Shadow of Death (27 page)

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Authors: William G. Tapply

Tags: #Suspense

BOOK: Shadow of Death
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The television sounded louder down here.
I had to hunch over to walk under the ceiling beams. I followed the sound of the television to a closed door in the corner under the stairs that ascended up into the house. A small room had been walled in under the stairway.
I stood outside the door to this room. The television sounds came from inside.
The door was locked from my side with a simple sliding steel bolt.
I slid it open, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.
The first thing I noticed was the odor. It was vile, acrid, stomach-turning, and it permeated the air in that tiny room. I couldn't identify the smell. It reminded me of rotting garbage.
Aside from the dim, bluish light from the TV, the room was dark. The television sat on a low table against the left-hand wall behind the open door where I stood. It was playing something in black-and-white—judging from the sappy violin music, an old romantic movie.
I blinked a couple of times to adjust my eyes to the dimness.
Then, in the shadows against the wall to my right, I saw a figure huddled under a blanket on a cot. He was lying on his side, curled fetally, facing the wall, with his back to the TV.
He moaned softly.
“Albert?” I said.
He moaned again, but he didn't move.
I went over to him and touched his shoulder. “Hey,” I said. “Hey, Albert. It's me. It's Brady Coyne.”
He slowly rolled onto his back. His eyes flickered open, and he looked blankly up at me. “Brady?” he whispered.
His lips were swollen, and his eyes were narrow slits. He wore a week's growth of whiskers. Even though it was damp and chilly in the unheated basement, his face was sheened with perspiration.
It took me a minute to recognize him.
“Gordie?” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
G
ordon Cahill's eyes blinked and his mouth moved, but his voice was too weak for me to hear what he was trying to say.
I turned off the volume on the flickering TV, then knelt beside him where he lay. “Say it again,” I said.
“Pills,” he mumbled. He pointed a shaky finger at the small table beside his cot. “Need one.”
On the table was a half-filled glass of water and a plastic prescription pill bottle. I picked up the bottle and read the label. Morphine. For pain. Also good for inducing unconsciousness. Powerful, addictive stuff.
I shook my head. “No pills. We've got to get you out of here.
“No,” he said. “Can't do it. My leg. Need a pill.”
I peeled back the thin blanket that covered him, and I nearly puked at the stench of rot and decay that came up at me.
The bottom half of Gordie's right pant leg was black and oozing with dark blood and greenish pus. His leg had swollen
so that it filled his pant leg like a fat sausage.
“What have they done to you?” I said.
“Busted it,” he said. “Axe. My shinbone.” He gestured vaguely to the corner of the room.
Standing on its head was a long-handled single-bladed axe. I went over and looked at it. The blunt end of the steel head was caked with dried blood.
I tried to imagine it. It made me shiver.
I went back, knelt beside Gordie, and pressed my palm against his forehead. His skin was afire.
My mind swirled with questions. But they could wait.
“Can you stand up?” I said.
He squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a small shake. “No way. I can't hardly move. Just gimme a pill, for God's sake.”
“Let me think,” I said.
I had to get him to a hospital. Judging from the smell of his leg and the heat of his skin, the infection was coursing through his entire body. I was no doctor, but I guessed that he was pretty close to dying.
In his condition, he'd be a dead weight. I couldn't carry him very far—certainly not all the way to my car—even if he could tolerate the pain.
If the Goff men came back while I was there, I'd lose my chance to get Gordie out.
They'd probably bust my leg with the flat end of an axe, too.
I fished out my cell phone and hit 911. This time I didn't even get one halfhearted ring. “Call failed,” it said on the screen.
“I've gotta go get you some help,” I said to Gordie. “I'll bring an ambulance.”
He reached out and clamped his hand weakly onto my wrist. “I don't care what you do,” he mumbled. “Just gimme a damn pill.”
He was probably addicted to the morphine. Given his condition, though, it was hardly the time to worry about that.
I opened the bottle, shook a capsule out onto my palm, picked up the water glass, and held them to him.
“Put it here,” he said. He stuck out his tongue.
I put the pill on his tongue.
His throat worked, swallowing it. “Water,” he said.
I held the water glass to Gordie's mouth and tilted it up for him. He took a couple swallows, then turned his head away.
I put the glass back on the table. “I'm leaving now,” I said to him. “I'll be back.”
He rolled away from me so that he was facing the wall.
I touched his shoulder. “Did you hear me?”
“Whatever,” he mumbled.
I stood up and took one step to the door—and that's when I heard a door slam. Then there were men's voices and heavy footsteps on the floor overhead.
The Goff brothers had come home.
My first thought was to dart out through the bulkhead, skulk through the yard, and run back to my car.
But before I could move, I heard the cellar door open overhead. Then footsteps started down the stairs.
I pulled the door to Cahill's little cell closed and wedged myself into the corner behind the door. Maybe Goff, whichever brother it was, wouldn't even open the door. Or maybe he'd just peek inside, see that Gordie was passed out on the cot, and leave. Then I could slip away through the bulkhead.
The footsteps on the stairs descended. Then they stopped. He'd reached the cellar.
“Must be gettin' careless,” he said from outside the door, as if he were talking to Gordie. “Left the lights on and your door unlocked. Don't suppose you walked out, did you?” He laughed. “Naw. Don't suppose you did that. You still alive in there, Mr. Detective, I hope?”
The knob on the door turned. I picked up the axe, held it at my shoulder, and pressed myself against the wall.
I was standing behind the door when it opened. The first thing that came into the room were the twin barrels of a shotgun, held about waist high.
When the hand and arm that held the fore end of the shotgun followed, I smashed down on them with the business end of the axe.
He yowled, and the shotgun clattered to the floor. I launched myself at him. In the bluish flickering light of the muted television I saw that it was Dub, the older one. I tried to hack at him again with the axe, but he rammed his shoulder against my chest before I could bring it down on him.
I staggered backward, smashed into the wall, and went down on the seat of my pants.
Dub Goff started at me … and a sudden explosion filled the little room. It sounded as if a bomb had gone off.
Dub seemed to be lifted up and blown backward, and I saw a patch of red bloom on the front of his thigh.
I glanced at Cahill. He held the shotgun propped along the length of his body on the bed. It was pointed at the open doorway. His finger was curled around the trigger. His eyes were wide and crazy.
“Don't shoot again,” I yelled at him. “We'll need that second barrel.”
He turned his head slowly and looked at me as if he'd never seen me before.
“Don't shoot,” I repeated. “Give me the gun.”
I went over to him and took the shotgun out of his hands. I held it at my hip and turned to face the door, where I expected to see Dub Goff lying in a puddle of blood.
But Dub wasn't there.
“You son of a bitch,” came a growly voice from somewhere outside the room. “You shot my brother.” It was Harris Goff.
“You better call an ambulance,” I said, “before Dub dies.”
“Fuck you, Boston. I shoulda put a hole in your head first time.”
“Now's your chance,” I said. “Come on in.”
“No hurry, Boston.” He chuckled. “You go ahead, stay right there with your detective buddy. Watch him die. It's gonna be slow and smelly. Me, I can wait. I got all the time in the world.”
“You planning to let Dub bleed to death?”
“Dub's gonna be okay,” he said. “He's tough. Pretty pissed, though.”
“Nice try,” I said. “But I saw his leg. It nearly got blown off.”
“You got one shot left,” said Harris. “If I was you, Mister Lawyer, I'd eat that barrel and pull the trigger right now, 'cause if I get there first, you'll wish to hell you did.”
“I'm saving this barrel for you, Harris,” I said. “The way it looks to me, you can wait out there while Dub bleeds to death, and I can wait here while Cahill dies, or else you can call an ambulance and save both of their lives. What do you say?”
“Dub ain't gonna die,” he said, but I thought I detected a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“You know what the femoral artery is?” I said.
“If you think—”
At that moment, a bell chimed from somewhere inside the house.
“There's your doorbell,” I said.
“Fuck,” muttered Harris.
“You better answer the door,” I said.
Some shuffling sounds came from outside the room. Then the door to our little room closed, and I heard the deadbolt slide into place. “Sit tight, Boston,” said Harris. “Don't go nowhere. I'll be back in a minute so we can continue this nice conversation.”
Harris's footsteps clomped up the wooden stairs over my head. Then a door closed.
A moment later I heard faint voices from upstairs. Harris had answered the doorbell. Someone was up there.
“Cover your ears,” I said to Gordie.
I glanced at him. He didn't move.
I moved to the back wall of the little room, leveled the double-barreled shotgun at where I figured the deadbolt was on the outside of the door, and pulled the back trigger.
The shotgun roared, and a fist-sized hole appeared on the edge of the door.
I dropped the shotgun, went to the door, and turned the knob. It swung open.
Dub Goff was sitting on the dirt floor outside the door, facing me. His back was pressed against a stack of cardboard boxes, and he was holding a big-bore revolver in his lap. It was pointing at me. I guessed it was a .45.
Blood was pooling under him, and his eyes looked droopy.
“Jesus, Dub,” I said. “We've got to get you to a hospital, man.”
For his answer, he put both thumbs on the hammer of his revolver and cocked it.
I ducked back into Gordie's little room just an instant before Dub pulled the trigger. The bullet left a hole you could stick your big toe through about head high on the wooden door.
A moment later heavy footsteps came clomping down the cellar stairs.
I picked up the empty shotgun by the barrels, held it against my shoulder like a baseball bat, and backed against the wall.
I heard movement outside the door.
“Mr. Coyne?” came a voice. “You in there?”
The two shotgun blasts inside that little room had half deafened me. But I thought I recognized that voice.
“Officer Munson?” I said. “That you?”
“Yes. Don't shoot me. I'm coming in.”
A
few minutes later an ambulance arrived and a team of EMTs took Gordon Cahill and Dub Goff away on gurneys and sped them off to the hospital.
Then a pair of state police officers took Harris Goff away in handcuffs.
Officer Somers was there, and he and Munson stayed behind at the Goffs' place to wait for the crime-scene people to arrive. Somers's young female partner, who said her name was Meredith O'Dell, drove me to the Southwick police station in her cruiser. I rode up front in the passenger seat, which assured me that I was not a suspect of any kind. Not that I should have been. Reassuring, nonetheless.
Officer O'Dell—she said I should call her Merrie—led me to a small conference room. She asked if I wanted coffee. I did. She returned a minute later with two mugs and sat across from me at a rectangular wooden table. She was drinking tea.
She told me her job was to baby-sit me and that neither of us was supposed to reveal information about what she called “this case” until the right people arrived.
I asked her if Cahill was going to make it. She shook her head. Either she didn't know or she wasn't going to share with me.
Her headshake could have meant Gordie was doomed, but I chose not to read it that way.
So we made small talk. She told me she'd been dating a patrolman in Keene, but she didn't think it would go anywhere. He wanted to be a big-city cop—his ambition was to join the New York or Los Angeles force—and she wanted to live on a farm and raise babies and chickens and goats.
I told her about Evie, my virtual spouse, and Billy and Joey, my two sons, and Henry, my dog.
Merrie O'Dell had a dog. She'd rescued it from the pound. It was mostly golden retriever, with a few drops of mastiff blood. It slept on her bed and took up most of the space.
I was on my second mug of coffee when the door opened and Lieutenant Bagley, the state cop from the Major Crimes Unit in Concord, came in.
Merrie O'Dell stood up and moved to the door. Bagley sat in her chair across from me.
“How's Cahill?” I said to him.
He shrugged, then looked over his shoulder and jerked his chin at Merrie. “Find out,” he said.
She nodded and left the room.
Bagley folded his hands on the table and peered at me. “You've been busy, Mr. Coyne.”
“If you want me to explain everything to you,” I said, “I'm afraid I can't.”
“Don't worry about it. Don't speculate. Just tell me what happened.”
“I have a client to protect,” I said.
He nodded. “I understand. We'll get an official statement
later, and then you can be as careful as you need to be. This is just between you and me, and I'd like to hear it all. I figure between what you know and what I know, we can figure this out.”
So I told him everything. I began two weeks ago when Jimmy D'Ambrosio hired me, and I ended two hours ago when Officer Munson rescued me from the Goffs' cellar. “I don't know why Munson happened to show up when he did,” I said, “but I hate to think of what would've happened if he hadn't.”
Bagley smiled. “Munson had his eye on you. Ever since he happened upon you at Stoddard's cabin, he figured you for a suspicious character. He was lurking around after the funeral, keeping an eye on you, and when he saw you heading for the Goff brothers' house, he tailed you. He heard a gunshot, had the good sense to call for backup, and waited for Somers and O'Dell to get there. Just about the time the three of 'em knocked on the door, you fired the shotgun again. That got their attention. If you hadn't done that, they would've had no choice but to turn around and leave.”
I nodded. “That was my intent.”
There was a soft knock at the door.
Lieutenant Bagley called, “Come in.”
Officer Merrie O'Dell poked her head in and beckoned to Bagley.
He stood up, left the room, and closed the door behind him.
Bagley was gone nearly fifteen minutes. When he came back, he sat down and looked at me. I couldn't read his expression.
“Your friend Cahill's in pretty bad shape,” he said. “They've got him in ICU, loading him up with antibiotics.
They want to operate on that leg, but they can't until they get the infection under control.” He shrugged. “That's all I can tell you.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Dub Goff lost a hunk of muscle off his leg,” he said. “He'll live. We've got a guard with him in the hospital. Assume you're interested, seeing as how you contributed to his condition.”
“For the record,” I said, “it was Cahill who shot Dub.”
“Well, good for him.” Bagley smiled. “I just talked with Lieutenant Horowitz. He was—shocked might not be too strong a word—that Gordon Cahill was alive.”
“He thought Gordie got burned up in his Corolla,” I said. “It must've been Albert Stoddard. I figure the Goff brothers killed him.”
Bagley nodded. “The question is why.”
“I've got a theory.”
“Me,” he said, “I've got something better than a theory.”
“What's that?”
“I've got Harris and Dub Goff. They have both expressed enthusiasm about enumerating and justifying the things they've done. We're waiting 'til their lawyers arrive.”
“Playing this one by the book, huh?” I said.
“We play 'em all by the book, Mr. Coyne.”
 
 
Saturday afternoon three days after I found Gordon Cahill in the cellar of the Goff brothers' house, I was raking leaves and pulling dead annual plants out of our gardens on Beacon Hill when Roger Horowitz called.
“You got any beer in your refrigerator?” he said.
“Depends.”
“You give me a Sam Adams,” he said, “I'll tell you a story. Deal?”
“Sure,” I said. “Good deal.”
Horowitz knocked on the back gate fifteen minutes later. Henry went over and barked, and when Horowitz came in, Henry sniffed his cuffs. Horowitz bent down and scratched his muzzle.
I fetched a bottle of Sam Adams lager for each of us, and Horowitz and I sat at the patio table. Henry curled up underneath, plopped his chin on my foot, and went to sleep.
“Where's Evie?” Horowitz said.
“Shopping. She's running low on shoes.”
He smiled. “Bagley and I have been talking with those Goff brothers. Their lawyers are advising them to cop a plea, so they've been more than cooperative. Inasmuch as you probably saved Cahill's life, I figured I should share the story with you.”
“Tell me how Gordie's doing.”
“Still in the ICU up there in Peterborough,” he said. “Stable, they tell me. No visitors yet. He's all drugged up, in no condition to talk anyway. Donna drives up every day.”
“He's going to be okay?”
“Looks like it. They're not sure about his leg, though.”
I nodded. “I thought he was a dead man when I found him.” I took a sip of beer. “So let's hear your story.”
This was the Goff brothers' story as Roger Horowitz reconstructed it for me:
On the morning of October 12, 1971, five boys from Southwick, New Hampshire, piled into a '59 Buick owned and operated by the oldest of them, sixteen-year-old Dalton Burke. Albert Stoddard and Oliver Burlingame were fourteen, Mark Lyman fifteen.
Bobby Gilman, barely thirteen, was the youngest. The only reason Bobby got to tag along was because Dalton Burke's mother, who was friends with Mrs. Gilman, insisted the boys bring him. Bobby played in the junior high band and got good grades and didn't like sports. Everybody teased him. He didn't have any friends. The other kids called him a pussy.
They drove southwest from Southwick to Mount Monadnock. It took about half an hour. It was a crisp October day—bright sun, high skidding clouds, a wintry bite to the air.
The boys chose one of the less popular trails on the shaded western slope of the mountain. This one was marked by paint slashes on trees and boulders, and if you didn't pay attention, you could easily wander away from the trail. In some places you had to use your hands to pull yourself over rocks and up the steep parts of the trail.
The five boys had barely gotten halfway to the top of the mountain when Bobby Gilman started whining. He wanted to stop and rest. He was tired. He was thirsty. He was cold. He had a blister.
Oliver called him a baby.
Mark said if he couldn't stop bitching he should go back down by himself and wait at the bottom for them.
Bobby started crying. He said he didn't want to be left alone. He said if they didn't help him, he'd tell his mother.
Albert told him to shut up.
Dalton said they had to bring him along, because if they didn't his mother would be pissed.
So Bobby hobbled along behind the other four boys, and every fifteen minutes or so they had to stop and wait for him to catch up.
He never stopped whining.
It took them much longer to get to the top of the mountain than it would've if Bobby Gilman hadn't been along, and when they finally stood on the rocky summit, they saw that a black cloud bank was moving in from the northeast.
Dalton Burke squinted at the sky and said they better get back down. It looked like a storm was coming.
They'd barely reached the timberline when Bobby sat on a rock and took off his sneaker. His sock was wet with blood from a broken blister. When he saw the blood, he started crying.
Mark Lyman picked up Bobby's sneaker and tossed it to Albert Stoddard. Albert tossed it to Oliver Burlingame.
Oliver threw it into the bushes.
Dalton told Oliver to go fetch Bobby's sneaker and give it back to him. Dalton was the oldest, and besides, he had the car, so the other boys usually obeyed him.
Oliver found the sneaker and threw it at Bobby. It hit him on the head. Bobby picked it up and tried to put it back on, but it hurt too much.
About then it started to snow. It came on the edge of a sharp wind, a sudden white sheet of hard little kernels blowing almost horizontally, sweeping over the mountainside.
Dalton Burke helped Bobby Gilman get to his feet. “We gotta get going,” he said. “Forget about your damn sneaker. Let's move it.”
“I can't,” sobbed Bobby. “My foot hurts.”
“Fuck him,” said Oliver. “We're gonna have a fucking blizzard. Let's go.”
“We can't just leave him,” said Albert.
“Why not?” said Mark.
Dalton put his arm around Bobby's waist and helped him hobble over the rocks down the mountain. After about ten minutes, it was Albert's turn to help Bobby.
The temperature was dropping, and already, under the black clouds and in the thick driving snow, it was getting dark and the snow was starting to stick to the ground.
They were on a steep, rock-strewn section of the trail when Albert slipped on a slick boulder. He and Bobby fell down in a heap.
Bobby started crying again. “I hurt my leg.”
“We're never going to get there at this rate,” said Oliver. “We're all gonna freeze to death.”
Dalton went to Bobby, grabbed the front of his jacket, and yanked him to his feet. “I'm sick of you whining like a fuckin' baby,” he said.
Bobby scrunched up his face and cried louder.
Dalton started shaking Bobby. “Stop your damn crying,” he yelled. “I can't stand it anymore. Just shut up.”
Bobby kept crying.
So Dalton hauled back and slapped Bobby's face as hard as he could. Bobby slipped, staggered, waved his arms in the air, then tumbled backward off the boulder and out of sight.
The four other boys crept to the edge and looked down.
Bobby was lying there on his back amid a jumble of rocks in a crevasse about twenty feet below them. One of his legs was bent at an impossible angle underneath him.
Bobby wasn't crying. He wasn't even moving.
“Oh, shit,” said Albert.
Dalton Burke slithered down to where Bobby lay. A minute later he looked up at the other three. “His head's all smashed in,” he said. “He ain't breathing.”
“You killed him,” said Oliver.
“Not me,” said Dalton. “All of us.”
“What're we gonna do?” said Mark.
“We gotta get an ambulance or something,” said Albert.

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