Hell Bent

by William G. Tapply

  The movie ended at eleven. Eight o’clock on this Sunday evening in Sausalito, California. I picked up my cell phone, flipped it open, closed it, bounced it up and down in my hand. I had stopped trying to call Evie a long time ago. I didn’t like imagining her screening her calls and not answering when she saw it was me. I didn’t like hearing her voice mail inviting me to leave a message and deciding not to leave one because I knew she wouldn’t call me back.

  Well, I wanted to do this. I poked out her cell phone number. It had a 617 area code. Boston. Unless by now she’d had it changed, in which case my call wouldn’t go through.

  I hit Send. It rang five times. Then came her familiar, businesslike message. “It’s Evie. I can’t come to the phone. Leave a message and I’ll get right back to you.”

  I took a deep breath, and after the beep, I said, “Hey, babe. It’s me. I got your letter. I guess it didn’t surprise me. It’s okay. I want you to do what you need to do. And I’m good. You don’t need to worry about me.” I hesitated, cleared my throat. I wasn’t saying any of the things I wanted to say. “Look,” I said. “We really could talk. It’s kind of dumb that we don’t. I wouldn’t try to lay any guilt trips on you or beg you to come home or tell you how lonely I am. Nothing like that, honest. I mean, I’m not lonely. I’m good. It would just be nice to talk. We could do that. We don’t need to keep avoiding each other, at least as far as I’m concerned. Well, I just wanted to tell you that. I hope Ed’s doing okay. I hope you’re doing okay. We’re good here. Me and Henry. I’m trying to live my life, just like you want me to.” I stopped, thought for a minute, then shrugged and hit the End button on my phone.

  Before bed, I let Henry out. While he sniffed around and squirted on the bushes, I stood on the deck, looked up at the sky, and tried to locate Snoopy and Elvis and the Green Ripper. But it still just looked like a random chaos of stars up there.

  ELEVEN

  I spent all of Monday morning in court and didn’t get back to the office until around two in the afternoon. Julie was on the phone when I walked in. She lifted a finger and smiled, and I gave her a quick wave, poured myself a mug of coffee, and went into my office.

  She came in a minute later and sat in the client chair at my desk. “How’d it go?” she said.

  “Judge Kolb was his usual pissy self,” I said, “but we got it done in spite of him. Gus Shaw has been weighing heavily on my mind, needless to say.”

  Julie nodded. “I’m sorry. What’re you going to do?”

  “Nothing to be done until the ME comes up with his verdict. If then.”

  “And Alex? How’s she taking it?

  I shrugged. “He was her big brother.”

  “Horrible,” said Julie. “Just horrible.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “So, anything happen in my absence this morning?”

  She mentioned a couple of clients I needed to call and a few lawyers who had called me, pushed a printed list of messages and reminders across my desk to me, then said, “I tracked down the lawyer for AA Movers. Name of Kenilworth. Charles Kenilworth. Office on Route 101A in Amherst, New Hampshire.”

  “That’s good work,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “101A is like this giant strip mall, goes on and on,” I said.

  Julie nodded. “It’s like Alice’s Restaurant. You can get anything you want on 101A in Amherst, New Hampshire.”

  “Lawyers, even.”

  “One lawyer anyway,” she said. “So I bet you want to talk to Attorney Kenilworth, huh?”

  “You bet I do,” I said.

  “How’s now?”

  “No time like the present. Let’s strike while the iron is hot. Early bird gets the worm. Or you can just go ahead and fill in your own cliché.”

  Julie rolled her eyes went out to her desk, and a few minutes later my telephone console buzzed. I picked up the phone and said, “Yes?”

  “I’ve got Attorney Kenilworth on line two,” Julie said.

  “His secretary can’t be much good,” I said, “if she didn’t give you the runaround, tell you Attorney Kenilworth was negotiating a settlement with Ford Motor Company, or arguing issues of constitutional law in federal court, or at least conferring with important clients.”

  “He answered his own phone,” she said. “I told him who you were, who you were representing, and he said for me to go ahead and put you on.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks. Got it.” I hit the blinking button and said, “Attorney Kenilworth? You there?”

  “I’m here,” he said, “and lawyer to lawyer, you can call me Chuck.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m Brady. I wanted to talk to you about—”

  “The Epping complaint with some nonexistent Massachusetts corporation,” he said. “I’ve got your letter here on my desk.”

  “I assume you were intending to talk to me about it,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “Actually, I wasn’t. Nothing to talk about. This doesn’t involve any client of mine.”

  “Well, okay, then. Thanks for taking my call.”

  “It would’ve been rude not to take your call, Brady. I’m not a rude person, and I’m always happy to say hello to a fellow attorney. But let’s not waste our time on this noncase.”

  “Your client—”

  “My client,” he said, “assuming you’re referring to AA Movers, a New Hampshire corporation with headquarters in Nashua, has no reason to respond to your letter, as I’m sure you understand.”

  “You sure you don’t want to talk with me?” I said.

  “You seem like a nice person,” he said, “but aside from the weather or the football scores, we don’t have anything to talk about.”

  “Assuming your client has broken no laws,” I said, “I guess you’re right. Nothing to discuss.”

  Kenilworth hesitated one beat too long before he said, “You’re not threatening me, are you, Brady?”

  “Me? Certainly not.”

  “Threatening my client, I mean.”

  “No threat,” I said. “Just keeping you informed. Your client fucked over my clients, Chuck. Wrecked a lot of valuable stuff and refused to accept responsibility. So my clients are very upset, and on their behalf, so am I. I just thought you might want to get back to Mr. Nicholas Delaney, there, at Double A Movers, formerly a Massachusetts corporation, now incorporated in New Hampshire, but the same sleazeball Delaney, and tell him that there is an angry Boston attorney who knows people in the state attorney general’s office and has friends at the IRS who’s thinking about looking into their business practices. See what kind of advice you might have for them. Defunct Massachusetts corporation notwithstanding, I promise you that before we’re done, I will know everything there is to know about Nicholas Delaney.”

  Kenilworth said nothing for a moment. Then he chuckled. “Sounds like a threat to me.”

  “I’ll wait to hear from you, then?”

  “I’ll get back to you,” he said. “Good talking to you, Brady.”

  “You, too, Chuck,” I said. “I enjoyed it.”

  I took two or three deep breaths, then called the number for Doug and Mary Epping at their new condo in Charlestown.

  When Mary answered, I asked to talk to Doug.

  “He’s having his afternoon nap,” she said. “He cherishes his afternoon nap. I’d rather not wake him up. Is this about my furniture?”

  “It is,” I said.

  “You can talk to me,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s really my stuff.”

  “Right. Okay. Here’s the thing, Mary. Back in the spring when this Double A outfit moved you and wrecked your stuff, they were a Massachusetts corporation. Now they’re not. Legally, they no longer exist. We can’t touch them.”

  Mary Epping said nothing for a long minute. Then I heard her clear her throat. “I understand about corporations,” she said. “And limited liability. But you’re saying they have no responsibility for what they did?
”

  “I’m afraid that’s right, yes. No legal responsibility.”

  “And there’s nothing we can do?”

  “The law can’t touch them,” I said.

  “There must be something.”

  “I’ve talked with the lawyer for the brand-new AA Movers, which is a New Hampshire corporation,” I said. “I don’t have high hopes.”

  “This is very disappointing,” she said.

  “I agree,” I said.

  “Doug will be beside himself.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “You’ve got to think of something, Brady. It’s not even the furniture, or the money. It’s …”

  “The principle of it,” I said. “I agree.”

  “More than that,” she said. “It’s my husband’s sanity. We’ve got to figure something out.”

  “We will,” I said. “You keep Doug calm.”

  “Easier said than done,” said Mary. “He can get absolutely homicidal, you know.” I heard her let out a breath. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell him what you’ve told me. I imagine he’ll want to talk to you.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Have him call me.”

  “It’s just not right,” said Mary Epping. “We’re not done with this. I guarantee that.”

  Alex and I talked by phone on Monday evening, and then again on Tuesday and Wednesday, around the same time, a little before eleven when both of us were thinking of heading for bed, she in her room at the Best Western hotel in Concord and I in my townhouse on Beacon Hill in Boston. We were less than an hour’s drive apart. It would have been easy enough to get together on any of those evenings, but neither of us suggested it. We seemed to have fallen into a familiar routine, these eleven o’clock bedtime conversations when we shared the events of our days like comfortable old friends. It was eerily reminiscent of the time several years earlier when we were a couple but living apart, Alex at her little house in Garrison, Maine, and I in my rented condo on the Boston waterfront. Back then, during the workweek we talked on the phone every night before bed but saw each other only on weekends.

  Somewhere along the way we decided to get together on Friday, just as we used to do in the old days. We’d have dinner at my house. Alex insisted on doing the cooking. She said she wanted to show me that she wasn’t a bad cook anymore. She’d become a better cook than I remembered, she said, and I said I believed it, because she’d never cooked anything before.

  We didn’t talk about where she’d sleep that night, or how we’d spend the weekend, or how much things between us had changed in the past seven years, or how much things hadn’t changed.

  I’d hung up my office pinstripe, pulled on a pair of jeans, and opened a bottle of Sam Adams, and I was giving Henry his supper Thursday after work when my phone rang. It was Roger Horowitz. “In five minutes I’m going to knock on your front door,” he said. “Wanted to be sure you were there.”

  “I’m here,” I said. “You want something to eat?”

  “Just coffee.”

  “I’ve got food,” I said. “It’s suppertime.”

  He said, “Nope,” and hung up.

  So I made a fresh pot of coffee, and five minutes later, almost to the second, my doorbell rang. Henry scurried to the door and stood there pressing his nose against it.

  I told him to sit and stay, which he did, then opened the door for Horowitz.

  He stepped in and peered around. A big manila envelope was tucked under his arm. “Needs a woman’s touch, Coyne.”

  “I know.”

  He bent down and gave Henry a scratch on the forehead. “I got the ME’s report on the Shaw thing,” he said, tapping his briefcase with his forefinger. “Figured you’d want to hear it.”

  “I do. I appreciate it.”

  “I have no obligation to share this with you, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. “I owe you.”

  “Of course you do,” he said. “I’m keeping track.”

  “I figured if I heard from anybody,” I said, “it would be Detective Boyle.”

  “Boyle wouldn’t’ve bothered,” said Horowitz.

  We went into the kitchen. I poured two mugs of coffee and we sat at the table.

  Horowitz slid a manila folder out of the envelope. He opened it on the table and squinted at the typed pages. Then he looked up at me. “Suicide. That’s the verdict. I bet you’re not surprised.”

  “No, not really,” I said.

  “The evidence was unequivocal,” he said. “There were no contraindications at all.”

  “I’m not arguing with you,” I said.

  He nodded. “The weapon they found on the floor under the victim’s left hand—a military-issue M9 Beretta, nine millimeter—fired the bullet that killed him. Mr. Shaw’s were the only fingerprints on the weapon, which matches the description of the handgun that he, um, allegedly brandished before his wife and children several months ago, the same weapon he brought back illegally from Iraq.” He arched his eyebrows at me.

  “How’d you hear about that?”

  “Boyle got it from Mrs. Shaw. It was never officially reported.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. What else?”

  “Two empty shell casings on the floor. One evidently a practice shot into the ceiling.”

  “Explain the practice shot,” I said.

  “We see it sometimes with handgun suicides,” he said. “For courage, maybe. Or just to be sure he knows how the weapon works. He fires a shot into the floor or the wall or the ceiling. Unfortunately, we’ve never had the opportunity to ask the victim to explain it to us. But, anyway, there were those two cartridge casings. Ceiling, then head. I got all the crime-scene photos here. You want to see?” He slid a sheaf of eight-by-ten photos out of the envelope.

  “No,” I said. “I was there. I saw it.”

  He shrugged and put the photos back.

  “So,” I said, “the bullet entered here”—I put my finger against the soft place behind and just below my left ear and behind my jawbone—”and exited …”

  Horowitz touched the top of the right side of his head. “Here. The gun was held at an angle, pointing slightly upward. The bullet angled through his head. It expanded as it went. Made a helluva big exit wound.”

  “Hollow-point bullet?”

  He squinted at one of the typed pages, then looked up at me. “Ordinary round-nosed lead bullet.”

  “The angle?” I said.

  “Just about what you’d predict, a man holding a gun under his ear.”

  “Did he press the barrel against his head?”

  “No,” said Horowitz. “There was some burning and blistering of the skin around the entrance wound consistent with the gun being held an inch or so away.”

  “Is that what a man shooting himself in the head would do?” I said. “Not touch his skin with the barrel?”

  He shrugged. “Happens both ways.” He frowned at me. “You got some kind of a problem, Coyne?”

  I shook my head. “No. No problem. You’re answering my questions. I’m just trying to envision it. Thanks. Carry on.”

  He took a sip of coffee, then glanced at the papers on the table in front of him. “Gunpowder residue on Shaw’s left hand, which as it happens was his only hand.” He moved his finger down the page. “I’m skimming here. A lot of technical stuff. Traces of legal prescription drugs in his system. Antidepressants, matching what they found in his bathroom, quantities consistent with a prescription dosage. Um, okay, he had about two ounces of bourbon in his stomach, which was otherwise empty. There were about four ounces gone from that bottle of Early Times he had there, which just about computes with his BAL, which was .04.”

  “You lost me there,” I said. “Explain.”

  “Two two-ounce shots of whiskey, one maybe half an hour after the other,” he said, “what you might call a couple of stiff drinks, would give a big guy like Mr. Shaw a blood alcohol level of around .04, which would result in what the highway cops call partial impairment. Not l
egally drunk, but enough to relax you, affect your judgment, retard your reflexes. Enough probably to give a man who wants to kill himself the courage. The two ounces still in the stomach, not yet metabolized, had to’ve been taken within a minute or two before he pulled the trigger. See? He took a drink, waited for it to hit him, got relaxed, maybe fired a bullet into the ceiling, then took another drink and did it.”

  I was shaking my head.

  Horowitz frowned at me. “What?”

  “Just that Gus had quit drinking,” I said. “He said he couldn’t handle it.”

  He shrugged. “I guess when you’re about to put a bullet in your brain, you don’t worry about things like that. Or maybe he was lying.”

  “Did they find any other booze in his apartment?”

  “No. Just that Early Times. Two shots gone from the bottle. He probably bought it for the occasion.” He shuffled through the papers in the manila folder. “Okay,” he said. “Moving on. Shaw’s fingerprints were the only ones on the glass that had the Early Times in it. They couldn’t pull any prints off the paper bag the bottle was in. Several smudges and partials on that bottle, but nothing they could use.”

  “Liquor store clerks, stockboys, customers,” I said.

  “The only fingerprints on the gun were Mr. Shaw’s, too. His left hand. They put TOD at between five thirty-five and eleven ten on Friday.”

  “Those are fairly strange estimated times,” I said. “You can be that precise?”

  He shrugged. “The time on the e-mail he sent his wife was a little after five thirty. He was alive then. You called me at eleven fifteen, reporting he was dead. QED.”

  “You don’t need a medical degree to arrive at that estimate,” I said. “I mean, I assume the body temperature, lividity, rigor mortis, digestion, things like that were in line?”

  Horowitz waved his hand. “They were in line, yes. The ME’s science actually put it at between 6:00 and 9:00 P.M.”

  “That e-mail was sent from Gus’s computer, then?”

  He nodded.

  “What else did they find on his computer?” I said.