Tight Lines

by William G. Tapply

  I reached into my hip pocket and took out my wallet. I handed it to the policeman.

  “Take it out for me.”

  I removed my license and handed it to him. He copied from it into his notebook, then gave it back to me. “Why’d you say you were here?” he said.

  “I came to visit him. He lives here alone.”

  “And the place was burning when you got here, right?”

  “Yes. It was full of smoke and fumes. When I opened the door, I think it fed the fire.”

  The cop nodded as if he wasn’t really listening. “Right. Sure.” The firemen were spraying foam inside the trailer. We watched them for a minute or two. Without turning to me, the cop said, “What can you tell me about this—Finn, that’s his name?”

  “Yes. Dave Finn. He’s a Boston police officer. He’s under suspension right now, without pay. So he’s living here. I think the trailer belongs to a friend of his.”

  He turned to look at me. “A cop, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Suspended? Why?”

  “I’m really not sure.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Finn’s lawyer, is that it?”

  “No. Just a friend. An acquaintance, really.”

  The cop stared at me for a moment, frowned, and scribbled in his notebook. Then he slapped it shut and shoved it into his pocket. “Okay, Mr. Coyne. If you’re sure you’re okay, you can leave. We might want to talk to you later, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  I retraced my route slowly, down the sloping dirt road, past the bungalows and duck pond and barn with the silo. I turned east on Route 119 by the lumberyard. I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Groton for a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach, but I no longer had the urge to puke.

  And all the way home I kept trying to figure it out. Mary Ellen Ames, Jill Costello, and now Dave Finn. There had to be a connection.

  31

  “YOU LOOK AWFUL,” JULIE told me the next morning.

  “Gee, thanks. You look beautiful.”

  “Are you sick, Brady?”

  “I’m on the mend. Something I ate, I think.”

  I fled into my office. For some reason, I didn’t want to tell Julie about my visit to Dave Finn. She’d ask a lot of questions that I was still asking myself, and I didn’t have any answers. And inevitably she’d end up shaking her head and telling me what most of my friends ended up telling me—that I should stop mucking around in other people’s affairs and stick to fine points of law. And she’d be right, of course. But I didn’t want to hear it.

  I called the Townsend police. I wanted to know whether Dave Finn had made it. They wouldn’t tell me.

  I tried to get some work done. It went slowly. I had trouble concentrating.

  Horowitz showed up around noon. No surprise. Julie ushered him in. We shook hands and he smiled at me. “Well, well,” he said.

  “What the hell is ‘well, well’ supposed to mean?”

  “You do get around, Coyne.”

  “Look,” I said. “I really don’t need a bunch of shit from you today, okay?”

  “Lady X drowns up in New Hampshire,” he said, holding up his right fist and prying up the forefinger with his left hand. “Lady Y gets stabbed to death by her husband in her Beacon Street basement apartment.” He pulled off the adjacent finger so that two of them were extended from his fist. “And then Gentleman Z dies from inhaling noxious fumes in a trailer fire in Townsend.” Now he had three fingers sticking out. It looked like he was making the Boy Scout pledge. “These items come ticking out of my computer, and each time I see something. I see Brady Coyne’s name. And I say to myself, ‘My goodness, that man does get around.’”

  I sat down on the sofa. “Finn died, huh?”

  Horowitz sat beside me. “Yeah. I heard about what you did. He was probably dead when you got there. They said you gave it a helluva try, though.”

  I let out a long breath. “Shit,” I muttered.

  “Brady,” he said, “what the hell is going on?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out myself.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m a great believer in coincidence. Happens all the time. Most things, they don’t make much sense. Things just happen. Randomness, that’s the best explanation for a lot of things. That’s how the world works much of the time. But, hell, we’ve got these three deaths. Nothing in common with each other. Different places, different causes, people from different walks of life.” He tapped my leg with the tip of his forefinger. “Except you. You’re the common thread. So what gives, huh?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out. Only place I can start is by thinking that Mary Ellen Ames did not die by accident. After that it gets confusing.”

  “You think she was murdered, right?”

  “Yes. So did Finn.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did Finn think that? I’m not sure. But I was going out there last night to find out. He called me earlier, left a message. Give me the impression he’d figured it out.”

  “And the young lady, Miz Costello?”

  I shrugged. “Well, of course, she knew Mary Ellen Ames. Lived in the same building. But I guess her husband killed her. Just a coincidence, I suppose.”

  He nodded. “I talked with Jack Sylvestro. That’s what he thinks, too. Look, would you mind talking about all this?”

  “With you? Now?”

  He nodded.

  I shrugged. “No. I guess not.”

  So we did. He stayed for more than two hours, and we went over all of it. He shared forensic information with me—the absence of useful fingerprints in Jill Costello’s apartment, medical examiner reports on both Jill and Dave Finn concluding that Jill had died instantly from a stab wound directly to the heart and Finn had died from inhaling poisonous fumes with enough alcohol already in his bloodstream to make him comatose before the fumes got him, and the Townsend fire chief’s verdict that the electric space heater had ignited the fire.

  I told him about the tenuous connection among Mary Ellen and Jill and Finn. It was a lovers’ triangle of sorts, of course, but it was an incomplete geometric shape. Mary Ellen had many other people in her life.

  I told Horowitz that both Sid Raiford and Sherif Rahmanan had inherited one hundred thousand dollars from Mary Ellen. They might’ve also been her lovers, although both of them denied it. Rahmanan, at least, had been at one time, and he admitted that he continued to be obsessed with her. Raiford, for his part, had supplied her with marijuana and cocaine and helped her consume it.

  I told him about Willard Ellington who also, indirectly, benefited from Mary Ellen’s timely death, but there was no indication that he had ever laid eyes on her.

  Any of them could conceivably have been a jealous lover.

  Otherwise, neither of us could invent a reason why any of these men would care whether Jill Costello or Dave Finn lived or died.

  I did not tell Horowitz all that I knew about Warren McAllister. Most of it was privileged information. I was his lawyer.

  And when we finished talking, both of us shook our heads. Mary Ellen had not lived a conventional life. But there was nothing unconventional about the fact that she had many varied acquaintances and friendships. Hell, so did I. And aside from the fact that all of them had a relationship of some kind with her, coincidence still seemed to account for any other connection among all of them. Each death—Mary Ellen’s, Jill’s, and Finn’s—had its own separate logical explanation.

  I walked Horowitz out of my office and past Julie’s desk to the door. We shook hands. We promised to share anything else that occurred to us. I got the impression that he already had other things on his mind. A Massachusetts state homicide cop always has lots of things on his mind.

  After I closed the door behind him, Julie said, “What was that all about?”

  I flapped my hands. “Just the Mary Ellen Ames thing.”
r />   “Well pardon me,” she said.

  I went back into my office and called Warren McAllister. His machine answered and I asked him to get back to me.

  Julie left at five. I stayed. I had a messy desk to clean up.

  Warren called me back around seven. When I answered the phone, he said, “Wow! You attorneys put in long hours. I tried your house first.”

  “It’s been a busy day,” I said. “Hey, have you heard the forecast for the weekend?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Supposed to climb up into the seventies. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s a gift, a weekend in October in the seventies.”

  “I like the way you think, Counselor. God, I haven’t been fishing for weeks. I need it.”

  “Me, too. How’s Sunday for you?”

  “You got it. Where do you want to go?”

  “I got a place in mind,” I said. “I’ll pick you up around nine.”

  “Trout, right?”

  “Right. Bring your fly rod.”

  “Think they’ll be biting?”

  “Hell,” I said, “even if they’re not, it’ll still be worthwhile.”

  32

  I GOT TO THE McAllisters’ big Victorian in Brookline a few minutes before nine Sunday morning. As promised, the day had dawned sunny and warm. It felt and tasted more like early September than late October.

  Warren already had his fly-fishing gear piled on the back porch—two aluminum fly rod rubes, a pair of waders, his fishing vest, a net, a shapeless old canvas hat studded with bedraggled flies, and a small duffel for his fly boxes, reels, spare socks, rainwear, and all the other stuff that fly fisherman cannot travel without.

  I rang the bell and a moment later Robin opened it. She smiled radiantly. “Brady, hi,” she said. “I’m so jealous of you guys. What a beautiful day you’ve got.”

  She was wearing a comfortable old pale blue terry-cloth robe. The hem brushed the floor, and her bare toes peeped out from underneath. Her hair hung in a ponytail down the middle of her back. She wore no makeup. She looked quite beautiful without it.

  She hugged me quickly. “Thanks for doing this,” she whispered. “He’s really been looking forward to it.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I like fishing.”

  “Well, come on in,” she said, taking my arm. “Old Izaak Walton is in there making sandwiches.”

  She tugged me into the kitchen, where Warren was piling slabs of roast beef onto thick slices of dark bread. “Hey, partner,” he said when he saw me.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “Grey Poupon on your roast beef, a little horseradish?”

  “Terrific.”

  “I’ve got a thermos of coffee and some Coke on ice, okay?”

  I smiled and nodded. “Perfect.”

  “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I never drink beer or anything while I’m fishing.”

  “Me neither. Booze and fishing don’t go together.”

  Robin handed me a mug of coffee and then went over to help Warren stuff the thick sandwiches into plastic bags. I leaned against the wall, sipping my coffee and watching them. She actually seemed happy for her husband that he could go off fishing on a Sunday in the autumn. My experience was limited, but I believed that this was a rare and wonderful thing between married people.

  The two of them loaded up a wicker basket, and then Warren said to me, “Ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  I drained my mug and put it in the sink. Robin crossed her arms around Warren’s neck and kissed him. Then she smiled at me. “Have fun, boys. Tight lines.”

  We went out, gathered up Warren’s gear from the porch, and loaded it into my car. Then we got in.

  “Where are you taking me?” he said.

  “Little pond in New Hampshire. It’s supposed to be full of native brook trout. They should be dressed in their spawning colors by now.”

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Absolutely perfect.”

  It took about two hours to get there. Warren and I sipped coffee from the thermos and swapped fishing stories the entire way.

  We crossed the border into New Hampshire, and a half hour later, when I turned off the main road onto a narrow country lane, Warren said, “What’s the name of this place?”

  “Teal Pond.”

  “Wasn’t that…?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The place where Mary Ellen drowned. I heard the fishing was good here. Our friend Horowitz told me how to find it.”

  Warren said nothing. I turned down the unpaved driveway that wound for nearly a mile down a long wooded slope before the sparkle of sunshine on water appeared through the trees. The driveway ended in a thinned-out pine grove surrounding a modest shingled cottage that was perched on the rim of the pond. A pine needle path led down a gentle slope to the pond’s edge where a dock extended out over the water. Two aluminum canoes rested upside down on the dock.

  I turned off the ignition. “Pretty spot, huh?”

  “Beautiful,” said Warren.

  “Come on. Let’s go look at the water.”

  We walked down the path and onto the dock. I lit a cigarette. The two of us gazed across the pond. It nestled snugly in a bowl formed by the foothills of the White Mountains. The subdued oranges and russets of autumn oaks reflected on the water’s surface. In the middle it was riffled by the soft breeze, but along the edges and in the coves the pond’s skin lay as smooth and flat as glass. Off to the right I thought I saw some tiny dimples in the surface that could have been feeding trout.

  After a minute or so, Warren said, “Brady, why did you bring me here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are lots of places we could’ve gone fishing. Why here?”

  I shrugged. “I heard it was good. It’s always fun to try new places.”

  “Come on,” he said. “This is Mary Ellen’s cottage. What’s on your mind?”

  “I guess I was just wondering if we might talk some more about it.”

  “About her?”

  “Yes.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’ve been here before.”

  “I thought you might’ve been.”

  “It’s where we used to meet. When we…”

  “Yes.”

  He touched my arm. I turned to him. His intent gaze held my eyes. “Brady, you’re my lawyer, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I want to tell you about it.”

  I nodded. “Good.”

  He sat on the edge of the dock. I sat beside him. We dangled our legs over the edge and looked out at the pond. The sun was warm on our faces. He talked without looking at me.

  “She was different from my other patients right from the beginning,” he said. “The first time she came to my office it was clear that she was interviewing me, trying to determine if I was suitable to treat her. I didn’t know what she was looking for, and I certainly didn’t consciously try to impress her, but even before I knew anything about her I found her unusual. And—and attractive. There was something about her that made me uncomfortable. Something subtle, sexual. I even considered refusing to accept her. But I’m an experienced shrink. I know about attraction between analyst and patient. It’s often present, and a skilled analyst can manage it, even use it to advantage. Anyway, the decision was hers. I guess I passed muster, because I began to see her. This was a little over four years ago. And right from the beginning there was a different agenda between us. For Mary Ellen, psychoanalysis was a long leisurely process of seduction. That’s what it was. She was paying me a hundred dollars an hour, four days a week, for purposes of seducing me.”

  “And you didn’t realize it?” I said.

  “Of course I did. It was not a problem. Or it shouldn’t have been. It offered a useful way of proceeding with treatment. We talked about it. I was direct with her. I asked her why she had chosen me, why she was setting about in this obviously calculated way to seduce me.”

  “You were her fath
er,” I said.

  Warren turned to look at me. He smiled and nodded. “Sure. Your classical case of transference. I can quote you the Great Man on it. Freud said, ‘The patient sees in his analyst the return—the reincarnation—of some important figure out of his childhood or past, and consequently transfers onto him feelings and reactions that undoubtedly applied to this model.’” Warren smiled at me.

  “Sounds risky to me,” I said.

  “Yes, it can be.” He nodded. “Freud went on to say, ‘It soon becomes evident that this fact of transference is a factor of undreamed-of importance—on the one hand an instrument of irreplaceable value and on the other a source of serious dangers.’”

  “Serious dangers,” I repeated.

  “Usually,” said Warren, “transference happens over a long period of time. It grows and develops as a natural part of the analytic process. But with Mary Ellen, it was instantaneous. It’s what she was looking for even before she became my patient. A father substitute.” He paused. “How did you know about this?”

  “It’s common, isn’t it?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Mary Ellen had a portrait of her father in her condo,” I said. “It’s very large, and it’s hung prominently in her living room, and she even had a little light mounted in the ceiling to spotlight it. You resemble Charles Ames remarkably.”

  “I look like him?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t catch it at first. But I was back there a week ago and saw the painting again. After having seen you, I caught the resemblance immediately. It’s almost uncanny. The eyes and the mouth especially. Even your hair.”

  Warren smiled. “Well, she never told me that, and of course I had no way of knowing what Charles Ames looked like. I certainly know what kind of a man he was—or at least what kind of a man lived in Mary Ellen’s memory of him.”

  He stopped talking. I lit another cigarette. We stared at the water.

  “It’s about the biggest failure a psychiatrist can ever have,” he began softly after several moments of silence. “Worse even than suicide.”

  “What is?”

  “Allowing a patient to seduce you. It destroys everything. There are philistines in my profession who rationalize it otherwise, and some who have even rationalized sex with their patients into a form of treatment, who are themselves the seducers. But that’s all bullshit. It was, to say the least, very humbling for me to learn how weak I was, how readily all of my training, all of my good professional judgment, all of my experience with transference could be swept away by simple lust.”