Eddie Bourque: Speak Ill Of The Living Part 27

Pub owners.h.i.+p claimed last night that they are operating within the rules of their entertainment license, and have already gone beyond what is required to satisfy Matthewson by installing a new vestibule to contain the sound when patrons come in and out.

The board put the complaint on hold for two weeks, to allow commissioners time to schedule a site visit to the club...

Eddie read the story to the bottom. All the relevant facts were there. The top was engaging, even funny, while still respectful. The outcome of the hearing was clearly stated high in the story. And Ryan had added context with just a few words, describing the club as an "incubator" for new acts, which quickly characterized the garage bands that jammed there.

This is good journalism.

It was good enough to be published in any community newspaper. Eddie printed a paper copy of the story and then grabbed his red pen. With a few constructive edits, Ryan's story would really sing, and then Eddie could get back to sleep.

The clock said five-thirty-one. Eddie sighed. It was time to give up on sleep. He set the paper aside for a moment and brewed himself a ten-cup batch of double-strength Sumatra.

Eddie watched it drip, rubbing the key in his pocket.

Chapter 28.

The Late Chuckie's rat bike glug-glugged over the bridge. Eddie looked downriver, where the Merrimack widened and became shallow. Patches of yellow-green gra.s.s sprouted from little almond-shaped islands where the water parted around sloping mounds of muck. The morning was bright, cloudless, hot. The wind from his slow ride failed to dry the sweat that dripped from under Eddie's helmet. The perspiration came from a mix of nervousness and too much caffeine.

The Post Office was a modern building with a sleek design that suggested computer-age efficiency. Eddie left the bike between two yellow lines, patted his pants, felt the key again-still there-left his helmet and goggles on the seat and walked inside.

The building's air conditioning had been set lower than cool, lower than cold, somewhere near cryogenic sleep. Sweaty after the ride, Eddie felt a deep-bone chill. He was afraid to ask for help finding the P.O. box-why would the rightful owner need help finding it? He browsed the little metal doors until he found the one with a number that matched the stamp on the key.

Looking both ways, feeling suspicious-probably looking suspicious-Eddie inserted the key and opened the box.

A manila envelope had been folded and stuffed inside.

Eddie wrestled it out.

It was nine by twelve, a half-inch thick, obviously containing paper of some kind. The address printed in green pencil was to Lewis Cuhna, at this post office box, Lowell, Ma.s.sachusetts.

Cuhna had mailed this envelope to his own P.O. address.

Eddie checked the postmark and raised an eyebrow. Dated last spring...six months ago. He double-checked the box. No other mail inside. Weekly newspaper editor Lew Cuhna had taken the trouble of renting this post office box for the single purpose of stas.h.i.+ng this envelope.

Eddie stuck the packet in his waistband, pulled his polo s.h.i.+rt over it and walked out, toward the bike. He felt like he was moving in slow motion, almost like he was not moving at all; it was as if the bike were simply getting bigger, until Eddie was standing over it, helmet strap cinched beneath his chin, his shoe stomping the starter. He revved the engine, blasted the coughs from it, and then drove off.

There was no need to think about where he would open the envelope.

There was one car parked beside the Grotto shrine, a twenty-year-old green Oldsmobile the size of a tugboat. A plastic St. Christopher statue stood on the dash. Eddie left the bike beside the car.

Nearly all of the two dozen white candles on the shrine's altar had been lit. Somebody had strung Christmas tree lights around the statue of the Virgin. The lights shone feebly under the bright sun.

A car horn blared from the street. Two men argued loudly. Eddie blocked out their conversation and looked to the top of the shrine. He saw no one. For a moment, he thought he was alone.

He pulled the envelope from his waistband, and then walked to the stairs.

An old woman in a long black dress and white Adidas tennis shoes-a nun, Eddie quickly realized from her black habit-knelt on the staircase, halfway to the top. The nun clutched pink rosary beads. Eddie watched her. She grunted in pain as she stiffly climbed on her knees to the next stair, and then began mumbling her prayers.

Eddie held the iron handrail and climbed past her.

"Excuse me, sister," he said gently.

The nun smiled up at him. Her face was wide, tanned and deeply creased with channels that flowed from around her eyes to the corners of her smile. Her skin was s.h.i.+ny in the sun. She was maybe eighty years old, and beautiful.

"Bonjour," the nun said in a high, trill voice. "It is a joy to love in His name."

Eddie smiled and nodded. "Oui."

He climbed to the top of the shrine and sat on the bench there. Through the willows he could see the windsurfers tugging their bright sails over the river. Eddie wondered if Lucy Orr was among them.

He held the envelope and looked over the river. The sun was hot on his face, hot enough to burn his cheeks if he wasn't careful. He could hear the old nun murmuring her prayers, groaning as she dragged arthritic limbs up each stair.

He hesitated, because the envelope from Lew Cuhna was his last hope.

There are no more leads.

If the envelope did not hold answers, then Eddie would have failed.

He traced the Sign of the Cross-seemed like the thing to do on top of the shrine-and then opened the envelope.

Inside, Eddie found three editions of Lew Cuhna's newspaper, The Second Voice.

Eddie recognized one of the papers immediately: it was the edition Roger Lime had been holding in the first photograph released by the kidnappers. The front page had a cliche in a banner headline: SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL OFF WITHOUT A HITCH.

"So what, Lew?" Eddie muttered. "So what?"

Then he noticed the gray text under the headline.

It wasn't a real story.

"Dummy text," Eddie said aloud, running his finger up and down the columns.

It was all computer-generated nonsense, random letters grouped into unp.r.o.nounceable words. Dummy text, such as this, was created by publis.h.i.+ng software to permit a page designer to experiment with the page layout without using real news copy. Once the page design was set, the real news copy would be flowed into the columns to replace the dummy text.

Eddie turned the page-nothing but dummy text, and fake headlines, too. Not one real news story in the entire paper.

He stared at the top half of the front page and tried to make sense of it.

The page looked just like the edition that Lime had been holding in the kidnapper's photo, except that this edition wasn't dated; this wasn't a real newspaper.

It's a mockup.

Why did Lew want Eddie to see it?

He put it aside and looked at the next paper Cuhna had left in the envelope.

It was another mockup-all dummy text. The front page had been designed to look identical to the first mockup, except that the headline was different: SHAKESPEARE FESVITVAL IS MARRED BY RAIN.

That made no sense.

The weather had been ideal for the Shakespeare festival. No rain at all.

Eddie set that paper aside, too, and inspected the last one-also full of dummy text, and identical to the first two mockups, except that its banner headline read: CANCELLED: NO SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL THIS YEAR.

That headline was just idiotic. The Shakespeare festival had been held the same weekend in late July every year for the past two decades. The outdoor festival was a Lowell tradition.

Eddie's head snapped up with a sudden revelation.

He stared blankly at the river for a moment, thinking, thinking. Then he flipped through the papers again, re-reading the headlines.

The nun had reached the top of the stairs. She was a dark figure at the periphery of Eddie's vision. She was mumbling the Hail Mary.

Eddie understood everything, who was doing these killings, and why.

Roger Lime. Dr. Crane. Jimmy Whistle.

"Holy f.u.c.k," he said under his breath.

Then the larger truth of his revelation thundered down on him. "Oh, G.o.d! Noooo!" he wailed. He crushed the papers in his fists and pressed his palms to his eyes.

The old nun appeared in an instant on the bench beside him.

"Qu'est-ce que se pa.s.se?" she asked. What is happening?

Her fingertips touched lightly on Eddie's shoulder. He turned to her, grit his teeth, buried himself in the old nun's loving embrace, and wept.

Chapter 29.

The message on the answering machine that evening was from Durkin: "Eh? Bourque? Tony at the garage says that s.h.i.+tty Chevette is ready and he wishes you'd come pick it up so he can use the parking s.p.a.ce for his new Dumpster. So, if that bike ain't killed you yet, give Tony a call. Oh, and he wants his money. Cash."

Eddie smiled. He had made peace with The Late Chuckie's rat bike.

It won't be the bike that kills me.

Eddie had spent all morning at the Grotto, on his knees, wounded inside, as if a little boy.

He had spent the afternoon on the bike, a man, deciding how he would end the drama of the past six days.

On a whim, he had wanted to see the ocean. Eighty-five miles per hour on The Late Chuckie's rat bike was like doing mach-three on hockey skates; it required unbroken focus to stay alive. The bike had taken Eddie to New Hamps.h.i.+re, up the Hampton Beach strip. The strip smelled like fried food, coconut sunscreen and seawater, as it did in Eddie's earliest recollection of a family weekend there, in a two-story drive-up motel with a view of the backside of a three-story drive-up. Eddie had been five years old. That was before his parents realized that Eddie was not his brother, and that they could not erase Henry's murder conviction by starting over.

Earlier today, the beach had been carpeted with reddened blobs of sizzling beach flesh. You could have walked a mile without touching sand-stepping only on the edges of other people's towels. Eddie had stopped the bike and climbed onto the seawall. The tide was low. Four white-haired men, their leathery bodies tanned so dark that they approached purple, had been playing bocce on the hard sand below the mid-tide line.

Behind them, two small sailboats, probably twenty-two-footers, cut silently along the water.

Eddie had sipped Pellegrino water and watched the boats. They gave him an idea, and he understood what he needed to do.

He had gotten home at dusk, his face chapped from the wind and the sun.

His first call was to Bobbi's hotel. The clerk put him on hold for five minutes, playing Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year'' in Eddie's ear; the wait wasn't too bad.

Sinatra clicked off, the call was transferred, and Bobbi got on the line. "Hey, little brother!" she said. "Was thinking about the best way to reach Henry about getting a good lawyer. You could write him a note-"

"Won't work," Eddie interrupted.

"Oh, don't be modest," she chided. "I've seen your writing. Henry loves the way you express yourself on paper."

Eddie's words came out hoa.r.s.e: "I've found something, Bobbi. It's...bad for Henry. The court appeal, the new trial..." He trailed off.

She waited, waited. "Christ, Eddie," she said finally. "What have you done?"

"I'm afraid I've wrecked everything," he said. "Before I tell the police about this, I thought I should tell you. You're his wife, and you need to hear it first. Can you meet me tonight?"

"Where? I'll meet you right G.o.ddam now."

"No, later. Say, midnight? I've got stuff to do before I can see you."

Her voice softened. "You're scaring me, little brother. What is all this?"

"There's a place off the river, near this religious school. They call it the Grotto. It's secluded. n.o.body will be around late tonight. Let me tell you how to get there."

He told her. They hung up.

Eddie's next call was to Detective Orr's cell phone.

Orr must have recognized Eddie's number on her caller ID, because she answered: "I hope you've smartened up."

"I'm afraid that I have."

"You don't sound like yourself, Eddie."