Later that afternoon I was gazing out my office window trying not to think about Vincent Russo when Julie buzzed me. “There’s somebody here who wants to see you,” she said.
“Who is it?”
“Mrs. Cahill,” said Julie. “If you have a minute.”
“Of course I’ve got a minute,” I said. “I’ve got several minutes. You know I’m in here daydreaming.”
I got up and went out to the reception area.
Donna Cahill, Gordie’s wife, was a plump, pretty woman somewhere in her late forties. I’d only met her a couple of times. She looked older than I remembered.
She stood up when she saw me. She was wearing a gray business suit and an off-white silk blouse and high heels and a big shoulder bag. I had the impression that she’d dressed up for this occasion, as if she thought her appearance would make some kind of difference.
I went over to her and held out my hand. “I’m sorry about Gordie,” I said.
“Yes. Thank you.” She took my hand and smiled quickly. “I wondered if I could talk with you for a minute. I know I don’t have an appointment, but …”
“You don’t need an appointment,” I said. “Would you like some coffee or something?”
“Your secretary already offered,” she said. “I’m fine, thank you.”
We went into my office. Donna sat on the sofa with her knees pressed together. She rested her big shoulder bag on her lap and tugged at the hem of her skirt.
I sat in the chair across from her. “How are you doing, Donna?” I said to her.
She looked out the window for a moment, then returned her eyes to me. “I guess I’ve been waiting for that late-night knock on the door ever since we got married,” she said softly. “All that time he was with the state police? Even during the past ten years or so, when he was working private, presumably easy, safe, boring stuff, it never left me, that feeling of impending doom. It never went away. It didn’t make for a particularly happy marriage.” She looked up at me and smiled. I saw no irony in her smile. I guessed that in better times she had smiled often and easily.
“I can understand that,” I said.
“Actually,” she said, “I guess Gordon was happy enough. Anyway, all those years, they pretty much prepared me for what happened Sunday night. I’d played it out in my head a thousand times. So how am I doing? I’m doing about the way I imagined I’d be doing. Kind of numb, I guess.”
I nodded. There didn’t seem to be anything to say about that.
“He was doing what he wanted to do,” she said after a minute, “what he was good at. I loved him, but I resented
the hell out of his job.” She waved her hand, dismissing the importance of her own feelings. “Anyway, it seems like even now, after he’s dead, his damn job is still haunting me.”
I noticed that she’d taken pains with her makeup, especially around her eyes. In spite of her denials, I suspected she’d done some crying.
I put my elbows on my knees and leaned toward her. “What can I do, Donna? How can I help?”
“Gordon always said you were the one lawyer he could trust. He said if he ever needed a lawyer, you’d be it.” She arched her eyebrows at me.
“I trusted him, too,” I said. “Gordie was rock solid. Even if he did inflict me with some awful puns.”
She smiled. “I want to do what’s right. I guess I want to hire you. I need some advice.”
I waved my hand. “You don’t need to hire me. What’s the problem?”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You know Roger Horowitz.”
“Sure.”
“You know how—how dogged he can be, then.”
I smiled. “I certainly do.”
“Gordon and Roger were old friends from his state police days,” she said. “We used to socialize with Roger and Alyse. Now Roger’s investigating Gordon’s death. Roger tells me he was murdered.”
“He told me that, too,” I said carefully.
“He wants me to give him permission to go through Gordon’s files and records. He thinks he’ll find something that will lead him to the murderer.” She paused. “I’d like him to catch whoever did this, of course. But …”
“But those files contain confidential information,” I said.
She nodded. “Gordon always said confidentiality was an absolute in his work. He said it was the same as a doctor or”—she looked up at me—“or a lawyer.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t quite know what to do. Roger says Gordon’s dead, so it’s up to me. He says I don’t have any obligations to anybody. What do you think?”
“I’m probably the wrong person to ask,” I said.
“I know he was working on something for you,” she said. “I think that makes you the right person to ask.”
“I don’t know for certain if that case has anything to do with what happened to Gordie,” I said.
“You think it might?”
I nodded. “It might.”
She looked up at the ceiling. “Roger implied it had something to do with that testimony he gave ten or twelve years ago. He was hinting about mobsters, revenge. Like that. I think he was trying to scare me.”
“Horowitz is a good man,” I said. “He’s just trying to solve a crime.”
“I’m asking for your advice,” Donna said.
“I can’t be objective,” I said. “My professional relationship with my own client is at stake, and as much as I want Gordie’s murderer brought to justice, and even considering the possibility that there’s a connection, I have refused to share any confidential information with Roger Horowitz. But that doesn’t make it the right thing for you.”
She shook her head. “Oh, I think it does. It’s what Gordon would want, don’t you think?”
I nodded. “Well, if you want the truth, I guess I do, yes. I think he would consider it a betrayal if you or I divulged confidential information about his clients to anybody.”
“Even if it meant his murderer would go free?”
“That’s a tough one, all right.” I shrugged. “My situation is different from yours.”
“He kept all his records locked up in his office in our house,” she said.
“What about the office on St. Botolph Street?”
She shook her head. “That’s just where he met with clients, did his research, played on his computer, used the phone. He didn’t feel it was secure.”
“I know Horowitz did some snooping around there.”
“Well, I’m sure he didn’t find anything,” she said. “That’s why he wanted to snoop around our house. I told him I had to think about it. He mumbled something about a search warrant.”
“Typical,” I said. “He’s bluffing.”
“So you think I’m on solid legal ground?”
“Legal or moral?” I said.
“Moral is my own problem,” she said. “I’m not asking for your help with that. I want to know about legal.”
“You could make a compelling case either way,” I said. “On the one hand, you, as Gordie’s wife, have no legal obligation to his clients. You could turn his files over to the police and let them worry about the confidentiality issue. On the other hand, the significance of those files doesn’t change just because Gordie isn’t here to protect them. They’re still confidential. The people who confided in him still have every right to expect their privacy to continue to be honored.”
Donna Cahill was smiling at me. “Could you repeat that?”
“Well,” I said, “all I meant was, a lawyer could argue it either way. Which, of course, is typical of lawyers. Which I guess is what I was doing, come to think of it. You should do what feels right to you.”
“So it is a moral issue.”
I shrugged.
“Roger said he’d be back,” she said, “looking for those files. I’m going to tell him no.”
“You going to tell him you consulted with an attorney,” I said.
“Sure. Why not.”
“If you want to see Roger Horowitz blow his stack,” I said, “just tell him it was me you consulted with.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing Roger blow his stack.” Donna smiled. “I’ve got something of yours,” she said. She opened her shoulder bag and pulled out a manila envelope. “I found this on Gordon’s desk. It’s got your name on it.”
“We were going to get together Monday morning,” I said. “He probably planned to give it to me then.”
“Yes, well …” Gordon Cahill’s Toyota Corolla hit the tree in the Willard Brook State Forest on Sunday night, she was thinking.
I was thinking that, too. The timing of it was striking.
She handed the envelope to me. “One less confidential thing for me to worry about.”
I took the envelope. It was sealed with cellophane tape. Cahill had scrawled “Coyne” on it with a black Magic Marker.
There was something else scribbled on the envelope, this in blue ballpoint pen. It said: “Leave no tern unstoned.”
I looked up at Donna.
She smiled. “I guess he was working on another pun.”
“I thought some of them were actually pretty clever,” I said. “Though I never admitted that to Gordie. I think he enjoyed hearing you groan when he told one of his puns.”
She shrugged. “He was a clever man, all right.”
I put the envelope on the coffee table. “Thanks for this.”
She stood up and smoothed her skirt over her thighs. “Well, I won’t take any more of your time,” she said. “Thank you for listening. Thank you for your advice.” She gave me a little half smile. Then she suddenly turned her head away, and I heard her mumble, “Oh, shit.”
I stood up and went to her side. I touched her shoulder. “Donna?”
She turned and put her forehead on my chest. “Roger told me he didn’t want me looking at Gordon’s body. Wouldn’t even let me see a picture of him.”
I put my arms around her. Cahill’s body was a cinder, Horowitz had told me.
“He brought Gordon’s watch and his wedding band and his wallet over for me to identify,” she said. “They were in a big yellow envelope. The ring and the watch were half melted. They had to cut them off him. The wallet was charred.” Her arms went around my waist and she hugged herself against me. “Thinking about what happened to him …”
I patted her shoulder. I felt useless. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“He kept his wallet in his hip pocket,” she murmured. “He was sitting on it, and it got burned anyway. The money in it was ashes. I keep trying to imagine it …”
I made sympathetic noises in my throat and held on to her.
“I swore I wouldn’t cry,” she mumbled. “Gordon always told me I had to toughen up.”
“I’d say you’re plenty tough,” I said.
“Just putting up with all his stupid puns.” She chuckled softly into my shirt. “Oh, hell, Brady. I miss him.”
“Me, too,” I said.
After Donna Cahill left, I went back into my office, sat at my desk, and opened the envelope that Gordie had intended to give me. It contained two computer printouts of newspaper articles.
The headline for the first one read: “Search for Local Boy Given Up.” The date at the top was October 22, 1971.
JAFFREY–After nine days of intensive searching by local and state authorities, specially trained rescue dogs, and an estimated seventy-five volunteers, the hunt for the teenage boy who got lost on Mount Monadnock on Columbus Day was suspended.
Robert Gilman, 13, of Southwick, was hiking the popular Parker Trail on the east slope of the mountain when an early-season blizzard separated him from the rest of his group.
According to State Police Lieutenant Francis Conway, the weather impeded the search efforts from the beginning. In addition to the Columbus Day blizzard, which left nearly a foot of snow on the mountain, another storm three days later dropped seven more inches. “Snow on the mountain in October isn’t that unusual,” said Lt. Conway. “Two major storms within three days of each other like that is pretty rare, though. The snow made it really hard for the dogs.”
Conway indicated there was no immediate plan to resume the search.
I’d read somewhere that Mount Monadnock was the mostclimbed mountain in the United States. It was one of those geologically old, round-topped, worn-down eastern mountains where casual hikers could follow well-marked walking trails to the summit in the morning, have a leisurely picnic, and descend in the afternoon. You could see Monadnock’s peak from some of the hilly roads in Southwick, New Hampshire.
The headline for the second clipping read: “Boy’s Body Found on Monadnock.” It was dated July 16, 1972.
JAFFREY — Andy and Rebecca Gilman’s nine-month nightmare ended Saturday afternoon when hikers discovered the couple’s teenage son’s body at the bottom of a ravine off the Marlboro Trail on the west side of Mount Monadnock.
Bobby Gilman, who would have turned fourteen in three weeks, became separated from his friends in a freak snowstorm last Columbus Day. Rescue workers and volunteers searched for over a week before giving up.
The boys who were with Bobby that day told police that they had been playing in the woods about halfway up the mountain just off the heavily traveled Parker Trail on the east slope when the heavy snow squall suddenly enveloped them. They headed down the trail, and only when they arrived at the bottom did they realize that Bobby wasn’t with them.
“We found the boy’s body on the opposite side of the mountain from where he got lost,” said Jaffrey Police Sergeant Adam Becker. “We figure he must have gotten disoriented in the storm and the darkness, and he ended up wandering several miles in the wrong direction. It appears that he fell into the ravine and hit his head and broke his leg. If he’d just stayed where he was, the rescue teams would have found him for sure. It’s a tragedy.”
Bobby Gilman was an honor-roll student. He played the clarinet in the Southwick junior high school band and was a member of the French club. Funeral arrangements are indefinite pending the release of his body.
I tilted back in my chair and looked up at the ceiling. I was thinking of Andy and Rebecca Gilman. How do parents ever learn to live with such a thing?
I read the two stories again. The names of the boys who’d been with Bobby Gilman the day he got lost on the mountain were not mentioned. If they had been, I was willing to bet that Oliver Burlingame, Mark Lyman, and Albert Stoddard would’ve been among them.
If I was right, those boys must have lugged around a load of guilt all those years.
Mark Lyman, for one, had ended up taking his deer rifle into the woods shooting himself with it. Maybe he never did quite learn how to live with it.
Maybe Oliver Burlingame had gone to Louisiana and jumped off his bass boat.
And now Albert was acting, in Ellen’s word, “weird.” Guilt over something that happened thirty years ago?
If so, why now?
And what did Bobby Gilman’s death on Mount Monadnock in 1971 have to do with Gordon Cahill’s murder?
Julie and I usually close up shop a little early on Friday afternoons, so I got home before Evie. I changed into my weekend clothes, then took Henry down to the Common so he could stretch his legs.
When we got back, I snagged a Sam Adams from the refrigerator, took it to my room, and checked my voice mail.
I had one message: “Mr. Coyne, this here is Farley Nelson up to Southwick. I was thinkin’ maybe you’d like to come on up here tomorrow, give them bass in my little pond a try. They’ve been bitin’ awfully good lately. I’ll be around all day. If you can make it, just come on up. Don’t forget your fly rod.”
He didn’t leave his number, but I hit star-69 and retrieved it.
I dialed it, and when his answering machine picked up, I said, “Farley, it’s Brady Coyne. Thanks for the invitation. I’ll be there. Late morning sometime, assuming that’s okay with you. If you get a chance, call me back. I need directions to your place.”
I thought it would be fun to get to know Farley better, and maybe even to catch one of his largemouth bass on a fly. I was also looking forward to testing his memory about a Southwick boy who died on Mount Monadnock over thirty years earlier.
Evie and I were sipping Bloody Marys in our patio garden and watching the late-summer sky grow dark. We were debating whether to go out to eat or have takeout delivered. Neither of us had the energy to cook.
Henry was sprawled under the table listening closely to our discussion. He’d already eaten, but he was always attentive when the subject was food.
We’d pretty much agreed on takeout and had narrowed it down to pizza or Chinese.
I refilled our Bloody Mary glasses. “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” I said to Evie.
“Thank God.”
“Feel like driving up to New Hampshire with me?”
She took a long thoughtful sip, then said, “Why?”
“Well, the foliage has started to turn. It’s supposed to be a nice day. There are always antique shops …”
She was grinning at me. “Antique shops? Come off it, Brady Coyne. You hate antique shops. And since when did you want to go driving around looking at foliage?”
I shrugged. “I’ve got to go back up there, talk to someone. I thought you might like to come along.”
“And do what?”
“Keep me company. It is a pretty drive.”
She reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “Honey,” she said, “don’t worry about me, okay? You’ve got business to do, and if you’ve got to do it on a Saturday, that’s fine. I understand. I’m a big girl. I’ll give Mary a call, see if she wants to play.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “Bring Henry. He enjoys foliage.”
“I wouldn’t do it if weren’t important.”
“I believe you,” she said. She stood up. “I need a jacket. I’m getting chilly. Want anything inside?”
I shook my head.
Evie went into the house. I reached down and scratched Henry’s forehead. I was thinking about Bobby Gilman stumbling around a mountainside in the dark with a blizzard swirling around him.
When Evie came back, she said, “Hold out your hands and close your eyes.”
I did.
She put something into my hands. “Don’t open ’em yet,” she said. “Guess what?”
I closed my hands on it. “I know what this is,” I said. “It’s a damn cell phone.” I opened my eyes and looked at Evie. “I hate cell phones.”
“Tough,” she said. “This is for me, not you. This is for when you’re on the road or held up in court or off fishing or wandering around in New Hampshire somewhere and you realize you’re going to be late and you know I’m about to start worrying about you, or you think maybe I’m already getting angry with you. This is so you can call me and tell me you’re okay and you’re going to be late and you love me. Just keep it with you, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “But I’ll never use it.”
“You’ll use it to call me,” she said.
“I guess so,” I said. “But I’m not going to give the number to anybody. I don’t want the damn thing jangling in my pocket.”
“I’ve got the number,” she said. “If it jangles, it’s me, and you better answer it.”
“If you tell Julie I’ve got a cell phone,” I said, “I promise, I’ll heave it off the Longfellow Bridge.”
She smiled. “It’s a deal. What about pizza?”