by Linda Barnes
“How was I to know what papers Jason might have kept, linking him to me? You forced my hand that time, too; I never thought you’d get that far. Even when I overheard you say you were going up to Davis, I never dreamed. But when I saw you hurry out of his apartment, hurry out empty-handed, I had to act quickly. I improvised. That’s where most criminals fail. They have no imagination, and they’re not willing to take the necessary steps. I’m different. I’m special. Don’t think I’ll hesitate to kill you.”
Full-blown megalomania, Spraggue thought. With God knows what kind of delusions.
“Hey, Phil,” he said in a stage whisper. “Have you been listening to yourself lately? Giggling and gibbering. Out of control. I doubt you could stop killing if you wanted to. After me, who? You want the list of everybody else who might be on to you?”
“Who knows?” Leider screamed.
“Or maybe you’d rather tell me about that boy you killed.… Why would Enright call that a sex murder?”
“That was part of the plan,” Phil said defiantly. “They’d know it wasn’t Kate Holloway, wasn’t a woman.”
“But they already knew it couldn’t be Kate. She was in jail, Phil. Remember? What kind of movies do you show at your house, Phil? Family-night stuff? Did you help Lenny out with his photography?”
The bullet’s ricochet came closer than Spraggue liked, but he was certain he’d found another wound to probe. Four bullets gone.
“You read about those crazy perverts, Phil? What happens to them when they get caught? Tough life in the state prison. The guards won’t dare put you in with the general population because of what they’d do to you, Phil.”
“Shut up! You hear me? Shut up!”
Spraggue’s fingers worked at his key ring. He removed the corkscrew and tossed it against a distant steel tank. Leider whirled and fired twice. Six shots gone. Was that enough? The uniformed Boston police, he knew, carried the S&W six-shot revolver. Had he actually heard seven shots before Leider changed the clip? Had his imagination or an echo played him false?
“Bad shot, loony,” he yelled. “Why don’t you tell me about the boy? About what you did before you strangled him? Did you bring him here, Phil?” What else could he throw? Not the car keys. If Leider hadn’t put the station wagon out of commission, he’d need it. If he got away. He hurled his tiny flashlight in the opposite direction and again it drew fire.
Where the hell was old Harry Bascomb when you needed him? If he’d counted right, if the pistol held seven slugs, then Leider was either out of ammunition or inserting a fresh magazine. Spraggue decided not to take any chances.
He let out a heartrending groan, just the kind of sound Dave, the actor, made when he died on the trolley tracks at Park Street Station.
The catwalk swayed. Leider hurried over to the tank he’d fired upon a moment ago, his flashbeam searching for Spraggue’s prostrate body. Spraggue was shocked by the man’s appearance. Saliva dripped from one corner of his open mouth. His face was a livid, chalky white.
Spraggue shut off the tape recorder, removed the cassette, jammed it into a niche under the tank. He hefted the now empty tape recorder, measured the distance between himself and the outline of Leider’s belly. He was almost close enough, but only a major league catcher could make a throw like that from his knees.
Supporting his weight against the tank, Spraggue straightened up, aimed at the light, heaved the recorder up and to the right, dead on target.
Leider saw it coming late, sidestepped, flailed wildly. Spraggue hit the floor, just in case the fat man had managed to reload.
Leider stumbled, tottered against the flimsy rotten guardrail. Screamed.
For an instant, Spraggue thought Leider might regain his balance.
He plummeted awkwardly, landed with a sickening thud, one leg at a horribly unnatural angle, his gun arm trapped under his massive chest.
As Spraggue scrambled to a sitting position, a blaring voice filled the room: Bradley’s voice, dehumanized, amplified a thousand times.
“Come out with your hands up,” the deputy cried.
Leider, a twisted mass on the wooden floor, groaned softly, struggled to move, failed.
By the time the cops found Spraggue, he was twisting his shirt around his swollen ankle, laughing to himself. “Come out with your hands up!” he repeated delightedly. Maybe the dialogue in Still Waters was better than he’d thought.
27
“Ten minutes!” shrieked the elegantly tanned production assistant, a brightly garbed blonde whose enthusiasm proclaimed her a novice. Spraggue tried not to limp as he walked wearily off the set. He pulled the letter out of his pocket, slit the envelope with Harry Bascomb’s nasty little prop-knife. Settling himself gingerly in a softly upholstered chair, he rested his bandaged ankle on a stool. “Keep off that foot as much as possible,” the doctor had warned. Sure.
He rubbed a hand across his forehead. The pressures of playing tough guy with three cracked ribs, a sprained ankle, and assorted bruised and tender spots all over his body were starting to get him down. The taped ribs itched like crazy. He stifled the impulse to scratch. Hell, old Harry Bascomb would have taken those steps with hardly a scrape off his hard-boiled flesh.
The envelope was square, marked “Photos—Do Not Bend.”
“Michael, dear.” Kate’s inverted greeting was as standard as her spiky printing and her purple-ink-on-lavender-stationery combination. Her correspondence needed no signature, much less a return address.
Well, Howard’s agreed to come back, [the letter began]. I’m giving him a raise. He didn’t ask for one; he wouldn’t. But I’m sure you’ll agree that he deserves one in his own convoluted way. If he hadn’t finally gone to the cops with those pages from Lenny’s cellar book, I shudder to think what might have happened to you …
God, Howard must have been furious when I hired Lenny! Imagine our bumbling Howard actually breaking into Lenny’s place, bent on revenge! And, finding no one home, stealing those pages from Lenny’s cellar book!
Of course, the more I brood on it, the more likely it seems. Howard just wanted to improve himself by studying Lenny’s secrets. (I will try not to tell him that it was never his wine-making skill that I doubted, just his personality that I can’t stand. Tactful of me, don’t you think?)
Wasn’t it brave of Howard to go to the police? Belatedly brave, I’ll admit. But then he thought he’d get thrown in the clink himself, for stealing Lenny’s book. Besides, it took him a while to figure out Lenny’s added notes on Leider’s ’75 Private Reserve. (And a while longer to get up his nerve. Thank God, he had enough sense to go straight to Bradley. Enright would have terrified him to death.) Anyway, Howard’s timing certainly worked out well for you. But then you always had the luck.
Your tape recording turned out to be a gem. You, of course, came through loud and clear; Leider’s voice is very faint, but definitely understandable. His attorney is making “inadmissible evidence” noises, but no one pays him any mind.
One sad thing: I did as you asked, hung around and played mother hen when Carol Lawton came up to identify her Mark. Poor kid … She went back to stay with her parents. She’s young. But I wonder if you can ever get over something like that …
Spraggue, about those photos … A confession: I haven’t turned them over to the police. Mostly because I’d hate to corrupt Enright’s beastly mind any further. I mean, I can’t stand half those women, but I just can’t turn the stuff in. Lenny was a worse toad than I thought.
Mary Ellen Martinson was well represented. (Well endowed, too.) She must have been looking for Lenny’s dirty picture collection when she called on Grady. Further confession: I burned the photos and the negatives. So that you won’t just have to take my word for the artistry involved, I’ve sent you one sample—of a lady who I’m sure wouldn’t mind.
So all’s well, et cetera, darling. My “Mr. Baxter” is fine, but I have that “he’s going-back-to-his-wife-for-the-children’s-sake” feeling. The cr
ush is slowly winding down. Both Howard and I have hopes of an outstanding vintage.
Oh, I bought you a present. An entire case of Leider’s ’75 Private Reserve Cabernet. The real McCoy. According to George Martinson, it’ll drink superbly around the year 2000. Imagine: you’ll be fifty-three, with just a touch of gray at your temples; I, a mere child of fifty-one. Do you suppose we’ll be settled, solid citizens at the turn of the century, our children already in their teens? Will a dignified middle age creep up on us or will we fall into bed exhausted after one more rip-roaring battle? Do you suppose those mythical children might be ours, yours and mine?
There was a sloping capital K for a signature, another Holloway trademark. And a postscript.
This should cheer you up: Enright was absolutely furious that Bradley made the arrest. A promotion is definitely in order. Don’t you think Brad is a very attractive man?
Spraggue crumpled the note.
The envelope was stiff. He pulled out a thin packet, wrapped in brown paper, glanced fleetingly around the room: No one was watching.
No trouble identifying the model, even though the black-and-white print didn’t do justice to that hair. The background clicked only after the first few minutes: that deep maroon sofa, the fat gray cushions … Part of the blackmail: Lenny got to use Leider’s house for his off-beat entertainment.
Spraggue thought back to the evening of Leider’s tasting, to Grady’s blatant overtures in that same room. Had Phil been behind a camera, waiting to click some blackmail shots of his own? Had Grady known, been instructed? Was that the reason for her abrupt amorousness?
The sudden hum in the air told him a presence had entered even before the heavy steel doors banged shut. A head honcho; the whispers swelled like a spring breeze. The producer, maybe. Spraggue struggled to his feet.
Dear Lord.
Spraggue stared down at the nude photo, up at the clothed original.
She’d sure dressed for the occasion. Her jeans were the narrowest he’d seen in a city full of fashion-conscious asses. The pale pink shirt, frilled at the wrists, slit almost to the waist, did wonders—not the least of which was that it set that incredible hair on fire. Spraggue’s mouth shaped itself automatically into a whistle-O.
Grady posed on her stilt heels, did a great bewildered look-around, murmured into an entranced focus puller’s ear.
The poor guy hung on her words as if he were tuned into the last out of the last game of the World Series, turned and pointed in Spraggue’s direction. Spraggue shoved the photo quickly in his pocket, got a welcoming smile together on his face. The director was already hurrying over, prancing, practically drooling.
“Michael!” Grady’s voice was great, too: warm and low and sexy as hell. “I finally found you.” Spraggue held back on the applause, but what an audition! He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. Everod panted for an introduction.
A ripped-up ankle, itchy ribs, lousy scripts, and now Grady Fairfield, future star! Kate was right, he had all the luck.
“Places!” screamed the production assistant. Spraggue smiled down at Grady, saw her stretched out on Leider’s sofa, barely wearing that soft green dress.… Had she been following Leider’s orders? Posing for one of Lenny’s hidden cameras?
He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Michael Spraggue Mysteries
ONE
With sweaty fingers, Spraggue yanked a crumpled scrap of paper from the pocket of his running shorts. He didn’t have to read it; he knew it. Awkward block printing on dime-store stationery. Today’s date, in numerals and slashes, in the upper right-hand corner. CHESTNUT HILL RESERVOIR. Beneath it, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. Beneath that, 3 P.M. And at the bottom, the scrawled signature that took most of the sting out of the threat, A FRIEND INDEED.
Frowning, he shoved the note back in his pocket, glanced around hoping to get a glimpse of the author.
The scene would have been picture postcard stuff if not for all the ragtag runners. The reservoir’s shape could, have been fashioned by nature rather than bulldozer. Furled along an irregular rocky coast, the water seemed suspect—too perfect a blue, barely rippled by the mid-April breeze. If you ignored busy Beacon Street slicing through the middle, the grounds resembled those of an English country estate, with the tiny, boxlike gatehouses and support structures along the shore serving as outbuildings to the two ornate Chestnut Hill Pumping Stations.
Afternoon sunshine glinted off the surface of the pond and forced the runners to squint. Those who had come equipped with sun visors smugly pulled them down. Spraggue, lacking visor or sunglasses, momentarily shut his eyes, sun-struck, and stubbed his toe on a lurking rock. One more discomfort hardly seemed to matter.
Today’s most aggravating scenario, he thought, plodding determinedly onward, would encompass aching muscles—worse—a torn Achilles tendon, the direct result of pretending a thirty-five-year-old body could still move like an eighteen-year-old one. Blistered feet. One car towed from its dubious mooring in a zone prominently marked by No Parking signs—worse—held captive by the dread yellow Denver Boot, bane of Boston drivers. He tried to recall whether he had the requisite five unpaid parking tickets stuffed in the dash compartment. And to top it all off, the anonymous letter writer wouldn’t show.
The trail narrowed and changed from shin-splintering cement to a foot-mangling mixture of gravel and turf. A murderous incline made the fronts of his thighs shriek in protest, the backs of his thighs cringe in anticipation of the eventual decline.
The path swarmed with runners, atoning for training time lost to the freak April blizzard, chests emblazoned with the logos of sportswear manufacturers or the locales of popular road races: New York; Denver; Charleston; Falmouth; Eugene, Oregon. Fukuoka, Japan was represented by a slight, exuberant Oriental in spotless white running shorts. Through sun-dazzled eyes, the runners—despite their mismatched apparel and dirty sneakers—looked uniformly young, incredibly thin, disgustingly fit. Feeling like some creaky relic, Spraggue increased his pace. He’d have asked the attractive, bronzed woman running alongside him when they’d started letting babies run the Boston Marathon, if he’d thought he could summon sufficient breath to string together the ten or so necessary words. He knew that if he tried, he’d gasp like a salmon jerked out of a stream. He dug his balled fist into his right side, searching for the source of a gnawing ache.
Could the bronzed woman have composed the curious note, delivered it to Aunt Mary, the only person always able to contact him? Was that why she paced herself so steadily beside him? Even as he had the thought, she gulped in a deep breath, and sprinted ahead.
On the whole, he hoped his mysterious correspondent was a woman, a fascinating dark-eyed woman, with sculptured cheekbones and a ready, aching smile.
Didn’t any of these runners perspire?
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
To keep his mind off a right baby toe that felt like a swelling balloon, off the letter writer’s three o’clock deadline, he recited bits of As You Like It under his breath. Not his own lines, but those of the banished Duke Senior, words appropriate to the rustic surroundings. And he scrutinized the faces of approaching runners, chiding himself for paying greater attention to the females. It wasn’t that he believed the anonymous note to be a feminine invention, he admitted. It was pure loneliness, pure longing.
He considered the possible benefits of consoling himself with one of his female colleagues at the Harvard Rep. The exquisite, if predatory lady who played Celia to his Oliver, perhaps. Was there any hope for an honest relationship with a woman with whom he feigned falling in love four times a week in Act Four, scene three?
The ache in his side took a fierce bite out of his appendix and his calf muscles picked the same moment to shift from minor grievance to screaming alarm.
�
�Spraggue! Over here!”
The rumbling voice was unmistakable. He turned his head and saw Pete Collatos, dark hair plastered in ringlets against his skull, sprinting toward him. A terry-cloth band, circling his broad forehead, failed to keep the sweat from pouring down his swarthy face. Spraggue’s mouth split in a rueful grin. So much for the mystery woman. He tried to breathe normally. His lungs burned.
Collatos’ running companion, a strikingly familiar-looking man wearing last year’s ’81 Boston Marathon T-shirt, approached from the right and halted, jogging in place, breathing as softly and regularly as if he’d been relaxing in a lounge chair by the side of a crystal pool instead of racing hell for leather around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.
Collatos wiped his hand off on his shorts before offering it for a handshake. “I thought you were one of those lousy, good for nothing, half-hour-in-the-morning-if-it-doesn’t-rain runners. You gonna do the marathon this year?”
“No way.” Spraggue searched for a sign that he’d met up with his anonymous correspondent, decided not to mention the reason for his unusual afternoon run. Not yet. “How’s Boston’s finest?”
“Hang on to your hat; I’m not a cop anymore,” Collatos said. “Got laid off. Goddamn Proposition 2½.” The ex-cop smacked himself on the forehead with the flat of his palm, a gesture Spraggue remembered from countless nights in a sweltering telephone booth of an office at police headquarters, and turned to the man jogging impatiently at his side. “Excuse me. Sorry, Brian. Meet one of the snakes I had to deal with when I was a humble civil servant. Michael Spraggue—Senator Brian Donagher.”
That accounted for the overwhelming sense of familiarity. Spraggue mentally kicked himself for not tagging a name to the man earlier. But this Donagher looked much older than the brash upstart who’d run for U.S. Senate six years ago on a platform as liberal as that of any sixties Democrat and confounded all the pollsters by winning. He’d aged more than the time should have allowed. His hair looked darker than it did on television, on his ubiquitous campaign posters. His blue eyes, twinkling out of a nest of fine lines that belied his youthful physique, seemed just as frank, his face as gaunt.