The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer (7 page)

"Charlie. Charlie!"

"C'mon, Doc, cool down—

But the words swept by me like soft air. I was
looking at Keegan, who was turning to look at me, the corners of his
mouth starting to draw back. I was bearing down on him now, my hand
reaching out for his face.

"You come into my house, after I've called the
force to help you out in this case, you come and tell my son—"

He held his hand up, then moved it in Jack's
direction. I turned quickly and saw Jack's face. The look of fear and
helplessness on it. And then Keegan blew it. He turned toward Jack,
murmuring something like "If that's the way you feel, maybe
we'll take him in now—"

And then I totally lost it.

I remember Keegan saying something about "possible
custody" and "full rights of the defendant" and
approaching Jack—who was still dazed—with that thin-lipped
grimace on his Marine Corps face, and grabbing my son's shoulder . .
.

Then there was Paul Keegan's face only inches from
mine, beet red, his eyes bugged out. I was shocked to see two hands
gripped around his thick throat. Surgeon's hands that were supposed
to help and heal. I saw my thumbs inch down below the cartilage of
the Adam's apple to the ribbed stiffness of the trachea and press in
deep, deep, trying to shut off the air supply.

I was in a dream. A slow, nasty, semi-silent dream.

I could hear, from far, far away, somebody shouting.
I saw Joe's big form trying to move between us. But then Keegan shot
both arms up between mine and flung them outwards, breaking the hold,
and an instant later I saw a tan blur cross my face, and felt a heavy
blow on my cheekbone. I shook off the punch and managed to stamp my
heel hard down on his instep, while bringing up a fist in an uppercut
that landed right in his groin, the force of it lifting him to the
balls of his feet. Then I was standing again—still feeling no pain
from his punch because I had maybe a gallon of adrenalin in my
bloodstream—looking down at the bowed-over Keegan. I had cocked my
right hand back against my shoulder, making a hard point of my right
elbow, and had jumped up high when Joe caught me from behind,
snatching me right in midair. I was lucky he did, or I would have
probably followed through with step three (as taught by Laitis
Roantis), bringing down the point of the elbow in a smashing blow
onto the nape of your opponent's neck.

Joe's bear hug from behind me, and the pain from
Keegan's punch, made me come out of my nasty, waking dream long
enough for Joe to release his grip and jump between us, keeping us
apart until we could limp away from each other. His pounds helped.

I found out later that Paul Keegan is thirty-seven.
I'm about ten years older. Not bad, Adams—you stupid son of a
bitch. I had a possible assault charge facing me. Assaulting a law
officer, a state policeman. Great. This vacation just keeps getting
better and better, I thought to myself.
 

SIX

"LOOK, DOC, it's not as if he's going to jail or
anything. Keegan just said what I told you earlier, that Jack's the
chief suspect. I mean, that's his job. He's gotta say that. So why
you had to go and blow your stack—"

"I don't want to hear any more shit, Joe. From
anybody, and that includes you. Far as I'm concerned, you just stood
there when he was accusing him. Any cop or agency who thinks, even
for one second, that Jack's a murderer is full of shit. And you
didn't say anything in his defense; you just stood there."

"Listen: I talked to Paul all the way out to his
cruiser to calm him down. And I kept you off the hook, too, in case
you don't know it. He was ready to haul both of you in."

"If he sets foot near this place again, there's
going to be a dead state cop. You tell him that."

"Look, Doc, face it; from Keegan's point of
view,Jack's the one who had the best opportunity. That's just
officially. I'm not saying—"

I went for him. He ducked through the bedroom door
and into the hall.

"Get back in here!" I shouted. "You
get the hell back in here, Joe!”

No answer. Nothing. With two fast steps, I was out in
the narrow upstairs hallway. Joe was there, flattened against the
wall, his right arm cocked back and his huge brown hand balled into a
fist. A fist as big as a cantaloupe. But I didn't care; I was going
for him anyway. I was going to make it two dead state cops. Two in
one. Why not?

"Charlie!" Mary screamed from halfway up
the stairs. "Charlie, goddamn you! Stop it!"

"If he comes one step closer—panted Joe in a
hoarse whisper. I felt blood pounding in my head. Mary hustled up the
rest of the way and stood between us. She put her hands against my
chest and pushed me back. She was careful to do it gently. I noticed
she was crying. Can't imagine why.

"Now you listen," she said softly.
"Charlie, you're going out for a run. A long run, okay? I just
turned on the sauna. When you get back, you can bake yourself for an
hour or so. Now go in and change. Joey and I will go over Andy's
things for the lab. Joe will show me what to do. There's nothing for
you to do here for a few hours. You hear me, Charlie?"

I think I managed to nod, then walked back into our
bedroom. She followed me, and turned me around, looking at my face.

"How is it? jeez, it's beginning to turn
already. Let me feel—"

"Nawww . . . it's not broken. Don't worry."
I felt her cool hand running over my left cheekbone. "Okay, I'm
changing. You can leave now."

She did. But I could hear their conversation from the
next room.

"I know. I know he was upset, Mare. But hell,
assault on a state cop. Holy shit."

"Keegan hit him first."

"Yeah, after he broke the choke hold. jeez, you
believe how fast Doc moved? Like a panther—"

"Well he's in great shape. We know that. Anybody
who runs that much—"

"It's Roantis, Mary. He's gotta stop hanging
around with Roantis and those loonies at the club."

"What's Keegan going to do now?"
 
"Go to a good urologist first, I imagine. Then
he's probably going to go into Mickey Finn's in Boston and buy a
steel cup. The kind hockey goalies wear."

"Do you think he was badly hurt?"

"Hurt? Oh Mare. You don't know. You can't know.
A woman can't know just how much that hurts. And his instep, too. He
nailed Doc a good one all right, but you ask me, your hubby got the
best of him."

"That's why you ran out into the hallway when
Charlie came for you."

"Hell yes; I'm not as dumb as I look, you know .
. ."

I was glad we'd sent Jack out to do some shopping
after the scuffle. The scene was not one I was proud of. Though
Laitis would've probably approved.

I laced up my shoes, pulled a lightweight nylon shell
over my sweat clothes to shed the rain, then trotted down the stairs
and outside.

The rain was now reduced to a blowing drizzle. I
started slowly, padding up Sunken Meadow Road to the main drag. I
speeded up gradually, so by the end of the second mile I was setting
a pretty good clip. At the middle of mile three I doffed the nylon
shell, which was making me hot and clammy, and tied it around my
waist. I headed back, going as fast as I could to pump the adrenalin
and the queasy trembles out of my system.

Now it looks as if Jack and I will be sharing the
same cell, I thought. How cute. How familial.

Why had I done it? I wasn't sure. I certainly hadn't
planned on it. One second I was the normal, concerned father,
cooperating fully with law enforcement officials. The next instant, I
had wrapped my hands around Lieutenant Keegan's throat and was trying
to kill him. I don't get carried away when people abuse my property.
I've had my house ransacked a few times, my car vandalized .. . I
even had the unpleasant surprise of finding my murdered dog's head in
the oven one fine morning. I can handle those things. But when
somebody—anybody, even a cop—fools with my wife and kids, then
the lid comes off. And the more I thought about it, the more I was
willing to bet that nine out of ten men would have done exactly the
same thing.

I trudged up the flagstone walk to the cottage and
went upstairs, feeling much better. I stripped, put on swimming
trunks, grabbed a beach towel, and went down into the sauna. On my
way, I heard Joe and Mary talking in the guest room, where they were
carefully arranging and cataloguing the effects of the late Andrew
Cunningham. This sad task had to be completed according to strict
guidelines, on which Joe was an expert.

The sauna is a little lean-to structure of redwood
tacked onto the cottage. Since Mary had turned it on for me, it had
been on almost an hour, so it was a cozy 165 degrees. I poured a
dipper of water over the black basalt rocks and hopped up on the
upper wooden ledge, inhaling the invisible, scalding, live steam
before it stopped hissing. The sauna is my favorite place to think.
For one thing, in that heat blood is racing through your head at
practically Mach 2.

After I'd gone in and out of the sauna three times,
showering and resting each time in between, wringing all the bad
stuff from body and mind, I returned to the spare bedroom where Joe
was labeling items prior to sending them off to the lab. I sat down
on the brass bed Andy had slept in.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"Yeah. Sorry, I don't deal well with people who
threaten my family."

"Ummm. You'd make a good Italian, Doc. Maybe
that feeling is the result of being married to one.”

"Uh-huh. Or maybe I had the trait to begin with
and it's what attracted me to her."

"The old chicken and egg routine."

"I guess what's got me so upset is that I'm
mostly angry with myself, Joe. There I was, hotshot Doc Adams,
uncovering foul play by one brilliant deduction after another,
calling the M.E.'s office and steering him in the right direction.
Bravo. And where did it get me? After hearing what jarhead Keegan had
to say, I'm sorry I ever made that call. If I hadn't stuck my nose
in, the boy's death would have been chalked off to cardiac arrest as
the result of a seizure and Jack wouldn't be in this bind."

"Yeah, right," he answered, "except
that there'd be a killer on the loose. And who knows? Somebody like
Jack could be next."

"
So you're convinced it's murder, too?"

"Oh yeah. No problem there. Murder all right. We
know the medication was tampered with. We know it wasn't suicide. We
know it because to kill himself, all Andrew Cunningham had to do
would be to gulp down twenty or thirty of those little capsules.
Maybe wash them down with a couple of beers, then maybe have a strong
highball to cap it off. Presto: into the big sleep, going quietly and
painlessly. But that's not what happened. The kid was urinating all
Friday, feeling lousy, not knowing why. Getting up in the middle of
the night and saying to Jack 'I feel shitty.' That's not suicide;
that's murder. And we both know Jack didn't do it."

"Tell that to Paul Keegan."

"I did, and will again."

"Listen Joe, I got to thinking about that
dispenser case while I was out running. I knew it was significant
earlier on, but I didn't put the pieces together until this morning.
It was the murderer's way to determine when Andy would die."

"By picking the day?"

"Not only by picking the day, but by
concentrating the lethal capsules all in one spot, namely the little
compartment for Friday's meds. If you're going to doctor up some
prescription meds, you've got the problem of random selection. Say
there's twenty or thirty capsules in a vial; you have no way of
knowing when the intended victim will take the fatal dose. The
problem is compounded when it takes more than one capsule to do the
job. How many do you tamper with? Half of them? All of them? No way
because—"

"Because if you do that, the victim then leaves
doctored capsules behind for the police to discover."

"Exactly. Or even worse, suppose he takes just
one doctored capsule and another that's normal. He doesn't die; he
gets sick as hell, and then calls the police himself . . . and so
on."

"Uh-huh. So you're saying that the murderer
slipped the doctored capsules into the Friday slot, knowing that
Andrew would take all three meds on that day and then die, leaving no
trace of the altered meds."

"Right. Also, the dispenser case enabled the
killer to sequence the drugs for maximum effect. Thursday: Lasix and
phenobarb. Friday: Lasix and digoxin. Boom. So, if Jack were the
murderer, why in hell would he time it so that Andy dropped dead
here? Why wouldn't he instead set the lethal dose for Saturday, and
then come up here alone, say Thursday? That would give him an
airtight alibi."

"And so it now seems, following this line of
reasoning, that the real murderer did in fact know of Andy's visit up
here in Eastham and rigged it so he'd die near Jack. That sounds like
a frame as well as a homicide."

"It sure does. I wonder what Paul Keegan will
think of it as a working hypothesis."

"I don't know. Maybe all Paul Keegan is thinking
about at the present time is how much his balls ache. And maybe about
pressing charges against you."