by Linda Barnes
Spraggue ran his finger down the worn page. L. DiBennedetto was listed as a property owner in the North End, a property owner whose buildings seemed to have had a marked attraction for spontaneous combustion.
“I haven’t gotten to the financial reports yet, Mary,” Spraggue said. “How did Donagher come up with the money to afford his original campaign?”
“The same old tune,” Mary said. “A wealthy wife.”
“Oh, Lord,” Spraggue said under his breath, and then loudly, “Get Heineman out of his office and keep him here. And then call the police. Tell Hurley, no one but Hurley, to meet me at Donagher’s. Fast.”
THIRTY-FIVE
When Spraggue jerked the car door open, Sharon scuttled past him, barefoot, and scrambled into the passenger seat.
“I’m going with you,” she said. “I won’t be any trouble. There’s no point in telling me to stay put.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “You’re terrific.”
“You’re wasting time.”
The house on Sparhawk Street was dark except for a rectangle of light in a third floor dormer and a glow from a side window on the first floor. The street seemed deserted. Spraggue parked right in front of the house, in a tow zone, wondered as he did so whether Donagher still had police protection, whether the so-called protection was slumbering as soundly as the rest of the silent neighbors. The wind groaned like a bow drawn across a cello’s lowest string; it made him shiver.
Sharon followed on her noiseless bare feet while he hurried up to the front door, and rapped sharply with a bronze, bull’s-head knocker, waited for a count of ten, rapped again. This time they heard reluctant footsteps pad across a wooden floor, heard a deep yawn as the door creaked open.
Eichenhorn blinked at them, started to say something, thought better of it, and began to close the door. Spraggue pushed against the wood and Eichenhorn, surprised, drew back. “Hey,” he said in an injured tone, “what the hell do you think you’re doing? I could call the police. Shoving your way in here in the middle of the night—”
“Where’s Mrs. Donagher?”
“Where’s—?” Eichenhorn shook his head in disbelief: “It’s—it’s past twelve o’clock. I suppose she’s sleeping. She gets up early with the kids. What do you care?”
“Half an hour ago she was talking on the phone. Is she upstairs? Is Donagher home?”
“Brian’s—he’s in his study. Wait—!”
Spraggue burst in through the doorway. The room was as calm as a still-life drawing. The senator glanced up from the armchair in the corner, dog-eared the page he was reading in a bound document, stuffed a pair of reading glasses into his pocket. He said nothing, but his look was one of gentle inquiry, first directed toward Spraggue, then at his outraged campaign manager, finally at Sharon.
“I have to see your wife,” Spraggue said.
“Oh, come now,” Donagher said. “No melodrama, please. No bursting into the house after midnight with threats. I’m tired. My wife is tired. She went to bed hours ago.”
“Did she?” Spraggue said, suddenly wary. “Wake her up.”
“Murray,” Donagher said. “I think you’d better call Captain Menlo.”
“The police should be on their way.”
The senator stood. “What is this all about? Who is this woman? What are you doing here at this time of—”
“It’s about your wife. I’d rather not accuse her when she’s not here to defend herself.”
“She doesn’t need any defense, as you put it. She’s not on trial.”
“All right,” Spraggue said. “Let’s talk about your wife. She’s had a secret all these years, maybe more than one secret. But at least one absolutely vital secret that she had to keep quiet. And you invited a man into your house who could have blown her whole life sky-high.”
“My wife—” Donagher began with indignant spluttering, regained control and continued with intense sarcasm. “Are you crazy? Lila? What secrets—”
“When you married her, you thought her name was Lila Bennett.”
Donagher nodded. His mouth moved but no words came out.
“It may be. She may have had it legally changed. But it was as L. Di Bennedetto that she inherited real estate all over Boston. And as L. Di Bennedetto she became part of a scam to raise real estate values and then burn that real estate down for the insurance.”
The senator took his reading glasses out of his pocket, started to put them on with shaky hands, changed his mind, and placed them absently on the end table near the chair.
“No one connected L. Di Bennedetto with Lila Bennett who was Lila Donagher,” Spraggue continued. “It happened years ago, when you were first married. There may not even be enough evidence for a criminal prosecution. But she was terrified that the facts would come out and be exposed in the press. Terrified that they might influence a judge when she filed for divorce, that they might make her, in the eyes of the law, an unfit mother, that she might lose the children—”
“She hasn’t filed for divorce, not yet—not until after the election. She promised—”
Spraggue’s eyes narrowed. “Senator, we have to talk to her, before the police arrive—”
“Have you told them any of this?”
“No.”
“Do you have to?”
“She killed Pete Collatos. Because he was putting the pieces together—”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Ask her.”
“Murray.” Donagher took four or five deep breaths before making the decision. He sat down, folded like a sail bereft of breeze. His head sank slowly to his hands and his call to his campaign manager was faint and muffled. “Ask Lila to come down here.”
Eichenhorn, puzzled, nodded. He took the stairs two at a time.
“Oh, God.” Donagher’s soft words exploded in a room so quiet the ticking clock sounded like a giant metronome. “I know I shouldn’t be thinking things like this, not now, but it will ruin me … I’ve worked so hard … I’ve done so much and there’s so much left to do. I’ve got a deskful of legislative proposals: tax reform, gun control … Things I’ve worked for my whole life. So much I could do—And now this. It will take everything away. I might as well withdraw from the Senate now, before the election. How can I justify going on? Lila will need me. The kids …”
Donagher let his head drop back into his hands. They waited long enough for the silence to get uncomfortable. Sharon sat on the sofa and folded her legs up under her. In profile, Spraggue realized how much she resembled her dead brother—not just in the dark coloring, the round forehead, the prominent chin. He’d seen that resolute defiance in other brown eyes than hers, in this very room, when Pete Collatos had told his old friend of his intention to catch the anonymous letter writer.
They heard Murray’s steps echo downstairs, twice as slowly as they’d gone up.
“She’s not in her room.” Eichenhorn said. “Or she’s not answering. The door’s locked.”
“Hurry up,” Spraggue was already in the hallway, pushing past Eichenhorn on his way to the stairs. “Do you have a key?”
“Lila!” Donagher hollered on his way up the stairs. He used the bannister to help himself negotiate a sharp turn at the landing and stopped outside a heavy oak door. “Lila!” No answer. “Murray,” he said urgently to the man who was trailing behind, “Go upstairs and make sure the kids don’t come down. Tell them it’s okay, but under no circumstances to come down. Then get back here.”
Spraggue said. “We’d better call an ambulance.”
“No. Please. She may just be asleep. She sleeps heavily … She may have forgotten to unlock the door. It might be stuck. She may—”
“You’re clutching at straws.”
“Please. Help me break the door down. If there’s any way to keep it quiet—I’m begging you.”
The two men put their shoulders against the door, backed up, thudded against the door.
“Let me kick it in,” Spraggue s
aid grimly.
“Can you?”
“I can try.”
Donagher stood back. The door quivered with the first kick, gave off a shower of splintering wood. The second kick knocked it wide.
“Oh my God,” Donagher mumbled.
Lila was dressed for a sleep much less permanent than the one she seemed to have achieved. Her nightgown was white, dotted with small pink roses. Her hair, brushed into a smooth, yellow silk curtain, partially hid her face. The smell in the air was alcohol and vomit. The pill bottle anchoring the sheet of paper to the bedside table was empty.
Donagher moved first. He snatched the note off the table, flinging the pill bottle on the floor. He kept repeating those three words—oh my God, oh my God—over and over.
“Call an ambulance,” Spraggue said.
Sharon was a foot from the bed, her hand on Lila Donagher’s motionless shoulder. “I’ll start CPR—” she began.
“No!” Donagher pushed her away with a force that made her stumble. “Don’t touch her. Leave her alone.”
“Is she dead?” Eichenhorn breathed, just outside the door.
“She will be if you don’t call an ambulance,” Spraggue said. “She will be if your boss doesn’t let us help her.”
“Murray,” Donagher said. “Don’t call. She’ll be okay. Get these people away from here. They’re trying to pull something political. If Lila gets carried out of here on a stretcher, it’s political suicide. We can bring her around ourselves. Black coffee. We’ll make her throw up, make her walk off whatever she took.”
Spraggue absorbed the tableau: the motionless, rag-doll form tossed across the king-sized bed; the senator, tousle-haired, wild-eyed, shielding her; Sharon, kneeling on the braided rug, searching for a way through Donagher’s defenses.
“Get away from her.” Donagher’s face was twisted, his voice an ugly snarl.
One minute everything made sense one way and the next minute everything had tilted and rearranged itself into a new pattern.
“Murray,” Spraggue said, his dead monotone more threatening than Donagher’s snarl. “What was the diet Donagher and Collatos went on two weeks before the marathon?”
Donagher froze.
“What the hell?” Eichenhorn said.
“Tell me if I have it right. And if I do, get an ambulance fast because Donagher killed Collatos and he’s trying to kill his wife. No cheese, right? No alcohol? Nothing rich in tyramine because tyramine reacts with Parnate. If Pete had eaten anything wrong the week before the marathon he might have died too soon and it wouldn’t have looked like Donagher was the target; it wouldn’t have thrown us off the scent, it wouldn’t have given Donagher a sympathy vote and all that publicity …”
“Brian,” Eichenhorn said and his voice was a plea, a plea for a denial that didn’t come.
“He’s trying to stall,” Spraggue said, “hoping that help will come too late—because if Lila dies, he can still blame it all on her. Go and call an ambulance!”
Eichenhorn, when he moved, walked as stiffly as an old man, stumbled down the corridor.
“No!” Donagher called after him. “Don’t call!” He lunged toward the doorway, but had to stop to keep Sharon away from the bed.
The doorbell rang.
THIRTY-SIX
The chiming bell echoed through the first floor, up the stairs, into the room where Lila Donagher lay motionless as a wax statue across the king-sized bed. It froze everyone in place: Eichenhorn in the corridor, shoving his gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, disbelief in the round ‘o’ of his mouth; Donagher, twisted, undecided whether to stop Murray or bar Sharon from the bed; Spraggue blocking the bedroom door.
“Answer it, Murray,” Spraggue said, moving a few steps inside the bedroom.
“No.” Donagher shouted. “It’s a trick. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Lila.”
“Get the door. They’ll break it down,” Spraggue warned.
The campaign manager came unstuck and moved haltingly toward the landing. The senator must have seen him as a greater threat than Sharon because he ran forward to stop him, into the space Spraggue had ceded. Closing in from behind, Spraggue grabbed Donagher’s gesturing right arm with both hands, at wrist and elbow, twisted it cruelly—up, behind the writhing politician’s back.
Donagher sagged as if he’d given up, kicked backward suddenly, landing a stinging blow on Spraggue’s shin, wrenched his arm free.
“She’s got a pulse!” Sharon shouted, bending over the still form on the bed.
Donagher struck first. The punch hit the fleshy part of Spraggue’s neck, cracked against his jaw. It made Spraggue stop thinking of Donagher as a respected senator gone mad, made him remember instead Pete Collatos cold on a stretcher, a house full of blackened memories.
The senator may have seen the change in Spraggue’s eyes. He dodged back toward the bed, tried to push Sharon away from his wife.
Spraggue seized the man by the shoulders, sent him crashing into the wall. Donagher slumped, clung to the wall. But he was stronger than he looked—quick, wiry, and crafty. When he turned, he came out punching.
Afterwards, Spraggue couldn’t remember what had happened. Rage blinded, deafened him, cut him off. The pulsebeat humming in his hears exploded into a roaring ocean of sound. In the rush of blows, some of Donagher’s must have connected, but he shook them off. Then Donagher was on the ground, his upturned face shocked and bloodied. Spraggue picked him up as if he were a stick of wood, buried his fist in the politician’s stomach.
“Stop it!”
Spraggue heard the words before he understood their significance. It sounded as if someone were shouting at him from down a long tunnel.
“Stop it!” Sharon was screaming in his ear, pounding on his shoulder. “You’ll kill him.”
Spraggue’s arms fell to his sides. Donagher sank to the floor, cradling his head, moaning.
Sharon stared at Spraggue for a long moment, ran back to Mrs. Donagher. “I’ll breathe for her until the ambulance comes.”
Spraggue bent down, seized the senator, spun him around, grabbed his arm in the hold that had set off the fracas, hauled the man to his feet.
“You’re breaking my arm—” Donagher struggled, his skin patchy, his breath coming in gasps.
“I’d like to break your neck,” Spraggue said in a voice so quiet it silenced him like a shot. “Pete worshipped you. He thought you were the best goddam thing that ever happened to him. And you told him to keep on running while you lay down and played possum, knowing he’d die.”
Eichenhorn raced down the steps. Spraggue’s progress, pushing the senator ahead of him, was a crawl by comparison. He didn’t want Donagher to trip, by accident or design. By the time they got downstairs, the front door was already ajar, the porch light blazing. Captain Hank Menlo loomed on the doorstep, a smaller uniformed cop behind him.
“Shut the door!” Spraggue said quickly, too late. The huge man and his shadow stepped over the sill. The uniformed attendant slammed the door and twisted home the locking bolt.
Donagher stopped struggling.
“Let him go,” Menlo ordered. Spraggue loosened his grip. “Do you want to prefer charges, Senator?”
“Officer,” Eichenhorn’s tenor practically squeaked. “Upstairs. Mrs. Donagher … she needs an ambulance …”
“About time, Menlo.” Donagher straightened his shirt, rubbed his arm. He had his voice back. His breathing was almost normal. He sounded as confident as he did on his promotional campaign radio spots, but the blood still oozed from a corner of his mouth. “There is a woman upstairs who joined this man in breaking into my house. Have your man bring her down here—and tell him to ignore anything else he might see. Only to bring that woman downstairs.”
Menlo nodded and the short, dark cop headed for the stairs. When Spraggue stepped out to challenge him, the cop patted his holster and looked questioningly at his boss. Menlo cracked a smile that had no humor in it. “Not yet,” he said.
> The cop bypassed Spraggue and bounded up the steps.
“Murray,” Donagher said calmly, “go into the kitchen and wait for me.”
“I can’t.… I … Mrs. Donagher …”
“You’ll do what I tell you,” Donagher said. “Now.”
Upstairs, a woman’s scream was cut short.
“Get an ambulance,” Spraggue said. “If Lila dies, she’s going to take the rap for all this.”
A flicker of understanding lit Menlo’s eyes. Spraggue could almost see the machinery turning—weighing, evaluating, stacking and restacking the chips. Then the captain motioned Donagher to his side, drew his revolver, and herded the other two men into the front room. “No phone in here? Good. Nobody leaves until I say so.” The rest of Menlo’s words were addressed to Donagher in a whisper too faint for Spraggue to catch.
Eichenhorn collapsed on the couch, removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes. Spraggue stood by the mantel, searched the room—first for an escape, then for some sort of weapon-regretted that he no longer carried a gun. The dark cop half carried, half dragged Sharon Collatos into the room, dumped her on the rug. She had angry tears in her eyes, the crimson mark of an open hand splayed across her face. The cop had bloody scratches down one cheek. He backed out of the room, quickly, warily, guarded the doorway with his hand poised above his holster.
Sharon shook off Spraggue’s hand when he tried to help her up.
After a long five minutes, Menlo reappeared, coughed. “The senator says that his wife wrote a letter before she took her life and that perhaps I’d better read it before I involve the authorities any further.”
“It’s too late for that—” Spraggue said.
“Exactly,” Donagher interrupted smoothly. “It’s too late for Lila; but it may not be too late to salvage something from this tragedy. That’s what I was explaining to Captain Menlo.”