Outwitting Trolls (21 page)

“It's not like you knew what was going to happen,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “Still, having those thoughts, and then this happening…” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys. She turned, unlocked her car door, and slid in behind the wheel, leaving the door open. She looked up at me. “Are you okay? You look like you've got things on your mind.”

“Actually,” I said, “I was just thinking about Sparky.”

“Wayne's cat, you mean?” she asked.

I nodded. “I don't know what they do with the pets of murder victims.”

“They'll probably put her in a shelter.” Ellen buckled her seat belt, turned the key in the ignition, and put on the headlights. Then she shut the car door and rolled down the window. “Well, Mr. Coyne, thanks for everything.” She waggled her fingers at me.

I waved. “Drive carefully.”

She rolled up her window, backed out of her parking slot, and pulled away.

I watched her turn at the hospital exit. Her brake lights flashed, and then she pulled out of the parking lot onto the street.

I went over to my car, slid in, and fished out my phone. I held it in my hand for several minutes, trying to figure out what the right thing was. Then I dialed Roger Horowitz's cell number.

It rang several times. Then he said, “Jesus Christ, Coyne. Do you know what time it is?”

“It's after one o'clock in the morning,” I said. “I figured you'd be sleeping.”

He sighed. “Not fuckin' hardly. Me and Benetti are here in my office conferring. We just got off a conference call with a New Hampshire detective named Wexler, who you met, and now we're putting our heads together, comparing notes, trying out hypotheses, and making up scenarios. What detectives do, even sometimes at one o'clock on a Monday morning. So whaddaya want?”

“I just wanted to leave you a message.”

“Well,” he said, “ain't this better? Now you get to talk to me.”

“It would be easier to leave a message,” I said. “I'm uncomfortable with the ethics of this.”

“Christ,” Horowitz said. “Spit it out, willya? Whaddaya want?”

I took a breath and blew it out. “I want to tell you who killed Ken Nichols and his son, Wayne.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“You got it figured out, huh?”

“I think so.”

“Us cops, we ain't smart enough—but Mr. Lawyer knows.”

“Okay,” I said. “Forget it.”

“Take it easy,” said Horowitz. “We can use all the help we can get, believe me. Who is it? Who's our killer?”

“Ellen Nichols,” I said, “and that's all I'm gonna say.”

Horowitz was silent for a moment. Then he said, “The daughter, huh?”

“I think so,” I said.

“He thinks it's the daughter,” he said, and then I heard Marcia Benetti's voice in the background, though I couldn't tell what she said.

“Benetti wants to know what makes you think it's her?” Horowitz said to me.

“Means, motive, opportunity,” I said.

“Thanks a lot. You think maybe you could be a little more specific?”

“That's all I want to say,” I said. “You figure it out, see if I'm right.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Come on, Coyne. Help us out here.”

“Dumb me,” I said. “I thought with a little guidance, like, say, giving you the name of the bad guy, you could figure out the rest of it.”

“You're an officer of the court,” he said. “Look. Why don't you come on over, we can talk about it. Me and Marcia, we're
here at my office, just around the corner from your house. You can drive over from that hospital and park right in front. We're only about an hour from Fitchburg. Marcia brewed up a nice pot of coffee, and we got a box of fresh doughnuts from the Dunkin' on Cambridge Street. They're still warm. We got plain, glazed, jelly, apple-and-cinnamon, and this place reeks of coffee and doughnuts. Ain't your mouth watering?”

“It sounds great.” I hesitated. “Ellen knew about Wayne's cat.”

“Huh?”

“Why I think it's her. Wayne Nichols had a cat named Sparky. She claims she hasn't seen or even talked to her brother since he went off to college, but she knew he had a cat named Sparky.”

“So how'd she know that?”

“Bingo,” I said, and with that, I snapped my phone shut. No “Good-bye,” no “Nice talkin' to you.” Just like Horowitz.

It felt great.

I found an FM station playing smoky wee-hours-of-the-morning jazz on my car radio, and my mind drifted on the music as I drove east through the darkness on Route 2. The music was sexy and moody, and it made me think about Alex. Sexy, moody Alex.

I wondered what would become of us.

Some wisps of fog materialized and dissipated in my headlights. The speed limit was fifty-five, and I kept the needle on sixty. The last thing I needed was to get snagged in a speed trap. Traffic was light on the highway—now and then a big twelve-wheeler rammed past, and a few automobiles came up fast from behind and then pulled around me. I stuck to the right lane, grooving on the radio music, and pretty soon I was turning off Storrow Drive onto Charles Street. I wasn't even tempted to hook onto Cambridge Street and go to Horowitz's office. Al
ready I felt that I might've nudged my toe over the fuzzy ethical line by giving him Ellen's name.

Besides, it was way past my bedtime.

I pulled into my parking garage, nosed my car into its reserved pay-by-the-month slot, shut off the lights and the ignition, got out, locked up, and headed down the ramp for the door that opened onto Charles Street. The lights inside the garage were dim and yellow, and they cast spooky, distorted shadows against the dirty walls. My footsteps echoed, and somewhere in the depths of the big concrete structure water was dripping on the hood of a parked vehicle. It made a rhythmic
ping-ping
sound.

I was about to push open the door and step out onto the Charles Street sidewalk when a voice behind me said, “Hold it there, Mr. Coyne.”

It was a woman's voice, at once soft and assertive.

“Ellen?” I asked. I stopped and started to turn to look at her.

“Don't turn around,” she said. “I'm pointing a gun at you. Back away from the door.”

“You've got a gun?” I asked. “Jesus, Ellen. What's going on? What are you doing?”

“Please don't play dumb,” she said. “Don't insult my intelligence.” I heard a soft mechanical click, the unmistakable sound of a pistol's hammer being cocked. “Step back from the door, please.”

I did what she said. “You followed me here?”

“All the way from Fitchburg.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“I want you to tell me how you figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” I asked. “Look. We're both tired. It's been a hard night. I just want to go home and go to bed. I bet
you do, too. You're upset. Hard to blame you. Your father getting murdered, and then your brother, not to mention your grandfather in the hospital. Let's just forget about this. A good night's sleep, and the world will look a lot different. Go on. Go home.”

“I wish it was that easy,” she said, and I thought she actually did sound regretful. “You should've just minded your own business.”

I turned around to look at her. She really did have a gun. It was a revolver with a short barrel, and it was pointed at my midsection. I guessed it was the same weapon that had killed Wayne.

“I told you not to turn around,” she said.

“You were planning on shooting me in the back?”

“It was the cat, huh?”

I shrugged.

“You had some kind of suspicion,” she said, “or you wouldn't have tried to trap me like that.”

“I was just fishing,” I said. “If you'd said ‘Who's that?' when I mentioned Sparky, that would've been the end of it.”

“Now I've got to kill you, you know,” she said.

“How do you feel about that?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“You stabbed your father,” I said. “You shot your brother in the chest. How did it make you feel, killing people like that?”

Ellen mumbled something so softly that I couldn't understand her.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said it didn't bother me,” she said softly.

“It's like torturing those pets in the kennel, huh?”

She shook her head. “I'm not talking about this anymore.” Ellen gestured at me with her gun. “Move away from the door. Over there. Do it now.”

I figured she intended to shoot me. Why not? She'd already killed two men, and she admitted that she didn't mind doing it. As I eased away from the door that opened to the street, I tried to figure a way out. The hammer on Ellen's pistol was cocked. All she needed to do was touch the trigger to blow a hole in me. Her revolver looked like a .38. It would make a big hole, and even though snub-nosed revolvers are notoriously inaccurate, from where Ellen was standing, it would be hard to miss.

I could make a move on her. Fake left, go right. Or I could try to run away. Or I could drop, go into a roll, hit her at the knees. Or I could just make a bull rush at her and hope she panicked and forgot to shoot, or shot wildly, or, if she hit me, that it wasn't in some vital spot and wouldn't stop me.

Maybe twenty years ago a quick evasive flight—or a sudden attack—would've worked. Maybe not. Twenty years ago I was stronger and faster…and stupider.

I moved away from the door, keeping my eyes on the handgun she was holding. I figured as long as I could keep Ellen talking, she wouldn't be shooting.

“So after you left the hospital,” I said, “you pulled over and waited for me to go by, and then you eased in behind me, huh?”

She nodded.

“Because you made a mistake about Wayne's cat.”

“You tricked me,” she said. “That won't happen again.”

We were standing in the entryway to the parking garage. On the wall behind me was the big glass-fronted door that opened onto Charles Street, which was empty of traffic now at two o'clock on this Monday morning. On one side was the curving ramp that led up to the second floor. Directly behind Ellen was the opening to the dimly lit first floor of the garage, where rows of cars were parked.

I thought I saw the flicker of a shadow in the garage behind
Ellen. It was quick, and then it was gone. Probably my imagination.

Maybe not.

Keep her talking.

“So,” I said, “that wasn't Wayne who tortured the animals when you were growing up, right? It was you.”

She was shaking her head. “I don't want to talk about that.”

“You told your mother it was Wayne,” I said. “You put those awful thoughts into her head.”

“Stop that. I'm going to kill you. Nothing you say will change my mind.”

“I already gave the police your name,” I said. “If you kill me, it'll just be worse for you.”

“There's no proof,” she said. “You tricked me with the cat, that's all. I can explain that.”

A shadow appeared behind her, and in the dim yellow light I saw the shadow materialize into Marcia Benetti. She wore a dark windbreaker over a black T-shirt, with blue jeans and white sneakers. She was holding her service revolver in both hands beside her face, pointing up at the ceiling, and she was easing along with her back against the wall, moving toward Ellen.

“Was it really just about the money?” I asked Ellen.

“Of course it was the money,” she said. “He was going to keep it all. He said he needed it more than I did.”

“Your grandfather's inheritance?”

“I've got a right to that money,” she said. “My father didn't deserve it, and neither did my brother. You can understand that, can't you?”

That's when Benetti darted out of the parking garage shadows. Her scream echoed and rebounded off the concrete walls. It was a wild canine sound, a growl from deep in her chest, and then she slammed into Ellen, grabbing the arm that held the gun
and sprawling her sideways. Ellen bounced off the wall, and when her shoulder slammed against the floor, her revolver came out of her hand and went skittering across the concrete, and Benetti was on top of her, rolling her onto her belly, pushing her face against the floor, and twisting her arms behind her.

Then the door to Charles Street flew open, and Roger Horowitz burst in from the sidewalk with his weapon in his hand. He looked at Marcia Benetti and Ellen Nichols on the floor, and then he looked at me. He smiled and gave me a little shrug, then put his gun back into his shoulder holster. “She's something, ain't she?” he asked.

“She just saved my life,” I said, “if that's what you mean.”

Benetti had everything under control. Ellen was lying on her belly with her hands cuffed behind her. Her gun lay on the parking-garage floor near the wall, safely out of reach, and Marcia was kneeling beside her with her own handgun now in her hip holster.

Horowitz stood there inside the door. He looked at Marcia Benetti, smiled and nodded, then turned to me. “You okay?”

I nodded. “Thanks for showing up.”

“Marcia's idea,” he said. “She said we had to pick your brain. Said we shouldn't let you off the hook. She said, let's intercept the son of a bitch, bring him in whether he wants to or not. Woulda been easier all 'round if you'd come to the office voluntarily, had coffee and doughnuts with us.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “The offer still stands.”

I shook my head. “The doughnuts are tempting, but you don't need my help anymore.”

“Your
help
?” Horowitz asked. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but we just saved your sorry ass here. This pretty little girl was gonna blow a hole in you.”

“I had everything under control,” I said, “and now you've
got yourselves a real live double murder suspect. That should keep you busy for a while. Have a nice night. I'm going home.”

I had started to push open the heavy glass door to the sidewalk when Horowitz said, “Hold on a minute.”

I stopped and turned to look at him. “What?”

“How'd you figure it out?”

“Ellen, you mean?”

He nodded.

“If it had been only Ken who got killed,” I said, “or only Wayne, I probably wouldn't've. Each of them had plenty of enemies, just like most of us. Could've been anybody. Tonight, though, when I found Wayne murdered, I assumed it was the same killer, and that narrowed it way down. I just asked myself who was linked to both men, and of those people, who'd benefit from them both being dead.” I jerked my head in the direction of Ellen, who was now sitting on the floor with her back against the concrete wall. “Ken Nichols stood to inherit several million from his father, Ellen's grandfather, who's old and in bad health, and, in fact, is comatose in the hospital as we speak. Ken had huge debts. With him out of the way, the two grandchildren, Ellen and Wayne, were next in line for it. With Wayne gone, it'd all be Ellen's.”

“If it ain't for love,” Horowitz said, “it's for money.”

“Just about every time,” I said.