Shallow Graves

by Jeremiah Healy

  The impact rocked Vivian onto her heels and over onto her back. For the second or two before her eyes focused, she was back in grade school, the day that Hale’s brother had accidentally-on-purpose swung a baseball bat and caught her square in the chest.

  Then Vivian lifted her head from the cedar decking and looked down. She saw the gunmetal gray shaft sticking out six inches between her breasts, the black plastic feathers on its end slanting toward her body. She couldn’t place where she’d seen it before, then remembered. Hale’s surprise toy last year for Steve. Then she felt a terrible sloughing inside her, and Vivian Vandemeer died without saying a word.

  In the kitchen, a large wooden fork in his hand, Hale Vandemeer said, “What was that?”

  Sandra Newberg said, “I didn’t hear anything.”

  Hale came up behind her and whispered, “Didn’t you feel it?,” pressing himself against her.

  Sandra stopped chopping the lettuce long enough to say, “Hale, this isn’t the time or the place.”

  He nuzzled her ear. “It was, three weeks ago.”

  She brushed him away, getting a shred of lettuce in her ear and causing her to shake him off to shake it out. “That was when Steve was in L.A. and Vivian took Nicky to New York. This is a weekend.”

  Hale took a breath. As a doctor, you get used to being right, but he had to concede on this point. Vivian was on the deck, only a couple of walls from the kitchen, and Steve would be back in fifteen or twenty minutes.

  “Sorry,” he said, “but it has been a while.”

  Sandy sighed as Hale put down the wooden fork and reached for the tomatoes they’d bought at the Shop ’n Save in Augusta on the way up. She had kind of hoped that the rendezvous at the lake might end it gracefully for both of them, before Vivian or Steve found out how stupid she’d been ever to encourage Hale, much less go past that. Instead, it seemed to spur Hale onward and … upward.

  Sandy made sure Hale had his back toward her, then risked a smile. No problems with the good doctor in that department. But her dissatisfaction with not having a job, and with the way Steve’s job had been driving him, was no reason—well, no excuse—for what she’d jeopardized among the four of them. Of course, that was nothing compared to what Steve had told her just after her midweek episode with Hale. His little “secret.” On the drive up today, Steve had discussed it with her, and they’d decided that they had to tell Vivian and Hale now, before things went any further. “Change for the sake of change,” Steve had said. “Great,” she’d said, thinking, he’s quoting Chairman Mao, like dead commies held all the answers to life. Sandy sighed again. It was just as well to tell the Vandemeers now, so she could break it off with Hale before—

  Sandy felt it rather than heard it. Someone on the deck or the steps, but moving heavily.

  “Hale?”

  He turned to her, the serrated blade of the paring knife dripping seeds from the tomatoes. “Do you think Vivian’s doing aerobics out there?”

  “Maybe you should check on her.”

  Hale put the knife down on the counter and moved out through the swinging door of the kitchen. Sandy finished with the lettuce and switched over to the tomatoes.

  Hale Vandemeer couldn’t see anything from the living room of the big contemporary, even though there were three sliding-glass doors leading onto the deck and the floods were throwing light in wide cones. What surprised him most was that he couldn’t see his wife.

  There was no music coming from the CD player. In a conversational tone, Hale said, “Vivian?”

  The center set of glass doors was open, just the screened panel across the opening. Hale went up to it and used his left hand to slide the screen to the left. He stepped out onto the deck, looking first to his right as he closed the panel with his right hand.

  Another song started inside the living room, so Hale spoke a little louder. “Vivian?”

  Turning to his left, he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing, his eyes needing to adjust to the difference in lighting. In shadow at the corner of the deck, a body lay flat on its back, the arms out, the legs together, as though crucified horizontally onto the decking. Only the hair was brightly illuminated by the flood, the color unmistakably the one Vivian had chosen at her beauty parlor.

  Hale took a step forward before he realized the shadow over his wife’s body was moving, ever so slightly. He stopped as the bolt from the crossbow whooshed up and at him, punching him just below the sternum and taking him back through the screen door, tearing it from the frame as he crashed to the floor of the living room. As the last few seconds of consciousness washed over his brain, Hale Vandemeer thought, “Just two inches lower and I’d have a chance to …”

  The sound of the crash made Sandra Newberg cut her left thumb with the paring knife. She was too startled even to curse at it, just grabbing a paper towel for the blood as she burst through the kitchen door and down the little hall into the dining area and living room.

  Hale was splayed on the floor, the mesh that had been the screened panel rolled over his right leg and hip like a partially closed shroud. But the thing that angled into his chest and his open eyes told Sandy that something she didn’t understand had happened and was very, very wrong.

  Then the figure filled the doorway where the screening had been, and the bow raised up.

  Ten feet away Sandra Newberg hoarsely cried “No!” and brought her hands up to protect herself. The bolt pierced the back of her left hand and the paper towel wrapped around the thumb, pinning them to her chest as the arrowhead bit deeply into her heart, rupturing it and dropping her limply onto the polished hardwood floor.

  One

  THE GUY ON THE racing bike missed clocking me by about the width of the dentist’s tool he had mounted on his helmet as a rearview mirror. He used fingerless leather gloves to shift through a couple of his eighteen gears, swerving around the abutment holding up its share of an on-ramp to Storrow Drive. Then he turned in his saddle enough to yell, “Fuck you, you fucking joggers.”

  Gritting my teeth, I mopped the sweat over my eyes with a forearm but didn’t break stride. I’d learned that from the first two bicyclists, who pretty clearly thought that 4:00 P.M. on a hot Monday in June was wheel-time-only along the Charles River. Usually I run in the mornings, but I’d just spent two weeks undercover, playing employee for a high-tech company on the Route 128 beltway. The company thought it had a payrolled worm working his or her way through its trade secrets and siphoning them off to a competitor.

  I generally don’t like going undercover. For one thing, it cuts you off from most everything else a private investigator is supposed to do, like return phone calls and meet with people. For another, your basic mission is to get relatively nice people to like and trust you so that you can bag them or one of their friends. The company did cover my daily rate for seven days, even though they knew I’d be putting in only five, and the worm turned (sorry) out to be a snobby engineer, late of MIT, who decided industrial espionage would be a quicker route to her first Porsche. For me, though, the reverse commute from Boston thirteen miles west every morning didn’t leave much time for running, so I’d been missing that endorphin high. And the schmoozing that goes with being undercover didn’t leave me with much time for anything else. Including Nancy Meagher.

  I’d finished with the high-tech assignment that morning, then spent most of the afternoon in my office opposite the Park Street subway station, catching up on the crapola paperwork that seems to breed in place when you aren’t pushing it every day. Nancy was about to start a long conspiracy trial for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, but she promised me a home-cooked meal at her place in South Boston that night. I figured four miles along the river would vent some of the tension and pressure that had accumulated over the last few weeks. So, I laced up the shoes, pulled on the shorts, and tugged over my head the T-shirt Nancy had given me last Christmas and I’d worn running the Boston marathon two months before. Unfortunately, the bikes turned out to b
e just the tip of the iceberg.

  A Metropolitan District Commission crew was trying to clear a sewer line. They wore surgical masks, like earthquake relief workers excavating collapsed buildings. With both temperature and humidity well past eighty, the cloying stink stayed strong for another hundred yards.

  Half a mile after the sewer line, a cluster of Boston University students sat near the river’s edge, smashing wine bottles against the rocks. It looked like the collected empties of a four-year career, the kids drinking and cursing and laughing at their cleverness. You think about stopping the party, but there were enough of them that you’d have to hurt a few, and at least one would dimly recall a television bar scene where somebody came after somebody else with the neck of a broken bottle.

  A mile farther on, another crew, this time road workers, had traffic backed up on Storrow while they jackhammered about an acre of macadam into rubble. The car horns nearly drowned out the jackhammers. Nearly.

  But the worst, that was saved for the last quarter mile. A sour old man in a Kangol cap and hiking staff and cigar broader than the staff let his Doberman off the leash just as I was passing them by a respectful lateral margin. The Doberman’s head flashed up, I tried to dodge him, and his jaws snapped shut on the tail of my T-shirt, wrenching it away from me.

  I stopped and looked down at what was left of the shirt. The rending went diagonally through the BODY BY NAUTILUS, BRAIN BY MATTEL legend on it.

  Then I looked over as his dog dropped the rest of the thing at his owner’s feet.

  The man snugged down the Kangol cap and brandished the hiking staff like a lance. Around the cigar, he said, “There’s worse where that came from, too.”

  I shook my head and decided to walk the rest of the way home. Slowly.

  I parked my old silver Prelude on the nonstreet that backs toward the Massachusetts Turnpike. The Winecellar of Silene is a terrific store next to the University Club on Stuart Street. They cater mainly to an upscale yuppie crowd, but they know a lot about the grapes and enough about me to recommend something for ten bucks that tastes twice as good as something costing three times as much in most restaurants.

  Ruben the manager caught my eye as I came through the door. The features around his brown eyes tightened.

  “John, you okay?”

  I checked my clothes. I’d showered and put on a polo shirt and a pair of khaki pants over old running shoes. The humidity made the shirt cling a little, but on the whole I thought I looked pretty presentable.

  Ruben said, “You look kind of … keyed up.”

  “It’s been a tough day.”

  “We can deal with that. Red or white?”

  “Both.”

  Ruben nodded. “Just be sure to drink them on different nights, huh?”

  I smiled and nodded back.

  When I got out to the car, the orange cardboard under my windshield wiper reminded me that I’d forgotten to feed the meter.

  I inched through bumper-to-bumper traffic toward Nancy’s neighborhood. Just before the Central Artery, a derelict black man with a paper bag crimped around a bottle of something sat spraddle-legged against the wall of a warehouse. He glanced up as a statuesque black in a bright red dress, high heels, and a shoulder bag strutted past him. The derelict said, “Norman, boy. Is that you?,” and cackled as the tall person picked up his or her pace and never looked back.

  On the South Boston side of the Artery, Broadway was choked with people double-parked and just leaning into driver’s sides, talking, while cars tried to slalom around them. I’d grown up in Southie and understood the community exchange function of basically blue-collar folks who’d been at work when most white-collars are just getting out of bed, but it was the perfect close to a frustrating day.

  I finally got to Nancy’s block off L Street and left the Prelude four doors down from her building. It’s a three-decker owned by a Boston Police family, Nancy renting the top floor. They’re pleased to see a neighborhood girl doing well as an assistant DA, and she’s pleased to have the incremental security the Lynches represent.

  The humidity was making me sweat from just carrying the bag Ruben had filled with a Rafanelli zinfandel and a chilled Waterbrook chardonnay. A drop fell off my chin and into the bag as I pressed Nancy’s bell. A minute later the door opened, and my thoughts caught for just a beat, the way they always do when I first see her.

  I could show you a photograph of Ms. Meagher, and you’d start by saying, “Smart. Professional woman, right?” Then you’d probably notice some specifics: the nicely spaced eyes, the black hair, the wide mouth. If the camera was good enough, you might pick up the blue in her eyes that owed nothing to contact lenses and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Eventually, you’d appreciate how the eyes kept your attention, and the hair framed the face, and the teeth seemed so even if an inviting smile happened to spread the mouth even wider.

  “John?”

  “Sorry, just daydreaming a little.”

  She pushed up the sleeves of an old flannel shirt and peeked over the edge of the Winecellar bag. “Two bottles on a work night?”

  “We can pick one, save the other for another time.”

  Nancy heard something in my voice and pushed on her sleeves some more. “Sure. Come on up.”

  She took the bag from me. I followed her rump as it swayed fetchingly under tennis shorts with the hem turned up once. At the second-floor landing, Drew Lynch opened his door and nodded to me. Just making sure Nancy’s company was expected.

  The third-floor door was open, and Nancy’s cat, Renfield, scuttled out to greet us. The little gray tiger had needed an operation on both back legs, which, nearly a month later, were still crooked and healing. However, he didn’t seem to be in any pain, just unable to launch himself from a crouch into a jump.

  Renfield rubbed against my legs and purred, then butted his head into my shin until I bent down and picked him up. He sensed something and struggled until I set him down gently, front legs first, then rear ones when he seemed steady.

  Nancy put the wine on the kitchen table. “Even the cat can tell.”

  “Tell what?” I said, a little too sharply.

  Renfield ran sideways out of the kitchen, his clawless front paws digging hard at the linoleum, his rear legs trying to come alongside like a skidding car on a patch of ice.

  I took a breath. “Didn’t mean to scare the cat.”

  “And if you’re scaring me?”

  Something from the sea was crackling on the stove behind her. I lowered my voice. “Let’s open the wine. The white’s a chardonnay.”

  Nancy turned down the gas under a covered pan. “So long as we talk over it.”

  I popped the cork and poured into a pair of tulip-shaped glasses. We moved to the front of the apartment, taking floor cushions in Nancy’s living room. The television was on, the sound off. The screen showed a much-used clip of the troops coming back from Desert Storm being welcomed by a big crowd at an airport. The civilians were cheering and beaming, the soldiers looking as bewildered as the Vietnam vets from my era felt betrayed.

  Nancy clicked off the set, then sat cross-legged, elbow on the glass-topped coffee table. I leaned against the wooden half-moon seat built into her small bay window. The undercover job had been outside Nancy’s jurisdiction, so I’d been able to tell her some of it and now was able to fill in most of the rest. Then I got to the part I didn’t like.

  The glass of wine stopped halfway to her lips. “They’re not going to prosecute this woman?”

  “No. The general counsel said it would be ‘too difficult.’ ”

  “Meaning too much bad PR.”

  “Probably. The head of security out there is going to take early retirement as it is.”

  “And the company doesn’t want the fumes from this to waft back to its customer base.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “So, the engineer can go on to her next job and play Mata Hari again.”

  �
�No.”

  “No?”

  “The company had a sit-down with her and her lawyer and me. Very fruitful. The general counsel said he wouldn’t pursue any formal remedies, and she gave the company the kind of letter, signed by her and witnessed by her lawyer, that will be trotted out if she ever uses the company as a reference in the future.”

  Nancy took a sip of wine. “That means she just doesn’t use this company as a reference.”

  “It’s her first job out of school. Tough to leave it off the resume.”

  “She says to the next employer, ‘Oh, but with the economy and all, I’ve just been twiddling my thumbs these last months.’ ”

  I shook my head. “I guess so.”

  Nancy set down her glass. “But that’s not all that’s bothering you, is it?”

  “No.”

  “So, let’s have it.”

  I told her how tiresome the high-tech job had been, how badly the run had gone, how aggravating the traffic had been.

  Nancy said, “You just need a change of scenery.”

  She said it lightly, just the trace of a smile at the corners of her lips, as though she were trying to start the evening all over again at her front door.

  “What do you mean, Nance?”

  “You’re just a little burned out, John Francis Cuddy. You don’t usually feel that way, because of how your job works. Generally, you get to do different things every day, variety keeping the boredom at bay. The problem is that you’re just a little sick of your surroundings. You need to get away.”

  I tried for the trace of a smile, too. “With you?”

  A frown. “No chance. With this conspiracy trial coming up, I’ve got to work, even the weekend.”

  “I’m not really up for a solo vacation.”

  She reached into a pocket of her shorts, producing a pink telephone message slip. “I got a call from a classmate of mine today.”