Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (3 page)

“'Preciate it.”

“Three vics in there. First two look to've been standing in the front hall when the shooter walked in. He could've threatened them, or he could've walked right past. Instead, he blew their innards all over the ugly striped wallpaper.” He looked at his notebook. “Only vic upstairs turns out to be Weller, Brian C. Mass license, Winchendon address.”

I said, “So?”

Long pause. Lima looked at Gus.

“He was my best friend in the house,” Gus said, his face the color of peed-on newspaper. “My
only
friend in the house. We got here the same day. People said we looked and acted like brothers.”

“Still,” I said, “why the mix-up?”

“Weller was killed in Gus's room,” Lima said, “and the housefather gave us a bad ID. Easy mistake. Shotgun, close range. Face was pretty much gone.”

 

CHAPTER THREE

Gus was quiet. That was different.

No way was I letting him stay at Almost Home tonight. Or ever again.

Once the bodies were gone, Lima had let him go in and pack his gear. Gus had come out with a duffel and a white face. I wondered how much blood was in there.

We drove.

“Can't take you to my place,” I said. “My girlfriend's place, I mean.”

“Charlene.”

“You knew?”

“Barnburner royalty,” he said. “Everybody knows.”

I let the
royalty
crack slide. “I'd bring you there, but … it's a crowded house right now. Or feels like one. Long story.”

I worked a few blocks north and west, parked in front of a four-square colonial. Even on a rainy night, you could see the house was the best one on the street. Fresher paint, a fence that didn't sag, curtains in all the windows. No surprise there: Trey Phigg and his wife, Kieu, loved the place and told me so every chance they got.

Bonus: from the blacked-out third-floor windows, it looked like they were between renters for the in-law apartment.

I had Gus follow me up the flagstone walk.

Five minutes later, he was switching on lights in the apartment. “Not bad at all,” he said. “But I have to ask … is this a damn safe house or something? Are you Barnburners
that
serious?”

I shook my head. “I once owned this place, and I'm friends with the folks who bought it. Just dumb luck that it's empty.”

We were quiet maybe thirty seconds.

I turned and fussed with a blind that didn't need fussing with. “Ask you something?”

“Okay.”

“You always cry during the Lord's Prayer.”

Gus said nothing.

“At meetings.”

“I knew what you meant. When does the question arrive?”

“Why?” Brushing dust from the blind as I said it.

“It … it makes me think of my mom,” Gus said.

“Gotcha.”

“Hang on. There's more. You asked. Now receive.”

I turned, leaned on the wall, folded my arms.

“As far as I know, my dad's never spent two seconds thinking about God one way or the other,” Gus said. “My mother was raised as what she called a Guitar Catholic in some hippie-dippie church. She fell away from the whole deal. I was never baptized or any of that gobbledygook.”

“Only child?”

He nodded. Looked at nothing, recalling something. Then made the nicest smile I'd yet seen on his face. “When I was nine, Mom got a wild hair across her ass for structure and tradition. I think … piecing it together, I think she and my dad were having problems, serious marriage problems, for the first time. She was taking stock. She was reconsidering.”

I said I could picture that.

“One night as she served dinner,” he said, “Mom folded her hands and suggested we say grace. She tried to make it casual, but it came out of
nowhere,
man. She wouldn't have surprised us more if she'd lifted a cheek and farted ‘Shave and a Haircut.'”

Gus paused. Took his time. Smiled again, looking at nothing. “If she was hoping my dad would lead the charge and murmur sweet Norman Rockwell-isms, she miscalculated. His cheeks flared bright red—he's Russian, in case you hadn't guessed—and he said, without moving his lips, ‘Fine then. Feel free to say your grace.'”

“And?”

“It quickly became clear my mom was stumped. She hadn't thought it through past the initial suggestion, didn't know what to say. She steepled her hands and closed her eyes.”

I said nothing.

Gus licked his lips. When he spoke again, his voice was husky, just north of a whisper. “I guess all she could think of, grace-wise, was the Lord's Prayer. So she said it. That was the first time I heard the whole thing, stem to stern. We said it every night at dinner, me and Mom, for the next … five years? Six?”

“And your father?”

“Never joined in.” Long pause. “Never once, until they split up my freshman year in high school.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Huh,” Gus said. And slapped his thighs. “I should unpack. That might take damn near a minute.”

I stepped to the door. Grabbed its knob. Stood still.

“Thank you,” I said. “For telling me.”

“De nada,”
Gus hollered from the bedroom.

I left and headed west to Shrewsbury. To Charlene's place.

*   *   *

During the twenty-minute drive, I let my head go where it wanted to. Thought about Gus's story, which led me to think about the danger he was in.

Possibility: some methed-up former Almost Homer with a grudge. Got high, lucked into a shotgun, waded into the place not knowing who or what he was going to kill. Call that the most likely scenario. It was a big part of the reason I'd never liked halfway houses.

Possibility: the kid who got blasted, Brian Weller, was the kid who was
supposed
to get blasted. It'd happened in Gus's room, but so what? They'd been thick as thieves, had shared iPods and sweatshirts and God knew what else. If former-Almost-Homer-with-a-grudge had come looking for Weller, Gus's room would be the second place he looked.

But those possibilities left out Gus.

And my job was to look after Gus.

So seize the initiative, as my buddy Randall Swale always said. Jump to the assumption that could lead to an action plan. Call it possibility three: The killer had come looking for Gus. Maybe he'd been told to hit a certain bedroom. Maybe he'd seen just enough of Weller to confuse him with Gus.

The thought chain had lodged something in my head.

Randall.

My parole officer's son. We met a while back. He helps me out here and there. Former army, knows what he's doing.

Randall was big on seizing the initiative, big on confirmed information, not so big on assumptions.

So get his help confirming some info—or not.

I called his cell. Voice mail. Sketched out what I was after: Brian Weller of Winchendon, shot down at Almost Home. Could Randall sniff around, see what kind of nonsense Weller had been up to? Had to be some—Eagle Scouts don't end up in sketchy Framingham halfway houses.

I clicked off. Drove more, thought more.

What
I
needed was to talk with Gus, figure out who might want him dead. Andrade was the obvious choice. He needed looking at, and he'd be my first stop. But … the vibe was wrong. Andrade felt like a bottom-feeder, not a killer. So it was worth asking Gus for more ideas, more jerks with grudges.

I didn't know much about Gus. The Barnburner grapevine said he was a Richie Rich from around here who'd gotten in a jam at college. He'd done the rehab thing, then started showing up at AA and NA meetings. Hard kid to read: he might be serious about staying straight, or he might be smirking his way along to satisfy the court and Daddy.

I'd find out tomorrow.

Checked my watch as I swung into the driveway. Almost midnight. Upstairs, Sophie's light was off.

Jessie's was not.

I sighed, climbed out, let myself in.

Charlene was piddling around with her laptop in the kitchen/great room where we spent all our time.

The laptop's never far away.

Charlene Bollinger made it to the Barnburners a few years after I did. Booze and meth had been her things, and they showed. Back then, she weighed maybe ninety, wore eye makeup that gave her a raccoon look, jitter-jumped at the slightest noise.

The state had taken away her daughters, the ones who were up in their rooms now. For Charlene, that was the bottom you hear people talk about, the thing that finally pushed her to AA.

Over the next few years, she worked harder than anybody else I've seen. Got clean, stayed clean, got the girls back. Found steady work transcribing in Westborough District Court, used that as a springboard to her own transcription-and-translation company.

The business is a big deal now.
Charlene's
a big deal.

“Thanks a million,” I said, setting my keys on the counter. “You stranded me up there telling my life story.”

“People love hearing your life story.” She shut her laptop, leaned back on the red sectional, scratched the head of Dale, one of my cats. “
I
love hearing your life story. That's why I stranded you.”

I flopped, sat, yawned. “How is she?”

The way Charlene stiffened was all the answer I needed.

Hell.

You'll never meet anybody works harder than me to stay out of soap operas. But here I was, smack in the middle of one.

My son Roy and Charlene's older daughter, Jessie, are the same age. A while back, when they were high school seniors, they hauled off and fell in love. Trouble was, Jessie'd just gotten out of treatment for anorexia and bulimia. Staying out of serious relationships for a year was part of her aftercare program, right there in black and white.

Like all dumb-ass parents, Charlene and I tried to talk sense into Jessie and Roy.

Like all dumb-ass kids, they told us to pound sand. The two of them moved to Boulder, Colorado, where she waited tables and he worked in a body shop.

Just a few weeks ago, without a phone call or a text message, Jessie had showed up on Charlene's doorstep. She and Roy had broken up. Jessie wouldn't tell Charlene an awful lot, and Charlene in turn didn't tell me everything she heard, but it was easy to see the breakup hadn't been pretty. Neither of the kids could afford an apartment on their own, so Jessie left Colorado and landed at Charlene's place. Roy went back to his mother, my ex. She lives in Lee, Massachusetts, about as far as you can get from me and still be in the state.

I hate to say it, but Jessie didn't add a whole hell of a lot to the Shrewsbury house, where her mother and her sister and I had been doing pretty well. She was as silent and rage-filled as ever. More so, really, because I'd moved in while she was gone. She slept most of the day. Went out every night, never said where or who with. Charlene didn't know what the hell to do. Me neither.

Worst of all, Jessie was skinny. So damn skinny it'd break your heart. Wore a baggy sweatshirt to mask it, but the way she cinched her belt to keep her jeans up was enough to make you cry.

And you know who got the short end, as usual? Sophie, Charlene's thirteen-year-old. She'd been happy as hell when I moved in—I love the kid like nobody's business—had thrived, had let loose her smarts, stunning Charlene and me at the dinner table with these concussive blasts of intelligence.

But Sophie's family role was peacemaker, mood reflector. Since Jessie came home, all that intelligence had gone dark.

What could you do? Family is family.

Charlene had to be thinking along the same lines as me, because she said, “How's Roy?”

I shrugged. “You know as much as I know. Still out in the Berkshires with his mother. I've been trying to get him here to ride the dirt bikes. Been leaving messages.”

We were quiet awhile.

Charlene scratched my shoulder. “What happened after the meeting? I got a half-dozen calls from Barnburners. People said the cops were checking up on you and that boy you brought.”

I told her the whole thing. It took a while. Halfway through the story she rose, tugged my hand, and led me upstairs to her bedroom. I liked that. Then she stroked my hair while I spoke. I liked that too.

When I was done, Charlene, pillow-propped on the bed now, was quiet a few seconds. “Before noon today,” she finally said, “three different Barnburners called to tell me about this Andrade beating. Like all gossips, they had parts of the story wrong. But they had the gist of it right.”

“How the hell did word get out?”

She shrugged. “The point is, a lot of people are unhappy about it. There's grumbling about the things you do, Conway. The favors. The muscle stuff.”

“Do they think I do it for
fun
? People come to us screwed up in ugly ways. I get them out of jams. And only when I'm asked to.”

“I realize that, and I realize that some of the bitchers and moaners are the ones who were once in the ugliest jams.” Charlene let a finger play through my hair. “That's half the problem, Conway. People who need help from a man with your talents don't like to be reminded of the fact years later.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. Now I know the holier-than-thous are eyeballing me.”

Charlene put her head on my shoulder. “Are you worried for Gus?”

“I don't know. I think so. Yes. I
have
to be worried for him.”

“What's he like?”

“Cokehead. Rehab kid. College kid. Big bullshitter. Probably doing AA because Daddy made him. I had to guess, I'd say he'll quit the coke and drink like a fish for the next twenty years. Then he'll come back to AA for real.”

“Harsh.”

“Honest.”

“But you care about him a lot.”

I waved a hand. “I'm just helping out a Barnburner.”

“Nonsense.” She smiled.