Outwitting Trolls (8 page)

“Like who'd've wanted to murder my father?”

“Well, sure. Or just anybody you might remember your father mentioning, friend or foe, or any problem or worry or issue he might've alluded to. Anything at all, even if you think it might be irrelevant. Okay?”

“Sure. Okay.”

I scratched my home number on the back of one of my business cards and handed it to her. “Call anytime, day or night.”

She took the card, glanced at it, and stuck it into her purse. Then she held out her hand. “Thanks for seeing me.”

I took her hand. “Thank you for dropping in. I'm glad we talked. We'll be in touch.”

After Ellen left, the console on my desk buzzed. I picked up the phone, and Julie said, “You had a couple calls. Don't know if you want to take them.”

“Who?”

“A reporter.”

“Josh Neuman?” I asked. “The
Herald
?”

“That's the one,” she said. “What's he want?”

“It's about the Nichols case. I've got nothing to say to him.”

“He called twice,” Julie said. “He seems quite persistent. He made it pretty clear that he intends to keep calling until he's satisfied. I suppose I can keep putting him off if you want, but…”

“You think I should talk to him, huh?”

“Get it out of the way,” she said. “He could become very annoying.”

“You're probably right,” I said. “Okay. If—when—he calls again, I guess you better put him through.”

Half an hour later my phone rang. “It's that reporter Josh Neuman again,” Julie said. “Line two.”

“Got it.” I pressed the blinking button, heard the click, and said, “Mr. Neuman. How're you doing?”

“Not that good,” he said. “We got a brutal murder in an up-scale hotel full of veterinarians from all over the globe, should be a helluva story, and nobody's saying anything.”

“You've got to talk to the police,” I said. “That's how it works.”

“Yeah, I never would've thought of that all by myself,” he
said. “Look, they held their bullshit press conference. Said exactly nothing beyond the obvious. I want to talk to your client.”

“You can't,” I said. “No way.”

“You, then,” he said. “You'll do.”

“Ha.”

“Just answer a couple questions for me. Then I'll leave you alone. How'd that be?”

“Can't do it,” I said. “You know that.”

“You don't want this great opportunity to get your slant on it out there, massage public opinion, counteract the stories the police will produce, create sympathy for your pretty client?”

“No, thanks.”

“Come on,” he said. “Give me your side of it. I'll print it just the way you say it.”

“No comment,” I said.

He laughed. “Listen. Here's what I want to know. You can tell me in your own careful lawyer's way, or even better, Mrs. Nichols can tell me. I want to know why she was there on Saturday night, how it happened that the pretty ex-wife was the one who found her ex-husband's body in his hotel room. There's a story there. You know there is. Plus, I want to know about their kids, where they are, what they're doing, how they got along with the dead guy and with each other. Of course, I want to know who they think did it.” He hesitated. “Unless one of them wants to confess to me.”

“None of that's any of your business,” I said. “That's private, personal stuff.”

“It's gonna come out one way or the other,” Josh Neuman said. “You know that. I either talk directly to them, get it straight from their mouths, or else I talk to neighbors and business acquaintances, cousins, uncles, fathers-in-law, and get fragments of the story and put it together as well as I can, and what I can't
write straight, I can write innuendo, which I am very good at. This is a juicy story, Mr. Coyne. Sexy woman, secret rendezvous in ex-husband's hotel room, dead guy in a bathrobe, stabbed to death with a steak knife. Who's gonna be your prime suspect every time, huh?”

“You go making up irresponsible stories,” I said, “and there will be a giant lawsuit, I promise you.”

He laughed. “Can I quote you on that?”

“Good-bye, Mr. Neuman,” I said, and I hung up.

A few minutes later there came a scratch on my office door.

“Come in,” I said.

Julie poked her head in. “What's this I hear in your voice?”

“It's that damn reporter,” I said.

“Looking for a story,” she said. “Acting like a reporter. What do you expect?”

“I know,” I said. “He almost made me lose my cool.”

“The sign of a good reporter, I'd say.” Julie sat in one of the client chairs by my desk, opened her stenography notebook on her knee, and said, “Now, you better bring me up to date on this new client of ours.”

I'd been home from the office for about an hour. I'd hung up my necktie and lawyer pinstripe and pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt, and I'd fetched myself a bottle of Samuel Adams lager, and now I was sitting out in my backyard sipping my Sam and watching the finches and nuthatches and chickadees peck sunflower seeds at my feeders.

Then my cell phone, which I'd left on the picnic table, began buzzing and jumping around.

I picked it up and looked at the screen. It was Horowitz. I flipped open the phone and said, “Roger. Hey.”

“I'm parked in front of your house,” he said. “Where are you?”

“I'm here. Out back. You want a beer?”

“That's exactly what I want. I just went off duty. Let me in.”

“Okay.” I snapped the phone shut, put it back on the table, and went through the house to the front door. When I opened it, Horowitz was standing on the stoop. He was wearing his rumpled brown suit, and his red necktie was pulled loose at his throat. His Columbo outfit.

I held the door for him, and he pushed past me into the house.

We went out to the kitchen, where I grabbed a beer for Horowitz and a fresh one for me, and then on out into the backyard.

We each sat in an Adirondack chair.

Henry came over and sniffed Horowitz's cuffs. When Horowitz ignored him, he sauntered over to where I was sitting and sprawled on the bricks beside my chair.

I reached down and scratched the scruff of his neck, which was all he wanted.

Horowitz tilted up his beer, took a long swig, and then put his bottle on the arm of his chair. “Ahh,” he said. “That's good. And this”—he waved his hand around my little walled-in patio garden—“this is nice. Flowers, birds, brick walls. Privacy. It's so quiet you'd hardly know you were in the middle of the damn city. The air even smells clean up here.”

“Yep.” I nodded. “I like it.”

“Must get a little lonely, though, huh?”

“I don't mind,” I said.

“Looks like you've been working on your flower gardens,” he said.

“Just cleaning out last fall's leaves.”

“Evie used to take care of the gardens, didn't she?”

“She did,” I said.

“So now what're you gonna do?”

I shook my head. “You enjoy this, don't you?”

He turned and looked at me. “What?”

“Reminding me that Evie's gone. Rubbing it in.”

“Hey,” he said. “You're the one who always screws up your relationships, not me. I feel sorry for you, that's all.”

“Just what I need,” I said. “Your pity. I bet that's not why you're here.”

“Naw. That just occurred to me.” He took another swig of beer. “Benetti would kill me if she knew I was here.”

“You didn't tell your partner you were coming?”

He shook his head. “Consorting with the enemy, she'd call it.”

“I'm not your enemy.”

“In this screwy adversarial system of ours, I guess you are.” He flicked that consideration away with a backhanded wave. “Fuck it. Benetti thinks your client there is good for the Nichols thing. She thinks her story about going to his hotel room to have sex with him is bullshit.” He arched his eyebrows at me.

“What do you think, Roger?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I got some doubts about it. Anybody would. Plus, we haven't come up with any better suspects. So Mrs. Nichols there, she's pretty much our default suspect.”

“Default,” I said.

“We can't eliminate her,” he said. “Means, motive, opportunity. She's got 'em all.”

“You're pretty shaky on all three,” I said. “Last I heard, you had no murder weapon. So much for means. Ken and Sharon Nichols had been talking about resuming their relationship, which hardly amounts to a motive for murder. Opportunity I might stipulate. She was there, though the times aren't right.”

“No sense in arguing about those things now,” he said. “I wanted to ask you about when you were with our victim the night before.”

“I told you everything,” I said. “About the bearded guy he called Clem who pointed his finger at him. The fact that Ken seemed kind of nervous. That his phone rang several times. I don't know what else you want.”

“He didn't mention what he was nervous about?”

“No. He kind of hinted he was having some problems, but no specifics.”

“Money? Love? Health?”

I shook my head. “No idea. You get a line on the guy with the beard?”

“Nope.”

“What about the kid in the hoodie?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Not that I need to share with you.” He blinked at me. “Our victim had a cell phone with him, you said.”

“Yes. You could probably get some useful numbers off of it.”

“We can get his phone records,” Horowitz said, “but it takes a while. Big pain in the ass. Privacy, all that shit. Helluva lot easier if we had his phone. Which we don't.”

“You didn't find his phone in his room?” I asked.

“Nope.” He took a swig of beer. “Funny, don't you think?”

“The bad guy took the phone and left that satchel of ketamine there?”

“No phone,” Horowitz said, “no murder weapon. No laptop, no briefcase, no personal papers, no BlackBerry. Nothing like that—but, yeah, a gym bag full of illegal drugs.”

“The killer must've taken all that stuff,” I said. “I know Ken had a phone, at least. Makes you wonder if the drugs had anything to do with the murder.”

He shrugged and lifted his beer bottle and took a long pull. His throat muscles clenched and flexed like a biceps. When he put the bottle down, it was empty. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and said, “Ahh.”

“You want another one?” I asked.

He shook his head. “State cops in Maryland have had their eye on him.”

“What for? Ketamine?”

He nodded. “Other stuff, too, that a vet would have access to.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose.

“He said nothing to me about it,” I said.

Horowitz looked at me for a minute. “There was one little piece of evidence at the crime scene that you might find interesting.”

“You going to share it with me?”

“Benetti wouldn't like it, but, hey. Disclosure, right? Gotta disclose sooner or later. Anyway, I wondered if you might have a take on it.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“A hotel matchbook,” he said. “One of the techs found it, photographed it, tagged it, and bagged it. It was lying on the floor just outside of the door to the murder room. It had indentations on it that exactly matched the shape of the latch on the door.”

“As if it had been wedged in there so the door wouldn't lock,” I said. “So somebody could get in from the outside without a key.”

He nodded. “When your client pushed on the door, it opened and the matchbook fell out.”

“She was telling the truth about that,” I said.

“As far as it goes, yeah, looks that way,” Horowitz said. “Maybe, but that doesn't exactly exonerate her. Her lover there, our vic, he could've jammed the latch with that matchbook so he could wait for her in his bathtub, or in his bed or something, and she could just waltz right in there with her steak knife.”

“You really think that's what happened?” I asked.

“Benetti does,” he said. “Me, I'm trying to think about some other scenarios. The null hypothesis. Suppose the lady did
not
stab our vic with a steak knife in that hotel room. Suppose her story
is
the truth. How else could it have gone down?”

“Who put the matchbook in the latch, for example,” I said, “if you assume it wasn't Ken?”

Horowitz looked at me and nodded. “The killer, for example.”

“Could be, huh?” I asked.

“Why would the killer do that?”

“Because he planned to come back,” I said. “Or he was leaving the room open for somebody else.”

“Somebody who was gonna pick up that bag of Special K, for example.”

“Sure,” I said, “or if he somehow knew that Sharon was expected, he could've left the door that way so she'd walk in and become a suspect.”

Horowitz grinned. “Which she did.”

“That guy in the hoodie,” I said. “He was heading for Ken's room. Looking to score that ketamine, maybe. The killer left the door unlatched for him. When he saw Sharon and me, he ran.”

Horowitz shrugged. “Could be. Makes as much sense as your client doing it. Doesn't mean she didn't. Benetti might be right. Hell, for all I know you might be sitting there knowing how stupid this sounds, knowing what she did.” He cocked his head and looked at me.

I smiled. “What do you want me to say?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“You know I can't—”

“Christ, Coyne. What do you think? I just wanted to relax, drink a beer, enjoy your little garden after a hard day at work, your nice little oasis of peace and calm here in the middle of the big bad city, have a little low-key conversation, share an interesting tidbit of information with you, that's all.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“No more shop talk,” he said. “Okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “Okay.”

“You won't tell Marcia I was here, right?”

I shrugged.

“Come on, Coyne. She'd kill me.”

“Looks like you owe me one,” I said.

“I told you about the damn matchbook,” he said. “What do you want?”

I nodded. “You're right. Call it even. I promise I won't tell Marcia that you were here.”

He grinned. “So,” he said, “how about them Red Sox, huh?”

 

Horowitz stayed around for one more beer, and we talked baseball, with a little city politics and stock market thrown in. The subject of Ken Nichols's murder did not come up again.

After he left, Henry and I had dinner—a bowl of Alpo for him, a ham-and-cheese sandwich for me.

After dinner we went into my downstairs home office, where I called Billy's cell phone. It rang just once before he said, “Hey, Pop.”

“Hey yourself,” I said. “I'm calling to make a date.”

“You name it,” he said.

We decided that Billy and Gwen would come to my place for a cookout the next evening. He and Gwen would bring rib eyes and potatoes and salad fixin's. I'd provide beer for us guys and a good Shiraz for Gwen. If our mild late-April weather persisted, we'd cook on the gas grill on my back deck and eat outside at the picnic table, and Billy and Gwen would tell me whatever it was that they came east to tell me.

When I hung up with my son, I realized I was smiling. I liked having him nearby, for a change. I looked forward to hanging out with him.

Julie had insisted I bring home the remainder of the paperwork that I hadn't finished during the day, and I figured I better get on top of it, because she'd have more for me tomorrow.

I was making good headway on it when my phone rang. I glanced at my watch. It was a few minutes after nine o'clock.

It was Sharon Nichols. “I hope I'm not bothering you,” she said.

“Au contraire,”
I said. “You're giving me a reprieve from a pile of boring deskwork. How are you doing?”

“I'm okay, I guess,” she said. “I don't know how I'm supposed to be. How is one supposed to feel when her ex-husband gets murdered?”

“I assume that's a rhetorical question.”

“Sure,” she said, “but if you've got an answer, I'd love to hear it.”

“I guess you should just feel whatever you feel,” I said.

“Well, that's what I've been doing. And I'm okay. I went to work today.”

“Where do you work?”

“I manage a leather shop in Concord center.”

“A leather shop.”

She laughed quickly. “It's not how it sounds. Nothing kinky. Women's apparel. Jackets, belts, vests, skirts, sandals. Lots of boots. Hand-tooled stuff.”

“Sounds classy,” I said.

“It's nice,” she said, “and I like it. Different from being a vet's assistant. I miss the animals, but I like the people. So, yes, I worked all day, and it was fine, and I guess I'm fine, and I'll be even finer if you can tell me they're not going to arrest me.”

“I don't know that for sure,” I said, “but every day that goes by, the odds get better. You should just try not to think about it.”

“Easier said than done.” She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “You met Ellen today, I understand?”

“She dropped by my office. We had a good chat. She seems like a mature young woman.”

“Can I ask you what she wanted to talk about?”

“She'll probably tell you if you ask.”

“Oh,” she said. “I get it. It's a lawyer confidentiality thing.”

“Not really,” I said. “It's just a human being confidentiality thing. Ellen's not my client, so I don't have a professional obligation to her. I wouldn't tell her things you said to me, either, whether or not you were my client.”

“Okay,” she said after a minute. “That's okay. That's good. I just…” She blew out a breath.

“What?” I asked.

“It's nothing,” she said. “I just wondered if Ellen was blaming me. For what happened to Ken, I mean. I've always felt she blamed me for the divorce. She was always Daddy's little girl.”

“Talk to her,” I said. “If you want, I can set you up with a good counselor. That might not be a bad idea in any case. I know a homicide counselor. She specializes in helping the relatives and friends of people who are murdered. Her name is Tally Whyte. She works out of the medical examiner's office here in the city. If you and Ellen saw her together, you might…”

“Yes, hmm, maybe,” she said. “Interesting. I'll think about it.” She hesitated. “The other thing is, I haven't been able to get hold of Wayne. I don't quite know what to do.”