Seventh Enemy (24 page)

I parked behind the wagon, got out. and slammed the door. I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. I heard it jingle inside. I waited, then rang it again. A minute or two later a fat old golden retriever came sauntering around from the back of the house. He sat at the foot of the steps and looked up at me.

I descended the steps and scooched down beside him. I scratched his ears. “Do you live here, boy?” I said to him. “Is your master out back?”

He cocked his head at me as if he understood what I was saying. I stood up, and the dog stood, too. He started around the side of the house. I followed him.

It was a typical suburban backyard, with a swing set and a small above-ground pool and a metal toolshed and a flagstone patio with a gas barbecue grill and a picnic table and some folding aluminum lawn furniture.

I squinted into the afternoon sun and saw Wilson Bailey sleeping on a chaise on the patio. He was wearing sneakers and chino pants and a white polo shirt. The dog went over and lay down beside him. I followed him.

“Mr. Bailey…?” I began. But I stopped. Because I saw the dark puddle under the chaise and I knew Wilson Bailey would not answer me.

He was lying on his back. His eyes stared up at the sky. His mouth was agape and a trail of crusted blood ran from the corner of his mouth and made a dark stain on the front of his shirt. The back of his head had been blown away. The weapon lay on his chest. It was short and ugly. Bailey’s right thumb was curled inside the trigger guard.

His left arm was folded over the gun and across his chest. He was clutching something in his left hand. I bent to look at it. It was a photograph of a plain round-faced young woman and a very pretty little girl.

I wedged two fingers up under his jawbone. His skin was the same temperature as the air. I felt no pulse.

I backed away from him and sat heavily on a lawn chair. The dog came over and laid his chin on my leg. I stroked his nose for a moment, then lit a cigarette. I stared at Wilson Bailey lying rigidly on the chaise while I smoked the Winston down to the filter. Then I stood up and went to the back door. It was unlocked. I went into Wilson Bailey’s kitchen and dialed 911.

I sat on the front steps to wait. The dog waited with me. Within a couple of minutes I heard the sirens, and then two cruisers skidded to a stop in front of the house. I waved toward the backyard, and two of the cops jogged in that direction. One stayed out front to talk to the kids on their hikes and the neighbors who began to gather there. The other cop came to the front steps where I was waiting.

“You called it in?” he said.

I nodded.

“The detectives are on their way.” He turned his back on me, folded his arms, and stood there watching the street.

A rescue wagon arrived a minute later, and then another cruiser, and then a couple of unmarked vehicles. I continued to sit on the front steps patting the dog and smoking, and the cop stood there ignoring me.

The uniformed cops kept the curious neighbors in the street and off the front lawn. They draped yellow crime scene ribbon all the way around the yard. Official people kept moving back and forth from the back of the house to their vehicles parked in front. Distorted voices crackled from police radios. After a while a graying man in a green plaid sport coat came along and said something to the uniformed cop who was guarding me. The cop sauntered away and the guy in the sport coat sat beside me on the steps. “You’re the one who called it in?” he said. f nodded.

“Lieutenant Morrison, state police.” He held his hand out to me.

We shook. “Brady Coyne. I’m a lawyer.”

“Mr. Bailey’s lawyer?”

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s a long story.”

“You better tell me.”

So I did. I began with Wally Kinnick’s testimony before the state Senate subcommittee where Wilson Bailey had also testified, the SAFE enemies’ list, Wally’s getting shot, my conversation with Senator Swift, the Saturday night gunshots on the Cambridge street. All of it. Except I didn’t tell him about my Bobby Farraday dream. It was beginning to make sense to me, but I didn’t think it would to the lieutenant.

“So you came out here to warn Mr. Bailey?” said Morrison.

I shrugged. “Warn him. Or ask him why he was doing it. I wanted to talk to him. I thought I understood what he’d been living with. It seemed like a better reason than most to try to shoot people.”

“It looks like he shot himself.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“Stuck the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

I nodded again.

“How do you figure it?”

“Me?” I said.

“Yes.”

I shrugged. “I guess he felt he just had to do something.”

“So he was number ten on that list, huh?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “It was his turn.”

Morrison nodded.

After a minute,” I said, “That gun…”

“It’s a Valmet,” said the lieutenant. “Pretty common assault weapon. Made in Finland. Semiautomatic. Modeled after an automatic military weapon they make. Fifteen-round magazine.”

“What’s the caliber?”

“It’s 5.56 millimeter.

“That’s .223,” I said.

He looked at me and shrugged.

“You should talk to Lieutenant Horowitz in Boston,” I said.

“Horowitz has been on this case?”

“Sort of.”

Morrison was silent for a moment. Then he said, “We got a little problem here, Mr. Coyne.”

I looked at him.

“No note,” he said.

I remembered that Bailey had spoken without notes at the subcommittee hearing. When asked to hand in his written statement, he had instead given the committee members a photograph of his wife and daughter. “That photograph he had in his hand,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I think that was his suicide note, Lieutenant. I think he believed that photograph says it all.”

He smiled quickly “Yeah, I guess maybe it does at that, doesn’t it?”

L
IEUTENANT MORRISON SAT WITH
me for a while longer. We didn’t talk anymore. I figured he was just keeping track of me. Or maybe I was some kind of suspect. I didn’t really care.

A rescue wagon drove across the lawn and around the side of the house. A few minutes later it returned and disappeared down Aldrich Street. It didn’t bother to sound its siren.

Gradually the onlookers in the street went back to mowing their lawns and playing basketball in their driveways and pedaling their bikes and weeding their gardens.

I rode with Lieutenant Morrison in the backseat of a state police cruiser to headquarters in Springfield. Another cop followed behind us in my car. I gave my deposition to a tape recorder, telling my story and answering the lieutenant’s questions.

It was after dark when I got home. There was one message on my answering machine. Alex’s voice said, “I’m glad you had a chance to go fishing. Nice day for it. Call me when you get in, if it’s not too late, huh?”

I went out and sat on my balcony and decided I didn’t want to talk to anybody.

When I got to the office Monday morning, I said to Julie, “Hold my calls, kid. And cancel anything on the calendar. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

She opened her mouth, gave me a quick hard look, then closed it. She nodded. “Okay, boss.”

I fiddled around with paperwork all day There was plenty of it. But my mind kept wandering, and I frequently found myself swiveled around in my chair with my back to my desk, staring out the window at the concrete and glass of Copley Square.

My console didn’t buzz and my phone didn’t ring all day.

At five o’clock Julie tapped on my door, then opened it. Without speaking, she came to my desk and laid a sheet of paper onto it. “Your calls,” she said. “You’ll notice that Alexandria Shaw called several times. You should call her back.”

“I thought you didn’t like her.”

“I do like her. And I wish you’d call her. Maybe you’ll tell her what you’re not telling me.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call her, then.”

“Good.” She turned and went to the door.

“Good night,” I said to her.

She stopped and frowned at me. “Good night, Brady.”

“Ill tell you about it when I’m ready.”

She nodded. “I know you will.”

I stared at the phone for the length of time it took me to smoke a cigarette. Then I tried Alex at home. Her machine answered again. I hung up without leaving a message, then called her number at the
Globe.
She answered with a brusque, “Alex Shaw.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Oh, geez. How are you?”

“I’m okay.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “No, you’re not. I can hear it in your voice.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not. I want to talk to you about it. But not now.”

“Want me to come over tonight?”

“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t he very good company. Give me a couple days, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “Whatever you say.”

“Are you upset?”

“Should I be?”

“No. I do want to see you. I’ve just got to sort out some things.”

“Call me when you’re ready, then, all right?”

“I will,” I said.

I fooled around with paperwork the next day, too. No calls, no visitors. When Julie gave me my messages that afternoon, I saw that one was from Wally. “Getting discharged tomorrow,” it said.

So I walked from the office over to Mass General. Wally was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt and sitting in a chair. Diana was sprawled on the bed. When she saw me she scrambled up and hugged me. “Are you okay?” she said.

“Sure, I guess so. Why not?”

“I called several times. Your secretary wouldn’t put me through. After what happened Saturday night, and then you found that poor man…”

“Your friend Horowitz was in,” said Wally. “He told me all about it.”

“I bet he had some questions for you, too.”

Wally smiled. “Why, sure. But he did smuggle in a quart of Wild Turkey.”

“I suppose it’s all gone by now,” I said.

“Not quite. We probably ought to find a way to get rid of it. It’d be risky to try to smuggle it out again.”

So Diana slipped out of the room and came back a couple of minutes later with three water glasses and a pitcher of ice. We closed the door and Wally retrieved the bottle from his duffel bag and we toasted each other’s good health.

He and Diana were headed straight to the cabin in Fenwick the next day. They planned to unplug the telephone so they could fish and read and eat and sit in the sun and make love without interruption, and from the way they kept looking at each other, it wasn’t hard to deduce which activity held the highest position on their order of priorities.

They planned to stay for at least two weeks. They hoped I’d join them.

I shrugged. I was behind on my office work. Maybe I could get away for a weekend.

They didn’t press me, but they made it clear they were sincere.

We toasted the trout of the Deerfield River.

Wally said that Gene McNiff had called. The assault-gun bill, which had passed Senator Swift’s subcommittee by a single vote, had been buried in committee and was officially dead for the current legislative term. McNiff told Wally that as far as he was concerned, there were no hard feelings.

We toasted Gene McNiff.

Horowitz had said that the state police lab confirmed that Wilson Bailey’s Valmet was the same gun that had shot Wally and missed Senator Swift. So we toasted Horowitz.

Wally’s doctors had given him a clean bill of health, and we toasted that, too.

When I left the hospital a couple of hours later, I felt peppier than I had for a while.

But by the time I walked into my empty apartment, the effects of the Wild Turkey toasts and Diana’s and Wally’s happiness had worn off.

I sat on my balcony and stared down at the dark harbor and thought about Wilson Bailey and Bobby Farraday. Then I went to bed.

I got to the office before Julie on Wednesday. When she arrived, I brought her a mug of coffee. “No calls,” I said.

“Brady, you can’t—”

“Just one more day. Okay?”

She shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon she knocked and then came into my office. “Listen,” she said.

“Julie, please.”

“Alexandria Shaw is here to see you.”

“Tell her I’ll call her later.”

“I think you should see her now.”

I looked up at her. “Why?”

“She’s very upset.”

“Shit,” I mumbled.

Julie smiled. “Brady, as adorable as you are, I’ve got the distinct impression that Miz Shaw is not feeling lovelorn.”

“What did she say?

“She needs to talk to you. She says it’s a professional matter.”

I sighed. “Fine. Okay. Send her in.”

Alex was wearing her big round glasses. Behind them, her eyes were red and swollen. I stood up and went to her. She allowed me to hug her. But she did not return my hug. She rested her forehead against my chest for a moment, then stepped back. “I’ve got something I want you to hear,” she said.

“Okay. Say it.”

She shook her head. “Not me. It’s a tape. Can we sit?”

I gestured to the sofa. She sat down, and I sat beside her. She fumbled in her briefcase and came up with her little tape recorder and a cassette. “It came in the mail this morning,” she said. “I’ve listened to it once.” She inserted the cassette, then switched on the machine.

“Miz Shaw,” came the recorded voice, which I recognized as the same voice that had left a message on my answering machine, “by the time you get this I will be dead. So you might consider this my suicide note. I have much to say, and I think it will be easier just to talk this way than to try to write it all down. I suppose you’ll have to turn this over to the police, and that’s okay. But I hope you can use what I’ve got to tell you. I’ve tried every other way I know to get this story in front of the public where it belongs, and so far I’ve failed.”

His voice was soft. But it was firm and conveyed strength and conviction. “Oh, this is Wilson Bailey, and it’s Saturday evening. I’ve just returned from Cambridge where I shot my Valmet in the general direction of Mr. Brady Coyne. A few nights ago I did the same thing to Senator Marlon Swift down in Marshfield. I know this isn’t coming out very logically. I hope you’ll bear with me.”