ALSO BY STEPHANIE GAYLE
Idyll Threats
Idyll Fears
Published 2018 by Seventh Street Books®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
Idyll Hands. Copyright © 2018 by Stephanie Gayle. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke
Cover image © Dave Ellison / Alamy Stock Photo
Cover design © Prometheus Books
This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gayle, Stephanie, 1975-author.
Title: Idyll hands: a Thomas Lynch novel / by Stephanie Gayle.
Description: Amherst, NY: Seventh Street Books, an imprint of Prometheus Books, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018016761 (print) | LCCN 2018021138 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633884830 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633884823 (paperback)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION Mystery & Detective Police Procedural. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3607.A98576 (ebook) | LCC PS3607.A98576 I382 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016761
Printed in the United States of America
For Todd
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Stephanie Gayle
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1972, Charlestown Massachusetts
Chief Thomas Lynch - FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999, 0945 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999, 1010 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999, 1130 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999, 1115 Hours
Officer Michael Finnegan - MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1972, Charlestown, Massachusetts
Chief Thomas Lynch - FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999, 2015 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - MONDAY, MAY 17, 1999, 1400 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - MONDAY, MAY 17, 1999, 1505 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - MONDAY, MAY 17, 1999, 1650 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1999, 2220 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - THURSDAY, MAY 20, 1999, 0915 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - THURSDAY, MAY 20, 1999, 1250 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - SUNDAY, MAY 23, 1999, 1400 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - MONDAY, MAY 24, 1999, 0750 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - MONDAY, MAY 24, 1999, 0800 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - MONDAY, MAY 24, 1999, 2000 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - FRIDAY, MAY 28, 1999, 0900 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1999, 0645 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - MONDAY, MAY 31, 1999, 1015 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1999, 1100 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 1999, 1400 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 1999, 1730 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 1999, 1500 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1999, 1530 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 1999, 1045 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1999, 1300 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 1999, 1000 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1999, 1600 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1999, 1130 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1999, 0920 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1999, 1400 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1999, 1945 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - MONDAY, JUNE 21, 1999, 1030 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 1999, 1900 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 1999, 1230 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 1999, 1730 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 1999, 0945 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1999, 1400 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1999, 1015 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1999, 1300 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1999, 0910 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1999, 2020 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1999, 2100 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1999, 0910 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - THURSDAY, JULY 1, 1999, 0950 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - FRIDAY, JULY 2, 1999, 0845 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - SATURDAY, JULY 3, 1999, 1124 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - MONDAY, JULY 5, 1999, 1610 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1999, 1900 Hours
Detective Michael Finnegan - FRIDAY, JULY 9, 1999, 1340 Hours
Chief Thomas Lynch - SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1999, 1200 Hours
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1972
CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS
She watches the clock, checking the second hand to see if it’s time to go yet. Her freckled hand trembles as it brings a forkful of mashed potatoes to her mouth. She sets it down. The fork clanks against the dinner plate’s blue rim, and her mother’s eyes are on her.
“Not hungry?”
Her mother assesses the plate. Peas untouched, potatoes furrowed by fork tines, meatloaf covered in ketchup to conceal only a small piece has been consumed.
She tries to smile, but her cheeks feel tight. “Guess I ate too many chips.” She will accept this small sin if she may be forgiven the larger one coming. She touches the chipped crystal salt and pepper shakers. Years ago, she and her siblings had held the crystal shakers up to sunbeams, to create rainbows. “Rainbow makers,” they’d called them. “Can you pass me the rainbow maker?” they’d say at dinner, and their parents would exchange confused glances. And they’d laugh, giddy in the power of their shared secret. Secrets are not so nice now. They are dark and make her sick.
Her father, at the head of the table, says, “Drink your milk.” He doesn’t look up, but she knows the remark is aimed at her. You’d think her parents worked a dairy farm, the way they push milk. She lifts the sweating glass and swallows a mouthful. It is cold and wet and tastes of soap. Someone didn’t rinse the dishes well. It wasn’t her, not this time.
She pokes at the meatloaf and watches her brother, Bobby, eat. He is the only one left at home with her. Her other brothers and sister have grown up and moved to their own places. He will leave too, in a year or so. Bobby shovels potatoes and peas into his mouth. Then he chews and chews, twenty times at least, before he swallows. Has he always done this? He is the brother who scared her with stories of the boogie man when she was little. Who told her there were monsters under her bed. But he is the same brother who saved her from choking. Who stuck his grubb
y index finger down her throat and fished out the butterscotch candy blocking her airway. Tears come to her eyes and she blinks them away. They cannot see her cry. They’ll know something is up. She pinches the web of skin between her left index finger and thumb.
Her mother asks Bobby about his job, and he talks about a customer who didn’t know the difference between a spark plug and … she drifts off. Her father’s fingers are stained brown at the tips, and his hair is going gray. Even his mustache is streaked with silver. He would die if he knew what she was about to do. It would kill him. She bites down until her front teeth indent her lower lip, and then she asks, “May I be excused?”
Both parents eye her plate. Both frown. Her mother is about to tell her to eat more.
“I told Lucy I’d meet her at 6:30.” When they don’t respond immediately, she adds, “I’m sleeping over, remember?”
“Whatcha doing?” Bobby asks.
“We’re going to a double feature.” She twists the napkin in her lap, strangling the fabric. Thank God she checked the paper for this weekend’s listings. “The Last House on the Left and then Bluebeard.”
“Double feature?” her father says. “Is Mr. MacManus picking you up?”
“Yes.” She pictures Mr. MacManus, reading the paper in his recliner, balancing a cigarette on his lower lip. He won’t be picking her up from the movies. Not tonight.
She prays her father won’t argue, that she won’t have to explain again that she is sixteen years old, old enough to go to the movies with her best friend. She doesn’t want to argue that she can be trusted. She’s not sure the lie would make it out of her mouth.
He sighs, but she recognizes the hollow sound in it that means he will give in. Her mother looks at her father. He sets the rules. He nods. Her mother says, “Be careful.”
She rises from her chair. The smell of her mother’s perfume, Wind Song, makes her wince. She used to love the smell, but now it makes her queasy.
“Clean your plate,” her mother says.
She takes the plate into the kitchen and scrapes her food into the trash, the potatoes sticking, refusing to budge, until she pushes them with her knife. They land atop empty cans and cigarette packets and discarded circulars. She sets the plates and utensils in the sink, where her mother will wash them using Palmolive. Her mother wears bright yellow gloves to prevent “dishpan hands.” She hums songs as she washes, Simon and Garfunkel or “She Loves You” by the Beatles.
The girl’s eyes water and she blinks, fast. On the yellow fridge is a picture of her and her siblings two Christmases ago. They are arranged before the Christmas tree. Bobby has his arm wrapped around her neck and Dave is making rabbit’s ears behind Mikey’s head. Carol ignored them all, posing. Her pregnant belly upstaged her smile. The girl will not allow herself to think of her nephew, Jimmy. Not now.
She grabs her knapsack from outside her bedroom. She will be gone two days, she tells herself. Only two days. And then she’ll be back, and it will be okay, things will be okay. She calls, “See you later!” and hustles downstairs, her feet thumping heavy on each step. Then she’s outside, and the sun is sinking and the air smells like hot dogs and lighter fluid. The neighbors are grilling though the air is nippy and it’s past grill season.
She sets her eyes to the road ahead and counts every car that passes. It keeps her from looking backward, to thinking of what lies ahead. It keeps her centered and present in the moment. That’s what she must be. She pushes her long hair behind her and leans forward as she walks, away from home and her life before. When she returns, on Monday, it will be fixed, and everything can go back to the way it was.
CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH
FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999
0945 HOURS
My sneeze erupted in wet spray. Droplets landed on an accident report. “Bless you!” Billy called from across the station. “Allergies bothering you, Chief?” Forty-six years I’d been on this planet and until last year I’d never had allergies. Had never had my eyes itch for weeks, had never woken each morning with a phlegm-coated throat, had never blown my nose through a tissue box in three days.
“My mother has hay fever something awful,” Billy said as he approached.
“I never had allergies in New York.” As if I could lay the blame at Idyll, Connecticut’s feet. Idyll had too many trees, shrubs, and flowers. You couldn’t walk four feet without stepping in a puddle of acid-green pollen. The crap coated cars and houses.
“My doctor says you can get allergies any time, even when you’re old … older.”
Old? I was in the prime of life. I sneezed again and grabbed a tissue. It tore in half. I fished the other half from the cardboard box. Blew my nose. God, when would this end?
“You take anything? Mom says she wouldn’t survive spring without Allegra.”
“I’ll check it out.” A paper airplane sailed past, coming to land atop a phone. “Is spring always this quiet?” It was my third here, but it seemed slow, even by Idyll standards. Idyll = idle. That joke never got old.
“Slow?” Billy said. “We got that problem up on Piper Street.” Right. Someone was tossing clamshells along Piper Street. The shells had meat inside and were creating a rotting, stinking mess. It was the season’s greatest crime.
“Saw your fitness plan,” Billy said.
“How’s that?” It was supposed to be under wraps for a week.
He got red. “Mrs. Dunsmore was upset, so I asked what was wrong.”
“She’s upset about the requirements? They’re for policemen.” Mrs. Dunsmore was the station’s secretary and had been here as long as the building. Okay, maybe not quite that long.
“I figured,” he said. “Is it because of Dix?”
Two weeks ago, Dix lost a footrace to a kid who’d defaced school property. The kid was nine years old. The guys had been teasing Dix, calling him Carl Lewis, ever since.
“No.” One look around our station revealed that many would benefit from a regular exercise regimen.
“I think it’s great.” Not surprising. Billy was young. He could do all the activities listed and barely break a sweat. Hopkins hauled himself out of a chair and waddled toward the newly hired dispatcher. Not everyone was so lucky. “It’ll get us in shape in time for the softball game, yeah?” He referred to the annual Idyll Cops and Firefighters match, which raised money for St. Jude’s Hospital. Historically, the victories had been largely one-sided. Not on our side.
“Hope so,” I said. “Would be nice to win.” I’d never played on the team. My first year, I didn’t know about it and so failed to volunteer, and last year the game was scheduled during my vacation break. I’d promised my nephews a trip to Six Flags and decided being the World’s Best Uncle trumped propping up the sad collection of Idyll Police softballers. This year, though. This year would be different.
The front door opened, and Mayor Mike Mitchell breezed inside. I walked swiftly toward the building’s rear. The mayor was Billy’s uncle. Those two could chat about Idyll’s softball games for hours. Me and the mayor? We had a more complicated relationship. He’d once been a fan. But then I’d come out as gay, and he’d tried to interfere with an arson investigation. Now he delighted in taking jabs at me during town meetings.
I walked inside the Evidence room and locked the door behind me. I hadn’t been inside in a year or more. No need. The room was the size of my guest bedroom, but it contained more stuff. Because this was Idyll, a lot of it was random. Sure, there were drugs and a couple of guns, but most stuff represented petty shenanigans: spray-paint cans, baseball bats, two bicycles, and a shelf full of fireworks. Leaning against the back wall were the twenty-two plastic flamingoes we’d recovered from the middle school principal’s lawn. They’d been arranged to spell “DICK.” There were also the rolls of toilet paper we grabbed every Homecoming. Apparently, it’s a high school rite of passage to toilet paper the trees of the football players’ houses. Startled kids, caught in the act, often dropped half a case rather than be caught. We used
the toilet paper at the station, over time. It being May, we had only four rolls left. On the shelf nearest me were the cardboard boxes containing evidence from the North murder that took place in summer 1997, seven months after I started as police chief. On the highest shelf were three moldering boxes that looked as though they’d been placed there when Mrs. Dunsmore was hired as a fresh-faced secretary wearing a short skirt and tall hair.
The leftmost box looked soggy. It was labeled “COLLEEN.” The one beside it was marked “Vacations, 1978–82.” Why would they keep vacation records that long? The one closest to me wasn’t marked at all. It was a blue-and-white banker’s box. When I pulled it down and opened it up, it smelled musty, like old books. The box was filled with calendars of past police chiefs, detailing the exciting series of local town events they’d chaperoned. Memorial Day Parades, July Fourth Blast Offs!, and of course, the town’s biggest event, Idyll Days. Dear God, this was my future. No more murders or kidnappings, only a long string of town events and charity pancake breakfasts. I didn’t even like pancakes.
Another sneeze erupted from my nose. Too much dust back here. I moved to the door and set my hand on the knob. I heard the mayor say, “Where has the chief gone?” I dropped my hand and stepped back. A few minutes here wouldn’t kill me. I returned to the boxes and pulled down the one marked “COLLEEN.” I set it on the floor and unfolded the top flaps.
I’d been a homicide detective for twelve years before I came to Idyll. The foot-long bone lying in the box, its yellowed knobby end jutting above a plastic bag, didn’t startle me. It was a humerus bone, the one that linked the elbow to the shoulder. Under it, a plastic bag held a plaid fabric swatch. A smaller bag contained a watch with a cracked glass face and a pale pink wristband. At the bottom was a folder labeled “JANE DOE.” At last, something interesting.
A sharp squeak brought my head up. The door opened, and in stepped Michael Finnegan, our part-time detective, with a book in his hand. Originally from Boston, he had the accent to prove it. He whistled a tune, his eyes on the key he’d used to get in. He placed his keychain in the pocket of his mustard sports jacket and looked up. He saw me, a bone in one hand, and then looked down at the box by my feet. A line bisected his forehead, and his mouth turned down. “Oh. I see you’ve met Colleen.”
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