Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  He remembered the sudden chill that had swept over him when he entered the room two days ago, as though the air hadn’t changed for over twenty years, and the same sensation returned when McGuire flicked the switch for the overhead light.

  Cora had sealed the room, McGuire believed, because it was the only remaining tangible evidence of her son’s existence. And because it would always be waiting for Terry if she should awake and discover it had all been a nightmare and her son was even now calling from Logan Airport to say he was boarding a Cape-bound bus, returning from the madness of war to the safety and sanity of home.

  But it wasn’t nostalgia for his dead cousin that brought him here. It was Ellie Stevenson and her suspicions about Terry.

  Ellie was a strange and angry woman. Neither quality, McGuire knew, meant she was a liar. In his experience, such people were often addicted to absolute truth, as cruel and painful as it might be.

  He began pulling books from the shelves, flipping through their pages, the action releasing a musty acidic aroma that rose from the paper and irritated his nostrils. With the third book in his hand he froze at a noise from downstairs, a sound firm but yielding, like wood sliding on wood.

  McGuire walked softly to the top of the stairs and listened. He heard nothing for a moment until a rafter in the roof creaked above his head and a tree branch, tossed by the evening breeze, brushed against a second floor window.

  Still, he descended the stairs, switched on lights in each of the rooms, checked the locks on the front and rear doors and stood silently in the centre of the living room before climbing the stairs again.

  Old houses, McGuire told himself, are like old bodies. They creak and groan and cause alarms.

  The musty, closed-in smell of Terry’s room seemed stronger than ever. McGuire walked to one of the windows, pulled aside the antique sash lock and, ignoring the pain in his back that warned him he was midway between forty and fifty, hefted the window open.

  He returned to the bookshelf which extended along the wall facing the window. Several issues of Sports Illustrated were stacked in one corner. “Can Ali Come Back?” asked the cover of one. “Fran Tarkenton and Those Amazing Vikings” shouted another. McGuire flipped through the magazines, pausing to smile at a feature story or an advertisement for outdated clothing and cars.

  He glanced at the book titles on the shelves, located Terry’s high school yearbook and spent the next few minutes studying graduation photographs of Terry and his friends. A thin, athletic Blake Stevenson looked almost handsome with a head of thick, wavy hair. He saw a shy Parker Leedale without his silly mustache and a smiling Mike Gilroy, perhaps the least changed of the group.

  At the bottom of the grad photo page an engaging face stared out, the jaw dimpled, the smile lopsided, the eyes laughing, the hair curly and full and coal-black. Charles “Sonny” Tate. Ambition: Millionaire. Probable Destiny: The White House. Activities: Football, Basketball, Orchestra . . .

  From the darkness beyond and beneath the open window, a peculiar sound alerted McGuire’s senses: soft yet metallic. Precise, familiar, threatening.

  He looked up from the high school yearbook and frowned.

  The hell.

  He didn’t hear the shot, could never recall the sound of the rifle firing or the next snick-snick of the bolt action being worked or the noise made by the second bullet slamming into the wall beyond him.

  Because the first shot found McGuire and burrowed its way into his shoulder and out again, and the rush of adrenalin released with the warning sound of the bolt action propelled his body in a twisting, falling motion away from the window, fueled by fear and pain.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mumbling his name and Cora’s address into the telephone, stumbling downstairs to discover familiar faces offering words of assurance and a sudden scurrying of bodies, then needles puncturing his skin, the pain blessedly diluted by drugs, the wail of a siren and the slight tossing of the ambulance, strangers demanding his name, more needles in his arm, a sensation of the interior of his skull being flooded with helium and, finally, an enveloping grayness.

  McGuire woke in a brilliantly lit room, recalling it all through a haze. Sunshine poured through the windows. An attractive woman was peering down at him, repeating his name. He tried to speak, tasted bile in his mouth, closed his eyes and fell asleep again.

  When he opened his eyes a second time, the sunlight was brighter than before and the nurse was accompanied by a man. McGuire turned his head to watch the nurse take his blood pressure.

  “How are you feeling?” the man asked. His voice said he either didn’t care or already knew.

  “Drugged.” McGuire was thirsty. His left shoulder felt numb. A bandage, like a small pillow, was fastened over his wound.

  “You’ll be all right,” the doctor said. He turned to the nurse, who was releasing the pressure valve.

  “One twenty over ninety,” she said.

  “Do you feel like talking?” the doctor asked.

  McGuire nodded.

  The nurse disappeared from McGuire’s field of vision. She was replaced by Bob Morton and Ivan Hayward, the officer in plaid shirt, the doctor in traditional white smock.

  “Dr. McKenna says your vital signs are good,” Hayward said. He permitted himself a small smile. “But I doubt you’ll ever pitch an inning for the Red Sox.”

  “The hell happened?” Morton asked. “God, I can’t believe it. Clare and me and the kids, we came down here to get away from stuff like this. . . .”

  “Is there anything you require?” Hayward asked. “Perhaps some orange juice?”

  “Where am I?” McGuire felt weak and vulnerable. Over twenty years of stalking the mean streets of Boston with nothing more serious than a pimp’s razor slash to show for it, and he gets shot in a sleepy Cape Cod town.

  “Cape Cod Hospital,” Hayward replied. “Hyannis.”

  “What’ve I got?”

  “A clean wound. Dr. McKenna treated you. Says the bullet entered through the pectoralis major, creased the clavicle and exited through your trapezius. If that means anything to you. Important thing is, it didn’t strike a bone. You lost a lot of blood, though. Severed an artery. If the Leedales hadn’t found you . . .”

  “Had to be a twenty-two,” McGuire said.

  “It was,” Morton replied. “Dug the one that got you out of the wall. The other one, the one that missed you, disintegrated.”

  “Bolt-action rifle,” McGuire nodded, closing his eyes. He recalled the pain. And the sound that preceded it.

  “How do you know that?” Morton asked. A notebook appeared in his hand and he began scribbling in it.

  “Heard it through the open window. Son of a bitch must have been standing in the trees, maybe twenty feet from the house.”

  “That figures.” Morton flipped the pages aside. “The shots came in fired up at a steep angle, looks like.”

  McGuire opened his eyes. “How long am I going to be here?” he asked Hayward.

  “That’ll be Dr. McKenna’s decision,” Hayward said. “He’s attending you. I came down with Bob when I heard what happened.” His expression turned grave and his voice lowered. “This has something to do with your aunt’s death, doesn’t it?”

  “I think so.” Sitting upright wasn’t as pleasant as McGuire had hoped. His head was spinning and he felt nauseated. Closing his eyes made things worse, so he willed his lids to remain open and turned to Morton. “Who found me?” McGuire replied. He couldn’t remember.

  “Parker Leedale.” McGuire heard the scraping of a chair, and Morton was sitting next to the bed. McGuire had to turn his head to look at him but it was too much effort. He kept his eyes on the ceiling. “He heard the shots, went out to investigate. Saw all the lights on in your house and when you didn’t answer the door he went in through a window.”

  “A window?” McGuire said. H
e thought he had locked all the windows.

  “On the back porch, leading to the summer kitchen. Apparently your aunt kept a key to the rear door hanging there. Anyway, he found you rolling around on the floor, called us and waited for the ambulance.”

  Trusting old Cora. “Who else knew about the key?” McGuire asked.

  “Beats me,” Morton said. “It was just a neighbourly thing between your aunt and the Leedales, far as I can figure.”

  McGuire grunted.

  “Anything you can tell me?” Morton asked.

  “I don’t know,” McGuire replied, searching his memory. The brightness of the room, the open window, the sound of the rifle’s bolt action being worked . . . Hayward moved out of view and, in spite of the dizziness it generated, McGuire closed his eyes again. “You ask the questions,” he said.

  “Any ideas who might have done it?” Morton asked.

  “None.”

  “Notice anything unusual when you got home?”

  “No.” Except . . . what? The sound of the old house creaking? The open window to the back porch. The key on the hook. How many people knew about the key on the hook?

  “You have any arguments or disputes recently?”

  Morton’s going by the book, McGuire told himself. Start with the obvious and work toward the obscure. No imagination. No experience. I’ll have to solve this thing myself . . .

  “McGuire?”

  His eyes opened. “What?”

  “You were drifting off there,” Morton said. He was standing again, looking down into McGuire’s face. “Maybe I should come back later.”

  “No, I didn’t have any arguments with anybody,” McGuire said. “But this has to do with Cora. And the Sanders murder.”

  “What makes you think so?” Morton asked. Hayward returned to the bed and stood across from the police officer, looking down at McGuire with concern.

  “Haven’t managed to piss anybody off in the last couple of days,” McGuire said. “Has to be my poking around about Cora and the other thing. Listen,” he said to Morton. “Find out where everybody was last night when I was shot. The Leedales—”

  “Hell, Parker found you,” Morton interrupted.

  “Both of them,” McGuire snapped. “Son of a bitch is married, isn’t he?”

  Morton began making notes again. Hayward almost managed to suppress a smile.

  “The Leedales, the Stevensons and the Gilroys,” McGuire said. “One of them, all of them maybe, are in this. . . .”

  “I can’t believe that,” Morton muttered. “Those people are as solid as anybody in Compton. . . .”

  “Big deal,” McGuire said. “Talk to them.” Goddamn, he thought. Somebody tried to kill me. The realization angered him, and he shifted his eyes to Hayward. “You were here thirty years ago, right?”

  Hayward nodded.

  “You remember an inquest on a murder out on Nickerson’s Neck? Woman named Sanders?”

  Hayward frowned. “Old Jim Hunt was coroner here at the time. I seem to remember him being upset about a case they couldn’t get a solid verdict on. . . .”

  “Verdict?” Morton asked. “It never went to trial.”

  “Inquest,” Hayward said. “Hunt handled the coroner’s inquest and I think he figured it was homicide but somebody, a police officer, prosecuting attorney, I can’t remember, kept saying it could have been an accident.” He rubbed his chin. “Something about the death that made him think so . . .”

  “Show him the file,” McGuire said to Morton. “Let him see the coroner’s report.”

  The door to McGuire’s room opened and closed and a knot of people in starched white uniforms hovered nearby.

  “Looks like you’re getting another injection,” Hayward said, smiling encouragement. “Good old Demerol. Probably be high on it for a couple more days.” He gripped McGuire’s wrist. “You’ll be all right. Hang in there.”

  Morton flipped his notebook closed. “I’ll take Ivan back to the station and show him the file,” he said. “Got an armed man outside your door,” he said. “Nobody comes or goes unless they’re on the hospital’s list of approved staff or somebody I know’s got a reason to be in here.”

  “Bit of overkill,” McGuire said. “Whoever tried this was an amateur. Nobody’s going to do me here.”

  Morton smiled. “Maybe so, but I figure it’s worth the trouble. Got state police looking over my shoulder on this one. They want reports, might even want me to hand everything to them.”

  “Do it yourself,” McGuire said. Someone had gripped his wrist and was rubbing the inner skin of his forearm with a wet cotton swab. “Do as much as you can yourself.”

  The day passed in a chain of short lapses into sleep interrupted by visits from the doctor and nurse team to check McGuire’s blood pressure, take his pulse and temperature, inject him with pain killer, change the IV fluid dripping into the vein on the back of his hand and ask him how he was feeling. One of the nurses offered to turn on the battered television set mounted opposite his bed but McGuire shook his head groggily.

  He dreamed of watching Barbara walk naked out of the water at Ocean Beach and awoke at the sound of the door closing and a young nurse adjusting the sheets on his bed.

  “Where’s the telephone?” he demanded. The enameled table next to his bed held a box of facial tissues, a reading lamp and a small calendar with the name of a local florist.

  “In the hall,” the nurse said. “Two pay telephones next to the nurses’ station and one extension for incoming calls. There are none in the rooms. Sorry.” She smiled coldly. “They were in last year’s budget. Until everything came down to a choice of raises for the nurses, telephones in the patients’ rooms or redecorating the doctors’ lounge. Want to guess who won?”

  Late that afternoon McGuire opened his eyes to find Morton sitting in the chair next to the bed, writing in his notebook.

  “What’ve you found?” McGuire asked. His speech was slurred from the drugs.

  “We got one empty shell casing, that’s it. The shooter was standing on grass and fallen leaves.” Morton shrugged. “No shoe impressions, just bent grass. Tracks lead out of the woods and back in again. Once you’re in those trees, the leaves and all, you lose it. Talked about bringing in a dog, but it’s so dry in there . . .”

  “Those woods,” McGuire said. “They go down to Miner’s Lane, right? About a hundred yards down the road? Same woods?”

  Morton nodded. “And all the way back to Carney Road behind you. Anyway,” he continued, “Doc Hayward looked at the file on that Sanders woman. That’s the case, all right. He wasn’t involved with it, of course. Just remembers the coroner complaining that the police weren’t convinced it was murder.”

  “Now there’s a switch,” McGuire said. “Cops tend to be a hell of a lot more suspicious than doctors. What’s the name of the guy did the investigation?”

  “Hindmarsh. I asked around, nobody else on the force remembers him. ’Course, the longest anybody’s been there is three years now. Had a big turnover a few years ago, two retired, one quit, another moved on to a sergeant’s job on the mainland. Found Hindmarsh’s name in our personnel files. Retired in 1980. Hayward says he was a decent cop, far as he can remember.”

  Morton waited for a response from McGuire, who lay with his eyes closed. “State guys still have a guard on your door,” Morton said. “They’re gonna want to talk to you. . . .”

  “Hell with ’em,” McGuire said. “Tell ’em I’ll deal with you. You give ’em whatever they need.”

  Morton looked pleased. “Anything I can do for you?”

  “Yeah, there is.” Consciousness was slipping away from McGuire again, carrying him down a steep slope to darkness. He managed to say, his eyes still closed, “There’s a Barbara Mayall staying in Nassau. Royal Bahamian Hotel. Have somebody call her for me. Tell her what happened. Tell
her I’m okay. Ask her to call me here.”

  The pain medication lulled him into a shallow sleep and he started, suddenly awake, at the sound of his name spoken aloud in a scratchy voice that was more breath than sound, like a breeze playing among dead leaves.

  McGuire opened his eyes. The wall in front of him was an insipid pea-green colour marked by a large pale yellow stain. The reedy voice behind him repeated his name, and he rolled onto his back and twisted his neck to look up at a narrow face crowned with sparse gray hair. The mouth was a thin line that drooped sadly at each end, like the wet eyes watching McGuire as though from a great distance. The man wore a plain gray suit over a black vest and round white collar.

  “Good afternoon,” the man said to McGuire. “We met a few days ago. I’m Reverend Willoughby. I performed the service for your aunt, Cora Godwin.”

  McGuire closed his eyes and nodded.

  “This is terrible,” Willoughby was saying. “Absolutely appalling. Fortunately Dr. Hayward tells me you can expect a full recovery, but it must be very painful nevertheless.”

  McGuire grunted. He wished he were still asleep.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” Willoughby enquired. “Someone I can contact perhaps? Would you like books? Magazines?”

  McGuire shook his head. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “But I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it.”

  Willoughby cleared his throat and sat silently as darkness swept over McGuire again. Delicious darkness. No soul to be saved here. None in danger of being lost. He welcomed the wave of sleep. Not yet anyway . . .

  He woke with no idea of how long he had been asleep. Minutes, hours, days. The light had grown dim since he closed his eyes, but his body felt refreshed, his mind a little clearer.

  Willoughby was still in the room, standing at the window overlooking the garden, his back to McGuire, his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the sky. His tall, thin silhouette, bent slightly at the waist, reminded McGuire of a stork.

  “You don’t have to stay,” McGuire said to Willoughby’s back.