Eddie Bourque: Speak Ill Of The Living Part 4

"Elvis has the record," another student said. "Or The Beatles."

"No," argued Ryan, "Pink Floyd."

"What does the term on the record mean," Eddie said, voice squeaking.

"I believe the sales record for a musical recording," said Gerard, rubbing his chin, "is held by that Brazilian gentleman who plays the pan flute."

Another student offered, "He means public records."

"Public? Like free downloads?" Ryan asked, incredulous. "No way, man. If it's good enough to listen to, it's good enough to buy."

"What the h.e.l.l is the pan flute?" asked Margaret.

"People!" Eddie pleaded.

"I've never heard of anybody downloading music from that pan flute dude," said Ryan.

Gerard shook a finger at Ryan, saying in his British accent: "That's probably why the gentleman has the sales record-n.o.body listens for free."

Ryan nodded slowly, impressed. "Yeaaaaah!"

Margaret repeated, "What the h.e.l.l is the pan flute?"

The pipe made its sucking sound.

Without meaning to, Eddie pulverized the chalk in his fist.

Chapter 4.

General VonKatz walked on the piano keys, from the low notes to the high, sounding, in Eddie's imagination, like a tone-deaf elephant turning into a pixie.

Eddie opened his eyes. He had fallen asleep in the recliner again. He stretched, felt the knots in his back. The clock said seven-thirty in the morning; it felt much earlier. After cla.s.s, Eddie had swallowed two jiggers of scotch and an Advil to help him sleep, but he had spent a restless night replaying the conversation with Henry in his mind.

I gave away the table I made to my partner's old lady.

Was Henry saying that this woman kidnapped Roger Lime?

And which partner?

For a moment, Eddie considered telling Detective Orr about the table, and what Henry had claimed. But Eddie resisted. The story was so outlandish, the proof flimsy. Henry might have seen a better copy of the Roger Lime photograph in some other paper, and had concocted that detail about damaging the table leg.

He doubted that finding this woman-his partner's old lady-would even lead to Roger Lime. Even if Henry were telling the truth, what's to say this woman even had the table? She could have left it at the curb for junk-pickers ten years ago.

Eddie also was uncomfortable with the notion that his brother, the killer, might have given Eddie something of value. He hoped that Henry was wrong-that it wasn't his table, and that he had nothing to do with Roger Lime.

The General walked back down the keys. He stopped, looked at Eddie and whined. Eddie laughed. "All right," he said, heaving his body out of the chair with a groan. "Let's eat."

The refrigerator held wheat bread, cottage cheese, eleven Rolling Rock beers, still left from the case he had bought a month before, and two dozen foods from the goop group: spreads and dressings, mustards and marinades.

"Nuts," Eddie said. "Not much here."

Hmmmm. Nuts? He checked the b.u.t.ter dish for a bag of slivered almonds he vaguely recalled. Nope. Long gone.

The General whined more intensely at Eddie's feet. There was better fortune in the cupboard-a can of white tuna. Eddie spooned half the fish into a bowl for the General. He ate the rest himself from the can, and then had two pieces of bread; it was like eating a sandwich one component at a time.

With more than twenty coffees to choose from in his freezer, he picked a Guatemalan he liked for the chocolate undertones.

Eddie went to fetch his Was.h.i.+ngton Post while the coffee dripped.

What the h.e.l.l?

The paper was spread across the tiny patch of lawn between Eddie's rented house and the street. He recovered the news, metro and sports sections, and then gave up on finding the rest and went back inside.

Bad night's sleep, bad breakfast, bad newspaper. If my coffee is bad I'm going back to bed.

The coffee was never bad. Crisp. Nice acidity. Hard to believe something so good was legal. The caffeine jacked him to a higher level of awareness, like smelling salts for the soul. He read what little he had found of his paper, and barely missed the rest of it. The national news page had a short update on Roger Lime-essentially that the police had no new leads.

The General had finished his food. He swiped against Eddie's legs, whining for something else.

"How about some TV?" Eddie said.

He fed a videotape into the VCR and turned it on. The house filled with chirping and fluttering, as the television showed close-ups of wild finches jockeying for s.p.a.ce on a crowded birdfeeder. The General hopped on the coffee table to watch. The cat's eyes darted over the TV screen.

"When you're sick of the birds, I'll put in the garden moles," Eddie promised. He owned a half-dozen videos from the "Small Prey Series for Indoor Cats." The tapes cost twenty bucks each, for sixty minutes of backyard animals scurrying around; it was an absolute G.o.ddam rip-off, and it killed Eddie that he hadn't thought of it first.

Springer called during Eddie's third cup of joe. "You working today?"

Eddie had planned to do research, to see if he could identify Henry's old partner. But it was hard to turn down a paying job, especially on a story with national interest. "I wouldn't mind another piece of the Lime story," he admitted.

"Work the coroner angle," Springer said. "The police have determined that the quack who mismatched Lime's dental records to the bones from the car fire is named Crane."

"Yeah, Alvin Crane," Eddie said. "Been in the medical examiner's office a long time. I've covered a zillion trials where he was the expert witness."

"Well, he hasn't been around the office since the photograph of Lime turned up. Called in sick, and hasn't been back."

"Is he sick? Or did he just misidentify his office?"

"Ouch," Springer said. "Head over to his place and see if the doctor is in."

Dr. Crane lived in a development of suburban mansions, each home identical except for details like brick face or stone face, pebble driveway or concrete. The developers had clear-cut a hardwood forest to build the homes, preserving little stands of mature white birch here and there for decoration. Crane's place was the only finished home on a cul-de-sac. Three dirt driveways stemming from the circle of asphalt led to fields of turned earth and weeds, for which the developer had not yet found buyers.

The house was two-toned, brick and yellow stucco. It was huge and attractive and unspecial at the same time. The black driveway smelled liked it had recently been treated with sealer. A silver Buick sedan was parked there. Eddie could see an unpainted, two-story barn out back, still under construction, stacks of clapboard on sawhorses outside it.

There were no cars going by, no children chasing each other around the neighborhood. Just the sound of the breeze sweeping across the lawn. People like Dr. Crane paid a lot of money for that kind of silence. Eddie found it creepy.

Eddie peeked in the mailbox-empty, so it seemed that Dr. Crane hadn't left town.

The doorbell was an orange dot lit from behind by a bright little bulb. Eddie rang it, heard the sing-songy chime from within the house.

Nothing.

He rang it again, waited, and then rapped the horseshoe knocker. He waited some more. He couldn't hear anyone moving inside.

From behind the house, a door slammed.

Eddie strolled across the front gra.s.s. "Dr. Crane?" he called out. "Dr. Crane?" Eddie felt like a trespa.s.ser on the lawn. He called out again, to announce himself, "h.e.l.lo? Is Dr. Crane around?"

He walked down a lush side lawn that sloped gently away from the house. The lawn abruptly turned to dirt at the property line. Red brick paths wandered through the backyard, around rock gardens garnished with leafy ferns and smooth silver driftwood. Somebody had begun applying clapboard to the unfinished barn. A circular saw lay on the ground, still plugged into an extension cord that snaked through a window into the house. There was a hammer on a sawhorse beside a coffee can full of nails.

"Dr. Crane?"

A back deck on the house led to a sliding gla.s.s door, which was open. The breeze tugged at the curtains. That door could not have made the noise Eddie had heard.

He looked over the barn. The twin roll-up garage doors were down. The side door was closed. There were no windows to peek through.

Eddie went to the side door and tested the k.n.o.b-unlocked.

He pushed the door open. It led into a tiny vestibule, and then, through another door, into the barn. The inside was nearly black.

Does he think he's developing film in here?

Eddie could make out a workbench, scattered tools, a lawnmower.

"Dr. Crane?"

He's got to be in here...he's not sick, he's working on his house.

Eddie stepped into the barn. "Dr. Crane, it's Eddie Bourque," he said, as he walked, arms feeling for objects in the darkness. "I'm a reporter, and I'm doing a story for the a.s.sociated Press today. I'd really like a word with you."

Eddie recognized the "A"-shape of a six-foot stepladder. He walked around it, toward the garage doors, where the light switch probably would be.

On the other side of the ladder, he walked into something with a thwack on the bone above his right eye. "Ow," he muttered, rubbing the tender spot.

Eddie frowned. Did he smell urine? He grabbed at the dark shape in the air.

Thin, narrow, smooth, leathery.

A shoe.

A leather wingtip and it was full.

Oh, Jesus.

Eddie dashed across the garage, stumbling over boxes and a bicycle. He felt along the wall, found a conduit tube, followed it up, found the switch, turned on the light.

"Oh Jesus!"

The body hung by the neck from a green and pink braided nylon rope, the kind of happy rope you'd use to hang a little girl's tire swing.

Eddie had disturbed the body by touching it. It slowly rolled a quarter turn to the left, paused there, then rolled the other way.

He hadn't seen Dr. Crane in more than a year, but there was no doubt this was he-silver haired, slight paunch, close to seventy years old. He was wearing denim overalls under an unb.u.t.toned white painter's coat. His face was swollen and purple, hard to look at. Eddie got another whiff of urine. What he had read was true; people p.i.s.s themselves when they hang.

Eddie wanted to run. But he couldn't. For there was something in the chest pocket of Crane's white smock that grabbed Eddie's attention and wouldn't let him leave. A sheet of paper, folded once lengthwise. Something had been typed on it.

A note. A suicide note.

Part of him-the better part-knew that he should dash right out of there, get his telephone from the car, call the police and wait for them on the street. But then the police would seal the barn. They would take the note. And they wouldn't show it to Eddie Bourque.

It would only take a moment to read it. What would it hurt?

The rope had been looped over a crossbeam near the top of the twenty-foot peaked roof; Crane hung high off the floor. Eddie steeled himself with a deep breath. He put his clammy hands on the ladder and stepped up, up, up, to the third rung. He looked the body in the small of its back. He still couldn't reach the note.

The feeling of trespa.s.sing was back, a thousand times stronger, like Eddie had crossed some line between trespa.s.ser and grave robber. He reached for the paper. A drop of sweat ran down his underarm with a cold tickle. Still couldn't reach the note; the body was facing away from him.

With just a finger and thumb, he pinched a tiny fold of the dead man's smock, and tugged. The body slowly rotated. Eddie stepped one rung higher. The body turned toward him. Another whiff of p.i.s.s. Eddie kept his eyes off that purple face and s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from the pocket. A dark urine stain had spread across the front of Dr. Crane's overalls.

Eddie read the typewritten lines: The district attorneys are fighting the good fight!!!! When they needed me, I was THERE.

For what THEY needed. Told them what they WANTED to hear.

I never meant to hurt anyone.

I just wanted to HELP put the monsters AWAY!!!

It grew out of my control, like a thing of its own mind!!!!

Forgive me, these FORTY years.

The letter was unsigned.

Eddie's hand trembled as he slid the note back where he had found it.

Dr. Crane had been falsifying his reports. Cutting corners to help prosecutors close their cases.

Eddie had never heard his police sources chatter about Crane-n.o.body had ever suggested that Crane's work might have been suspect, except defense lawyers. But they got paid to discredit the state's witnesses; they'd do it to their own mothers.

Forty years? How many bodies were in the wrong graves? No, to h.e.l.l with the graves-Crane had been an expert witness at thousands of criminal trials over the past four decades. How many innocent people had he helped put away?

The body rocked back. Eddie smelled the stench. He grimaced at the stain on Crane's overalls.