Tight Lines

by William G. Tapply

  “But it wasn’t simple lust for her, was it?”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s what makes it so bad. Mary Ellen lost her father at the worst possible time, for her, in her life, and she spent the rest of it trying to find him. All of the men in her life were considerably older than she, substitute fathers for her. None of them ever quite lived up to the standards in her mind—to him, her imagined father, the Charles Ames in her head. Not Dave Finn or Sherif Rahmanan or any of the many others. We talked about all of this, of course. She claimed I was it. I was the one. Finally, her search was over. So, Brady, no, for Mary Ellen it was far more than simple undifferentiated lust. For her, it was fulfillment. I was her cure.”

  “And for you?”

  He sighed deeply. “I love Robin. She’s a perfect wife. She is my life. Mary Ellen simply taught me that I am a weak, imperfect man, a man who may understand the complexities of the human psyche, but who can still be victimized by them. Mary Ellen was a temptation that a better man should have resisted. I did not.”

  I touched his leg. “So…”

  “Hell, Brady, I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking. I already told you that.” He frowned at me. “Is it? Is that what today is all about?”

  I shrugged. “I just wanted to hear the truth about it.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Her death must have been a vast relief for you.”

  “That’s very cruel of you,” he said softly. “But I guess you’re partly right. It saddened me profoundly. But, yes, I was relieved, too.”

  “What had you intended to do before she conveniently took you off the hook by dying?”

  “Jesus, Brady,” he said softly. He shook his head slowly. “I was going to tell her I wouldn’t see her anymore. She couldn’t be my patient any longer. I had colleagues I was going to refer her to. Women, who could help her with a different analytic approach.”

  “But you hadn’t actually gotten around to saying this to her?”

  “I tried. She refused to hear it. She was clever that way. Controlling. Steering our sessions in the directions of her choice. But I would have done it. I hesitated being too directive with her.”

  “You were afraid of her reaction?”

  “Yes. Well, cowardly, too, probably. But I was concerned for her. I couldn’t tell how she would respond.”

  “But she knew where you were headed.”

  “She was very intelligent, very perceptive. She certainly knew.”

  “Would she have killed herself?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” He hesitated. “She wanted me to marry her. She wanted me to divorce Robin.”

  “Would you have done that?”

  “Never.”

  “And Robin didn’t know?”

  “I could never tell Robin about Mary Ellen. My wife understands what psychiatrists do. She knows all about transference. She trusts me completely. She thinks I’m competent at what I do. Which means that I use the transference phenomenon to the advantage of the treatment. It would never occur to her that I would actually succumb to it. I couldn’t risk telling Robin, as much as I might have wanted to.”

  I swept my hand across the pond. “And you met her here.”

  He nodded. “Yes, here, in her cottage. This is where I came on Sundays when Robin thought I was off fishing. See, Brady, I didn’t give in right away. We met four times weekly for a very long time, and all the while she was doing her damnedest to seduce me and I was turning it back to her, trying to deal with it the way I have so many times in my practice, the way I was taught. Then one time I allowed myself to hug her at the end of a session in my office. A meaningless gesture, I told myself. But it wasn’t meaningless for her, and of course I knew that, which meant it wasn’t meaningless for me, either. And a few sessions later I kissed her. On the cheek, but the next time on the mouth. And for many months, we would kiss and embrace at the end of our hour. Finally—” He looked at me, his eyes asking for understanding.

  I nodded. “You fucked her.”

  He let out a long breath. “Okay. I guess I deserve that. I agreed to meet her here. For a picnic, we told each other.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last spring. May.”

  “A picnic,” I said.

  “You know what happened.”

  “And it happened every Sunday thereafter, huh?”

  “Just about. We skipped a few times. I tried to make excuses. I told her I couldn’t make it. And I can’t tell you how many times, when I had agreed to meet her, that I swore to myself I simply wouldn’t show up. But I always did. And I’d drive down that long bumpy driveway praying that her car wouldn’t be there under the pines, that she would be the one to call it off. But she was always here. We’d have a glass of wine. We’d talk. Like lovers, not like a shrink and a patient. And we always ended up in her bed. God help me.”

  “You must’ve been consumed with guilt.”

  “I was,” he said. “I am. Actually, I thought it was over, that Mary Ellen had finally seen the light. I met her here that last time back in September, and then she missed all of her appointments the following week. After she skipped the first one, I thought of calling her. I usually do that. Check on my patients when they miss and don’t call me. But I didn’t call her. I didn’t want to talk to her. I just wanted her to keep skipping. To be gone from my life forever. After she skipped the week, and then the following week, I believed it had been resolved. Then you called me, and I knew that it had been resolved, all right.”

  “So the last time you saw her was here.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I left her in bed. We made love, I got up and showered, dressed, went back and kissed her goodbye. She was dozing, as she always did afterwards. She’d go home later, sometime after me. It was our routine.”

  “Was she nude?”

  “When I kissed her good-bye, you mean?” He smiled at me. “Well, hell, we’d just been making love. Why?”

  “Her body was nude when they found it.”

  “Hey,” he said. “You still think I killed her, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “I keep remembering a conversation I had with a friend of mine a while ago. Guy named Charlie McDevitt, who I went to law school with. He’s a prosecutor for the Justice Department. A very good one. He and I were talking about the possibility that somebody murdered Mary Ellen, and I told him that it seemed as if several people would gain by her death. Know what he said to me?”

  “What?” said Warren.

  “Charlie said I should also think about who stood to lose by her remaining alive.”

  Warren frowned, then nodded. “Okay. I get it. And you think I’m the one who stood to lose by her being alive, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose I did. But I didn’t kill her, I swear. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  “If you did, you could tell me, you know.”

  “Sure, I know that. You’re my lawyer. And I’m telling you I didn’t do it.” He touched my arm. “You had this all figured out, didn’t you?”

  I shrugged. “More or less. Dave Finn told me how hung up she was on her father. You look too much like Charles Ames and she was too hung up on him for it to have been a casual affair for her. And I think I know you well enough to believe that it wasn’t casual for you, either.”

  “So you concluded that it was I who killed her?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I concluded that it wasn’t.”

  We watched the water for several minutes. Finally Warren said, “Well, should we try to catch a trout?”

  “Feel like it?”

  He shrugged. “Not that much. But let’s do it anyway.”

  We found paddles in a shed beside the cottage. We launched one of the canoes. We flipped a coin and I lost, so I started out in the stern. I pushed the canoe slowly around the rim of the pond clockwise so that Warren could cast comfortably over the bow. He handled the fly ro
d expertly. He cast a smooth line and twitched a Woolly Bugger over sunken weed beds and along drop-offs and against the edges of the boulders that protruded from the water. We got halfway around the pond without catching a single fish. There we beached the canoe and swapped ends. And then I fished and Warren paddled. We made it all the way back to the dock in front of Mary Ellen’s cottage without a strike.

  It took us about three hours to complete the circuit. We scarcely exchanged a word the entire time. “Want to quit?” said Warren.

  I nodded. “The sun’ll go down soon. Midday should’ve been best anyway.”

  We hauled the canoe back onto the dock, returned the paddles to the shed, and stowed our gear in the car. Then we started home.

  We rode in silence for a while. Then Warren said, “Thanks, Brady.”

  “Sorry about the fishing. I thought we might do something.”

  “I didn’t mean the fishing.”

  I shrugged.

  “It felt good,” he said. “Talking about it. Confessing. But tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “You said you had concluded that it wasn’t I who killed her. How did you know?”

  “I assume Mary Ellen was murdered. We know Jill Costello was murdered. I also believe Dave Finn was murdered.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Occam’s Razor.”

  “Christ,” he said. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

  “Look for the simple explanation. Assume you know all there is to know. These three deaths are awfully hard to explain unless you assume all were murdered. In this case, Mr. Occam tells me that one person, impelled by one motive, killed all three of them. Mary Ellen, Jill Costello, and Dave Finn.”

  “What’s that one motive?” said Warren.

  “Finn and Jill were intimate with Mary Ellen. They figured out about the two of you. They probably thought that it was you who killed her. That made them dangerous to you, all right. Except it couldn’t have been you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve got a seminar to teach on Tuesday, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Finn was killed on Tuesday. Sometime before eight. If you were at the hospital, you couldn’t have been in Townsend. So you weren’t the one who killed Finn. Therefore, you didn’t kill any of them. QED.”

  He was quiet for several minutes. Then he said, “One person with one motive.” Silence again, then, “Someone who had something to gain by all three deaths—or something to lose by their remaining alive.” Another pause. “I’m really a logical suspect, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Jill and Finn thought it was you. They both tried to call me right before they died. I think that’s what they wanted to tell me. That they’d figured out it was you who killed Mary Ellen.”

  “But it wasn’t me.”

  “No.”

  He was quiet again, and I didn’t interrupt the silence.

  As I turned onto his street, Warren sighed heavily and mumbled, “Ah, shit.”

  I glanced sideways at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “You do have it figured out, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I thought you might.”

  I pulled into his driveway and turned off the ignition.

  “You want to come in?” he said.

  “I think I better.”

  33

  WE WENT INTO WARREN’S house. Robin was not in the kitchen, as she had been every other time I had been there.

  “Have a seat, Brady,” said Warren. “I’ll be right back.”

  I sat at the table and lit a cigarette. Warren left the room. A moment later I heard him call, “Robin? Hey, hon. I’m home. Brady’s here.”

  There was a pause, then, “Okay. I’ll put on some tea water.”

  Warren came back into the kitchen. He went to the sink, filled a kettle with tap water, put it on the stove, then sat across from me. “She’ll be down in a minute,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “When did you figure it out?” he said.

  I shrugged. “About the time I decided that it wasn’t you.”

  “Well,” he said, “I really appreciate this.” He reached across the table and squeezed my arm.

  Robin came into the room. She rumpled my hair on her way to Warren, whom she kissed wetly on the forehead. “Hi, fellas. How was the fishing?”

  “The fishing was terrific,” said Warren. “The catching was piss poor.”

  Robin went to the kitchen cabinets. “What kind of tea do you guys want?”

  “Let’s have that smoky Chinese stuff,” said Warren.

  “Lapsang souchong,” said Robin.

  “Come sit with us, honey,” said Warren. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead. I can hear you.” She stood by the cabinets with her back to us.

  “We know,” said Warren quietly.

  Robin was taking teacups from the cabinet. She said nothing.

  “Did you hear me?” said Warren.

  “What?”

  “I said, we know.”

  “You know what?”

  “Everything.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Robin,” said Warren heavily, “come here and sit down, please.”

  “For heaven’s sake—”

  “Come on, hon. Sit with us.”

  She turned to face us. She shrugged. “Well, okay,” she said.

  She came over and sat down. She lit a cigarette. I nudged the ashtray toward her so we could share it.

  Warren cleared his throat. “My business phone is in the other room,” he said to me, jerking his head toward the inner rooms of the big old house. “A machine answers when I’m working and my patients can leave their messages for me on it. They often call when they’re feeling stressed. Family problems, health worries, whatever. Anything. I encourage them to call, and I always return my calls. The line also runs to my office upstairs, of course. But that phone doesn’t have a ringer, because I can’t have the telephone interrupting my work. I use it to call out.” He took a deep breath, let it out, and smiled quickly at me. “Anyone who’s down here when the phone rings can hear what my patients are saying to me.”

  I glanced at Robin. She was staring at Warren. He looked at her, too, for a moment, then returned his eyes to me. “She knew,” he said to me.

  I nodded. “Yes. I figured she did.”

  He looked at Robin. “Mary Ellen called here, didn’t she?”

  Robin frowned. “What are you—?”

  “Come on, babe,” he said. “You heard her call, didn’t you?”

  Robin hesitated, then nodded.

  “I never knew that she called,” said Warren to me. “Robin overheard the messages, then erased the tape.” He turned to her. “Right?”

  “Yes,” whispered Robin.

  “Tell us what she said.”

  Robin reached over and gripped my wrist. “She kept leaving long threatening messages to him,” she said in a taut voice. “She was going to expose my husband.” Her eyes were wide and staring into mine, and I saw the insanity in them. “She threatened to tell me about their—their activities. She threatened to tell the newspapers, to hire a lawyer, to tell the professional association. She said she’d ruin him if he didn’t divorce me and marry her.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I thought.” I touched Robin’s hand where her nails were digging into my arm. She looked down, frowned, then pulled her hand away. I looked at Warren. “Mary Ellen never threatened you directly, though, did she?”

  He shook his head. “I told you the truth about that, Brady. See, when we were together, I was her father. She couldn’t do anything like that. She couldn’t threaten her father. It would be disrespectful. But when we weren’t together, I was just a man. So she could leave a threat on an answering machine.” He drew his lips tightly together for a moment. “Robin heard it all.”

  I looked at Robin. “So y
ou killed her.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you? She would’ve ruined everything. What else could I do? I did it for Warren. He didn’t deserve that.”

  “Look,” I said to Warren, “I need to make a phone call right now. Robin needs a lawyer. I’m not it.”

  “But I thought—”

  “I’m your lawyer. Not hers. And I’m not a criminal lawyer anyway. I know a good one. Just sit tight.”

  I went to the kitchen phone and pecked out the home number of Xerxes Garrett, the young attorney who had clerked for me several years earlier. He had quickly become the best defense attorney I knew. He was young, handsome, smart, and black, and, like me, he ran a one-man law firm. He turned down clients at whim, but he usually accepted those I asked him to defend.

  The phone rang a half dozen times before he answered it. “Yo,” he mumbled.

  “Zerk. It’s Brady.”

  “Shit, man. This business?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hell, it’s Sunday. Call me tomorrow.”

  “It won’t wait. I need you.”

  “Who needs me?”

  “A woman. It appears she has murdered the woman her husband was having an affair with. Couple other people, too.”

  “Shee-it! One of them, huh?”

  “It’s pretty complicated, Zerk. The husband is my client. My take on it is that an insanity plea might be the way to go.”

  “Hey, man. Who asked you? I’ll decide that for my own self.”

  “Good. You’ll take it, then.”

  He sighed extravagantly. “I ever let you down yet?”

  “Hardly ever.”

  “So where’s she at?”

  I gave him directions to the McAllister house. “Come now, okay?”

  “Gotta get myself disentangled from these sweet arms and legs beside me here and I’ll be right over.”

  “Sorry to interrupt.”

  He chuckled. “We was all done, man. Otherwise I wouldn’t have answered the damn phone.”