Hell Bent

by William G. Tapply

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  “And he was going to tell you what he knew.”

  “Maybe. He called me, couldn’t talk, said he’d call again. He had my card with my phone numbers in his hand, right?”

  “Why you?”

  “I guess I’m the only one still asking questions about Gus,” I said.

  Horowitz peered at me for a moment, then grunted. He washed his doughnut down with a gulp of coffee. “For all we know,” he said, “the killer put that business card in our dead man’s hand. A message for you. So do you get the message?”

  I nodded. “I get it. If it is a message.”

  “It’s about you asking questions.”

  “I said I get it.”

  “Do I need to reinforce it?”

  “No,” I said. “The message is clear enough.”

  “So you’ll leave the homicide detecting to the homicide detectives.”

  “The homicide detectives concluded that Gus Shaw committed suicide,” I said.

  “Actually,” he said, “that was the ME’s office. You got a problem with their verdict, I gather.”

  I shrugged.

  “If you had just let it rest there,” Horowitz said, “maybe Pedro Accardo would be alive today.”

  “I hate to think that might be true,” I said.

  He shrugged. “In light of this new development,” he said, “perhaps we’ll have to give the Gus Shaw case a second look. Do you have any other reason to think he didn’t kill himself?”

  “Me?” I thought for a minute. “Honestly, no, not really. It’s just about whether he was the kind of man who’d do it, that’s all. I know what the evidence looks like. I’ve tried to think about it objectively. Alex doesn’t believe it, of course, but she’s still remembering him from when they were kids. I think Claudia, Gus’s wife, does believe it. People I’ve talked to, none of them has seemed overly surprised. Until Pedro Accardo called me last night, I’d pretty much accepted it. Gus had PTSD. He lost his hand in Iraq. His career and his marriage, his life as he knew it, all down the tubes.”

  “It’s a sonofabitch, all right,” Horowitz said. “So how’s Alex doing?”

  I shrugged. “All right, considering. I mean, it’s hard for her. He was her big brother, you know?”

  He cocked his head and looked at me. “You two got something going on, huh?”

  I said nothing.

  “Poor Evie, out there with her dying father in California,” he said, “and you’re playing house with your old girlfriend. You’re something else, Coyne, you know that?”

  “You don’t know shit,” I said.

  He waved the back of his hand at me. “Hey, it’s your life.”

  “Thank you for acknowledging that.”

  “Yours to fuck up.”

  “I’m touched by your concern.”

  He took another swig of coffee. “I like Evie and I like Alex, that’s all.”

  “I know,” I said. “And they’d both be better off if they didn’t even know me. You’re probably right.”

  “None of my business,” he said. He crumpled up his coffee cup and tossed it over his shoulder into the backseat. “I’m done with you for now. Lemme find somebody to take you home.”

  “Will you keep me posted?”

  “Why the hell should I?” he said.

  EIGHTEEN

  It was a little after 1:00 A.M. when Marcia Benetti dropped me off in front of my house on Mt. Vernon Street.

  Neither Henry nor Alex greeted me at the door when I went in. I found them both snoozing on the sofa in the flickering blue light of the muted television. Alex was curled up at one end, all but her face covered by a blanket. Her cheek rested on her palm-to-palm hands, and her knees were tucked up to her chest.

  Henry lay at the other end in virtually the identical position.

  I stood there smiling, and after a minute Henry opened an eye. He looked at me and then yawned, slithered off the sofa, and headed stiff-legged toward the back door.

  I let him out and waited on the deck while he visited his favorite shrubs. When he was finished, we went back to the living room. I sat on the sofa and touched Alex’s cheek.

  She blinked a couple of times, then an eye opened and looked at me. “Oh, hi,” she murmured. Her hand pressed mine against her cheek. “You’re back. Are you okay?”

  “I’m back and I’m fine,” I said, “and I think it’s past our bedtime.”

  Alex seemed to snuggle into herself. “I’m pretty tired,” she said. Her eyes closed again.

  “Come on,” I said. I stood up and held my hand down to her.

  She let out a deep sigh, then sat up, shrugged the blanket off her shoulders, took my hand, and pulled herself to her feet.

  I put my arm around her and led her to the stairs.

  She stopped. “Up there?”

  I nodded.

  “You sure?”

  I kissed the top of her head. “I’m sure.”

  By the time I got the coffee set up in the automatic perker for the morning and brushed my teeth, Alex was snoring softly under the down comforter in the big bed that Evie and I used to share.

  I crawled in beside her, and she groaned and sighed and pressed her butt back against me.

  I kissed the side of her throat. Her hair smelled soapy.

  She hugged herself. She was thoroughly asleep.

  I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes. I was suddenly very tired, and my mind went into free fall.

  Images ricocheted around behind my eyeballs. The nighttime gurgle of the innocent stream flowing over gravel and around boulders and through the Acton woods, the startling sight of Pedro Accardo’s body sprawled beside the eddying water, the flash of lights and flicker of shadows bobbing and blinking through the trees, the irritating intrusion of cop radios spitting static into the damp darkness, the warm aroma of fresh-baked doughnuts and steaming coffee in the front seat of Roger Horowitz’s unmarked sedan, the awful pink bled-out smile on Pedro’s throat, the withered emptiness of his pale, shrunken face …

  My business card was clenched in his fist. A message, Horowitz had suggested. A message from Pedro’s killer to me.

  Even half asleep, I didn’t have any trouble deciphering the message, if that’s what it was. Stop asking questions about Gus Shaw’s suicide, the message went. If you don’t stop, what happened to Pedro will happen to you.

  The realization that jerked me awake and opened my eyes to the darkness was this: Gus had not killed himself. Like Pedro, he had been murdered. Most likely by the same man.

  Alex was right all along. Now I believed her.

  And now, if Roger Horowitz was right, whoever killed Gus and Pedro was threatening me.

  The question that kept me awake for a long time, and for which I had no good answer, was: Who’d kill Gus in the first place, and Pedro in the second? And why?

  I went to sleep with that conundrum bouncing around in my head, and it was still there when I woke up Saturday morning, and it lingered there all day while Alex and I drove up to Plum Island, and while we strolled the pathways and took turns spying on the late-season migratory birds through my big Zeiss binoculars, and while we had mid-afternoon sandwiches and beers at the Grog in Newburyport, and while we prowled through a used-book store on State Street, and while we bought flounder fillets at the fish market, and while we sipped Rebel Yell on the rocks back at my house, and while Alex made dinner in my kitchen.

  The only answer to the why part of the question that I could come up with was Gus’s elusive set of photographs from Iraq. He had e-mailed them to Claudia. She had burned them on CDs, and when Gus got home, he’d apparently taken them.

  I wondered who knew about the photos besides Claudia and Anna Langley. Pedro Accardo, maybe. I wondered what they showed and who they threatened. The answer to that question might answer the who part of my conundrum.

  I wondered where Gus had hidden them, and if he’d divulged their whereabouts to his killer before he died.
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  Alex poached the flounder fillets and served them with a creamy dill sauce and brown rice and steamed fresh Brussels sprouts, with a nice pinot verde for accompaniment.

  She did the cooking, so I cleaned up the kitchen. Then we took coffee into the living room. Alex sat on the sofa. I remained standing.

  “I’ve got to go out for a couple of hours,” I said to her.

  Her head snapped up. “What?”

  I shrugged. “There’s something I’ve got to do.”

  “It’s Saturday night.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You were gone all last night, too.”

  I nodded.

  “It can’t wait?”

  “No.”

  She gave me one of her cynical smiles. “I’m sounding like I own you. I’m sounding like some whiny wife.” She shook her head. “Jesus. I’m sounding like my own mother. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m disappointed,” she said. “That’s all. I was hoping we’d have a nice Saturday night together. Popcorn and Coke, maybe an old Errol Flynn swashbuckler movie, definitely foot rubs …”

  “I know,” I said. “It sounds great. But …” I shrugged.

  “Can I go with you?”

  I shook my head. “Not a good idea.”

  “Why?” she said. “Because it’s dangerous, right?”

  “I don’t think it’s dangerous.”

  “You gonna tell me where you’re going, at least, what you’re up to?”

  “Don’t do this, honey,” I said.

  “It’s about Gus, isn’t it?” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Damn it,” said Alex. “He’s my brother. I’ve got a right to know. And don’t give me that ‘honey’ shit.”

  “Wait till I get back,” I said. “I’ll explain it then. Okay?”

  She turned her head away and flicked the back of her hand at me. “Sure. That’s fine. So go, then. Get it done.”

  “Okay,” I said. “See you later.”

  As I headed for the door, I heard Alex mutter, “Same old Brady Coyne. Some things never change.”

  It didn’t sound like a loving compliment.

  Storrow Drive westbound was virtually empty of traffic at nine thirty on that November Saturday night, and so was Route 2 all the way out past Route 128. I took the exit at the Crosby’s Corner traffic light where the highway made a sharp left turn by the lit-up all-night gas station, and less than an hour after saying my uncomfortable good-byes to Alex, I pulled into the center of Concord.

  The old hometown of Emerson and Thoreau and the Alcotts had rolled up its sidewalks and shuttered its windows for the night, and I found an empty parking slot on the street around the corner from the Colonial Inn. I fished my Mini Maglite flashlight and my Leatherman tool from my car’s glove compartment and slid them both into my pants pockets. My cell phone was in my shirt pocket, set on vibrate.

  I locked up the car and began walking down the sidewalk along Monument Street.

  It was a pleasant November evening for a walk—sharp dry air, cool but not cold, with enough stars and moonlight to show me where I was going.

  Fifteen minutes later I turned down Herb and Beth Croyden’s driveway. I stayed next to the shadowy edges, and as I approached their house, I circled around behind some bushes.

  Lights glowed from inside their house, although none of the windows facing the driveway was brightly lit. I assumed they were in some back room, or maybe already in bed. Two vehicles were parked in front of their barn—one for Herb and one for Beth, I guessed.

  I had thought about phoning them, telling them I wanted to take another prowl through Gus’s apartment, maybe even asking them if one of them might remember Gus mentioning some CDs that he was hiding or talking about his photographs.

  But after the double hit of finding Gus and then seeing Pedro Accardo’s bled-out body with its sliced-open throat lying beside the stream in Acton—with my business card clutched in his dead hand—I’d lost my faith in my ability to know whom I could trust. I had no particular reason to mistrust Herb or Beth Croyden … but no good reason to trust them, either.

  So I slinked through the shadows past the Croyden’s house, and when I came to the carriage house where Gus had lived, I stopped for a couple of minutes behind a hemlock tree to be sure nobody had come along behind me.

  Then I switched on my little flashlight and climbed the steps on the side of the building. I tried the door to Gus’s apartment, but it was locked, so I counted four shingles over and four down from the light and found the key wedged there where Alex had replaced it the night we found Gus’s body.

  I unlocked the door and pushed it open, then put the key back under its shingle.

  As I remembered it from a week earlier when I’d been there with Herb, the gunpowder-and-dead-human-body odor was gone, replaced by the hospital-disinfectant smell of Lysol and bleach, which had faded but not disappeared in a week.

  I’d given the place just a superficial search when I was there with Herb looking over my shoulder. And at that time I didn’t know what, if anything, I was looking for.

  Now I had my sights set on some CDs that held Gus Shaw’s Iraq photos.

  It was a small apartment without many nooks and crannies and hidey-holes, but even so, searching it was time-consuming and painstaking. I pulled out furniture, tipped it over, unzipped cushions and pillows and felt around inside. I looked behind and underneath drawers. I opened boxes and envelopes, flipped through magazines and books. I checked the pockets of the clothing that hung in Gus’s closet. I looked in, under, and behind the microwave and refrigerator and freezer and went through all of the kitchen cabinets. I looked for screwdriver scratches on the screws that attached the air ducts and vents to the walls. I tapped along the walls and ceilings inside the closets with my knuckles, listening for hollow spots. I rolled up the carpets and looked for trapdoors and hidden compartments in the floor.

  When I finished, I’d examined every square inch of Gus’s place and found no CDs, nor a hint that there had ever been any there.

  I sat on a kitchen chair. Now what? I scanned the room, and my eyes came to rest on the door that headed down into the first floor of the carriage house. Gus had told me it was where Herb kept his carriages—his effort at a little joke. Carriage house—get it?

  I got up and tried the door. It was unlocked. On the wall inside the doorway was a light switch. I flipped it, and a dim bulb just inside the door lit the narrow wooden stairway that descended down to the ground floor of the building.

  I went down the stairs into the first floor of the carriage house, where another single bare bulb in the ceiling gave minimal light. Herb Croyden did not keep colonial-era horse-drawn carriages in his carriage house. Instead, there were automobiles. I shined my flashlight on them. Three vehicles were lined up side by side, and I was instantly envious of old Herb. There was a classic white Thunderbird identical to the one that Suzanne Somers peeked out of in American Graffiti. Next to it sat an Elvis special, a big pink Cadillac with swooping tailfins, and beside the Caddy crouched a Woodstock-era forest green Karmann Ghia. All three cars appeared to be in mint condition. Their paint and chrome and wheel covers gleamed as if Herb polished them weekly.

  Gus hadn’t been joking after all. Herb Croyden really did store his carriages here.

  I shined my light around the big square room. It was a typical garage, with a row of plastic trash barrels lined up against one wall, garden tools bundled in the corners, hand tools hanging on pegs, and a workbench along the back that held toolboxes and stacks of paint cans and clusters of engine parts. Under the counter were cardboard boxes and wooden boxes and tin boxes. A big steel cabinet stood in the back corner.

  If Gus had chosen to hide his CDs in this cavernous room, and if he’d done it with paranoid zeal, it might take an expert snooper days to uncover them. I was no expert. Experts had way more patien
ce and enthusiasm for snooping than I, just for starters.

  If I were Gus, and if I believed the images that my wife had burned onto CDs were valuable and important, and if I suspected that I had enemies who would come after them, where would I hide them?

  I walked slowly around the room, shining the narrow beam of my little hand-sized light everywhere, just looking. There were thousands of hiding places. It was overwhelming.

  I stopped in front of the head-high steel cabinet in the corner near where the Karmann Ghia was parked. What interested me was the small, shiny, new-looking padlock on the paint-stained, scratched, and dented old cabinet door, which closed with a loop and hasp. I wondered if a lock would make Gus feel secure about his hiding place?

  I opened a couple of toolboxes on the counter and found what I was looking for—a small steel J-shaped crowbar. One end had a curved hook on it. The other end was flattened. It was a little more than a foot long and had a sturdy heft to it.

  I wedged a corner of the bent end of the crowbar up under the hasp and gave a hard downward yank, and the hasp broke away from the cabinet door with a loud pop.

  The door swung open, and I shined my little flashlight inside.

  The cabinet had three shelves. On the top shelf, which was about shoulder-high on me, were some items of clothing still in their plastic wrapping. I pulled one off the top of the stack and looked at it.

  It was a fishing vest such as we fly fishermen use for carrying our fly boxes and spools of leader material and our various tools and tubes and bottles and envelopes and plastic containers when we go wading in a trout stream. This one was buff-colored with a zipper up the front, and, like all good fishing vests, it had dozens of pockets of varying sizes.

  I looked through the other items on that shelf. All were fishing vests, the identical color, make, model, and size—XL. Six of them altogether.

  An odd thing to lock up in a steel cabinet, I thought.

  I bent over to shine my light into the shelf under the one that held the vests … and at that moment a blinding light suddenly flashed on in the carriage house.