The Ambassador, page 27
‘I know he is. Goodbye, Mrs Stevenson.’
‘Goodbye Andy.’ She turned to continue her walk, and I turned back toward the Maverick. There was a bite in the air that hinted of a cold winter just around the corner. The smell of woodsmoke offered the only sense of comfort regarding the coming of ice and snow. I was halfway back to my car when I heard a shot from somewhere in the woods. Stevenson was right, the hunters were reckless. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to share a grin with Honey.
Except she wasn’t there to smile back. She was lying on the ground. As I ran toward her, I could see the blood on the ground. Steam was rising up from her. I got to her, and her lips were moving but only a gurgling noise came out. She had been shot in the abdomen, just a couple of inches below her sternum.
Please, please let it be a through-and-through, I thought. She could live with a gut shot if we got her to the hospital quickly. I ran my hand under her and felt a lot of blood. I rolled her gently on her side and I saw her back.
The entrance wound was about the size of a pencil eraser, but the exit wound was the size of a large grapefruit. The wound was a gaping mess of blood, bone fragments and flesh. All I could smell was ammonia and blood. Her wound was horrific, easily one of the worst I had ever seen. The breath rattled out of her lungs and her eyes lost all of the light in them. She died in my arms.
I had her blood on my hands, my clothes. A rough hand at my shoulder pulled me away. Stevenson gave out a tortured scream of pure anguish. He was a man suddenly and irrevocably dipped in the fire of hell. Maureen ran up a few seconds later, barefoot and wearing flannel pajamas.
I was looking at the deer again. The wounds, the smells, the steam rising from the ground. Except I wasn’t in Laos. I was in central Vermont. Gordon Junior walked up, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt. He took one look at all of it and promptly vomited on the grass. I stood up and ran back to the house.
I called the Vermont State Police and told them there had been a shooting and a woman was dead. I gave them the address and hung up on the dispatcher. I dialed Watts’s number, and I noticed that I left bloody fingerprints on the white phone where I had touched it. Watts finally answered. It was, after all, a Sunday.
‘Hello.’
‘Watts.’
‘Roark, isn’t it a little early for you on a Sunday?’
‘I’m up at the Ambassador’s place in Vermont. Stevenson’s wife is dead.’
‘Dead how?’
‘Shot. From the tree line.’
‘OK, I’m on my way.’
‘Brenda?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you stop by my place? My clothes … my clothes have her blood all over them.’
‘Sure. You OK?’
‘No. Not by a long shot,’ I said to the dial tone after Watts hung up. Honey had been a beautiful, talented woman looking forward to motherhood, and now she was dead. Horribly dead. People like her aren’t supposed to die like that. That is reserved for people like me and guys like Baz. Not her.
I put the phone down in its cradle and went outside. There was nothing to be done. I stood there watching Stevenson, whose life had been blown apart in a millisecond, clutching his wife’s corpse. Gordon Junior looked queasy, hungover and shocked. Maureen looked flat, in shock and just flat.
‘Maureen. Your feet. You must be cold.’
She looked up at me.
‘Maureen, go put some shoes on, get a coat.’
‘Oh, OK.’
Gordon Junior looked up at me without saying anything and followed Maureen. I stood there, useless, Honey’s blood on me growing tacky and cold. In the distance I heard the wail of the siren. It had nothing on Stevenson’s anguished howls.
TWENTY
The Vermont State Police came in droves. My old friend Detective Lyndgarten arrived, this time in a warm jacket over his polyester K-mart suit, his feet sensibly tucked into duck boots. He pulled me aside and I told him what happened. He listened, nodding.
‘Sounds like some careless hunter. We get ’em up here every season. Usually from down south, idiots from New York or Connecticut. Sometimes they try and stave off the cold with a little liquid fortification. They get too close to homes, roads, and shoot at anything that moves.’
‘What about the exit wound? It was huge.’
‘Some of ’em use guns that are way too big. Had a fella up here one time with a .458 Magnum. Hunting deer, can you imagine? Just reckless.’
‘I smelled ammonia.’ It was gone now, just the smell of blood and death remained.
‘I don’t smell anything now, but who knows what some of the yahoos do to their ammo.’
The ambulance arrived, and they took Honey away in a body bag. I felt sick. Not like Gordon Junior, but sick as in ‘with the world’. Nothing about this made sense. That type of sick. I watched as a big state trooper led Stevenson back to the house. Stevenson looked dazed and in shock.
Watts showed up while I was sitting downstairs looking at Honey’s paintings. I was on my second, maybe third bourbon, which wasn’t bad for eleven fifteen in the morning. She softly said, ‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
‘Andy, what happened?’
‘They invited me up yesterday for dinner. We had a nice time, ate Sauerbraten, drank good wine, laughed and told stories. You know, like normal people do. I woke up this morning and wanted to get an early start.’
‘Why? Traffic shouldn’t be bad today, it’s Sunday.’
‘They asked me to investigate Baz Basselman and figure out why he did it. It wasn’t my type of investigation.’
‘That’s why you wanted to leave early?’
‘No, they were fawning over me. They acted like I had done something special, like I was some sort of hero. It made me wicked uncomfortable.’
‘So, you decided to leave.’
‘Yes, after breakfast. Stevenson told me not to leave without saying goodbye to Honey.’
‘That’s when it happened.’
‘Yep, I said goodbye and turned to walk back to my car. I got about ten or twenty yards away when I heard the shot. I thought it was just, you know, a hunter too close to the house. Then I turned to look, and she was down. I ran over, but …’
‘It was too late.’
‘Watts, the bullet really messed her up. I don’t know if it was a large caliber or a dumdum or what, but it blew a huge hole in her.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Watts, she was pregnant.’
‘I know.’ Watts knew there was nothing else to be said.
‘I need to get cleaned up.’ I had dried blood on my hands and on my clothes. Watts handed me the duffle bag of clothes she had gathered up at my apartment. I went to the bathroom. I pulled my clothes off while the shower heated up, filling the small room with steam. I scrubbed my hands and arms. Lathered and washed away the blood that soaked through my clothes. I lathered my hair, face, and then stuck my head under the stream of hot water.
When I was as clean as I could possibly get under the circumstances, I turned the water from hot to very cold, the spray stinging me with cold drops. I put my face in it and stayed under until I was shivering. I turned the water off and stepped out. I toweled off and dressed in clean clothes. My blood-soaked clothes just went in a trash bag. They would never be clean enough to wear again.
Watts was upstairs in the living room. She was standing over the white phone. As I grew closer, I saw that she was wiping it down with a rag. She was wiping away Honey’s blood that I had gotten all over the phone. She looked up.
‘I couldn’t leave it on the phone.’
‘It’s OK. I know what you mean.’ It didn’t have any value as evidence, and I wasn’t even sure if anyone was looking at this as a crime. Even if they were, it still wouldn’t be evidence of anything other than that I had held her after she had been shot.
‘You look better.’
‘Bourbon and a shower helped.’
‘Good. You looked rough.’
‘That was bad. I have seen some things … but that …’
‘I can see that. Doesn’t make much sense after Basselman’s little game. She gets through all that and gets hit by a stray round.’
‘Is that it? I’m not so sure.’
‘Andy, the State Police said it happens a few times a year up here. It’s bad luck but not unheard of.’
‘I don’t know.’
I looked outside. The morning had warmed in the pale sunlight and the frost was gone. ‘The timing seems coincidental.’
‘Sure, it is. It would be more so if Basselman or Kovach were still in the picture. But they are gone.’
‘I know, I know. It just doesn’t feel right.’ I couldn’t bring myself to say it ‘didn’t add up’, like they might on TV.
‘Maybe you’re too close to it. You liked them. I don’t know if you know this, but you are bad at feeling useless.’
‘You have a point there. Where’s everyone?’
‘Stevenson changed and went with the troopers. There is a lot of paperwork and there are arrangements to be made. Gordon Junior went with him. Maureen called Bradley; I assume to get him back here. She’s kicking around here somewhere.’
‘Probably dealing with it. Not an easy thing to see.’
‘No, I imagine not. What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I will hang around till Stevenson gets back. Make sure he is OK and then head back to Boston.’
‘That sounds like a plan. I called my boss and let him know what happened.’
‘What did he say about it?’
‘If it is a hunting accident, head back home and work on my caseload. If it is a murder, stay and advise the State Police.’
‘That sounds reasonable.’
I realized that I was standing looking at the tree line, across the field toward the road. On the other side of the road was another field and four or five hundred meters away was another wall of trees. In my head I was mentally calculating things like velocity and bullet drop. I was going through the index of different bullets, different calibers, trying to make the math add up to the wound I saw. Nothing did. Maybe Lyndgarten was right; maybe it was some yahoo trying out an experimental round.
In the early afternoon, Bradley arrived. Watts filled him in on what happened, sparing me from having to go over it again. Later Watts got a phone call and took it downstairs. Bradley came over to me.
‘How was the Ambassador?’
‘Bad.’ His anguished, grieving howl still echoed in my mind. ‘It was just bad.’
‘Jesus. Poor man.’ He would have said more but Watts came back upstairs.
‘That was the State Police. They combed the woods adjacent to the field and found some beer cans. Right now, they are leaning toward it being an accidental shooting. The shooter, if they were aware that they shot someone, probably took off.’
‘So that’s it?’ I asked.
‘For now, yes. They won’t release preliminary findings for weeks, but the reality of it is that it is an accident as far as they are concerned.’
‘OK, it is what it is.’ I didn’t like it, but that was the way it seemed to be going, whether I believed it was an accident or not.
The Ambassador, son in tow, returned home a little while later. Neither of them looked good. The elder Stevenson was pale and moved in a bit of a daze. The younger looked like he was going to throw up some more. Without being asked or told, we all followed Stevenson downstairs to the bar.
He poured himself a large bourbon and drank a couple of inches off it in one draft. Then he topped it off and sat heavily in his chair. He waved his hand at the bar and said, ‘I’m not up to playing host. Help yourselves.’
I took his advice and poured myself a large bourbon. Fortunately, all that time in the diplomatic corps had taught him well and I knew he bought the stuff by the case. Bradley got himself a beer from the refrigerator, which hardly seemed strong enough considering recent events. Gordon Junior poured himself a couple of fingers of vodka. Maybe there was hope for the kid yet. Watts didn’t have anything; she was going to head back to Boston soon.
Stevenson finished his bourbon and made to rise, but Bradley got up and poured him another one, adding a few ice cubes. Stevenson took it, mumbling an absentminded, ‘Thanks.’ Bradley didn’t say anything. Gordon Junior poured himself another two fingers of vodka without saying anything. Maureen came downstairs wearing jeans and her Dartmouth sweatshirt, hair pulled back in a ponytail.
‘Gordon, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
Watts stood up. ‘Mr Ambassador, I’m leaving. I am sorry for your loss, sir.’ She said the same inadequate words that we all say. Stevenson nodded and said, ‘Thank you,’ his voice coming from light years away.
Bourbon in hand, I walked Watts to her car. When we got to her red Saab, she said, ‘Are you going to stay up here for a couple of days? Keep an eye on the old guy?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good, I think he needs someone who will look out for him.’
‘You don’t trust the others?’
‘His assistant is too much of a yes man. His son is on something, and that redhead is a cold fish.’ It didn’t seem like the time to point out to Watts that I had firsthand knowledge to the contrary.
‘Look in on Sir Leominster for me for the next couple of days?’
‘Sure, take care of yourself.’ She got in her car and drove off. I watched her taillights until they disappeared into the twilight. I got my bag out of my car and went back into the somber house.
We sat with Stevenson, rotating in and out. Bradley had been given his marching orders and was making phone calls on behalf of the Ambassador. Gordon Junior came and went. I wondered what he was ingesting, besides vodka.
Later I went up to the kitchen and dug around in the refrigerator and found some cold cuts. I made sandwiches for everyone. They weren’t great but they were good enough. Even Stevenson managed to mechanically eat one. At least it would help soak up some of the bourbon. I sat with Stevenson, who described to me what the earlier phone call to his dead wife’s parents had been like. You didn’t have to be a detective to figure out that it had been bad.
Later, when he passed out snoring in the chair, I went and found some bedding by rummaging in the upstairs closets. The house was quiet and still, making me feel even more like an interloper. I bedded down on the couch, my .38 under my pillow. At some point I woke up and heard Stevenson sobbing. There was nothing to say or do. Later I woke up again and he had gone.
The next couple of days came and went much the same. The only difference was that Frieda had arrived Monday morning and she took charge of the domestic affairs. Food was served and we were expected to eat at the table. Stevenson maintained a healthy amount of bourbon in his system, and I only drank at night.
Maureen had stopped coming to my bed at night. It wasn’t anything we discussed but we didn’t have to. Honey’s death was still too recent. Everyone was very polite to each other. Bradley was kept busy trying to make arrangements, working around the fact that the coroner hadn’t yet released the body. Stevenson drank enormous quantities of bourbon trying to stay numb. Gordon Junior was like a wraith, only to be seen sparingly and even more rarely in the sunlight.
On the third day, the walls felt like they were closing in. I paced the living room, staring out at the woods and thinking about stray rifle rounds. The NVA – with all their skill, experience, and intent – had managed to wound me a bunch of times with very deliberate fire. Honey was killed by some asshole who just fired a round without any thought for where it might end up. The world wasn’t fair, and there was no point in expecting it to be.
I had packed and put my bags in the Maverick. I was thankful for my sweater because the blood-soaked pea jacket had gone in the trash. I went back to the house and ran into Bradley. ‘Leaving, Mr Roark?’
‘Yes, I’m not much help here.’ He nodded. No one seemed very talkative anymore.
I went downstairs to say goodbye to Stevenson. He had been spending more and more time in his recliner. Sinking into himself, sinking in his grief, pickling himself in expensive bourbon. He hadn’t showered or shaved since he had washed his wife’s blood away that morning. In the few short days, he had aged considerably.
‘I came to say goodbye, sir.’ He didn’t look up, and I turned to go but turned back. ‘I didn’t know her well, but I liked her. There was a sort of grace about her.’
I turned to leave when he said, ‘She was luminescent, Roark.’ I turned back. ‘When I first saw her, I fell in love with her. I had only ever been in love with two other women. A woman I met after the war and Gordon’s mother. Neither one compared to Honey.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Goodbye, Roark.’
‘Goodbye, sir.’
I walked upstairs and out the door of the hunting lodge. It had gone from being a place of happiness and conversation to having all the warmth of a mausoleum. Every time I closed my eyes I could see Honey on the ground, blinking at me with a total lack of comprehension. I got in the Maverick and drove to Boston in a foul mood.
The mood slackened as mid-November slid inevitably toward Thanksgiving. I don’t much care for the holiday. I don’t like turkey and I detest stuffing. Besides, it was a family holiday and, except for some guys I was in Vietnam with, I don’t have any family anymore.
In the last couple of weeks, I had spent time going over the case again and again in my head. I hadn’t really figured it out so much as I got lucky seeing Baz leaving the garage. When we shot it out in the woods, the case had closed. Which had been neat and tidy.
Then Honey got shot by a hunter. I couldn’t get over the wound channel his round had caused. I know a lot about guns. The Army had spent a lot of time and money teaching me about guns and ballistics. Yet, shy of a .50 caliber, I couldn’t think of a round that would do that much damage. It kept nagging at me.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I’d had enough. I got out my address book and thumbed to the Vs. I found Hank Vogel’s number in Pennsylvania. The first couple of tries were met with the phone just ringing. Later in the afternoon he picked up. He said ‘Hello’ in his heavy German accent.
