Shadow of Death (4 page)

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Authors: William G. Tapply

Tags: #Suspense

BOOK: Shadow of Death
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M
onday morning I left the house around quarter of eight—about half an hour earlier than normal—so I'd have time to talk with Gordon Cahill in his office and still get to mine by nine. Julie had a morning full of client meetings lined up for me, and being late would be a bad way to start the week. My clients could handle it, but Julie would make my life miserable.
It promised to be another fine Indian summer day in Boston. The maples and beeches on the Common and in the Public Gardens had started turning crimson and gold and bronze, and the low-angled morning sun glowed in the tops of the foliage. Squirrels scampered under their branches gathering acorns and beechnuts. Pigeons waddled around on the sidewalks looking for stale French fries and popcorn. Ah, Mother Nature.
It was the kind of early-autumn morning that gave me an itch to prowl through some real woods, spy on some wild animals, maybe even go trout fishing one more time before the snow flew.
I stopped at a coffee shop on Newbury Street and bought two large coffees and half a dozen bran muffins. As I recalled, Gordon Cahill liked bran.
St. Botolph Street runs between Huntington and Columbus Avenues behind Copley Place. Cahill's office was halfway down the street on the second floor above a Thai restaurant. The last time I was there he had the air-conditioning running high and was burning incense—a futile effort to neutralize the exotic aromas that wafted up from the kitchen below.
Gordie hated all Southeast Asian cuisine—a vestige, I assumed, of his time in Saigon thirty-odd years ago—but he wasn't thinking about moving. He said the rent was cheap and, anyway, he liked the fact that he wasn't too comfortable in an office. He liked being out on the streets where the action was.
When I climbed the stairway it was a little after eight-fifteen in the morning, and the restaurant was closed. Still, the mingled stale smell of curry and coconut milk and roasted peanuts and seared hot peppers lingered in the walls.
The door to Cahill's office was open a crack. With my briefcase in one hand and my bag of muffins and coffee in the other, I nudged it open with my toe and said, “Hey, Gordie. I come bearing muffins.”
He didn't answer. I went in.
His cramped office was dominated by a big old oak desk with an Apple computer, two telephones, and a wire basket full of papers. A dirty window overlooked the back alley. A row of filing cabinets took up one wall. There was a mini-refrigerator and a microwave oven and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that held mostly legal tomes, phone books, atlases, and other reference works.
To the left, the door to the conference room was ajar. I put the bag of muffins and coffee and my briefcase on Cahill's desk and stepped into the other room.
“Gordie, you here?” I said. “I'm in no mood for—”
That's when the gun barrel rammed into the back of my neck and the growly voice said, “Don't even blink.”
“Hey,” I said. “That hurts.”
I recognized the growly voice. It belonged to my old friend—and occasional nemesis—Roger Horowitz. Horowitz was a homicide detective for the Massachusetts state police. Naturally, whenever I encountered him it meant that he was investigating a homicide, so naturally, as much as I liked him, I never wanted to encounter him. It usually meant somebody I knew had died under suspicious circumstances.
“Christ,” Horowitz grumbled. “It's you.”
“Please point that thing somewhere else,” I said.
He hesitated, then shoved his gun into the holster under his armpit.
I poked my finger at his chest. “What are you doing here?”
“I'm the cop,” he said. “I get to ask the questions. What are
you
doing here?”
“I brought coffee and bran muffins. I'm having breakfast with Cahill.”
“Why?”
“Bran muffins are good for you,” I said. “They keep you regular.”
“Answer the fucking question, Coyne. I been up all night. I'm in no mood.”
“He's doing some work for me,” I said. “We were supposed to meet here and talk about it.”
“What work?”
“Oh, no you don't,” I said. “I came here to talk to Gordie, not you.”
“Cahill ain't here.”
“I see that.”
“That's because he's dead,” he said.
“Gordie?”
He nodded.
I sat heavily in one of the chairs at the conference table. “What happened?”
Horowitz blew out a breath and slumped in the chair across from me. “You said something about muffins. Got coffee, too?”
“Of course.”
“Go get 'em.”
“You want a muffin,” I said, “you've got to tell me what happened to Gordie.”
Horowitz narrowed his eyes, pretended to ponder the pros and cons of that proposition, then nodded. “I can tell you some things, I guess. That coffee better still be hot or the deal's off.”
I fetched the paper bag from the other room, plunked it down on the conference table, and sat across from Horowitz.
He ripped the bag open, popped the top off one of the coffees, and took a sip.
“Hot enough?” I said.
He shrugged, picked up a muffin, and took a bite. “Car crash,” he mumbled around his mouthful of muffin. “Around midnight last night.”
“Where?” I said. “How? What the hell happened?”
He took another sip of coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “He was heading east on Route 119
between Ashby and Townsend. You know the Willard Brook State Forest?”
“I've driven through there, sure. It's a little ways past the Squannacook River, where I sometimes go trout fishing.”
“Twisty road, all them big pine trees? No houses or gas stations or anything for maybe ten miles?”
I nodded.
“Cahill plowed into one of the trees.”
“And he died?”
“Yep. He was going way too fast, and his front tire blew out.” Horowitz made an exploding gesture with his hands. “There was a fire.”
“Damn.” I shook my head. “I can't believe it.”
“Believe it,” Horowitz said. “Your turn, Coyne.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I know about unattended deaths and all that, but why are you here?”
“Looking for clues. Why else?”
“You're investigating an automobile accident?”
“Who said anything about an accident?”
I looked at him. “You think he was murdered?”
He rubbed his bristly chin. “Officially, it looks like an accident, all right. No evidence to the contrary at this point. We got forensics and the accident-scene crew checking it out. How well did you know Cahill?”
I shrugged. “He's done some work for me over the years. He's very good. The best, actually. Thorough, absolutely discreet. Honest. Expensive. I knew him professionally more than personally, I guess you'd say. I liked him a lot.”
“You know he used to be a state cop?”
I nodded. “Friend of yours, then?”
“I got to know him when he was undercover in Lawrence
and Haverhill. The man had balls, I'll give him that. Annoying habit of making up puns. You'd never know it to look at him, but he was absolutely fearless. He was undercover almost three years. Not a minute of it he wasn't at risk. But he got the goods on 'em. When he testified, of course, that was the end of undercover for Cahill. They put him behind a desk. He hated that. Finished out his twenty years, retired, and started doing this.” Horowitz waved his hand around the office.
“So you're investigating this—this car crash—because he used to be a state cop?” I said.
He shook his head. “I told you too much already.” He arched his eyebrows at me. “Quid pro quo, Coyne.”
I shook my head.
“I'd really like to know what in hell Cahill was doing on Route 119 at midnight on a Sunday,” persisted Horowitz. “Where he was coming from, where he was going.”
“Of course you'd like to know,” I said.
“Who he'd been talking to, what he was looking for.”
“Key questions, for sure.”
Suddenly Horowitz reached across the table and grabbed my wrist. “Dammit, Coyne. Gordie's dead. Don't you get it?”
“I can't tell you what he was working on for me, Roger. You know that. Not without my client's permission.” I looked meaningfully at where his hand held my wrist.
He gave my wrist a squeeze, then let go of it. “Get it, then.”
“You really think—?”
“I don't know.” He leaned back in his chair, shook his head, and let out a long sigh. “For all I know, he had a heart
attack. But you're a cop for twenty years, you accumulate a lot of enemies. You do PI work, you collect more of 'em. I owe it to Gordie to figure out what the hell happened, that's all. Help me out, okay?”
“I'll talk to my client, see what I can do.” I stood up. “You want the rest of these muffins?”
He shook his head. “Bring 'em to Julie or give 'em to your dog or something. I prefer blueberry.”
I went to the outer office and picked up my briefcase.
Horowitz followed behind me. “I'll be calling you,” he said.
I swept my hand around Cahill's office. “You find anything useful?”
“You ask too many questions, Coyne.”
I shrugged. “I notice that you're here alone.”
“So?”
“I thought you guys always worked in pairs.”
He flapped one hand and said nothing.
“So where's your partner?” I said.
“Home having breakfast with her husband, probably.”
“You're alone on this?”
“What's it look like?”
“It looks to me,” I said, “like you're working on your own hunches on your own time. I bet your boss doesn't even know you're here.”
“None of his fucking business what I do on my own time.”
I nodded. “I'm right, then. This is not an official investigation.”
“None of
your
business, either.”
“Well,” I said, “your interest in my client suggests maybe
it is. You want my help, you've got to convince me there could be a connection. So what makes you so sure this wasn't an accident?”
He blew out a breath. “I just knew the man, that's all,” he said. “Gordon Cahill was very careful, precise, unexcitable. Plodding, almost. You don't survive undercover for three years if you're not. It would be entirely out of character for him to drive recklessly, exceed the speed limit. He'd never drink or do drugs if he was driving. He wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel. Nothing could make him panic. He just wouldn't have an accident. Not Gordie.”
“Unless?”
Horowitz shrugged. “Think about it.”
“Unless someone was chasing him? Is that what you're thinking? Somebody forced him off the road or something?”
He waved his hand. “We'll see what the crime-scene people, forensics, M.E.'s office come up with. You talk to your client. Then we'll put our heads together.”
“No promises,” I said. I opened the door and stepped out of Gordon Cahill's office.
“Hey, Coyne,” said Horowitz.
I stopped. “What?”
“There's nothing left of him but a cinder,” he said.
I looked at him.
He made an exploding motion with his hands. “It was a fireball. As bad as anything I've ever seen.”
“I'll see what I can do,” I said.
 
 
I left Horowitz pawing through the papers in the wire basket on Gordon Cahill's desk. I knew he wouldn't find anything.
Gordie was way too careful to leave anything useful on top of his desk.
It was barely a five-minute walk to my own office, and I used the time pondering the possibility that Albert Stoddard had figured out that Gordon Cahill was tailing him and had run him off the road in the Willard Brook State Forest.
That struck me as even more out of character for Albert than speeding was for Cahill. But I was a notoriously poor judge of character. I generally assumed the best in people. That, I'd learned over the years, was a surefire formula for disappointment.
Still, I rather liked that about myself. I knew a lot of lawyers, especially, who instinctively assumed everybody lied, cheated, and beat their wives. Mistrust was probably a useful trait for a lawyer, but it was a piss-poor trait for a human being … which shows how much interest I had in being a successful lawyer.

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