Outwitting Trolls (11 page)

“I need to talk with him,” I said. “I'm hoping you can tell me where he's presently living.”

She smiled and touched her hair with her fingertips. “I'm afraid it's not that simple, Mr. Coyne.”

“You can't tell me where he's living?”

Charlotte Allen was shaking her head. “Our regulations are very clear. It's all about protecting our students' privacy. I'm really sorry. I wish I could help you out.”

“Since you can't,” I said, “who can?”

“Nobody will,” she said. “Or at least nobody's supposed to.”

“Look,” I said. “Wayne's father was brutally murdered last Saturday night. His mother has been unable to contact her son to tell him what happened. She's asked me, as the family's lawyer, to see what I can do. I've tried calling Wayne, but he doesn't answer his cell phone, which is the only number I have for him. So I drove up here to Websterville in hopes of tracking him down. I just came from the last address his mother has for him, and he doesn't live there anymore. So now what am I supposed to do? What would
you
do, Mrs. Allen, if you were in my shoes?”

“Did you say
murdered
?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Oh, dear.”

“Yes.”

“Do they know…?”

“The police have made no arrests,” I said.

“Oh, dear,” she said again.

“So you can see why I need to talk to Wayne,” I said.

“He doesn't know?”

“No. We don't want him seeing it first on the news or hearing it as a rumor.”

“Of course. Understandable.” Charlotte Allen cleared her throat. “You drove all the way up here from Boston to deliver this horrible news to Wayne Nichols?”

“The victim's son,” I said. “Yes.”

“Let me check on something, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “Of course.”

“Just wait here,” she said. “I'll be back in a minute.”

She got up and walked out of her office, trailing the faint scent of lilacs behind her.

She was actually gone for about ten minutes. When she came back, she sat down across from me and said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Coyne.”

“What?”

“Under the circumstances,” she said, “I was prepared to, um, bend our regulations and find a way to get that information for you. When I checked our records, though, I found that Wayne Nichols withdrew from school just before the end of the fall term. We have no more information about him since then. I can tell you where he was living, but that's student housing, and he'd've had to move somewhere else when he dropped out.”

“I know where he was living then,” I said. “He's not there anymore.”

“Well, then,” said Charlotte Allen.

“Well, then,” I said.

She stood up. “Now what will you do?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I'll think of something.”

She held up my business card. “If I hear anything, I'll call you. How would that be?”

“That would be excellent,” I said. I held out my hand to her. “I appreciate your time.”

Her hand was soft, but her grip was firm. “I wish I could've been more helpful.”

“Me, too,” I said.

I walked out of Charlotte Allen's office and past the counter where I'd talked with Matthew Trowbridge, and I was halfway down the stairs when a woman's voice from somewhere behind me said, “Hey, mister. You in the suit.”

I stopped and turned around, and a young woman came skipping down the steps toward me.

“You talking to me?” I asked her.

“You're the only one in a suit,” she said. She was short and a little pudgy, with big dark eyes and a nice smile. “Did I hear you say you were looking for Wayne Nichols?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do you know him?”

“I overheard you up there.” She jerked her chin up to where I'd talked with Matthew Trowbridge and Charlotte Allen. “I bet nobody answered your questions. Am I right?”

“You're right,” I said. “They're very conscientious about protecting their students' privacy.”

“I'm Lila, by the way,” she said. She held out her hand.

I took her hand and smiled. “I'm Brady.”

We resumed walking down the stairs. “Lots of people know where Wayne Nichols lives,” Lila said. “It's hardly a big secret.”

“I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me.” We came to the bottom of the stairs. I opened the front door and held it for her, and we both stepped outside.

She cocked her head and frowned at me. “You're not gonna, like, get him in trouble or something? You're not a cop or something, are you?”

“No,” I said. “I'm just a lawyer. His family's lawyer. I need to talk with him is all.”

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “He's on Blaine Street. That's over that way.” She waved her hand off to the left.

“Can you tell me how to get there?” I said.

“Sure. You go back down that way for maybe two miles?” She pointed down Chesterfield Road in the direction of Wayne's old apartment building. “You'll come to an intersection with a white church on the corner on the left and a big cornfield on the right. Go left there by the church, and then Blaine Street is your, um…second or third right. There's street signs. Wayne's place is way down the end. There's all woods after that. It's like this old neighborhood, a bunch of shitty little ranch houses, excuse my language, where mostly married students live. Wayne's house is yellow with one of those carports on the side? Except there's all trash barrels and crap in the carport instead of a car.”

“Do you know what number his house is?” I asked.

She smiled. “Sorry. Way down at the end where it turns around in one of those whatchamacallits is the best I can do for you.”

“Cul-de-sac,” I said.

She cocked her head at me. “Excuse me?”

“Cul-de-sac,” I said. “The whatchamacallit. Where the road turns around.”

She smiled. “Right. I couldn't think of it.”

“You must be a friend of his,” I said.

“Friend? Wayne?” Lila shook her head. “I been to a couple parties at his house is all. My boyfriend knows him.” She looked at me. “Look, though, seriously. I hope you're not gonna get Wayne in trouble. My boyfriend would kill me if he knew I was telling you this.”

“No trouble,” I said. “Just some lawyer business.” I held my hand out to Lila. “I really appreciate your help. I didn't know what I was going to do.”

She gave my hand a quick shake. “They can be awfully bureaucratic,” she said. “I figured you were gonna end up frustrated.”

“I surely would have if you hadn't rescued me.” I gave Lila a wave and headed for my car, repeating her directions to Wayne Nichols's house in my head so that I wouldn't forget them.

Lila's directions were excellent, and fifteen minutes or so after I waved good-bye to her on the steps of the Webster State College administration building, I pulled up in front of Wayne Nichols's house in the cul-de-sac at the end of Blaine Street on the outskirts of Websterville, New Hampshire.

The place was even dumpier than I'd imagined from Lila's description. The little square of lawn in front was overgrown with last year's brown matted-down mixture of grass and weeds. It looked as if it had never seen a lawn mower. Dandelions grew from the cracks in the short blacktopped driveway, where an aged blue-and-rust Ford Taurus sedan was parked. The carport, with its sagging roof, was stuffed with overflowing trash barrels, soggy cardboard boxes, and scraps of lumber. The house itself, a small boxy ranch, featured flaking yellow paint and a rickety television antenna and a couple of missing window shutters.

A second-growth forest, a mixture of pine and oak trees with a thick understory of briars and brush, crowded close to the back of the house. There was a vacant lot on one side and an
identical ranch-style structure, this one with blistering gray paint, on the other side.

I sat there in my car, looking at Wayne's house, trying to detect a sign of life inside. The place just sat there, too, still and forlorn.

After a few minutes, I slid out of my car and went up to the front door. I pressed the doorbell and heard the hollow
ding-dong
echo from inside.

When nobody answered after a couple of minutes, I hit the bell again and waited again. Still nobody came to the door.

I went around to the side door under the carport. This one appeared to open into a small foyer—what we New Englanders call a mudroom. There was no bell beside the door. I rapped on the window, waited, rapped again.

Maybe nobody was home, although there was that old Taurus crouching in the driveway. I walked around to the back of the house, where there was another outside door. I climbed the three steps onto a little concrete porch under a plastic awning, cupped my hands around my eyes, and looked in through the storm door and the window of the back door, which opened directly into the kitchen. Pots and pans were piled high in the sink. On a small table sat a Wheaties box, a cardboard orange juice carton, a plastic one-gallon milk jug, an open newspaper, and some glasses and bowls. The kitchen light was on, and I could hear the deep bass-line
thump-thump
of recorded rock music coming from somewhere inside.

I pressed the doorbell, and when that brought no response, I banged on the frame of the storm door.

That's when I heard a car door slam from the other side of the house, and then an engine sputtered, and it roared to life, and then came the screech of rubber on pavement.

I jumped off the back porch and ran around to the side of
Wayne Nichols's house in time to see the rusty old Taurus sedan that had been in the driveway peel around the cul-de-sac and zoom down Blaine Street in a cloud of blue exhaust.

I stood there until the whine of the Taurus's engine faded into the distance. I looked at my watch. It was a little after one in the afternoon.

I considered my options. I could hop into my car, and if I drove fast and guessed right at the turns, maybe I'd catch up with the old Taurus.

Then what? Move up beside him and wave for him to pull over to the side of the road? Sideswipe him? Ram into him? Or maybe hang back and follow him until he stopped and got out, and then leap from my car and accost him?

Well, now it didn't matter. Hamlet Coyne had once again hesitated too long and given the whole situation too much analysis and too little action. By now Wayne was probably several miles away, and who knew which direction he'd taken.

Having screwed up this situation pretty thoroughly, and with nothing better to do, I went over and sat on the front steps. I figured I'd blown my chance to talk with Wayne Nichols. I'd spooked him, and he was gone. But, hey, it was a balmy April afternoon, and the sun was warm on my face, and the air smelled of fresh earth and lilac blossoms. There were worse things to do—such as shuffling papers in a law office or playing adversary with some other attorney in a courtroom—than sitting in the sun for a few minutes on such an April day.

Wayne Nichols, just a year or two older than my son Billy, was living here in this crappy little house on the slummy outskirts of Websterville, New Hampshire. I wondered how he made the rent. Monthly support checks from Sharon, I guessed. She probably thought she was giving her dropout son tuition and room-and-board money. I'd have to ask her.

Billy grew up in the same town and went to the same public schools as Wayne, and like Wayne, and at about the same age as Wayne, had lived through his parents' divorce. Both young men dropped out of college. Billy became a summer fishing guide and winter ski instructor.

I wondered about Wayne.

It was interesting, I thought as I sat there with the sun warm on my face, how parallel life paths sometimes converged, and sometimes they diverged.

Thinking about Billy reminded me of how he'd gone banging out of my house last night, angry and hurt, and how he was heading back to Idaho in a few days.

We'd had our rifts before. Billy was a prideful guy, unlikely to make the first move, but I knew that he'd come around if I met him halfway. I could be pretty stubborn, too, but this wasn't worth it. I'd call him. I'd apologize, and then he'd apologize. We'd get together, and we'd touch fists and give each other a hug, and we'd be good again. When I got home—

I sensed motion behind me, a sudden prickly feeling on the back of my neck. Before I could react to it, a growly voice said, “Who the fuck are you?”

I jerked my head around and found myself looking into the bore of a square automatic pistol.

Behind the pistol was a young man's face. He had black hair, cut short, with the scruff of a beard and dark glowering eyes. Wayne Nichols, I assumed. He had evidently cut through the woods and sneaked around the side of the house.

“My name is Brady Coyne,” I said, “and I don't like having guns poking at me.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“If you're Wayne Nichols,” I said, “I need to talk to you. I have news for you. Put that damn gun down, will you?”

“What kind of news?” The pistol continued to point at my forehead.

“Please aim your gun somewhere else,” I said, “before we have an accident.”

He lowered the arm that was holding the gun. “You left me a message the other day, right? Was that you? The lawyer?”

I nodded. “That's right. I'm your mother's lawyer.”

I moved over to the side of the step I was sitting on. “Why don't you sit down.”

He continued standing there beside me with the gun dangling from his hand. He was wearing blue jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt, with a Red Sox cap and expensive-looking sneakers. “I'm good right here,” he said. “You drove up from Boston to talk to me?”

“Yes,” I said. “Because you wouldn't talk to me on the phone.”

“Your news is that important?”

I shrugged. “That's for you to judge, I guess.”

“So go ahead,” he said.

I turned to face him. “Do you recognize me?”

He shook his head. “No, I don't think so. Should I?”

“I used to live in Wellesley. You were friends with my son.”

Wayne Nichols frowned for a moment. Then he nodded. “Coyne. Billy, right? He's your son?”

“That's right.”

“Billy was a cool dude. Not sure I remember you, though.”

“Look at me,” I said. “Have you seen me recently?”

He frowned at me. “Like when?”

“Like last Saturday night?”

“No. Where do you think I saw you last Saturday night?”

“In the Beverly Suites Hotel in Natick. In the corridor on the third floor.”

He shook his head. “I was nowhere near Natick. I've never
been to that hotel. I never even heard of it before. You're playing games with me. What is this all about, the Beverly Suites Hotel in Natick?”

“That's where your father was.”

Wayne frowned. “My father? What about him?”

“That's where he was last Saturday night when he got killed.”

I watched Wayne Nichols's face. He stared at me. I couldn't read his expression.

After what seemed like a long minute, he blinked, and then he shook his head. “Killed,” he said in a soft voice, making it a statement, not a question.

I nodded. “Murdered. He was stabbed in the abdomen and in the heart. He was there for a convention of veterinarians. He was in his hotel room. Your mother found him. His body.”

Wayne looked down at his hand, as if he were surprised to see a gun in it. He stuck the handgun in the pocket of his sweatshirt, then came around and sat on the step beside me. “Who killed my father?” he asked.

“They don't know yet.”

“You think I did it?”

“Me?” I shook my head. “Wouldn't matter what I thought.”

“Yeah, but do you?”

“I'm your mother's lawyer.”

His mouth opened, then closed. “So she did it, huh? She finally did it.”

“You think so?” I asked.

“The way he treated her all those years?” Wayne nodded. “About time.”

“How did he treat her?”

He shrugged. “You know. He was always putting her down. Insulting her. Making her feel like shit. I used to think,
How can
she put up with that? Why doesn't she leave him? Why doesn't she kill the son of a bitch?
”

“He made you angry, then? How he treated your mother?”

“Sure. Me and my sister, we used to talk about how we wished he'd just go away and leave her alone.” He smiled quickly. “Then they got divorced, and I thought after that everything would be better. But it wasn't. That sucked, too.”

“Did you talk about murdering him?” I asked. “You and Ellen?”

Wayne blurted out a quick laugh. “Murder? Christ. We were kids. Who knows what we talked about. Maybe we did. The way kids do, you know. We hated him, I can tell you that. And we didn't think so much of her, either, the way she just put up with all the shit he gave her, never stood up for herself.”

I wondered if abuse had actually been a factor in the Nichols divorce. It wouldn't be part of the court record, because Massachusetts had been a no-fault divorce state for many years. Of course, Sharon would know…if she wanted to tell me.

If Ken had abused her—emotionally or physically or both—it could be construed as a motive for murder.

On the other hand, this was the perception of a boy, now the memory of a young man. Sharon—and Ellen, too—seemed to remember things differently. Each of them had fabricated a story to make sense of their experiences, and who knew where the truth lay?

“What about you?” I asked. “How did he treat you? You and your sister?”

Wayne shrugged. “Okay. Nothing bad. He worked a lot. They both did. Me and Ellen both helped out at the clinic, feeding the animals, cleaning the kennels, and he paid us. That's how we earned our allowances. We didn't do a lot as a family. But it
was all right. It was just the way he treated her. My mother. That's what I remember.”

“So where were you last Saturday night?” I asked.

“Huh?” He looked at me for a second, then nodded. “Oh. You mean do I have an alibi.”

“Yes.”

“I was here. At my house. I—” Right then his head jerked up, and he looked out at the street.

I looked where he was looking. A large black SUV was coming around the cul-de-sac.

“I had some people over Saturday night,” Wayne said. “There were twenty-five or thirty people here at one time or another. Of course, none of them would ever admit it.” He stood up. “I'll be right back.”

He walked to the curb in front of his house. He had his hand in the pocket of his sweatshirt where he'd tucked his gun.

The passenger-side window of the SUV slid down, and Wayne leaned his forearm on it and bent to talk with the driver. He kept his other hand, the one holding the gun, in his pocket. I got just a glimpse of the other man's face as it moved toward the window before it was hidden behind Wayne's body, enough only to give me the impression that he was young—maybe a few years older than Wayne—with dark hair. He appeared to be wearing a dress shirt and a necktie.

I noticed that the vehicle had Massachusetts license plates and tinted windows. It was a Lincoln Navigator, and it looked like a new model.

I took out a pen and one of my business cards from the inside pocket of my jacket and copied down the license number of the Navigator. Detective Horowitz might be interested.

After a few minutes, Wayne stepped away from the car, the tinted window slid up, and the Navigator pulled away from
the curb and disappeared around the corner. Wayne stood there watching it go. Then he came back and sat on the step beside me. “So where were we?” he asked.

“You were telling me that you didn't have an alibi,” I said.

“No,” he said, “I told you I
did
have an alibi. It's just that I'm not sure anybody will confirm it.”

“Why wouldn't they?”

He looked at me and smiled. “Do you have any idea who the guy in that Lincoln was?”

I shook my head.

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “That kid's about my age, and he wears a suit and a necktie to work every day, carries a briefcase, drives the company car.”

I shrugged.

“He was looking to do business with me.”

“Business,” I said.

“You're a lawyer,” he said. “I can tell you anything. You've got to keep it private.”

“You know your way around lawyers, do you?”

He shrugged.

“I'm your mother's lawyer,” I said. “Not yours.”

“Doesn't matter. This whole conversation is just between us. Like you were a priest. You can't tell anybody what I say. I know that. Anyway, I didn't say anything about what that guy wanted, and I don't want to talk about it anymore.” Wayne looked at me with narrowed eyes.