Muscle Memory

by William G. Tapply

“I told Gretchen how much I admire what you folks are do­ing,” I said after a minute.

  “We all loved Kaye.” He hesitated. “And Mick, of course. Danny and Erin are family.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “Oh, the kids know they’re welcome to stay as long as they like. They’re starting to talk about getting on with their lives. I think Danny’s going to head back to Block Island tomorrow or the next day. I’m not sure what Erin’s plans are. I have the feeling she might want to hang around for a while. She and Linda get along well, and Erin doesn’t really have anyplace to go.” Lyn glanced sideways at me. “I think they both feel like they have unfinished business, though.”

  “Mick, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  “He was there this morning, you know. At the church.”

  “Yes,” said Lyn. “I saw him. I’m glad he’s okay, but I can’t understand what he’s thinking.”

  I nodded and took a sip of Coke. “So how are you doing with all this?”

  “Me?”

  I nodded. “Gretchen got a lot of sympathy, and Danny and Erin, of course. You were close to Kaye, too.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I was.”

  “People sometimes assume we guys don’t feel things the way women and kids do. It must’ve devastated you.”

  “Boy, you’ve got that right.” He let out a long breath. “Gretch was hysterical. I had to take care of her. I really couldn’t…” He shook his head, smiled quickly, then brushed the back of his hand across his face and blinked a couple of times.

  “Never having the chance to say good-bye to her,” I said. “Until it was too late. That had to be tough.”

  “Oh, I think about that, believe me. She was…”

  “Special,” I said. “I know.”

  “But you don’t know, Brady.” He was shaking his head. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said quietly. “I do know.”

  I felt him stiffen momentarily beside me. Then he tried to laugh. It came out strangled, like a sob.

  I touched his arm. “I know, Lyn.”

  “What? What do you know?”

  “About you and Kaye.”

  He straightened up and frowned at me. “There’s nothing to know,” he said. “Kaye and I…”

  I shook my head.

  He stared at me for a minute. “You couldn’t know,” he whispered. “Nobody knew.”

  “You’re wrong about that. I know.”

  He gazed off toward the meadow. Then he blinked, and the tears welled up in his eyes. “Shit,” he muttered. He fumbled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and stuffed it back. “We really loved each other, Brady. I hope you can understand that. This wasn’t some—some affair. We—we loved each other for years. I mean, since we were young together, before we had kids, even. We never—I mean, never—did anything. Didn’t speak of it, even to each other. But we both knew. We each knew how the other one felt. That’s how it was, and we lived with it. It was like it would always be that way. I never expected it would be any different. But I knew I’d never stop loving her.” He put his hand to his mouth for a moment, as if he wanted to stop his words from coming out. Then he shook his head. “When she split with Mick, I thought I knew why. And I—I had to—to see her, to make sure I was right.” He shook his head. “And I was. One night I went to her house. She—”

  “When?” I said. “When was this?”

  “A year ago last winter. January or February. A few weeks after Mick moved out. She said she never would’ve called me. But she wanted me to come to her. We talked for hours. And then we made love. And we made promises to each other.”

  “That you’d both get divorced?” I said.

  He nodded. “I was going to, too. But I kept putting it off. I mean, I didn’t think Gretchen deserved that. Me and Kaye? Her best friend?” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t figure out how to say it right. And my kids? I didn’t see how I could face them. I wasn’t sure I had the courage for that. Kaye never really pressured me. She understood, or at least she said she did. But she didn’t put it off. That was the difference between us. When Kaye made up her mind about something, she just did it. She split with Mick and she got a lawyer, and I knew that sooner or later I’d have to…” He waved his hand as if he couldn’t bear to say the words.

  “Tell Gretchen,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So Kaye became more insistent?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. But—” He stopped. His mouth opened and closed. Then he said. “You think I—?”

  “No,” I said. “You didn’t kill her.”

  “Hell,” he said. “I couldn’t’ve. I was with Gretchen that night. We had dinner at the Claymans’.” He shook his head. “God, for a minute there I thought you—”

  “What car did you take?”

  “Huh? You mean to the Claymans’?” He frowned. “The Cherokee. Ned had the Lexus.”

  “Right,” I said, “And—”

  Lyn was staring at me. “Oh, God,” he whispered. Then he lifted his head and looked past my shoulder. I saw his eyes widen.

  I turned in time to see Ned staring at us through the screen slider. Then he turned away. “Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, Ned. Wait.”

  Ned shoved aside some people, and darted back into the house. A moment later I heard the front door slam.

  I turned and started to run off the deck so I could intercept him out front. I’d almost made it to the steps when Lyn grabbed my leg. I lost my balance, spun sideways, and fell hard on my shoulder. Then Lyn was on top of me. He was pounding my back and shoulders with his fists, saying things I didn’t understand, his voice a kind of wail, oozing grief and pain.

  I arched my back, bucked and heaved, managed to throw him off me, and scrambled to my feet. He reached out and hooked my ankle, tripping me again. This time my head bounced off the flooring of the deck, and my cheekbone—the one where Mick had slugged me—grazed something. An arrow of pain shot into the pit of my stomach, and for a moment the world went spinning around me. I got to my knees, shook my head, then heaved myself onto my feet. Lyn grabbed my shoulder and aimed a fist at my face. I ducked away and punched him as hard as I could. My fist caught him on the point of his chin, and his head snapped back. I hit him again, this time on the jaw, and he staggered, stumbled, and slammed onto his back.

  People had begun to gather on the deck. A couple of them reached out to me. I shook them off and hurried down the steps, and about the time I hit the lawn I heard a car engine roar to a start from out front. I sprinted around the side of the house—just in time to see Lyn Conley’s Lexus swerving and fishtailing backwards down the driveway. The engine was racing and the driver’s door hung open, and Mick Fallon was holding onto the handle. Ned was behind the wheel, dragging Mick along, and Mick’s feet were running and skidding on the driveway as he tried to get them underneath himself.

  At the foot of the driveway Ned suddenly jammed on the brakes, and the door swung against the car. Mick’s legs lifted off the ground, but he somehow kept his grip on the door handle. Ned shifted into first gear and slammed into the street. The door flapped open, then crashed back and latched itself. Mick was still hanging on with one hand, and I saw him reach in through the open window, trying, I thought, to grab the wheel, or maybe to grab Ned.

  I stood there and watched the Lexus peel up the narrow carlined residential road. Suddenly, Ned swerved. The Lexus ricocheted off a parked car with the screech of speeding metal scraping against metal, and then Mick’s big body flew into the air. It seemed to hang there for a moment before it crashed down on the hood of a parked car, bounced, and flopped onto the ground.

  The Lexus screamed up the narrow street and skidded around the corner on squealing tires.

  I was halfway across the street to where Mick had been thrown when in the distance I heard the desperate screech of rubber on wet asphalt, followed by the unmistakable thudding crash of two tons of hurtlin
g steel and glass exploding against some large, hard, immovable object.

  That awful sound echoed, then died, and the absolute silence that followed was awesome and terrifying and seemed to last several minutes.

  A moment later, a cloud of black smoke billowed up over the tops of the trees from where Ned Conley had crashed his father’s gunmetal gray Lexus.

  Eighteen

  I REALIZED I’D BEEN standing there at the end of the driveway, holding my breath. I shook myself and dashed across the street.

  I found Mick sprawled on the grass behind the line of parked cars alongside the street. He was curled fetally on his left side with one leg twisted awkwardly under him. Dark blood soaked his hair and had trickled down the side of his face. His eyes were closed. He lay very still.

  I knelt beside him and bent my ear to his mouth. It took me a panicky moment to detect his breathing. It was shallow and rapid.

  “Mick,” I said. “Hey, Mick.”

  His eyes blinked open, darted around, then focused on me. “Hey,” he whispered. “You don’t have to yell, man.”

  A choking sob came from behind me. I turned. Erin Fallon was standing there hugging herself. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  “I think he’s okay,” I said to her.

  She came and knelt beside me, then reached down and touched Mick’s face. “Daddy?”

  “Hi, baby,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

  She touched his blood-soaked hair, then bent and kissed his cheek. “Shh,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  A murmur of voices made me turn. A crowd had gathered around us—people from the party and maybe some neighbors and passersby. “Anybody call an ambulance?” I said.

  “They’re coming,” somebody answered.

  Then Danny pushed his way through. He stood there, clenching and unclenching his fists, looking down at Mick. “Pop?” he said.

  Mick turned his head. He grimaced, closed his eyes for a moment, then looked up at his son and tried to smile. He lifted his hand an inch or two, then let it fall back. “How’s it goin’, bud?” Then he sighed and his eyes closed.

  Erin bent close to him for a minute, then looked up at me and nodded. Mick was still alive.

  I knelt there beside him, feeling helpless, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned. Horowitz was standing behind me. “Is he conscious?” he said.

  “Where’d you come from?” I said.

  Horowitz crouched beside Mick, ignoring me. “Hey, Fallon,” he said. “Can you hear me? It’s Lieutenant Horowitz.”

  Mick’s eyes fluttered open. “Guess you got me, man,” he mumbled. “Took you long enough.”

  Horowitz cleared his throat. “Michael Fallon,” he said, “you are under arrest for the murder of Katherine Fallon. You have the right—”

  I grabbed Horowitz’s arm. “Hold on,” I said.

  He whirled to face me.” Don’t interrupt, Coyne.”

  I shook my head. “Mick didn’t do it.”

  “Don’t tell me my job.”

  “Ned Conley killed her,” I said.

  Horowitz frowned. “Who?”

  “The driver of that Lexus that crashed up the street.”

  “Huh?” Horowitz narrowed his eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’ll tell you the whole story. Then if you still feel you’ve got to arrest Mick, you’ll probably be able to find him. These—” I waved my hand, indicating Danny and Erin “—are his kids. Have some consideration for a change.”

  He glanced from Erin to Danny, nodded, then turned back to me. “Can you prove this?”

  “You shouldn’t have a problem getting a confession out of Ned,” I said.

  Horowitz gave me his sardonic Jack Nicholson grin. “Might not be that easy,” he said. “That Lexus was going about seventy when it flipped. Smashed into a big oak tree. Impact flush on the driver’s side.”

  A few minutes later came the wail of sirens, and then two EMTs shouldered their way through the crowd. Erin and Danny and Horowitz and I stepped back while they examined Mick. After a few minutes, they got him strapped onto a board and lugged him to the ambulance.

  I followed behind them. One of the EMTs climbed in back with Mick. The other slammed the door and started around to the front. I touched his arm. “How is he?” I said.

  “Broken femur, coupla cracked ribs, lacerated scalp, for start­ers. Don’t know about internal injuries. Looks like his spine and skull are okay.”

  “He’s going to be all right, then?”

  He shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “Taking him to Emerson?”

  He nodded, climbed behind the wheel, squawked the siren a couple of times, then started up the street.

  I found Danny and Erin, and we got into my car and followed the ambulance to the hospital.

  We sat in the emergency waiting room for four or five hours. Neither of Mick’s kids seemed inclined to talk, and I didn’t push it. We watched the muted television, thumbed through old mag­azines, drank Cokes from the machine, and every half hour or so I went outside for a cigarette. I used the same bench I’d sat on with Evie Banyon a few days earlier.

  Sometime after seven that evening a doctor came into the waiting room. He said Mick was going to be okay, and we could see him if we wanted. They let us in one at a time. Erin went first, then Danny, and they both came back red-eyed but smiling.

  Mick’s eyes were closed. Wires ran from under the sheet to a ticking and humming machine on a table beside the bed, and he was getting oxygen through a tube under his nostrils. A bandage covered his head like a turban, and his left leg, which wore a cast from foot to hip, was cranked up on a traction device.

  I sat on the chair that was pulled close to his side and touched his arm. “You awake, Mick?”

  I saw his eyes roll under his eyelids, but he didn’t open them. His lips moved. I leaned close.

  “That you, Brady?”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  He gave me a week, lopsided grin. “You got yourself a mouse there, bud.”

  I touched my cheek. “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “How about you?”

  “Thirsty,” he rasped.

  I found a glass of water on the table. I held it for him, and steered the straw to his lips. He took a couple of sips, then turned his head away.

  He licked his lips. “C’mere,” he whispered.

  I bent closer to him.

  “It was Ned,” he murmured.

  “I know.”

  “They get him?”

  “They got him, Mick. It’s all over.”

  “Danny and Erin,” he said. “They know it wasn’t me, huh?”

  “They know.”

  “Tell ’em I love ’em,” he mumbled.

  “They know that, too,” I said.

  When I went back out to the waiting room, Horowitz was sitting there talking with Erin and Danny. He looked up at me, nodded, and said, “Got a minute?”

  We went outside and sat on the smokers’ bench.

  I lit a cigarette. “What about Ned Conley?”

  He nodded. “I talked to him before they wheeled him into surgery. He admitted both of ’em.”

  “Kaye and Darren?”

  He nodded.

  “Why Darren?”

  Horowitz shrugged. “Ned thought Darren could finger him.”

  “What else did he say?”

  Horowitz shrugged. “His old man told him he was gonna ask his mother for a divorce. Kid freaked. Went over, tried to talk Mrs. Fallon out of it, and…” He shook his head.

  “She refused and he hit her.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

  “So it’s all cleared up,” I said. “Except for the trial.”

  “No trial, Coyne. They lost him in surgery.”

  “Ned died?”

  He nodded.

  “Jesus.” I s
hook my head. “What a mess. The whole thing.”

  “Ah, it’s a fucking tragedy, Coyne. Bunch of people who all love each other?” He waved his hand dismissively. “I see it every day. What a job.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “I still gotta question your client. Doctors tell me he’ll be able to talk tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  Horowitz shrugged. “I gotta interrogate Mr. and Mrs. Conley and a few other people, too. Loose ends, that’s all.” He cocked his head and peered at me. “Did you figure it out?”

  “Not until today. Will Powers told me he saw that Lexus in front of Kaye’s house the night of the murder. I thought of Lyn, and when I did, it occurred to me that he might’ve been Kaye’s lover, the one who got her pregnant. That would fit with how Kaye handled it with Gretchen. But Lyn couldn’t have done it.”

  “Why not?”

  “The beer bottle. Lyn was on the wagon. Kaye wouldn’t have given him a beer. So then I thought Ned. He’d been borrowing his parents’ cars.”

  “How old was Ned?”

  “Just seventeen,” I said.

  “What a world, huh?”

  Danny and Erin decided to spend the night at the hospital. I hung around with them for a while, and finally they told me they’d be fine and I looked tired and why didn’t I go home and get some sleep.

  I didn’t argue with them.

  I got back to my empty apartment around nine-thirty, shucked off my funeral suit, and climbed into sweatpants and a T-shirt. Then I scrambled some eggs and toasted an English muffin and ate an evening breakfast out on my balcony.

  The storm had passed, leaving the air clean and sweet. A nearly full moon was playing peek-a-boo with some skidding clouds. Tomorrow, if I wasn’t mistaken, would be humid and hot with afternoon thunder showers, the first truly summery day of the season, even if the calendar insisted it was still spring.

  I tried to make sense out of what had happened. But I couldn’t. There was no lesson in it, no moral, nothing to be learned. Three people were dead and two nice families had been wrecked, all because a man and a woman loved each other, and because a boy loved his family. It was just a damn tragedy, and that was the only way to understand it.

  I’m all for love. But sometimes I think we’d be better off without it.