Muscle Memory

by William G. Tapply

  “It means she was having an affair.”

  “No shit, Sam Spade. So, okay. Tell me what you know.”

  I told him how Mick had mailed me the Blue Cross/Blue Shield form and about my conversations with Gretchen Conley and Dr. Allison.

  “So Mick found out,” said Horowitz. “Went to her house to confront her, blew his stack, and whacked her with that statue.”

  “The Thinker,” I said. “That was the statue. I don’t think he found out about the pregnancy until after Kaye was already dead.”

  “How so?”

  “Why else would he send me that form when he did?”

  “Hmm,” said Horowitz. “Go on.”

  “He mailed it to me the day before he disappeared. He got it in the mail, figured out what it was all about, and that’s probably when he blew his stack. Maybe he wanted to kill Kaye when he saw it. But he couldn’t even if he wanted to, because someone else had already done it. Anyway, I think he’s got an idea who her lover was. I think that’s what Mick’s doing now. Tracking down the guy who was having this affair with Kaye. That’s who probably killed her, not Mick.”

  “Save it for the courtroom, Coyne. You gotta have your head up your ass way past your shoulders not to see that this is just one more finger pointing at your client.”

  “Maybe it is,” I said. “Still, it’d be good to know who this lover is, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sure. So you gonna tell me? That why you called? You got an actual piece of useful information for me?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know who it is. I’ve already told you about Will Powers, that kid who used to be her student, who might’ve been stalking her, and I also mentioned Ronald Moyle, the principal of the school where she taught. But Kaye Fallon probably knew a hundred guys who thought she looked pretty good. Hell, any guy would think Kaye Fallon looked good. Your witness there, Mitchell Selvy, he told me he liked looking at her. And there’s that Down’s syndrome guy, Darren.”

  I heard Horowitz sigh. “Yeah, okay, so I guess I better talk to Mrs. Conley again. And that doctor—what was his name?”

  “Allison. It’s a woman. Her office is in the John Cummings Building at Emerson Hospital.”

  “Got it.” He paused, then said, “Uh, Coyne?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just want you to know. I’m gonna get my cell phone number changed, okay? And when I do, I’m counting on you to help me remember not to give it to you.”

  Then the phone went dead.

  When I stepped out of the shower the next morning, my door buzzer was ringing steadily. I wrapped a towel around my waist and went to the intercom, leaving wet footprints on the carpet.

  I pressed the button. “I’m here. Who is it?”

  “Sergeant Benetti. The lieutenant wants you to come down.”

  “Christ, I just got out of the shower. What’s the—”

  “Get dressed,” she said. “Make it quick.”

  The last time Horowitz had come for me, Mick was holding Skeeter hostage. I guessed this had something to do with Mick, too.

  I slipped into a pair of jeans and a cotton shirt, grabbed my cigarettes and a car mug full of coffee, and took the stairs down to the lobby. Horowitz’s Taurus was parked directly in front of the door with the back door hanging open for me. I slid in, and before I could settle back, Benetti had peeled away from the curb.

  Without preamble, and without even turning in his seat, Horowitz said, “Guy name of Watts.”

  “I don’t know any Watts,” I said.

  “Darren Watts. Ring a bell?”

  “Darren? Oh, the Down’s syndrome guy in Lexington. What about him?”

  “Why the fuck do you think I came for you?” said Horowitz. “You think I wanna buy you breakfast? He’s dead, that’s what.”

  I blew out a breath. “Darren? Homicide?”

  “Don’t know. Unattended death. Lexington cops called it in. I mean, one day you mention this guy’s name, the next day he’s dead, and I figured, friend of Coyne’s, another God damn dead body in the same neighborhood, maybe he’d like to join me, help shed a little light on the subject.”

  “You didn’t give me much choice,” I said.

  Benetti had the flasher blinking and the siren wailing, and she weaved and darted expertly among the early-morning traffic. Morning rush hour was coming into the city, not going out the way we were, and she made good time.

  A jogger had spotted Darren’s body facedown in the pond where he liked to fish. That’s all Horowitz would tell me. Then he turned to the side window, and neither he nor Benetti said anything all the way to Lexington.

  There were three Lexington cruisers and a medical examiner’s van parked at awkward angles alongside the road just around the corner from the Fallons’ house when we got there. A small cluster of gawkers had gathered where the jogging path led into the woods. They were being held at bay by three or four uniformed officers. I noticed a gray-haired woman sitting on the ground crying into her hands. She was wearing a flowered housedress and bedroom slippers. A younger woman was kneeling beside her with her arm around her shoulder.

  I followed Horowitz and Benetti along the path and down to the pond, where a couple of uniformed cops stood with their backs to the water. About ten feet from shore, two men in shirtsleeves stood thigh-deep in the water. They were bent over Darren’s body.

  Horowitz spoke to the cops, then went to the water’s edge. “Hey,” he said.

  One of the two men straightened up, shielded his eyes, nodded, and waded to shore. He was tall, bald, big-beaked, and stoop-shouldered. “Drowned,” he said.

  “Accident?” said Horowitz.

  The tall man shook his head. “Not unless you can figure how he might smash in the back of his own head and then fall facedown in three feet of water, not to mention explaining where the finger bruises on his neck and throat came from.”

  Horowitz turned to Marcia Benetti. “Take Mr. Coyne back to the car and keep him humored till I get there.”

  “Wait a minute—” I began.

  But Benetti grabbed my elbow and led me away.

  I sat in the backseat. She sat behind the wheel, looking out the window.

  “You don’t say much,” I said to her.

  “No,” she said.

  “What’s your partner thinking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Horowitz strolled back. Instead of coming over to where I was waiting, he went to the woman in the housedress, who was still sitting on the ground. He squatted down directly in front of her, and I saw her head lift up to look at him. I heard the rumble of his voice, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. The woman was shaking her head. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she made no effort to wipe them away.

  After a few minutes, Horowitz patted her arm, stood up, and came to the cruiser. He slid in beside me. “Mrs. Watts,” he said. “Divorced lady. Darren was her only child.”

  I blew out a breath. “What happened?”

  “Looks like someone whacked him from behind, then held his head under water.”

  “When?”

  “ME figures he’s been dead around twelve hours.”

  “So it happened early last night.”

  Horowitz nodded.

  “She didn’t report him missing?” I said.

  “She says he stays out late most nights, doesn’t come in till after she’s gone to sleep. He’s a big boy, she says. Twenty-six years old. She tries to treat him like an adult. Doesn’t ask where he’s been or what he’s been doing, and he doesn’t tell her. He likes fishing. That’s about all she could say.”

  “If he stays out at night,” I said, “he might’ve seen who killed Kaye.” I thought for a moment. “Or—”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Horowitz.

  “Or Darren might’ve done it,” I finished.

  Horowitz tapped my knee. “Got a question for you.”

  I nodded.

  “You wer
e out here the other day.”

  “Yes. Saturday.”

  “You talked with Darren Watts.”

  “Yes. I told you. He acted strange. Angry, afraid, or something. Got very agitated when I mentioned Kaye Fallon. He ran away from me, and when I followed him to the pond, he swung his fishing rod at me, chased me away.”

  “My question is this,” said Horowitz. “Who’d you tell about this?”

  I thought for a minute. “Well, you. And I think I mentioned it to Gretchen and Lyn Conley, and—” I stopped and looked at Horowitz.

  “Fallon,” he said. “You talked to Fallon on the phone.”

  “Yes. I mentioned it to Mick, too.”

  Horowitz nodded and proceeded to question me about every detail of my two encounters with Darren, first at the Fallons’ house and then at the pond. He made me remember everyone I’d told about seeing Darren. Then I had to go back all over it again for him.

  When we finished, he gave me his quick, cynical grin. “Why not do everybody a favor, Coyne. Hereafter, mind your own fucking business. Okay?”

  “You think I—?”

  “I hope you got a good look at young Mr. Watts’s body, pal, because this one’s on your head.”

  Horowitz stayed at the crime scene in Lexington, and Marcia Benetti drove me back to my apartment. I didn’t try to make conversation with her. I was trying to get my mind around the possibility that Mick Fallon had murdered his former neighbor, Darren Watts. I knew what Horowitz was thinking: either Darren had killed Kaye, and Mick had figured it out and taken his revenge, or Darren had seen Mick kill his wife and Mick had killed the witness.

  Either way, Mick was a helluva suspect. And I was the one who’d put Darren Watts into his mind.

  Horowitz was probably right. Everyone would be better off if I’d just stick to wills and divorces.

  Around noontime, Lyn Conley called me at my office. “Just thought you’d want to know,” he said. “Kaye’s going to be waked Wednesday at the Douglas Funeral Home in Lexington. Visiting hours’ll be three to five and seven to nine. Funeral’s Thursday at ten A.M. at the Immaculate Conception Church. It’s in today’s paper.”

  “Gretchen told me you were helping Danny and Erin with the arrangements,” I said.

  “The least I could do, I guess.”

  “So how are they handling it?”

  “I was with them when they saw her. That was pretty rough. But I think it got them over a hump. Made it real, you know? They’re good, solid kids. They’ll be okay.” He hesitated. “It’d sure help if Mick was around, though.”

  “It sure would,” I said. I saw no purpose in mentioning Darren Watts to Lyn. “Did Gretchen tell the kids that I talked with Mick?”

  “Yeah. Hard to tell how they felt about that.”

  “Knowing he’s alive…”

  “I don’t think they ever allowed themselves to think he wasn’t. Or Kaye, either, for that matter, until they saw her body.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, I appreciate your calling. I guess I’ll see you at the funeral. I’m not much for wakes.”

  He laughed humorlessly. “Me neither. Who the hell likes wakes? Oh, we’re having a kind of reception at the house afterwards. After the interment, I mean. I think it would mean a lot to the kids if you dropped in.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  Fifteen

  THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CHURCH was an imposing old brick structure—well, I guess all Catholic churches are imposing, at least to non-Catholics. This one had wide front steps that descended directly to the sidewalk, as if to lure in all passersby. Rhododendrons and azaleas in spectacular bloom grew against its granite foundation, and it was flanked by a pair of towering elms which had somehow been spared from the Dutch elm epidemic.

  I parked across the street and sat there in my car with all the windows rolled down and the sunroof open. It was around twenty to ten, one of those intoxicating New England June mornings when birdsong and flower scent saturate the air. As good a day as any for the funeral of a murdered young wife and mother and teacher.

  I could watch the front entrance of the church from where I sat. The double doors were wide open, and already people had begun to cluster on the sidewalk and front steps. Some of them were already drifting inside. They came in singles and pairs and groups and whole families. The teenagers—Kaye’s former students along with friends of Danny and Erin, I guessed—clung to each other in bunches. The girls wore pastel dresses and straw hats. The boys, awkward in their suits and ties, were tugging at their shirt collars and rolling their shoulders inside their jackets.

  After about ten minutes, I climbed out of my car. The funeral cortege had not yet arrived, and I wanted to be already seated inside when it did. I crossed the street and weaved among the crowd gathered outside the church, nodding to the strangers who nodded to me, then climbed the steps.

  Mounted on the outside wall beside the church doors was a brass plaque like the scores of brass plaques scattered around the history-rich town. Lexington calls itself “The Birthplace of American Liberty.” On its village green the American Revolution began when a British soldier fired “the shot heard ’round the world.” The Minutemen got clobbered, but history records the event as “a glorious morning for America.”

  This plaque read: “Constructed in 1768, this is the oldest continually active Roman Catholic church in Massachusetts. Here on April 19, 1775, a wounded British soldier found sanctuary during the retreat from the Battle of Concord. This church was an important way station on the Underground Railroad. When a fire set by antiabolitionists gutted its insides in 1856, it was rebuilt with donations from townspeople of all denominations.”

  I went inside. A cranberry-colored carpet covered the wide central aisle down to the altar. Tall stained-glass windows on both side walls filtered in rosy sunlight. It was airy and bright and altogether cheerful in there, although the faint, sweet scent of incense brought back old feelings of awe. An organ was playing Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus,” itself not an uncheerful tune.

  The old wooden pews were nearly half-filled already. Many folks were kneeling with their forearms braced on the pew back in front of them, heads bowed, hands clasped together. A few of the older women fingered rosaries and wore veils over their faces.

  I paused at the rear corner of the church, scanning the faces, looking for any that I might recognize. I spotted Barbara Cooper, Kaye’s lawyer, and Ron Moyle, her principal. The rest were strangers to me.

  I moved around to the side aisle and slid into a pew near the back. I didn’t kneel and I didn’t pray, because I had never been taught how to do those things.

  But I tried to think about Kaye Fallon, and to mourn her in my own inept, pagan way. I realized that I barely knew her—had, in fact, only met her once, at Mick’s deposition. I had probably not seen her at her best that day.

  I tried to conjure up her face in my mind, but the image that kept appearing was that of Meg Ryan, the actress. Close, but I knew that wasn’t quite right. Kaye was actually prettier, though not quite as cute as Meg.

  But even though I couldn’t picture Kaye, I felt that I knew her. I knew that people liked her. Many of them loved her. She’d done nothing wrong. She’d just wanted to carve out some happiness for herself in the eyeblink of time that was her life.

  And I thought of poor Darren Watts, and wished I had the powers to pray for him.

  I became aware of someone standing in the aisle beside me, and when I looked up, I saw that it was Mitchell Selvy, the guy who lived across the street from the Fallons. He was wearing a gray suit and a plaid tie, and his Clint Eastwood face looked even craggier than I’d remembered.

  “Oh, hey,” he said when he saw who I was. “How you doing, Mr. Coyne?”

  I smiled and nodded. Selvy dropped quickly to one knee in the aisle and crossed himself, then stood and slid in past me. He sat in the pew beside me, pulled out the kneeler, knelt on it, and dropped his forehead onto his clasped ha
nds.

  After a minute or two, he sat back, gripping his thighs. “We buried my wife from this church,” he whispered to me.

  The people were arriving in a steady procession now, and I watched all of them. Many were young people. Kaye had had a lot of friends. I thought it would please Danny and Erin to see the church filled.

  Then the organ stopped playing. The sudden silence was filled with the creaking of the pews, an occasional cough, and the soft buzz of whispered voices. A priest had appeared down front. He knelt with his back to us and crossed himself perfunctorily, then stood up, climbed the two or three steps up to the altar, and began moving around, as if he were double-checking that everything was in place. He had thinning white hair and a gap-toothed smile that reminded me of Ernest Borgnine.

  The organ started a different tune, something slower and more somber that I recognized but couldn’t quite place. Bach, maybe.

  Two men in black suits marched very slowly down the aisle, each bearing a spray of flowers. They placed them on the altar, then retreated.

  Then the priest, with his hands folded in front of his belly, started up the aisle. Everyone stood and turned to face the back of the church.

  Gretchen and Lyn Conley entered first. They were followed by four men and two women I didn’t recognize flanking the bronze casket on its rolling casters. Behind them came Danny and Erin Fallon, with their heads bowed and their arms around each other’s waists. Ned and Linda Conley followed Danny and Erin.

  The priest met the little contingent of mourners halfway down the aisle. He touched hands and whispered to each of them, then turned back to the altar. The organ stopped, and then a soprano, without accompaniment, began singing “Amazing Grace.” Her voice was so clear and sweet that it brought tears to my eyes.

  As she sang, the casket and its bearers moved to the front of the church. I became aware of Mitch Selvy beside me, craning his neck. Then he poked me with his elbow and pointed with his thumb.

  It was Mick.

  He had not been in the church before Kaye’s casket arrived. He’d waited until everybody’s eyes had turned to the rear. Then he’d materialized near the front, close to the altar, and slipped into a pew along the side aisle six or eight rows from the front, a couple dozen rows directly in front of me. I noticed a curtained entryway on the side wall. He must have slipped in from there.