Outwitting Trolls Read online

  She cocked her head at me. “Excuse me?”

  “Cul-de-sac,” I said. “The whatchamacallit. Where the road turns around.”

  She smiled. “Right. I couldn’t think of it.”

  “You must be a friend of his,” I said.

  “Friend? Wayne?” Lila shook her head. “I been to a couple parties at his house is all. My boyfriend knows him.” She looked at me. “Look, though, seriously. I hope you’re not gonna get Wayne in trouble. My boyfriend would kill me if he knew I was telling you this.”

  “No trouble,” I said. “Just some lawyer business.” I held my hand out to Lila. “I really appreciate your help. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

  She gave my hand a quick shake. “They can be awfully bureaucratic,” she said. “I figured you were gonna end up frustrated.”

  “I surely would have if you hadn’t rescued me.” I gave Lila a wave and headed for my car, repeating her directions to Wayne Nichols’s house in my head so that I wouldn’t forget them.

  Fourteen

  Lila’s directions were excellent, and fifteen minutes or so after I waved good-bye to her on the steps of the Webster State College administration building, I pulled up in front of Wayne Nichols’s house in the cul-de-sac at the end of Blaine Street on the outskirts of Websterville, New Hampshire.

  The place was even dumpier than I’d imagined from Lila’s description. The little square of lawn in front was overgrown with last year’s brown matted-down mixture of grass and weeds. It looked as if it had never seen a lawn mower. Dandelions grew from the cracks in the short blacktopped driveway, where an aged blue-and-rust Ford Taurus sedan was parked. The carport, with its sagging roof, was stuffed with overflowing trash barrels, soggy cardboard boxes, and scraps of lumber. The house itself, a small boxy ranch, featured flaking yellow paint and a rickety television antenna and a couple of missing window shutters.

  A second-growth forest, a mixture of pine and oak trees with a thick understory of briars and brush, crowded close to the back of the house. There was a vacant lot on one side and an identical ranch-style structure, this one with blistering gray paint, on the other side.

  I sat there in my car, looking at Wayne’s house, trying to detect a sign of life inside. The place just sat there, too, still and forlorn.

  After a few minutes, I slid out of my car and went up to the front door. I pressed the doorbell and heard the hollow ding-dong echo from inside.

  When nobody answered after a couple of minutes, I hit the bell again and waited again. Still nobody came to the door.

  I went around to the side door under the carport. This one appeared to open into a small foyer—what we New Englanders call a mudroom. There was no bell beside the door. I rapped on the window, waited, rapped again.

  Maybe nobody was home, although there was that old Taurus crouching in the driveway. I walked around to the back of the house, where there was another outside door. I climbed the three steps onto a little concrete porch under a plastic awning, cupped my hands around my eyes, and looked in through the storm door and the window of the back door, which opened directly into the kitchen. Pots and pans were piled high in the sink. On a small table sat a Wheaties box, a cardboard orange juice carton, a plastic one-gallon milk jug, an open newspaper, and some glasses and bowls. The kitchen light was on, and I could hear the deep bass-line thump-thump of recorded rock music coming from somewhere inside.

  I pressed the doorbell, and when that brought no response, I banged on the frame of the storm door.

  That’s when I heard a car door slam from the other side of the house, and then an engine sputtered, and it roared to life, and then came the screech of rubber on pavement.

  I jumped off the back porch and ran around to the side of Wayne Nichols’s house in time to see the rusty old Taurus sedan that had been in the driveway peel around the cul-de-sac and zoom down Blaine Street in a cloud of blue exhaust.

  I stood there until the whine of the Taurus’s engine faded into the distance. I looked at my watch. It was a little after one in the afternoon.

  I considered my options. I could hop into my car, and if I drove fast and guessed right at the turns, maybe I’d catch up with the old Taurus.

  Then what? Move up beside him and wave for him to pull over to the side of the road? Sideswipe him? Ram into him? Or maybe hang back and follow him until he stopped and got out, and then leap from my car and accost him?

  Well, now it didn’t matter. Hamlet Coyne had once again hesitated too long and given the whole situation too much analysis and too little action. By now Wayne was probably several miles away, and who knew which direction he’d taken.

  Having screwed up this situation pretty thoroughly, and with nothing better to do, I went over and sat on the front steps. I figured I’d blown my chance to talk with Wayne Nichols. I’d spooked him, and he was gone. But, hey, it was a balmy April afternoon, and the sun was warm on my face, and the air smelled of fresh earth and lilac blossoms. There were worse things to do—such as shuffling papers in a law office or playing adversary with some other attorney in a courtroom—than sitting in the sun for a few minutes on such an April day.

  Wayne Nichols, just a year or two older than my son Billy, was living here in this crappy little house on the slummy outskirts of Websterville, New Hampshire. I wondered how he made the rent. Monthly support checks from Sharon, I guessed. She probably thought she was giving her dropout son tuition and room-and-board money. I’d have to ask her.

  Billy grew up in the same town and went to the same public schools as Wayne, and like Wayne, and at about the same age as Wayne, had lived through his parents’ divorce. Both young men dropped out of college. Billy became a summer fishing guide and winter ski instructor.

  I wondered about Wayne.

  It was interesting, I thought as I sat there with the sun warm on my face, how parallel life paths sometimes converged, and sometimes they diverged.

  Thinking about Billy reminded me of how he’d gone banging out of my house last night, angry and hurt, and how he was heading back to Idaho in a few days.

  We’d had our rifts before. Billy was a prideful guy, unlikely to make the first move, but I knew that he’d come around if I met him halfway. I could be pretty stubborn, too, but this wasn’t worth it. I’d call him. I’d apologize, and then he’d apologize. We’d get together, and we’d touch fists and give each other a hug, and we’d be good again. When I got home—

  I sensed motion behind me, a sudden prickly feeling on the back of my neck. Before I could react to it, a growly voice said, “Who the fuck are you?”

  I jerked my head around and found myself looking into the bore of a square automatic pistol.

  Behind the pistol was a young man’s face. He had black hair, cut short, with the scruff of a beard and dark glowering eyes. Wayne Nichols, I assumed. He had evidently cut through the woods and sneaked around the side of the house.

  “My name is Brady Coyne,” I said, “and I don’t like having guns poking at me.”

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “If you’re Wayne Nichols,” I said, “I need to talk to you. I have news for you. Put that damn gun down, will you?”

  “What kind of news?” The pistol continued to point at my forehead.

  “Please aim your gun somewhere else,” I said, “before we have an accident.”

  He lowered the arm that was holding the gun. “You left me a message the other day, right? Was that you? The lawyer?”

  I nodded. “That’s right. I’m your mother’s lawyer.”

  I moved over to the side of the step I was sitting on. “Why don’t you sit down.”

  He continued standing there beside me with the gun dangling from his hand. He was wearing blue jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt, with a Red Sox cap and expensive-looking sneakers. “I’m good right here,” he said. “You drove up from Boston to talk to me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Because you wouldn’t talk to me on the phone.”

&n
bsp; “Your news is that important?”

  I shrugged. “That’s for you to judge, I guess.”

  “So go ahead,” he said.

  I turned to face him. “Do you recognize me?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Should I?”

  “I used to live in Wellesley. You were friends with my son.”

  Wayne Nichols frowned for a moment. Then he nodded. “Coyne. Billy, right? He’s your son?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Billy was a cool dude. Not sure I remember you, though.”

  “Look at me,” I said. “Have you seen me recently?”

  He frowned at me. “Like when?”

  “Like last Saturday night?”

  “No. Where do you think I saw you last Saturday night?”

  “In the Beverly Suites Hotel in Natick. In the corridor on the third floor.”

  He shook his head. “I was nowhere near Natick. I’ve never been to that hotel. I never even heard of it before. You’re playing games with me. What is this all about, the Beverly Suites Hotel in Natick?”

  “That’s where your father was.”

  Wayne frowned. “My father? What about him?”

  “That’s where he was last Saturday night when he got killed.”

  I watched Wayne Nichols’s face. He stared at me. I couldn’t read his expression.

  After what seemed like a long minute, he blinked, and then he shook his head. “Killed,” he said in a soft voice, making it a statement, not a question.

  I nodded. “Murdered. He was stabbed in the abdomen and in the heart. He was there for a convention of veterinarians. He was in his hotel room. Your mother found him. His body.”

  Wayne looked down at his hand, as if he were surprised to see a gun in it. He stuck the handgun in the pocket of his sweatshirt, then came around and sat on the step beside me. “Who killed my father?” he asked.

  “They don’t know yet.”

  “You think I did it?”

  “Me?” I shook my head. “Wouldn’t matter what I thought.”

  “Yeah, but do you?”

  “I’m your mother’s lawyer.”

  His mouth opened, then closed. “So she did it, huh? She finally did it.”

  “You think so?” I asked.

  “The way he treated her all those years?” Wayne nodded. “About time.”

  “How did he treat her?”

  He shrugged. “You know. He was always putting her down. Insulting her. Making her feel like shit. I used to think, How can she put up with that? Why doesn’t she leave him? Why doesn’t she kill the son of a bitch?”

  “He made you angry, then? How he treated your mother?”

  “Sure. Me and my sister, we used to talk about how we wished he’d just go away and leave her alone.” He smiled quickly. “Then they got divorced, and I thought after that everything would be better. But it wasn’t. That sucked, too.”

  “Did you talk about murdering him?” I asked. “You and Ellen?”

  Wayne blurted out a quick laugh. “Murder? Christ. We were kids. Who knows what we talked about. Maybe we did. The way kids do, you know. We hated him, I can tell you that. And we didn’t think so much of her, either, the way she just put up with all the shit he gave her, never stood up for herself.”

  I wondered if abuse had actually been a factor in the Nichols divorce. It wouldn’t be part of the court record, because Massachusetts had been a no-fault divorce state for many years. Of course, Sharon would know…if she wanted to tell me.

  If Ken had abused her—emotionally or physically or both—it could be construed as a motive for murder.

  On the other hand, this was the perception of a boy, now the memory of a young man. Sharon—and Ellen, too—seemed to remember things differently. Each of them had fabricated a story to make sense of their experiences, and who knew where the truth lay?

  “What about you?” I asked. “How did he treat you? You and your sister?”

  Wayne shrugged. “Okay. Nothing bad. He worked a lot. They both did. Me and Ellen both helped out at the clinic, feeding the animals, cleaning the kennels, and he paid us. That’s how we earned our allowances. We didn’t do a lot as a family. But it was all right. It was just the way he treated her. My mother. That’s what I remember.”

  “So where were you last Saturday night?” I asked.

  “Huh?” He looked at me for a second, then nodded. “Oh. You mean do I have an alibi.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was here. At my house. I—” Right then his head jerked up, and he looked out at the street.

  I looked where he was looking. A large black SUV was coming around the cul-de-sac.

  “I had some people over Saturday night,” Wayne said. “There were twenty-five or thirty people here at one time or another. Of course, none of them would ever admit it.” He stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

  He walked to the curb in front of his house. He had his hand in the pocket of his sweatshirt where he’d tucked his gun.

  The passenger-side window of the SUV slid down, and Wayne leaned his forearm on it and bent to talk with the driver. He kept his other hand, the one holding the gun, in his pocket. I got just a glimpse of the other man’s face as it moved toward the window before it was hidden behind Wayne’s body, enough only to give me the impression that he was young—maybe a few years older than Wayne—with dark hair. He appeared to be wearing a dress shirt and a necktie.

  I noticed that the vehicle had Massachusetts license plates and tinted windows. It was a Lincoln Navigator, and it looked like a new model.

  I took out a pen and one of my business cards from the inside pocket of my jacket and copied down the license number of the Navigator. Detective Horowitz might be interested.

  After a few minutes, Wayne stepped away from the car, the tinted window slid up, and the Navigator pulled away from the curb and disappeared around the corner. Wayne stood there watching it go. Then he came back and sat on the step beside me. “So where were we?” he asked.

  “You were telling me that you didn’t have an alibi,” I said.

  “No,” he said, “I told you I did have an alibi. It’s just that I’m not sure anybody will confirm it.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  He looked at me and smiled. “Do you have any idea who the guy in that Lincoln was?”

  I shook my head.

  “Let me put it this way,” he said. “That kid’s about my age, and he wears a suit and a necktie to work every day, carries a briefcase, drives the company car.”

  I shrugged.

  “He was looking to do business with me.”

  “Business,” I said.

  “You’re a lawyer,” he said. “I can tell you anything. You’ve got to keep it private.”

  “You know your way around lawyers, do you?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m your mother’s lawyer,” I said. “Not yours.”

  “Doesn’t matter. This whole conversation is just between us. Like you were a priest. You can’t tell anybody what I say. I know that. Anyway, I didn’t say anything about what that guy wanted, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Wayne looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  “Sure,” I said. “This conversation is privileged.”

  “So, okay,” he said, “I was here Saturday night, like I am most Saturday nights, and there was a bunch of people over, and they probably wouldn’t ever admit it, and they’d be totally pissed if I ever gave out their names.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “It was a college party, that’s all. Use your imagination.” He shrugged. “All I’m saying is, I’m just explaining to you that I was here, not there, and I did not murder my father, and I guess if you put somebody under oath they’d admit they were here and tell you that I was, too.”

  “What do you know about ketamine?” I asked.

  Wayne cocked his head at me. “Where’d that come from? Ketamine?”

  “I’m inferri
ng that there might’ve been drugs at your party,” I said. “Special K is a popular drug.”

  He grinned. “You got the terminology down pat, huh?”

  “It’s an anesthetic commonly used in animal surgery,” I said.

  “Shit,” he said, “everybody knows that. And my father was a vet. So what? Look. I don’t know anything about illegal drugs, okay? I feel bad my old man got murdered, but I didn’t do it, and I don’t know who did.”

  “Why won’t you talk to your mother?” I asked. “She left you several messages.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I don’t want to talk to her. I’m sorry about what happened to my father, and I’m sorry that she’s always been so unhappy, and I’m sorry about our totally dysfunctional family, and I’m sorry about my whole screwed-up life and all the misery I’ve caused everybody, okay?” He stood up and faced me. “I don’t want to talk about this shit anymore. Just go home and leave me alone, will you?”

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll go,” I said, “and I won’t keep bugging you—but I want you to agree that if I call you, you’ll either answer the phone or you’ll listen to my message, and if I ask you to call me back, you’ll do it.”

  “Why should I?”

  I spread my hands. “Because I don’t want to have to drive for two and a half hours every time I want to talk to you.”

  “So what do I get out of it?”

  “Me not being pissed at you, for one thing,” I said. “Maybe information you need to hear.”

  Wayne shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s fair, I guess. Okay. It’s a deal.” He held out his hand.

  I shook his hand. “Any message for your mother you’d like me to deliver?”

  He looked at me for a minute, then shook his head. “No, nothing. Probably best if you don’t tell her you were here, huh?”

  I shrugged. “I’d like to tell her I saw you and that you’re okay.”

  “Really?” He smiled. “Am I?”

  Fifteen

  It was about four in the afternoon, and I’d crossed the border back into Massachusetts, heading south toward Boston on Route 3, when my cell phone vibrated in my shirt pocket.