Speak Ill of the Living (6 page)

He chuckled. “Didn't learn your lesson last time, eh? Fine. I can make a pot.” He went off. Eddie left Henry's file alone while Durkin brewed the java. He had decided not to look at the file alone. On his expedition into his brother's criminal past, Eddie wanted somebody with him to watch his back.

Durkin returned in a few minutes with two paper cups of steaming black sludge. “Don't spill any,” he said. “This stuff stains.”

Eddie sipped and flinched at the bitterness. “Like licking a car battery,” he said. “I love it.”

Durkin laughed and turned to leave.

“Hang on a sec,” Eddie said. “This murder case—my brother's case.” He sighed. “I guess I could use a hand going through this stuff.” He smiled. “I could take your crutches away, I suppose. But I'd rather you just offered to help.”

Durkin looked at him. Eddie readied himself for more verbal combat. But Durkin didn't want to fight. He sat at the edge of the desk and flipped open the file.

“What I remember best is that they never found the money,” Durkin said. He searched through the file, pulled out a story about the missing money and flipped it on the desk for Eddie. “And they never found the guards' bodies, either.”

Eddie blanched. “Three murders? I didn't know it was three.”

“Naw, just two,” Durkin said. “Nicolaidis survived.” He tugged out another story for Eddie:

MISSING ARMORED CAR DRIVER ALIVE

Ralph V. Nicolaidis escapes captors

“The guards were tied up in a basement somewhere,” Durkin explained. He gestured to a head and shoulders photo of a thick-necked man with heavy black eyebrows. “They blindfolded this guy, Nicolaidis, and brought him out into the woods, out in Tyngsboro somewhere, probably to shoot him. But he managed to run off.”

Eddie scanned the story. The driver told police he had escaped in darkness and wandered through the woods for hours, until he heard the sound of traffic and staggered out onto a road.

Eddie was thrilled to learn that Ralph Nicolaidis had lived. Nicolaidis was just twenty-two, the paper had reported at the time. He had a mother and a stepfather. He had been accepted into the police academy. He played the drums.

In one sense, there was little difference between two murders and three—one man escaping didn't make Henry any less of a killer. But the difference of one life was infinite.

“So how did they catch them?” Eddie asked.

Durkin pulled out another clip. “Partial fingerprint in the truck. They finally matched it to a punk stickup man, who was doing life in prison on the installment plan—a year or two at a time.” He pointed to a mug shot of a young man with sharp, bony features. “This is the dude, Jimmy Whistle. He helped your brother pull off the heist.”

Eddie stared at the picture. He whispered, “My brother's partner.”

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

“Once the police nabbed Jimmy, he turned on Henry Bourque—fingered him as the mastermind and the trigger man who killed the guards, Dumas and Forte,” Durkin said. “Your brother admitted he had helped Whistle hold up a convenience store a few months before the armored car robbery, but he denied any involvement in the Solomon Transport murders. The jury saw it otherwise.”

Eddie read the story. In exchange for testimony against Henry, prosecutors had offered a plea bargain for James J. Whistle: parole in thirty years.

“He'd be out by now!” Eddie shouted.

Durkin read over the story. “I guess, assuming he stayed out of trouble. Cripes, imagine that—going into prison in your twenties and getting out at my age. That's a lot of life to miss.”

Eddie flipped through the file. “Something doesn't make sense,” he said. “Without the guards' bodies, and just the testimony of a convicted felon, how did the state stick the murder charge on Henry?”

“Blood evidence, if I recall,” Durkin said. He explained as he searched the file for the right story. “They found blood on his shoes.” He found the clip he was looking for and scanned it quietly for a minute. “Yeah, the cops found bloody sneakers in your brother's closet. Henry tried to say it was his own blood—and he did have a cut on his hand at the time. But you can't run from science. This was long before DNA testing, but an expert matched the blood types on the shoes to the missing guards.”

“How could they do that?”

“They knew from Army records that Dumas was blood-type B-negative,” Durkin explained, reading from the story. “Forte was AB-positive. Both types are rare—just two percent of the population is B-negative, four percent is AB-positive. Your brother is O-positive, which is common. But they didn't find any type O on his shoes—they found
both
of the rare types. It's pretty hard evidence.”

He offered the story to Eddie.

Durkin was right. Considering that Henry had tried to claim it was his own blood, the scientific conclusions were solid evidence. Beyond a reasonable doubt, for sure.

A name in the story leapt out at Eddie. He stood and read it again.

Dr. Alvin Crane.

“Holy shit—Dr. Crane testified at my brother's trial.”

“Crane? The guy who hanged himself yesterday?”

“Yeah…” Eddie read on. “He did the blood-type matching. It looks like he was the only expert to testify for the state.”

Durkin frowned. “Eddie, man, what the hell?” he said. “You're turning white.”

Eddie's eyes raced across the text. “Jesus! He was the only expert to testify
at all
. The defense didn't even offer a counter expert.”

“That was the public defender, back thirty years ago. What do you expect?”

The district attorneys are fighting the good fight!!!! When they needed me, I was THERE.

He sputtered, “Alvin Crane…he went to the rope a
liar
.”

Chapter 7

Leaving the
Empire
library was a lot easier than getting in. Security didn't care who broke
out
. Eddie had studied every story in his brother's file, and by the time he left the
Empire
, night had fallen.

The night was unusually cool for August. Eddie stuck his hands in his pants pocket and walked toward his car, which was tucked discreetly in the parking lot of one of the city's historic mills. The mill buildings were monsters of red brick that seemed too big to have been built in the century before modern machines. It seemed more likely that the mills just pushed themselves out of the ground the way mountains do. Some of the mills had become luxury apartment houses, others had become museums. They were the centerpiece of the city's tourism economy, a marketing plan based on America's industrial history.

Eddie squinted and scanned the field of dark asphalt. The Mighty Chevette was alone, deep in the parking lot. He listened to the knock of his shoes on the ground. He felt the breeze on his face. Simple details from everyday life, inaccessible to his brother. To live in such a way for thirty years seemed impossible. Eddie thought about goldfish that grew only as big as the bowl you kept them in. That must have been how Henry handled prison.

He fished his key ring from his pocket and felt for the ignition key. Headlights came on across the parking lot. Eddie held up his keys to the light and found the right one. He listened to an engine revving, from the car across the lot. He wondered if Henry could still drive a car after three decades in jail. Would he even know how to change the TV channel by remote control?

Eddie creaked open the car door and looked inside. The headlights from across the lot were coming toward the Mighty Chevette from the rear, and they illuminated the interior of the car. Eddie gave the back seat a quick inspection in the light. Finding Dr. Crane's body had been unnerving. The memory gave his mind plenty of raw material to imagine a killer hiding in his car. But there was nothing there but a few hand tools for the garden he intended to grow someday, two dozen empty Dunkin Donuts cups, and potato chip bags.

An engine gunned. Tires scrubbed the pavement. The headlights swerved toward Eddie. He saw the outline of a van.

This guy drunk?

The van lurched forward with a roar and the high beams bore down on Eddie.

Eddie froze for a moment in amazement.

He's running me down.

No place to run.

He dove into the Mighty Chevette a split-second before the van strafed the car with a screaming metallic crunch. The Chevette rocked and groaned, the driver's door was shorn clean off its hinges. Eddie heard it crash and skid away.

He looked over the dash, disbelieving what had just happened.

The van's brake lights came on. It was slowing down.

He's coming back.

Eddie fumbled with his keys, dropped them, snatched them up and tore through them. He looked up. The van made a hard U-turn. Eddie jammed the ignition key home, stomped the clutch and prayed as he turned the key.

For once, let it start the first try.

The Mighty Chevette coughed to life. The van came at him again, slowly this time. Eddie flicked on his lights, saw an arm sticking out of the van's window, a gun in the hand.

He popped the clutch and the Mighty Chevette jerked forward.

The gun flashed and banged.

The Chevette's windshield crackled in a spiderweb pattern, just below the rear view mirror.

“Jesus!”

Eddie drove straight at the van's headlights, then veered hard left at the last second and passed the van on its passenger side. He slammed the gearshift into third and floored the accelerator, aiming across the parking lot, for the street.

With no driver's side door, the pavement raced by close enough to touch. In one quick motion, Eddie reached his right hand over, dragged the seat belt across his body and clicked it into place.

Headlights filled his mirrors. The van was giving chase.

The Mighty Chevette zoomed onto the street, its engine high and whiny. Who was doing this to him? How did they find him? They must have followed him from Pawtucketville, and waited all afternoon in that parking lot for Eddie to get back from the
Empire
.

The wind whipped inside the Chevette. The speedometer reached fifty. Eddie watched the van in the mirror. One silhouette behind the wheel. The van was gaining. The arm snaked outside the window again.

Bang.

The back windshield cracked around a tiny hole. The bullet thumped behind the passenger's seat.

Get small.

Eddie hunched low against the wheel, close enough to bite it.

The road merged ahead with a busy urban thoroughfare. The Chevette weaved into traffic. Horns blared. A sedan with four people swerved out of his way into the breakdown lane.

Traffic was slowing for a yellow light. Eddie twisted the wheel left. The Chevette's tires squealed over the median line, through the intersection toward oncoming traffic. Those drivers slammed their brakes and darted left and right, looking for a safe spot out of the way of the madman in the little yellow Chevette. Eddie threaded through the jumble at forty miles per hour, then yanked the wheel hard again and got back in the right lane.

In his rear view mirror, the van was trying a copycat move, but it was bigger, couldn't go as fast through the maze of cars, and Eddie pulled ahead. He glimpsed his own face in the mirror—jaw clenched, eyes bugging out, hair matted with sweat.

Typical rush hour commuter
.

The steering wheel felt slick. He gripped it with all his strength; veins on the back of his hands bubbled against the skin.

To the left was a public park, dark at this hour. Beyond it, twinkling between the trees, were the lights of a shopping district. A blue flash caught his eye—a police car, across the park, probably responding to the chase through downtown Lowell.

The van was growing in the rear view mirror.

The shortest distance between two points…

Eddie wrenched the wheel left, thumped up the curb. The car answered with a pathetic rattle. Two hubcaps shot off like UFOs. Eddie raced the Chevette over the grass into the darkened park. The ground was soft, the wheel unsteady in his hands.

Please, don't get stuck out here in the mud.

The headlights in the rear mirror bounced up and down, as the van pounded over the curb. Eddie watched it. Still gaining. But the far edge of the park was coming up. He turned toward the store lights, racing up a little knoll.

Suddenly, ahead of him appeared two teenagers holding hands.

Oh fuck!

Shocked by the car, the teens stood paralyzed in Eddie's path, horror on their faces.

Eddie pulled hard right. The Mighty Chevette plowed into a giant puddle. Muddy water splashed over the windshield. The car slowed to nearly a stop. Water poured in the open door. Eddie slammed into first gear and gunned the engine. The car wailed in pain, tires spinning. For a moment, Eddie considered abandoning the machine and running for his life, but the Chevette seemed to sense the urgency and it struggled to dry land. A sickening sweet friction smell filled the car.

The van was nearly on him.

Bang.

The slug clanged near a rear wheel.

Eddie had no choice—there wasn't time to turn around—he sped away from the van, away from the storefront lights and the police, toward an industrial area of windowless warehouses. The Chevette rocked over the curb, back onto the street, and Eddie pounded the pedal to the floor.

The van barreled from the park a moment later and roared after him.

Will this guy ever give up?

The streets of the industrial park were wide to accommodate the tractor-trailers that serviced the warehouses there. Eddie aimed the Chevette down the center of the road. White aluminum buildings flew by on both sides. The street was lit in eerie yellow from curbside utility poles.

Eddie had the pedal buried, but with a newer, bigger engine, the van overmatched the Chevette and grew huge in Eddie's mirror.

Eddie had driven through this warehouse district a few times on assignment for
The Daily Empire
. He tried to picture it like a map. Where were the turn-offs? Which exit roads led back downtown?

The gun barked.

A tire exploded.

The Chevette bucked as if possessed by a demon. Eddie fought the wheel—no use, the car skidded toward a light pole. Two wheels bumped over the curb. Eddie heard a thunderous
wham
as the car ricocheted off the pole. The world outside the windshield flipped violently on its side. Over the scrape of hot metal, Eddie heard his own scream. The car slid across the tar. With no driver's-side door, Eddie's face was inches from bare pavement and a blast of white-hot sparks. He closed his eyes and wrenched against the seat belt.

Then, in an instant, the car stopped and everything was quiet, except the feeble squeak of a single spinning wheel.

Dazed, bruised by the seat belt across his chest, but not seriously hurt, Eddie tried to reconnect with reality.

The car had rolled onto its left side, in the middle of the street.

Eddie was still buckled in. The Chevette's engine had died. The van had swerved around him. Eddie saw its brake lights, some sixty yards down the street.

He's coming back to finish me.

Eddie slammed his fist on the seat belt release. It let go and he dropped to the pavement. It was hard and cold. The passenger's door was facing straight up. He struggled to his feet, put his shoulder into the door, pulled the handle and shoved, trying to open it like the hatch of a submarine. The door wouldn't budge. He tried to roll down the window; the handle snapped off in his hand.

Eddie smelled gasoline.

There was a twelve-inch dandelion puller at his feet, a tool he had left in the car months before. Eddie snatched it up and smacked it backhand against the windshield. In the tiny confines of the Chevette, he couldn't get leverage and the weapon glanced meekly off the safety glass.

I'm trapped in here.

The van's headlights swung back toward the Chevette.

A rivulet of gasoline flowed down the street, away from the Mighty Chevette. Eddie's car was hemorrhaging fuel.

The van pulled up in front of the Chevette and stopped.

Eddie felt as if he could choke on the ball of nerves in his throat.

The driver of the van wore a black ski mask. He got up from his seat and disappeared into the back of the van. A moment later he reappeared with what looked like a stick of dynamite—a road flare. He unscrewed one end of it, held both halves out the window and struck the two parts together, like lighting a giant match. It erupted into blinding red light.

This is the end.

Eddie waited for the man in the mask to meet eyes with him at least once before he dropped the flare, but he didn't. The son-of-a-bitch just dropped the fire into the river of gas, and then peeled away in the van without a glance.

Flames rose from the street. They spread in seconds around the little Chevette. Eddie had the point-of-view of the woodpile at the start of a bonfire. Smoke drifted into the car. Eddie felt the heat and the hopelessness.

He wasn't scared in a traditional way. He was furious with terror. Of all the thousands of miles he had safely driven in his Mighty Chevette, the little yellow car he had bought used for eight hundred bucks was about to become his coffin. He was supremely frustrated that a man
who
wears a ski mask in August
was cheating Eddie Bourque out of his life, and of all that he would have become. Eddie didn't even know why the man had murdered him.

He slammed the lawn tool on the pavement in frustration.

It clanked, metal on metal.

Eddie sunk to his knees, coughing in the smoke, and studied the ground. Sweat dripped from his nose and his chin like raindrops. The Chevette had skidded to rest above a manhole. The steel cover was about thirty inches wide and marked:

City of Lowell—ELECTRIC.

The electric service on this street was underground.

Hopelessness fled instantly. He dug the dandelion tool in a notch between the cover and the rim of the manhole, and pried. The cover lifted an inch. Eddie grunted and growled and wormed the tool in deeper. Musty air poured out.

At least it's not a sewer hole.

The fire filled the field of view outside the windshield.

Eddie gagged, choking on smoke. His eyes stung and filled with tears. Working furiously, muttering curses, he wormed his fingers under the steel cover and lifted. It must have weighed more than a hundred pounds, but Eddie's muscles were supercharged by adrenaline, and the hole yawned open. He could see the first step of a ladder on the side of the hole.

Eddie wasted no time backing down the passage. Standing on the fourth rung, he tried to lower the cover slowly, but unbearable heat stung his face. He yelped and ducked deeper into the hole.

The cover slammed above him and everything was dark and cool.

He heard a whoosh as the car flashed over in flame.