Muscle Memory Read online

  When they’d talked on the phone the previous afternoon to confirm their dinner date for Monday, Kaye had seemed upset.

  “Upset about me,” said Mick.

  Horowitz shrugged.

  Gretchen had arrived at Aigo’s at six-thirty. She went upstairs, took a table, had a glass of wine. When Kaye hadn’t shown up by seven, Gretchen phoned her at home. There was no answer, so she assumed Kaye was on her way. She went back to their table, had a second glass of wine.

  But by seven-thirty she was worried. Kaye was always on time, and if something had come up to make her late, she would’ve called the restaurant.

  So Gretchen phoned again and still got no answer. She tried again at eight. Then she left the restaurant and went home. She was concerned, but she figured that Kaye had a lot on her mind and something had come up. Still, it was odd that she hadn’t called. Gretchen kept phoning Kaye’s house and getting no answer.

  Finally, she drove to Kaye’s home in Lexington, arriving a little after ten o’clock. She rang the bell several times, and when there was no response, she used her key and entered through the front door.

  “The door was locked?” I said.

  Horowitz nodded. “That’s what Mrs. Conley said.”

  “And she had a key?”

  “Yes. She said Mrs. Fallon had been away on vacation back in February. She’d given her friend a key so she could water the plants and feed the cat.”

  I looked at Mick. He nodded. “She’d do that,” he said.

  “Mrs. Conley pushed open the front door,” Horowitz continued. “She called Mrs. Fallon’s name, received no answer. She stepped into the foyer. She said she noticed that all the downstairs lights were on. Then she saw the blood.”

  I tried to imagine what it must have been like for Gretchen Conley. She saw the blood, then she saw the body. So much blood from such a small body. The carpet was soaked, spatters on the wall and some of the furniture, and Gretchen suddenly feeling dizzy, nauseated, thinking she was going to faint, leaning against the wall, then sliding to the floor, hugging her knees and taking deep breaths until her head cleared, and after a while, standing up and staggering down the hall into the kitchen, where she knew there was a telephone, holding her hand beside her face, trying not to look at Kaye’s body, all that blood…

  She dialed 911, Horowitz said, told them where she was and what she’d found, gave them her name, and agreed to stay there. Then she went out, sat on the front steps, and waited for the police.

  “There was a half-filled glass of white zinfandel and an empty bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale on the coffee table,” said Horowitz.

  Mick, of course, was a beer drinker.

  “Any prints on the bottle?” I said.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  The locked door meant whoever it was either had a key or Kaye had let him in. Him or her. It had to be someone she knew. She poured herself a glass of wine, fetched him a beer. They sat on the sofa.

  “What else?” I said to Horowitz.

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “What about Gretchen Conley?” I said. “You know where she was Sunday night?”

  He nodded. “Says she was out to dinner and a movie with her husband and another couple. We’ll check it out, of course.”

  Mick sat beside me in the booth, his face wet, staring down at his hands, which were grappling with each other on the tabletop.

  Horowitz was leaning back, peering at Mick. “So who’d want to kill your wife, Mr. Fallon?” he said. “Help me out here.”

  “I don’t know.” Mick turned to me. “It wasn’t me, if that’s what he’s thinking. I didn’t kill Kaye.”

  “If you did,” said Horowitz, “it’ll go a lot easier for you if you tell me now.”

  “I didn’t fucking kill her.”

  “Can you tell me why you assaulted a police officer here tonight and then held Mr. O’Reilly at knifepoint?”

  Mick shrugged. “I was just having a beer. I got a lot on my mind. I guess I—I don’t know. Something snapped. I lost it.”

  “You’ve got a quick temper, Mr. Fallon?”

  “That’s enough,” I said. “My client has already told you he didn’t kill his wife.”

  Horowitz shrugged. “So where were you Sunday evening, Mr. Fallon?”

  “My client will not answer that question at this time,” I said.

  “I wasn’t there,” said Mick. He turned to me. “I wasn’t.”

  Horowitz grinned quickly at me. “Okay. So, Mr. Fallon. Give me a hand here, then, okay? Can you think of anybody who might have reason to murder your wife? Somebody who could’ve done this thing?”

  Mick shook his head.

  “Answer it for the tape, Mick,” I said.

  “No,” he mumbled. “I can’t think of anybody. But if I ever find them—”

  I grabbed Mick’s arm. He looked up at me, and I shook my head.

  Horowitz frowned and exchanged a glance with Benetti. Then he turned back to Mick. “Boyfriend, maybe?” he persisted. “Ex-lover?”

  “Christ, no.”

  “Maybe an enemy of yours, Mr. Fallon? Someone who wanted to get to you, send you a message. Revenge, maybe.”

  Mick shook his head. “I don’t know.” He turned to me. “Brady…”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Tell him, Mick.”

  Mick told Horowitz how he gambled, owed a lot of money.

  “Your wife didn’t like that,” said Horowitz.

  “No. She hated it.”

  Horowitz nodded. “You were about to be divorced,” he said. “You stood to get cleaned out.”

  Mick shrugged. “I didn’t care.”

  “What about insurance? Was your wife insured?”

  “Sure. We’re both insured.”

  “Life insurance?”

  Mick nodded.

  “Each other’s beneficiaries?”

  “Look,” said Mick, “I didn’t kill her.” He turned to me. “Brady, do we have to…?”

  “That’s it for now,” I told Horowitz. “My client is tired and upset. No more questions tonight.”

  Horowitz nodded. “Terminating the questioning at, um, two-oh-seven A.M.” He nodded to Benetti, who clicked off the tape recorder. Then he fixed Mick with that annoying Nicholson grin. “Stick close to home, Mr. Fallon,” he said. “We’ll want to talk with you some more.” He turned to me. “Got it?”

  “I got it,” I said.

  Benetti whispered something to Horowitz, who nodded and turned to Mick. “You gotta do something, I’m afraid.”

  Mick shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “We need you to identify the body for us.”

  Mick turned to me and frowned. “This guy some kind of joker, or what?”

  “No,” I said. “It has to be done.”

  Mick gazed up at the ceiling for a minute. Then he said, “Yeah, okay. I want to see her.”

  Horowitz gave us a ride to the morgue where Mick did his duty. Then a state cop took us over to my apartment. We got in my car, and I drove Mick back to Somerville over the quiet city streets. There had been a spring shower while we’d been inside Skeeter’s, and the roads glistened in my headlights. Mick didn’t say anything, and neither did I, until we pulled up in front of his place.

  Then I turned to him and said, “You okay?”

  He snorted a quick laugh out of his nose. “Oh, sure.”

  “That had to be rough.”

  He shrugged. “I’m just kinda numb, man. It ain’t making any sense to me. It ain’t real.” He turned his face away from me.

  “Mick,” I said after a minute, “I hope you’ve got a good alibi for last night.”

  He was staring out the side window. “He thinks I did it, doesn’t he? That Horowitz?”

  “You’re a logical suspect. Give me an alibi and you won’t be.”

  “I was home watching television.”

  “Anybody with you?”

  “No. No one’s ever wi
th me.”

  “Talk to anyone on the phone?”

  He turned to look at me. In the glow of the streetlight that filtered down through the leafy maples that lined the street, I saw that his face was wet. “Brady, I couldn’t even tell you what I saw on TV. I was just thinking about Kaye, missing the hell out of her, remembering all the good times, all the things we did together, me and Kaye and the kids when they were little, just driving myself nuts. That’s what I found myself doing tonight, too, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Being alone like that. That’s why I went to Skeeter’s. Just to—to get away from myself.”

  “You’ve got to be prepared—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. He reached over and gripped my arm. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said softly. “I didn’t do it. But if I ever get my hands on who did…”

  I nodded. “I know how you feel, Mick. We’ll figure it out.”

  He smiled quickly. “No way you know how I feel.”

  Five

  BY THE TIME MICK shambled into his apartment and I’d driven back to mine, the sky was starting to turn from black to purple. The sun would rise in an hour or so, and I hadn’t been to sleep yet.

  When I got upstairs, I shucked off my clothes and flopped down on my bed. I was exhausted, but too wired from all the adrenaline to sleep. So I lay there staring up at the ceiling, fragments of thoughts and hypotheses ricocheting around inside my skull, while the sky outside brightened and lit my bedroom and a bunch of sparrows began chirping out on my balcony.

  Eventually I dozed off. When I woke up, it was nearly ten in the morning. I felt more tired than before I’d slept. I staggered out of bed, put on some coffee, and tried to call Mick. I let it ring about a dozen times before I gave up.

  When I’d left him off at his place at around four in the morning, he’d been muttering and slurring his words, and it wasn’t from booze.

  I showered, climbed into my office clothes, and tried him again. Again, no answer.

  I tried to imagine what it must be like, having your wife brutally murdered and being considered a suspect. Mick had been right: I had no idea. But I understood that it could make a man crazy.

  “What’s the point?” Mick had mumbled as we’d driven along the slick streets to his apartment in Somerville. “It’s not enough that Kaye’s gone, but I gotta tell my kids that their mother’s been murdered and everybody thinks I did it? Fuck this.”

  So instead of heading for the office, I drove to Somerville and found a parking slot on Mick’s street.

  Some climbing pink roses were blossoming on the wrought-iron fence in front of the three-decker next door to Mick’s. I stopped and bent over to take a whiff. When I straightened up, I heard a sudden buzzing noise directly behind me. I whirled around, then smiled. A ruby-throated hummingbird was hovering in midair, so close I could’ve reached out and touched him. He paused there—sizing me up, I thought, trying to decide whether I was friend or foe or flower—then darted away.

  That hummingbird reminded me of kingfishers swooping along a riverbank, making their odd clattering sound in flight, and kingfishers reminded me of trout rivers.

  At the Deerfield, my favorite trout stream this side of Montana, the trout would be sipping mayflies on a beautiful day in June, and I could be there by early afternoon.

  I didn’t want to think about Kaye Fallon’s sprawled body, emptied of its lifeblood, smashed and sliced in the living room of her own home. I didn’t want to consider the possibility that her husband—my client—had done that to her, and whether or not he actually had, that he was a suspect and it was my job to defend him. I just wanted to go fishing.

  Not today.

  A realtor’s red-white-and-blue Apartment for Rent sign hung on the chain-link fence in front of the big square three-decker that Mick Fallon now called home.

  Half a dozen aluminum trash cans were jammed into one corner of the porch. Two unpainted wooden rocking chairs sat facing each other in the other corner, and a row of plastic flower pots were lined up on the rail with brown plants drooping out of them.

  Although I’d never been inside, I knew that Mick had the top floor flat, the cheapest and smallest in the rickety old triple-decker. I opened the front door, stepped into the tiny inside entryway, and hit the bell for apartment three. A minute later I heard heavy footsteps coming down the inside stairs.

  The door opened, and a man I’d never seen before stepped into the entryway. “Please,” he said, “will you people just leave him alone?”

  He wore a gray summer-weight suit, pale green shirt, blue-and-green necktie. He was a couple of inches shorter than me, neither fat nor skinny, brown hair, brown eyes, neatly trimmed mustache, glasses. An utterly nondescript guy.

  He was peering over my shoulder. “Where are the rest of them?” he said.

  “The rest of who?”

  He frowned at me. “Who are you?”

  “Suppose we introduce ourselves,” I said. “Then maybe we can start over again. I’m Brady Coyne.”

  He cocked his head, looked me up and down, then nodded. “You’re his lawyer. Jesus, I’m sorry. I assumed—”

  “What, that I was a reporter?”

  He nodded. “They’ve been here all morning, swarming all over the sidewalk, creeping around out back, double-parking their vans on the street. Mick’s up there crying his eyes out, and these—these monsters are banging on the door and yelling for him to come down and talk to them.” He blew out a long breath, then held out his hand. “I really apologize. I’m Lyn Conley. Mick’s best friend.”

  I shook his hand. “Good of you to be with him.”

  He shrugged. “I was up all night with my wife. I tried to call Mick early this morning, but he wasn’t answering. I figured he could use some company, so I came right over. He’s a mess.” He smiled. “I guess you know that. You were with him last night.”

  “Conley,” I said. “Gretchen…?”

  He nodded. “My wife, yes. She’s the one who found Kaye’s body.”

  “How is she doing?”

  “Better. She’s calmed down a little. Her mother’s with her now. Look, Mr. Coyne, Kaye and Mick are—were—our best friends. Our families were very close. Kaye was—well, every­body loved Kaye. You met her?”

  “Just once,” I said. “Not under the most favorable conditions.”

  He nodded. “The deposition. Sure. Well, that’s your loss. She was warm and funny and just a terrific person. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to do anything except hug her. And Mick?” He shook his head. “This is a terrible, terrible thing as it is. But the way they’re playing this story on TV, it’s as if Mick has been tried and convicted already. And that incident at the bar last night…”

  “What’s Mick told you?”

  Conley shrugged. “He’s a wreck. There’s no way he killed her. You never saw a man who loved his wife like Mick.”

  “Well,” I said, “I just came over to see how he was doing, maybe try to reassure him a little.”

  “I know he’ll want to see you,” said Conley. “Next time just ring and come on up. This door here doesn’t lock.”

  I followed him up the narrow flight of stairs, which paused at a landing on the second floor, took a 180-degree turn, and climbed steeply to Mick’s third-floor apartment. The entire stair­way was lit by two bare sixty-watt bulbs, one in the ceiling at each landing.

  The door at the top opened directly into the kitchen—cracked linoleum floor, open shelves above the sink, dirty white refrig­erator, scarred wooden table in front of a sooty window that looked out onto a small weedy backyard and, beyond it, the back side of another three-decker. A door in the corner of the kitchen led out to a small porch. Soot—or just years of house dust—covered the windowsill, the top of the baseboard, the edges of the linoleum. Three rickety wooden chairs were pushed in against the table. Beer bottles and dirty glasses and dishes and pots and pans were piled in and beside the sink and on the table. It smelled of old cigar smoke, sweaty socks, stale b
eer.

  “Mick’s in the living room,” said Conley. “Coffee?”

  “Please,” I said.

  Conley picked up some beer bottles and dropped them in a trash basket that was already brimming over. “I keep telling him,” he said. “He drinks too damn much. He doesn’t watch out, he’ll end up where I was.”

  I arched my eyebrows at him.

  He nodded. “I’ve been dry for four years, seven months, and thirteen days. I came damn close to blowing everything.”

  “You think Mick’s an alcoholic?”

  “I see my old self in him.” He shrugged. “He’s not ready to face it. I don’t know. Maybe this—” he waved his hand “—this tragedy will make him see the light.”

  “You don’t think…?”

  “What, that Mick killed Kaye?” He shook his head. “No. Absolutely not.” He found the electric coffee pot and began filling it at the sink. “He’s in the other room. Coffee’ll be ready in a minute.”

  Mick’s living room was smaller than my bedroom. An old faded sofa, two ancient chairs, and a new big-screen console tele­vision made it feel cramped. A goldfish bowl sat on top of the TV, and a rather large blue fish hovered motionless in the water.

  Aside from an insurance company calendar featuring an Audubon bird print hanging behind the TV—it was still turned to May—there were no decorations in the room.

  Mick was lying on the sofa staring up at the ceiling. The television was on but muted, tuned to an exercise show. A muscular young brunette in skimpy Spandex was leading a gang of senior citizens in a slow-motion aerobics class.

  Mick lifted his head. “Hey,” he said.

  “How you doing, Mick?”

  He let his head fall back. “You seen the TV this morning?”

  “No.” I sat in the wing chair. A spring poked at my left cheek through the upholstery.

  “Well, you should. You’re on it. You’re a fucking hero, man. You saved poor Skeeter O’Reilly’s life from a crazed, knife-wielding, wife-killing monster at an early-morning hostage-taking. They’re already debating whether they should restore the death penalty specifically for me. They got some footage from outside Skeeter’s—you arriving with Horowitz, going inside, us coming out, me getting cuffed. Somehow they even got some of the conversation Horowitz and I had on the damn telephone. How in hell did they do that? Horowitz give it to ’em?”