Seventh Enemy (25 page)

He cleared his throat. “See, Miz Shaw, you wrote the story about the massacre in the Harlow public library two years ago. Maybe you don’t even remember it. I know that every day you have a different story to write, and I imagine that yesterday’s news is something newspaper people quickly forget. But in your story you mentioned the fact that two bystanders were wounded by a man with an assault weapon. The man killed his wife, the librarian. That was your story. But my wife Loretta and my daughter Elaine were those two anonymous bystanders who were rushed to the hospital. Elaine died that night. They tried to operate on Loretta, but she didn’t make it. Neither did the baby she was carrying.

“I kept looking at the
Globe,
waiting for your story about Loretta and Elaine. I thought that was a much more important story than the one about that man killing his wife. I still do. I mean, the story is very obvious. That horrible weapon was the criminal, not that crazy man who shot it. He intended to kill his wife, okay. That was his crime. But it was the gun, that AK-47, not the man, that killed my family. Don’t you see? So I waited for that story, and it never came. The true criminal, that gun, that AK-47, was never accused or indicted or convicted of the crime. Loretta and Elaine—they just—they just died, Miz Shaw. Like it was an accident or a disease or something. Just one of those things that happens all the time.”

There came the low hum of recorded silence from the tape. Alex reached quickly for the machine and turned it off. I looked at her. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “He’s right,” she said. “I never followed up that story. I intended to, but I didn’t. Other stories came along, newer news. I didn’t think of them as people. They were—they were just stories.”

“Do you think it would have made a difference?” I said.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Yes. Yes, I guess I do.”

I put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder for a moment. Then she cleared her throat, sat forward, and clicked the tape recorder on.

The hum of silence continued for a few seconds. Then Bailey’s voice said, “Excuse me, Miz Shaw. I’m trying to think clearly here. I want you to understand.”

There was more silence. Then, “Since that afternoon two years ago I have devoted the poor miserable remnants of my life to one thing. Getting rid of those evil weapons. I have written letters to newspapers and magazines. Very few of them have been printed. And when they are, they are edited so that they don’t say what I intended. I have harassed legislators with letters and phone calls. Mostly they avoid me. I have tried to testify both in Washington and on Beacon Hill. A couple of times I have been heard. But my testimony—my story, the story of Loretta and Elaine—has been ignored. Ignored by the politicians, Miz Shaw, and ignored by the press. At first I didn’t understand. It’s all so obvious to me. But then I began to see. It’s all about money and votes, and I don’t have either. Groups like the Second Amendment For Ever, they have the money and the votes. They get heard. They get their stories in the newspapers. Like today’s
Globe,
Miz Shaw. A nice story about SAFE, and I suppose you couldn’t very well accuse them of shooting at Mr. Kinnick or Senator Swift, although, of course, they
are
responsible for it. But what about Loretta and Elaine? Where’s their story?

“When I testified two weeks ago, what were the stories? They were all about the courageous Walt Kinnick, risking his career as a friend of guns to speak in favor of a very modest gun-control bill. You heard him. What does he know? To Kinnick and to the politicians and to all the others, it’s a political issue, an abstraction. They say what they think will serve them, and then they’re done with it. When I heard Kinnick, my first thought was: Aha. An ally. But then I realized. He’s just another politician. Shallow, uncommitted, cynical, opportunistic. He’ll say whatever serves him, reap the publicity rewards, and then go fishing. It’s not an issue for men like him, not a cause. It’s just an opportunity to advance himself. Men like Kinnick, they’re as bad as the politicians. No. They’re worse. We expect cynicism from politicians. We expect more from the Walt Kinnicks of the world. I was naive. Men like Kinnick don’t care whether the legislation passes. They only care about what they can get out of it. They test the wind, they take their public opinion polls, and then they decide what they believe. We expect that of politicians. You’d hope for more from someone like Walt Kinnick. So he comes out for the bill. Big deal. The bill meant nothing to him. Just a chance to get his name in the paper. What about Loretta and Elaine, Miz Shaw? Were you there to hear me, or were you one of those who rushed out to interview Walt Kinnick and marvel at his courage? I tried. I did my best. I thought my story would—would make a difference.”

Bailey’s long sigh hissed in the tape recorder. There was silence for a moment. Then, “It took me a while to figure it out, Miz Shaw. The enemy was not the press, not the government. It was the money and votes of SAFE. It was SAFE that was telling you what to write, telling the politicians how to vote. And after my testimony that day, when I stood out there on the State House steps, I heard Mr. McNiff threaten Mr. Kinnick. And then I knew what I had to do, I knew that SAFE and all their cynical self-serving arguments had to be discredited. It was obvious, once I saw it. And then I read your stories about how they distributed lists of their enemies. What did they expect men with guns to do about their enemies? If you, Miz Shaw, if the press and the politicians believed that SAFE was murdering their enemies—if they were using those evil guns to do it—then you and the politicians and everybody else could no longer ignore them. The entire anti-gun-control argument would be exposed for what it is—a license for killing innocent people.

“I thought about it for a long time, Miz Shaw. I realized that Elaine’s and Loretta’s deaths were just the beginning. More deaths were needed. And a few days later the names of those victims were given to me on the SAFE list of enemies. Mr. Walt Kinnick was to be first.”

Bailey actually chuckled. “Miz Shaw, you would be amazed at something. You understand, I owned no firearms. But several years ago I tried to purchase some Mace for Loretta, because I was concerned for her safety in this awful violent world of ours. And I was told that I couldn’t make this purchase without a Firearms Identification Number. An FID, they call it. So I went to the Harlow police station, and in due course I got a card for me and one for Loretta, because she had to have her own if she wanted to carry Mace legally. Loretta and I, we always obeyed the law. So anyway, after I saw the SAFE newsletter, I took my FID card to a gun shop near here and I picked out this weapon. It’s very evil-looking. The man told me it was called a Valmet, and he assured me it was an assault gun. He showed me how to use it and he sold me ammunition and I bought that gun. Miz Shaw, I just bought it. It was no different from buying a book or a quart of milk. I walked into the shop with my FID card and my Visa card and I walked out with that wicked gun and a box of ammunition.” He paused. “I see I’m close to the end here. I’m going to turn over the tape.”

Alex reached forward, ejected the tape, turned it over, and reinserted it into the machine.

“Wait a minute,” I said to her.

She hesitated, then sat back on the sofa.

“Come here,” I said, “Please.”

She turned to me. I held her against me with my face in her hair.

Her arms dangled at her sides, and after a minute she pulled back and poked at her glasses. “Let’s listen to the rest of it,” she said.

She hit the play button. “Okay,” said Bailey’s voice. “I bought that Valmet. Probably just the way that David Burton bought the AK-47 that killed Loretta and Elaine. And I drove to Fenwick and found where Walt Kinnick lived, and while they were off fishing I called and left a message for him, pretending I was someone from SAFE. I walked up there that night, and in the morning I waited in the woods outside his cabin until he came out. I wanted to kill him. He was a cynic and an opportunist, and I guess, after two years of getting nowhere with men like him, I hated him. I thought I had to kill him. He was the number-one enemy. If he was assassinated with an assault gun, they couldn’t very well ignore the evil influence of SAFE any longer. The influence that made it so easy for me to walk into that shop and buy that gun. Isn’t that ironic? Miz Shaw, the hardest thing I’ve ever done was to aim that gun at Mr. Kinnick. And I pulled the trigger, and he fell, and I thought, Oh, my God, what have I done? And I kept pulling the trigger, but I wasn’t aiming, because, you see, I was crying. Crying for Mr. Kinnick, who I thought I had killed, and crying for Loretta and Elaine and all the other victims of these evil weapons.

“But,” he continued after a pause, “my mistake was that I didn’t kill him. You wrote one piece in the paper. But you failed to implicate SAFE, Miz Shaw, and you said nothing about the weapon that shot him. So I went after Senator Swift. But I didn’t have any hate left in me. I couldn’t shoot him. I couldn’t make myself point that gun at him. I thought maybe if I shot into the air it would be enough. But nothing. Not a word in the newspaper. The next people on that list were out of state. So it was to be the lawyer, that Mr. Coyne, who I would kill. Hate had nothing to do with it. I had to kill somebody, I realized that. Otherwise there was no news. But I couldn’t do it, Miz Shaw. I couldn’t make myself aim at him.”

I reached for Alex’s hand and gripped it hard. She gave my hand a quick squeeze. I glanced at her. Behind her glasses she was crying.

Wilson Bailey laughed quietly. “See, Miz Shaw? There has to be a killing. Who’s left? Now you know. It’s not SAFE that’s shooting at people on their list. But if you think about it. it’s still their fault. I have this weapon right here, and I walked into a store and bought it because no one has had the courage to stand up to SAFE and tell them it’s wrong. Please, Miz Shaw. I
could
have killed Walt Kinnick and Senator Swift and Brady Coyne. You see that, don’t you? And I
can
kill myself.”

The tape hissed quietly for a long moment. Then Bailey said, “I was there, Miz Shaw. I was in the library. I saw it all. I saw that man walk in. I saw the gun. I saw him raise it to his hip. Loretta and Elaine were there. I saw that gun jump in his hands when he fired. I saw Elaine, little sweet Elaine, lifted off her feel when those bullets hit her. I saw Loretta start to reach toward her before the bullets slammed her backward. I still see these things. Every minute of my life since that day I see these pictures, over and over again in my head. Miz Shaw, I have thought about this for a long time. There’s still one question I cannot answer. It’s this: Why in God’s name wasn’t I standing at the desk with Elaine and Loretta? Why did I have to keep living?”

The tape hissed. Alex reached toward the machine and switched it off.

We sat there, staring at it, not speaking.

“What are you going to do?” I said finally.

She shrugged. “I’ve got to give it to my editor. I wanted you to hear it first.”

“I was the one who found his body,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “We got the police report. You figured it out, huh?”

“Not really. Certainly not all that.” I gestured at her tape recorder. “I tried to call Bailey. To warn him. He didn’t answer. It was his wife’s voice on his answering machine. It said, ‘We’re not here.’ That ‘we,’ it got to me, I guess, because there was no ‘we.’ The woman who had made that recording
was
dead, and he had never changed it. It was just him, all alone, living in the same house with his ghosts. That got me imagining what it must be like to be him, to live with what he’d had to live with. And I got this—it was just a vague indistinct feeling. A discomfort. After I got shot at Saturday night, I was frightened, of course. That night I had a dream, and he was in it, although I didn’t recognize him. See, my subconscious was playing with it, making connections that my conscious mind refused to recognize. I tried to reach him again Sunday morning. Still no answer. So I went out there to meet him, and I wasn’t sure why. I wanted to know him. I thought it was to warn him. But I think on another level I knew he was the one doing the shooting. Except it was all out there on the fuzzy fringes of my consciousness where I couldn’t quite focus.”

“So you followed your intuition.”

I shrugged. “Something like that, I guess.”

“It must have been awful for you.”

“Yes, it was. I’m sorry I put you off. It wasn’t fair of me.”

“I understand.”

“I couldn’t talk to anybody. It’s how I am sometimes.”

She touched my arm. “It’s all right, Brady.”

“I think a hug would’ve helped more than anything.”

She poked at her glasses. “All you had to do was ask.”

“Can I have one now?”

She smiled softly. “Sure,” she said.

I stood up. She took off her glasses and put them on the table beside the tape recorder. Then she pressed herself against me and wrapped her arms around my waist and laid her cheek against my chest. I held her tight with my face buried in her hair. After a minute she tried to lean back to look at me, or maybe to kiss me, but I held her against me. I didn’t want her to see that my eyes were a little watery.

“Um, Miz Shaw?” I said, when I felt I could trust my voice.

“Mm?”

“How would you like to spend a weekend in a cozy cabin in the woods with me and two of my very best friends? We’ll keep the phone unplugged, and we can do a little fishing and reading and silting in the sun and…”

“And what?” she mumbled into my chest.

“And… and be together.”

Her arms tightened around me. “I’d like that very much, Mr. Coyne, sir,” she whispered.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Brady Coyne Mysteries