Hell Bent Page 11

  She returned my squeeze. “I used to think Gussie’s lap was the most comfortable place in the whole world. I never felt safer than when I was sitting on my big brother’s lap with his strong arms around me, looking up at the sky and feeling the rumble in his chest when he told me about the stars.”

  Alex let go of my hand and took a sip from her beer bottle. Then she pushed herself up from her chair. She stood there looking down at me with a question on her face.

  I held up my arms.

  She smiled and snuggled sideways on my lap with her cheek against my chest.

  I wrapped my arms around her and held her that way while she cried.

  Sometime later, we went inside. We made up the daybed in my first-floor office, and I put out some clean towels in the downstairs bathroom for her. I found a new toothbrush she could use and gave her one of my T-shirts to wear to bed.

  “Will you be okay?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Probably not.”

  “I’ll be right upstairs.”

  She arched her eyebrows at me.

  “If you can’t sleep,” I said. “If you want to talk. That’s all I meant.”

  She smiled. “I’ll be all right.” She put her hands on my shoulders, tiptoed up, and kissed my cheek. “Thank you, Brady. I don’t know how I could’ve gotten through this horrible night without you.”

  “I’ll be here for you tomorrow, too.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s what I used to love about you.”

  Henry followed me upstairs to my bedroom. Mine and Evie’s.

  Well, now it was just mine.

  I lay awake for a long time.

  TEN

  It was nearly eight thirty when I woke up the next morning, about two hours later than usual, even on a Saturday. The low-angled autumn sun was streaming through my window, and it took me a minute to identify the reason for the knot of tension in my stomach.

  It came to me all at once—the horror of finding Gus Shaw’s body, Gus’s constellations, Alex’s grief, the image of her in my T-shirt sleeping downstairs in my office, all mixed up with Evie and the hole she’d left in my life.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and went downstairs. I found Alex sitting at the kitchen table. Henry was sprawled on the floor beside her.

  When he saw me, Henry pushed himself to his feet and came over for a good-morning ear rub, which I gave him.

  “I made the coffee,” said Alex. She was wearing the T-shirt I’d given her and a pair of my old sweatpants that she must have found in my downstairs closet.

  “Did Henry wake you up?” I said.

  She smiled. “I was awake when he came into the room. He sat there and looked at me, and it was absolutely obvious that he wanted me to let him out. So I did.”

  I poured myself a mug of coffee and sat across from her. “Did you sleep at all?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Not much.”

  “That bed’s not very comfortable.”

  “The bed was fine,” she said. “It wasn’t the bed. How about you?”

  “I didn’t sleep so hot, either.” I took a sip of coffee. “So what’s your program today?”

  “Fetch my car,” she said, “stop at my hotel for a shower and a change of clothes, then go see Claudia.”

  “I’ll go with you, if you like.”

  “You don’t need to do that, Brady. You must have better things to do.”

  “Nothing more important. I’m offering. Moral support. Whatever. But I understand if it’s something you want to do by yourself.”

  She smiled quickly. “It would be nice. I can use plenty of support. And I’d like you to meet Claudia and the girls. Thank you.” She gazed out the back window into the garden, where the finches and chickadees were swarming the feeders, and without looking at me, she said, “He didn’t do it, you know.”

  “Gus?” I said.

  She turned and looked at me. “I lay awake all night thinking about it, trying to be analytical and objective. I guess I knew Gus Shaw better than anybody. Better than Claudia, even.”

  “In my experience,” I said, “what seems analytical and objective in the middle of the night has a way of seeming far-fetched in the light of day.”

  “Well,” she said, “here it is, and the sun’s shining, and I still don’t think he killed himself. Gussie just wouldn’t do something like that.”

  “Honey,” I said softly, “he wasn’t the same man who told you about the constellations while you snuggled in his lap.”

  “You don’t think I know that?” She shook her head. “Look, I know a lot of things have gone terribly wrong for him lately. In a lot of ways I barely recognized my brother. But Gussie wasn’t a suicidal person. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I’m not sure what a suicidal person is,” I said, “unless you mean somebody who actually commits suicide.”

  “I think some people just have it in them to kill themselves,” she said, “and some don’t. Like they’re born with it. How else do you explain why somebody whose life isn’t any worse than somebody else’s does it and the other person doesn’t? I think it’s like a gene. The suicide gene. You’re either born with it or you’re not.”

  “You’re saying Gus didn’t have it,” I said.

  “That’s right. He didn’t. You don’t have it, and I don’t, either. We’d never kill ourselves, no matter how unbearable things seemed to be.”

  “We’re too cowardly,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “Just the opposite. We’re too brave. Gussie was brave that way, too.”

  “So,” I said, “if Gus didn’t kill himself, it means …”

  “I know. It means somebody else did.”

  “You think somebody murdered him?”

  She shrugged. “There’s no other explanation, is there?”

  “Like who?” I said. “Why?”

  She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “We can talk to Detective Boyle, but …”

  She shook her head. “He probably won’t put much stock in my theory about the suicide gene. He’ll just look at the evidence.”

  “You’ve got to admit,” I said, “the evidence is quite compelling.”

  “When I was talking to that policeman last night,” Alex said, “I hadn’t thought this all the way through. I was … I don’t know … stunned. I didn’t mention any of this. I wasn’t really thinking about the Gussie I knew. I couldn’t get the image of him out of my head. His—all that blood, the gun on the floor.” She shook her head. “So I’m sure he went away with the impression that I accepted it. That I believed Gus did it, I mean. But I don’t. I don’t believe it.”

  “Do you mean you don’t want to believe it?” I said.

  “Wishful thinking? Is that what you’re saying?”

  I shrugged.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You tell me,” she said. “What do you think?”

  “I hardly knew Gus,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “but you’re good at that. You can size people up. You get people right off. Your first impressions are almost always on target. So what was your take on my brother?”

  I shrugged. “He had a lot of good reasons to kill himself.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “You saw him,” I said. “There was nothing to suggest anything except suicide.”

  “You’re still avoiding my point,” said Alex. “I wasn’t talking about evidence. I was talking about him. Gus. The person.”

  “Well,” I said, “just from being with him, if I didn’t know any of the facts of his life, and if I hadn’t seen him last night, I guess I’d say that he was a fighter and a survivor. Some of the things he told me, it seemed as if he was planning on living. He was thinking about the future.”

  “He was a fighter,” Alex said. “Exactly. So let’s think about the null hypothesis. Let’s start with the assumption that he didn’t kill himself.”

  “If he didn’t,” I said, “then somebody else did.
”

  “That’s right.”

  “Meaning he was murdered.”

  “Yes.”

  “We can’t ignore the evidence,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying. Let’s take the so-called evidence and see how it can be explained if we assume somebody murdered my brother.”

  “Start with his e-mail to Claudia yesterday, then,” I said.

  Alex shrugged. “Easy. Somebody else sent it.”

  “From Gus’s computer?”

  “Sure,” she said. “That’s possible. Whoever killed him. A note, to make it look like suicide. What else?”

  “All of it,” I said. “Means, motive, opportunity. The who, what, where, when, why, and how of it. I mean, just for starters, who’d want to kill him? And why? What could anybody gain by killing Gus Shaw? Where’s the motive?”

  Alex shrugged. “That’s exactly the question, isn’t it?”

  “No, listen,” I said. “The cops always say, the commonest things most commonly happen. It’s like the golden rule of investigating. Occam’s razor. The principle of simplicity and straightforwardness. Shave away all of the irrelevant assumptions and extraneous information to the bone and work with what’s left.”

  “Thank you, Aristotle,” she said.

  “Sorry. Did I sound pompous and condescending?”

  “No more than usual.” She smiled. “I understand what you’re saying. But there has to be a corollary to Occam, something like: Sometimes things are not simple. Sometimes uncommon things actually do happen. Right?”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  “And even when all of the so-called evidence seems to be pointing in one direction …”

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “So are you going to help me, or what?”

  “Help you …?”

  “Figure out who killed my brother.”

  I smiled. “You’re hard to say no to.”

  She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I’m not trying to seduce you. I’m just asking for your help.”

  “I know that,” I said. “Look. Let’s see what the medical examiner comes up with first. If his verdict is suicide, then we can decide what to do.”

  She nodded. “And if he says it’s not suicide …”

  “In that case,” I said, “the police will be all over it.”

  We stopped at the parking garage at the Alewife T station at Fresh Pond so Alex could retrieve her car. Then I followed her to the Best Western hotel near the rotary in Concord. She pulled into the parking area in front, and I slid my car in beside hers.

  She got out and came over to my window. I rolled it down. “You want to come up?” she said.

  I shook my head. “That’s okay. I’ll wait here.”

  “I’ll be a while,” she said. “I’ve got to wash my hair. There’s a coffeemaker in the room, and a TV.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said.

  She reached through the open car window, touched my arm, and then turned and went into the hotel.

  There was a little gas station/convenience store next door to the Best Western. I walked over, bought a cup of coffee and a skinny Saturday Globe, and took them back to my car.

  I read the paper and sipped my coffee while Alex washed her hair.

  It was close to an hour later when she came out and climbed into my car. “Your hair looks good,” I said. “Clean.”

  She smiled quickly. “You’re making that up. Men never notice things like that.”

  I shrugged.

  “I just talked to Claudia,” she said. “She didn’t sound that pleased about us going over.”

  “I imagine she’s totally blown away,” I said. “Maybe the idea of entertaining company …”

  “I’m not company,” Alex said. “I’m her sister-in-law. We’re old friends. She knows she doesn’t have to entertain me.”

  “I meant me,” I said. “I’m a stranger. Not only that. I’m Gus’s divorce attorney. Claudia doesn’t need that. Why don’t you go ahead without me. It’ll be easier for both of you.”

  Alex was sitting in the passenger seat beside me gazing out the front window toward the front of the hotel. Big pots of rust-colored chrysanthemums lined the pathway from the parking lot to the entrance. “Nothing’s ever simple, is it?” she said.

  “I hope you’re not worried about hurting my feelings,” I said.

  She turned and looked at me. “I worry about hurting everybody’s feelings. It’s my curse.”

  I reached over and patted her arm. “My feelings aren’t hurt. You go ahead. Give me a call afterward, tell me how it went.”

  “I wanted you to meet Claudia and the girls,” she said. “I’m disappointed. Well, I guess this isn’t a good time.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you want me to meet them?”

  She looked at me and frowned. “They’re my family. They’re all I’ve got now. Now that …”

  “Sure,” I said. “I would like to meet them. There will be a better time.”

  “I can tell you right now,” she said. “It’s going to be hard. For Claudia, I mean. I know they were getting divorced, and I know Gus behaved badly, but I’m sure she still loved him. She has to be feeling …”

  “Guilty?” I said.

  “Don’t you think?”

  “I’d be surprised if she weren’t,” I said. “I’m feeling guilty. I bet you are, too.”

  Alex nodded, then leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Okay. I think you’re right. It’s better if I do this by myself. I’m sorry you had to drive all the way out here and wait in your car. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Please do.”

  “So,” she said. “Big plans for the weekend?”

  I nodded. “I’ve got a million things to do.”

  She smiled. “Well, thanks for everything. I don’t know how I could’ve gotten through last night without you.”

  “That’s what friends are for.”

  I did not have a million things to do. I had very little to do. Since Evie left back in June, my weekends had been empty. I’d managed to get away for a few Sundays of trout fishing with Charlie McDevitt, and I spent one long July weekend surf casting and clamming with J. W. and Zee Jackson on Martha’s Vineyard. Mostly, though, I spent my weekends plowing through the paperwork that Julie always insisted I bring home, and watching a lot of ball games on TV, and reading some books.

  Before Evie came along, I lived alone and never felt lonely. Since Evie left for California, I felt lonely much of the time, and especially on weekends. Henry was good company, but he wasn’t Evie.

  That afternoon Henry and I piled into my car and drove out to Bolton Flats, which was a several-hundred-acre expanse of field, forest, and marshland on the other side of Route 495 near Clinton. It was what they called a Wildlife Management Area, owned and operated by the Commonwealth’s Fish and Game Department for hunting stocked pheasants. Since the hunting season wouldn’t open for another two weeks, Henry and I had the place all to ourselves. He ran and I walked, and after about three hours of fresh air and exercise, both of us were panting.

  When we got home I checked my voice mail for messages. There were none.

  I spent a couple of hours at the desk in my office slogging through some of the paperwork Julie had given me, and then, as a reward for my diligence, I heated a can of Progresso minestrone soup for my supper.

  I was watching a Saturday night college football game and sipping a glass of bourbon when Alex called.

  “I just wanted to say good night,” she said.

  “How’d it go with Claudia?”

  “I ended up spending the whole day and staying for supper,” she said. “We took Juno and Clea to Concord center and walked around and did a little shopping. They aren’t quite sure what it all means. The girls, I mean. They’re pretty young, and they haven’t seen much of Gus lately.”

  “Did you get
a sense of Claudia’s, um, take on it?”

  “You mean,” she said, “does she believe that Gus killed himself?”

  “Yes, that’s what I meant.”

  “She’s the one who got that e-mail yesterday, don’t forget. I think by the time she called to tell me about it she’d already decided Gussie had done something to himself.” Alex hesitated. “Yesterday. Wow. It seems like it was a long time ago.”

  “A lot has happened,” I said. “So what are your plans?”

  “Plans?”

  “You going to hang around for a while?”

  “Until we figure out what happened with Gus,” she said. “Absolutely. Besides, I’ve still got a lot of research to do on my novel.”

  “I’ll be here,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  “We’ll have dinner.”

  “That would be nice.” Alex was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “Well, good night, Brady. Thanks for everything. Sleep well.”

  “I think I will,” I said. “You, too.”

  I slept well and woke up late on Sunday. It was another perfect New England autumn day, so I took a carafe of coffee and the Sunday Globe out to the patio and read all of it.

  In the afternoon I watched the Patriots clobber the Dolphins. Then I spent an hour fooling around with my briefcaseful of office paperwork. In the pile of documents was a copy of the letter we’d sent to the Nashua office of AA Movers, which reminded me that I’d have to bring Doug Epping up to date on the unhappy developments in his case against them.

  Alex called just as I was stuffing everything back into my briefcase. She’d spent the day with Claudia and her nieces, she said. State police detective Boyle and his partner came by in the afternoon to interview Claudia. Alex took the little girls out to the backyard while the cops were there. She said that they took a printout of the e-mail Gus had sent to Claudia on Friday. Otherwise, Claudia didn’t want to talk about it, and Alex didn’t ask.

  I had the sense that if I’d asked Alex to come over for a drink or supper, she would’ve said yes. But I didn’t ask, and she didn’t mention it.

  We promised to touch base the next day, then hung up.

  I made an omelet for supper, found From Here to Eternity on a cable channel, and mourned Montgomery Clift’s premature death, as I always did when I saw him on the screen.