By the Book, page 11
He did the dishes after dinner, as always. And, as always, there was a pile of them in the sink. He had no idea if she ever did them in between his visits, or if she just left them for him to do at the end of the week. It didn’t make any difference. He’d do them in any case. There was no way he’d be able to ignore them.
Afterwards they sat on the porch in the ancient metal chairs with the once bright plastic strips that had printed patterns into his legs and backside when he was a boy. On the other side of the hedge, someone started up a lawnmower.
Ma lit a cigarette and inhaled with a deep sigh. At the end of the road, the bright sliver of the sun dipped below the horizon, leaving an orange glow in the sky. Time to ask. Ben had a decision to make, and he needed answers.
He took a deep breath of cigarette smoke, diesel, and freshly mowed grass. “Was Dad mixed up in something illegal?”
Her hand cut through the cigarette smoke in an irritated arc. “What kind of a question is that?”
Ben had asked the same thing in one form or another a number of times when he was a child. He’d given up when he was about twelve. Neither his mother nor the police had ever provided any answers. The police probably didn’t have any; they’d never caught the shooter.
But his mother had to know...something. He just wasn’t asking the right questions. “Did he know the man who shot him?”
Ben knew the answer, even before she said, “No. I’m sure he didn’t.” It had been asked before. It was in the report. He still didn’t know how to do this.
“I mean, did he know why he was shot?” Ben had always assumed that his dad had known, if not his killer, then at least the reason the man had been there and pulled the trigger.
“What’s with all the questions of a sudden? Is this to do with the man who got shot in your building?” There was hurt in her irritation, telling him to let it go. But the question had gained a new and immediate importance for Ben.
“In a way. So, did he know?”
“Did he know what?” Belligerent, like a child stomping her foot.
“Did he know why he was shot?”
She stared at him in the gathering dusk. Questioning, Ben thought, but he didn’t know if it was surprise that for the first time ever he wasn’t taking the hint to leave it be, or if she was asking herself how to get out of answering.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said slowly. Maybe she was trying to remember.
“The police thought at the time he might have owed someone money, lost a bet.” Ben was merely trying to jog her memory, but it backfired.
“Your father”—she pointed the cigarette at Ben—“never gambled a day in his life. He worked at that place; he knew exactly how things went down. Do you think he was stupid?”
Ben shook his head, but before he could say anything, she added, this time addressing the boards between her feet, “And still the cops dropped the case like a hot potato. For them, anyone who worked at the tracks was dirty and had it coming. Fucking pigs.”
And what if they hadn’t been wrong? Maybe it hadn’t been Dad’s fault, but there was something, some connection just outside Ben’s grasp. For one, there was his memory of the man asking his dad: Tell me something, Coyne. Did you really think you could just walk away? Go home and hide under the covers? He’d sounded curious, like he’d really wanted to know, and he’d waited a bit, for an answer that never came, before he’d pulled the trigger.
Ben had told all that to the police, once he could talk again, once the ringing in his ears had stopped. But they hadn’t been interested in the observations of an eight-year-old.
Ma stubbed her cigarette out on the railing and threw the end in a can by her chair. “Your father was a good man, Benny. He didn’t bother nobody. Don’t you let anyone tell you different.” With that, she went back inside.
The way she’d said it opened a drawer in Ben’s brain, and he could suddenly hear Dad’s voice saying, Always mind your own business, Benny. If you don’t bother nobody, nobody’s gonna bother you back.
Well, if Ma was right and Dad had bothered nobody, it sure hadn’t turned out that way, had it? Which kind of confirmed Ben’s earlier conclusion that hiding didn’t work, under the covers or otherwise.
He got up, feeling lighter and heavier at the same time with his decision. He’d fulfilled his promise to Agent Marshall—he’d thought about it, thoroughly, from every angle. Because he’d be lying to say he wasn’t scared; this wasn’t even close to his turf. But cowering behind a bush wouldn’t throw the wolves off his tracks.
So, Ben had no intention of cowering or hiding. Which meant he wasn’t walking away.
* * *
He didn’t have a long walk home from the T. He’d made the dash in under ten minutes once when it’d been raining. But tonight it was dry and still warm out, and he had a good half hour before Marshall would show up, so Ben walked slowly, savoring the anticipation of cashmere suit porn and a cultured voice that occasionally dipped into growl territory. He stole occasional glances at the stars—what little was visible of them in the city—contemplating whether he should wish on one.
As he crossed the street toward his building, someone stepped away from the front door. Marshall was early. Was that a new coat? Ben strained to make out anything specific in the darkness. The hat was definitely new.
No, wait, the silhouette was all wrong. This wasn’t Marshall at all. This was a big, hunched guy in a suit, and the hat threw deep shadows over his face. Something familiar about him, but Ben couldn’t see well enough to pin that feeling down. He’d probably visited someone else in the building.
They were walking past each other in opposite directions, when the man half turned and said, low in his throat, “Evening, Coyne.”
The little hairs on Ben’s neck stood on end as he stopped. Definitely familiar. “Do I know you?”
The man pulled his hat deeper. “I have a message for you.”
Ben felt stupid with relief. Marshall probably, telling him he couldn’t make it. Only the FBI would send messages in such a cloak-and-dagger way. That was where he must have crossed paths with the guy.
“What message?” As he said it, the thought shot through his brain that Marshall would simply have called.
When the not quite stranger laid both hands on Ben’s shoulders, Ben tried to pull away, but was held in an iron grip.
The man leaned forward and whispered in Ben’s ear, “Mind your own business.”
Fear burned bright through his body, but before he could react in any way, the man pulled Ben’s upper body down hard, and his knee shot up into Ben’s rib cage. There was a sharp, breathtaking pain, and an audible crack.
Something heavy slammed into Ben’s neck, the world shivered on its axis and Ben’s knees crashed into the pavement. His glasses went flying.
He’s going to kill me.
A hand in his hair pulled his head back. Ben was still gasping for his breath after the first hit.
The man’s head with the hat was only a black outline against the streetlight above. “If the boss wanted someone who gets creative,” the voice hissed by his ear, “he wouldn’t have hired an accountant. If you don’t want to end up like Henderson, you’ll stick like glue to exactly the accounts you’re given and do exactly the work you’re given. You understand?”
Ben tried to nod, but found he couldn’t move his head in that vise grip. “Perfectly,” he croaked.
“Good.” The man stood back up, but didn’t let go of Ben’s head. “Let’s make sure you don’t forget that as soon as I’m gone.”
At the same time as the man let him go, the light flashed off something long, black, and metallic in his hand. With a loud crack, the side of Ben’s face exploded in a world of pain. The blow slammed his head into the lamppost, and the world flickered off.
Chapter Ten
Nick
It had been a thoroughly frustrating day. Neither Nick nor Duncan had found a suspiciously obvious car leaving the Arch Tower’s underground garage. Nick had been pigheaded enough to go over all the other footage they had, from cameras around the main entrance and side streets as well, but finding it among all the pedestrians entering and leaving the building had proven even more impossible.
If any one of the hundreds of office workers, service and delivery people, or visitors had anything to do with Henderson’s murder, they’d gotten away with it. Nick could see neither the mail guy with his huge parcel cart, nor the mother with a baby in a stroller, nor the group of suits in a heated discussion about whatever, entering or leaving the garage without someone noticing them, or some camera in the building picking them up.
He was positive they had the murderer on camera, but the amount of footage was so overwhelming that they didn’t have a chance in hell of finding him. Nick almost wished for a lonely field in the wilds of rural Massachusetts with only the coyotes as witnesses.
To top it all, the lab report from forensics hadn’t found any DNA on the body that wasn’t Henderson’s own.
At the end of the day, Nick had been ready to punch holes in the wall. Coyne’s call had caught him on his way to the gym, where he’d punched heavy bags instead, not sure whether he was happy about the new info or mad at Coyne for poking around in the hornet’s nest. Well, both, to be completely honest.
At least the workout and a late dinner had taken the edge off his frustration, and by the time he pulled into a parking spot by Coyne’s building, he thought he might manage not to tear Bambi-eyes a new one for his extra tour. Would be a shame to mar that ass.
Do not think about Coyne’s ass!
Despite that distracting thought, Nick was conscious enough of the danger Coyne was putting himself in to be immediately suspicious of the bum apparently sleeping it off under the streetlight in front of Coyne’s building. It was the wrong neighborhood for homeless people to hang around.
When he came closer, he made out the gleam of blood in bright blond hair, and his heart hammered two hard beats against his ribs.
He ran the last few steps, then went down on his knees by the body on the pavement. He knew, even before he recognized the backpack and coat, that it was Coyne. Knew, even though the face was too bloodied and broken to be recognized. Jesus Fucking Christ!
“Coyne?” Nick didn’t dare to move him or even turn him over. “Ben, can you hear me?” He carefully brushed the matted hair out of Ben’s face on the side he could see, and winced at the damage. The blood seeped from a gash across the cheek with every sluggish heartbeat. On the plus side, that meant Coyne was still alive.
But relief quickly lost out to fear at the pool of blood Nick was kneeling in. For a precious second, he hovered between racing back to his car to get his first-aid kit, and not wanting to leave Coyne alone.
Action won. He pulled his phone out and called in a 10-52, ambulance needed, while he was running. “Get forensics out here as well,” he told the dispatcher as he rummaged around in his trunk. “I want to know what happened, and who did this.”
Where was the damned kit? Ah, there.
He ran back, already rifling through the kit in his hands, and pulled out the larger gauze pads. He stuck two on top of each other over the wound, but didn’t dare apply pressure, in case of any fractures.
“Ben? Talk to me. Come on. You can’t die on me. You know that, right?” Where the fuck was the ambulance? That Coyne was still out was a bad sign; Nick knew that much. The longer someone was out, the higher the chance of catastrophic brain injury. “Hang in there, Ben.”
Distant sirens came closer fast, then stopped when the ambulance came to a halt, its lights washing everything in intermittent red and blue.
Relief made Nick’s legs weak, but he had to get up. Reluctantly he made room for the EMTs. He answered their questions as well as he could, then started prowling around the huddle under the streetlight, wanting to stay close, knowing he needed to give them room to work.
A glint on the ground made him look closer. Coyne’s glasses, miraculously still intact. He picked them up with one of the gauze wrappers doubling as gloves, and bagged them.
Only when they lifted Coyne’s head to apply a neck brace did Nick realize that Coyne was bleeding from a second wound on his temple. Fuck! Should he have moved him after all? Would it have made a difference? Made things worse? Useless second-guessing, but he had no idea how to stop himself.
For a couple of minutes everything was silence, interrupted only by the occasional quiet one-liners from the EMTs. Then they loaded Coyne into the ambulance.
Nick ran back to his car, and slapped his emergency lights on the dash. He followed the ambulance as closely as he dared, its siren echoing the insistent, Go, go, go! inside his head.
He wasn’t a particularly religious man, but he was praying now.
* * *
It took him a while to find parking at the hospital, and by the time he walked inside, Coyne was already in surgery.
Nick flashed his badge at the front desk and asked them to bag Coyne’s clothes, and hand over his backpack and phone. Then he called George to let her know where he was and that he’d be a while. He didn’t owe her an explanation, but he didn’t want her to worry again either. He was still a little surprised that she had. Friends worried, didn’t they?
Coyne’s backpack was no help at all. Keys, wallet, a rain jacket, water bottle, pocketknife. The clothes were good quality, classic style without being boring, in line with what Nick had seen Coyne wear before. The phone was fingerprint locked.
Everything clean and tidy, pristine even, except for the damage the assault had left. Zero-personality control freaks had backpacks like this. Well, except maybe for the Legolas phone cover and Mockingjay key charm. A grin tried to worm its way past Nick’s worry. Fine, he wouldn’t put Coyne on the psychopath list just yet.
He called Duncan and told him what had happened. “Can you do me a favor and arrange for a guard to be posted in front of Coyne’s room? I don’t have a number yet, but hope it won’t be long before he comes out of surgery.” Nick pushed the thought that Coyne might not need a room far back into the darkest corner of his mind.
“I’m at home right now, but I’ll see what I can do,” Duncan said.
“Huh?”
“It’s eleven p.m., Nick. Home? Sleep? It’s a thing. You should try it some time.”
Nick wiped a hand over his face. “Sorry. I lost track.”
“You’re worried.” His partner sounded concerned now, and Nick tried to head him off.
“I’m pissed.”
“Uh huh.” Duncan patently wasn’t buying it.
“Whatever. Listen, Duncan?”
“Still here.”
“See if we have a phone number or address for Coyne’s mother? I’m pretty sure she lives in town.”
“You think she’s in the system?” Duncan sounded muffled, as if he’d clamped the phone between head and shoulder.
“Not really, but who knows? We could get lucky and she forgot to pay a parking ticket or something. She should know that her son’s in the hospital.”
“How bad is he?”
“I have no idea. He’s still in surgery. Looked pretty well worked over, though.”
“Should I assume that we’re excluding a random mugging?”
“You should. His wallet’s still there, money inside. Plus, I don’t believe in coincidences. Hence, the guard.”
“Okay, I’m on it. I’ll call you back.”
With that, Duncan disconnected and left Nick to his own thoughts. They weren’t pretty.
He should have seen this coming. Should have personally kicked Coyne out of town. If he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his little personal pity party, he would have.
He went to get himself a coffee from the machine in the hallway. It was predictably bad coffee, but it would help him through the night. He didn’t expect to get any sleep.
Duncan called him back just before midnight. “Sorry, brother. I have no one here I can send you. Even the on-call guys are out tonight. You’ll have to sit guard over your man until I can assign you someone from the morning shift.”
“Figures.” Nick had half expected something like that. He wasn’t leaving in any case. “Never a cop around when you need one, huh?”
Duncan huffed a laugh. “I may have found Mrs. Coyne, though.”
The way he said it made Nick sit up. “Do tell.”
“Has Coyne ever mentioned that his father was shot? Execution style? In the back of the head?”
Nick stilled as suddenly as a cat that had spied a mouse. “When?”
“Seventeen years ago. Apparently little Ben Coyne was hiding in the closet of the room when it happened.”
“Jesus Christ.” It came out as a whisper, because Nick’s voice was suddenly gone. He cleared his throat. “Who did it?”
“No clue,” Duncan growled. “It’s a cold case.”
“How the hell did this not come up when we checked Bennett Coyne’s name?”
“He was a minor. I expect his first name never made it into the system. I only found a mention in an interview transcript. I’d pulled a file to see if I had the right Mrs. Coyne. Mind you, you still want to verify she has a son who’s an accountant with Venture before you spring the news on her.”
“I’ll be careful and wear my velvet gloves, I promise.”
“Right. I have two numbers for Mrs. Coyne. One in Revere, one local.”
Nick opened his phone. “It’s probably the local one, but give me both.”
Duncan read them out to him, then said, “I’ll leave the file on your desk. The way things are, I expect you’ll want to have a look at it.”
