's federal prison in upstate New York. She answered the phones at an advertising agency by day, and tended bar at night. She had met Henry through the mail, somehow, became his pen pal, and then quickly his wife.

When her story was finally over, Eddie interjected, “Did you come all the way to Lowell just to see me?”

She gave a devilish grin and lifted one eyebrow. “Now you
are
a treat, Edward, but I'm here for my own benefit—and my husband's, of course.”

“I don't understand.”

“Your brother asked me a long time ago to look up your byline every day.”

“He did?”

“When I saw your story on that medical examiner who lynched himself, I knew I had to come.”

“Dr. Crane?”

“That's the one.” She shifted at the table and leaned closer. Her makeup was meticulous, like it had been applied by Michelangelo. “I read on the Internet that you found him swinging in the breeze.” She caught herself. “That's an expression, I don't mean to sound cruel, though I am furious at that so-called doctor.”

Eddie looked into his coffee mug. “It wasn't breezy where I found him.”

She put her hand on his. Her nails were painted pink. “It's terrible, I'm sure. Suicide always is.” She patted his hand. “It
was
suicide, wasn't it?”

Eddie shrugged, distracted by the memory. “That's what it looked like to me, though I got a cop friend who suspects otherwise.”

She put her hand to her lips. “Oh…why would the police suspect
that
?”

Eddie bristled. Had he said too much? He barely knew this woman. She didn't
feel
like his sister-in-law any more than Henry Bourque had felt like a brother. “I dunno,” he said, trying to shift the subject. “What about Crane's death made you come here?”

Bobbi tensed her shoulders and tapped her fists on the table. “He killed himself over his mistakes in that kidnapping case, the one with that man from the bank,” she said.

“Roger Lime.”

“Yes! Did you realize this doctor was also the state's lead witness against your brother?” Her voice cracked.

“I did, but—”

“And it was Crane's testimony that got Henry convicted!”

“—that was more than thirty years ago.”

She leaned back and looked into space, eyes glassy and roaming. For a moment, Eddie thought she might cry, but she collected herself and explained softly, “I didn't expect to get married a third time, and certainly not to a convict with a life sentence.” She smiled. “Stupid me, huh?”

Eddie smiled back, gently.

She looked him in the eye. “I've known in my heart since I set eyes on Henry Bourque that he is an innocent man.”

Eddie's stomach tightened. He had briefly entertained the same fantasy.

“You saw him in prison—he told me all about it,” she said. “Did you see it too? The innocence? The golden heart under that shaved skull and that big ol' scar?”

Eddie stammered. “I can't…well… ” He slumped. “Henry and I had a weird conversation.”

She laughed. “That boy's mind does tend to skip around,” she said, brightly. “I thought he was crazy before I figured out he was just an ordinary genius.”

Her laugh was catchy. Eddie chuckled. It seemed that he wasn't the only one unnerved by conversation with Henry. At least Bobbi had gotten used to it.

“He's very proud of you,” she said.

“Huh? How? Proud of what?”

“Your career as a newsman. When you worked in Vermont, Henry subscribed to your paper by mail. And when you came back to Lowell to work for—what was it?
The Daily Empire
?—he wrote your old newspaper to find out where you went.”

Eddie was stunned. He put his hands to his head. “I had no idea.”

“It's tough for him now because you're a freelancer and your work appears all over. Since I've known your brother, I've been searching the Internet every day for your stories, so I can print them out and mail them to him. I happened to see your story on the kidnapping case in my hometown newspaper. Henry was very interested in that piece.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, distracted again and re-analyzing his conversation with Henry over the Roger Lime case. Another thought struck Eddie and he blurted, “Wait! You've never said why you came all the way out here.”

She pressed her lips together and studied him for a moment. “Your brother,” she said in a stern voice, “is a mule head.”

“Excuse me?”

Bobbi wrinkled her nose. “Mister Mule, I call him—he's so obstinate. He drives me crazy. I've
told
him that this information coming out about Dr. Crane could overturn his conviction and get him out of that jail, so we can have a normal life.”

“And he disagrees?”

“He doesn't think it will do any good. He says, ‘What can
we
do about it?' Well, I've been studying the law. I told him we need a lawyer, a real shark, with a briefcase full of sharp teeth. And we need an investigator to collect some ammunition for the court brief.” She threw up her hands. “But Henry won't hear of it.”

“Is that why you came here?” Eddie said, still not following her reasoning.

“I got a few days off work and I came to Lowell to do some investigating of my own,” she said. “And I thought you could point me to a place to start.” She trailed off, then added: “But, most importantly, I thought you could help me convince your brother that it's worth a try. Maybe he'll listen to you, and together we can talk him into fighting for his freedom.”

Eddie thought about what she was asking. What could
he
do? He didn't have a clue where she might start an investigation of a thirty-year-old double homicide. And he couldn't imagine why Henry would listen to the little brother he just met.

But if she was right? What if Henry was innocent?

He sighed.

She's on a fool's errand.

“I dunno, Bobbi—”

“Stop right there,” she said. “I'm going to stop you before you say no, and we'll continue this conversation later, with no hard feelings. Okay?”

Eddie nodded. “Fair enough.”

Bobbi grinned, then glanced to the pink duffle on the floor. “So,” she said, “which room is mine?”

Eddie nearly gagged on his java. His eyes darted around the three-room cottage. “Ummm…”

She exploded into laughter. “Gullible,” she howled. “So gullible, just like your brother—it's a precious quality in you Bourque boys.” She laughed until Eddie was laughing, too, and then she said, “Maybe you can recommend me a good hotel?”

“I'll drive you downtown,” he offered.

Seeing the Chevette's steering wheel on the kitchen counter, Eddie frowned, and then corrected himself, “I mean, I'll call you a cab.”

***

She waved at Eddie from the taxi.

Eddie waved back from the window.

Two weeks ago, he wasn't sure if Henry Bourque knew that Eddie had been born. And now? A sister-in-law from out-of-town just barged in unannounced, threw a sack of problems over Eddie's shoulders and bummed ten bucks off him for the cab.

Christ, she acted just like family.

He was still shocked that Henry had been watching him for years through his work. He couldn't help thinking of the possibility Bobbi had presented.

Eddie got his chess set from the closet and unfolded the black and white board on the coffee table. It was a cheap set; two bucks at a flea market. The wooden pieces—half black, half unpainted—were scratched and chipped. Some had bite marks from a previous owner's puppy, or maybe from a toddler. Eddie liked that the pieces were oversized; they barely fit in their squares.

Henry preferred the white pieces, because the white side moved first. Eddie spun the board so the white pieces were in front of him.

How would Henry open a game?

Aggressive?
Like his in-your-face personality.

Or conservative?
To lull Eddie into a trap.

Eddie leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin on his fists, and studied the board.

Henry would be unconventional; Eddie had no doubt.

He grabbed a knight and jumped it over the picket line of pawns.

Eddie spun the board and looked over the black pieces. He imagined Henry sitting across from him, grinning, daring Eddie to match his opening move.

The phone rang.

Eddie lingered a moment at the board, and then answered the call. Springer from the Associated Press was on the line. “You working today?” he asked.

“I got transportation issues.”

“That piece-of-shit Chevette in the shop?”

“In the funeral parlor.”

“Oh, so then you
really
need the work.”

Eddie laughed. He felt too distracted to report and write a news story, but Springer was right; Eddie needed the job. “Gimme something easy,” he said.

“Roger Lime is back in pictures. The kidnappers have released another photo, apparently taken in the past couple days. The cops are offering the same deal as before—they share, we publish. You got the sources—your story was great last time.”

“Where and when?”

“At the cop shop in one hour. Can you make it by then?”

The police station was a little better than a mile walk from Eddie's house. The sky had turned overcast and rain looked inevitable. He sighed. “Yeah, I'll make it.”