Fall Guy
Authors: Carol Lea Benjamin
A Rachel Alexander Mystery
For Mary Divya Joubert,
no one was ever lost on a straight road
The first stroke is the final stroke; there are no touch-ups.
â
MICHAEL GREEN
Chapter 1
When I was little, my father once told me thatâ¦
Chapter 2
Walking back down the stairs from the detectives' squad room,â¦
Chapter 3
As soon as I woke up, I called Mary Margaretâ¦
Chapter 4
Sitting in the bar at Pastis, Dash next to theâ¦
Chapter 5
Detective Michael Brody cut the first of two seals onâ¦
Chapter 6
The answering machine was blinking. I hit play.
Chapter 7
When I woke up, I called O'Fallon's attorney, Melanie Houseman.
Chapter 8
The locksmith's name was Nick. It said so on theâ¦
Chapter 9
I was sitting at O'Fallon's desk when his phone rang.
Chapter 10
He was waiting at the gate that led to myâ¦
Chapter 11
When I was two blocks from home, my cell phoneâ¦
Chapter 12
The box office at the Louise Lortell Theater didn't openâ¦
Chapter 13
The house, along the Sparkill Creek, was one of theâ¦
Chapter 14
As soon as I got inside O'Fallon's apartment, I droppedâ¦
Chapter 15
I was halfway home before I changed my mind. Iâ¦
Chapter 16
Something called the Certificate of Preliminary Letters of Testamentary wasâ¦
Chapter 17
I hadn't had time to look through O'Fallon's notebook whenâ¦
Chapter 18
I had thought I'd wait until Saturday before asking Maggieâ¦
Chapter 19
I got to O'Fallon's apartment at eight, two hours beforeâ¦
Chapter 20
Where'd you get the bone?” I whispered.
Chapter 21
I borrowed a stepladder from Irwin so that Maggie couldâ¦
Chapter 22
Is that you, Rachel?” she called from the kitchen.
Chapter 23
Sitting outside in the garden, Dashiell rooting around in theâ¦
Chapter 24
After Brody left, I let the cold water out ofâ¦
Chapter 25
I didn't think I'd sleep, but I did. Sometime beforeâ¦
Chapter 26
I stopped at the Golden Rabbit on the way toâ¦
Chapter 27
I heard a car door close out front. Dashiell barkedâ¦
Chapter 28
Brody didn't answer his cell phone and when I calledâ¦
Chapter 29
Standing across the street from the Hotel Riverview, I waitedâ¦
Chapter 30
I didn't know if Francis Connor had recognized me. Theâ¦
Chapter 31
Where's your better half?” he asked, standing at the gateâ¦
Chapter 32
Brody stayed after all the others had left, Francis carriedâ¦
Chapter 33
I still don't understand,” Maggie said. “How did Francis findâ¦
When I was little, my father once told me that during the war, the one after the one they said would end all wars, he used to kneel at the window in the dark and scan the night sky for enemy planes. You knew who the enemy was back then. You knew where he lived, too. Even so, and even though the war was fought on enemy soil, as their countries were called, it was still awfully scary. So if something woke you in the middle of the night, or if you just couldn't sleep, you couldn't help it, you'd find yourself at the window, watching the sky and wondering
what if.
When I began to cry, he put his arm around me and pressed me close. I could smell his aftershave and feel the smoothness of his white shirt against my skin. “Just listen to your mother,” he said, “and you'll be safe.”
Like my father so many years ago in what now seems like a simpler time, in what now seems like another world altogether, I, too, can't help watching the sky and wondering
what if
. Only now, you watch in broad daylight. And now I know for
sure that the terrible things you worry about are almost never the ones that happen.
As it turned out, I never did worry about the possible death of Timothy O'Fallon. Had it made the news, it might have been on one of those days when I never bothered to pick up the paper from where it landed when the delivery person shoved it through an opening in the wrought-iron gate that leads to my cottage. If not for the phone call, late the following day, I might never have heard about it at all. And even then, even when the call came, somehow, I am sorry to say, I didn't recall the name. But now everything's different. Now I know something else for sure, that no matter what happens, no matter how much time passes, I won't forget it a second time.
“This is the part of the job I hate most,” the detective said, “giving people bad news.”
The moment that followed seemed eons long as I held my breath, waiting.
“Timothy O'Fallon is dead,” he said. And then, “I'm sorry for your loss,” his voice full of grief, as if it were his loss, too.
“Who?” I asked, feeling nothing at first but relief. Not someone I loved, not a death that would crush my heart, not even anyone I knew.
So why was I being notified?
“Timothy O'Fallon,” he repeated. “He was found dead early yesterday.”
“I don't know any Timothy O'Fallon,” I said into the phone. “I don't understand.”
He asked my name again, repeated my address.
I told him yes to both, that was me.
“You're right across the street then?”
“Yes,” I said, “I am.”
“If it's not too late for you, Ms. Alexander, would you mind walking over?”
I looked at my watch, the hands glowing an eerie green in the dark. It was ten-thirty. “Sure,” I said, “that's okay.” Not so sure that it was.
“I can show you the will,” he said. “We have a copy here.”
“His will?” I asked, slipping one foot into the sandal I'd kicked off near the front door.
But even then, even after I'd been told that a Timothy O'Fallon had designated me as executor of his will, I drew a blank. It wasn't until ten minutes later, when I was walking up the pea-soup-green back staircase to the detectives' squad room at the precinct across the street and up the block from where I live that it came back to me. I'd paused a moment at the top of the stairs to collect my thoughts. Dashiell, the pit bull I'd “liberated” from a contemptible slime who'd planned to raise him to be a fighting dog, stopping, too, looking up at me to see if there was something that needed his attention, something I wanted him to do. Gently placing my hand on the top of his boxy head, I found it wet from a dripping air conditioner we'd passed under on the way. That's when I remembered the man who'd only said a single sentence to me, and that a world of time ago.
Detective Michael Brody got up when I walked into the squad room, but stayed where he was. There was a chair at the side of his desk and I sat, Dashiell sliding to a down right next to
me without being asked. Brody glanced at him, then looked back at me, thanking me for coming so quickly. He picked up his ashtray, a Mount Saint Helens full of crushed butts, dumped it into his wastebasket and then put it on the far side of the desk to make room for the will. He placed that in front of me, taking a cigarette out of the rumpled pack in front of him, pulling the book of matches out from under the cellophane.
“You were never given a copy of this?”
I shook my head.
“And you don't remember meeting him?”
“Actually I do. I remembered on the way here.”
I looked down, to where his finger pointed, page three, paragraph four.
“I appoint my dear friend Rachel Kaminsky Alexander”âmy address followedâ“to be my Executor under this Last Will and Testament.”
“I don't get it. I hardly knew him.” Wondering how he knew my full name, while Brody watched me, waiting, his cop's face not giving anything away.
“I did some pet therapy, after 9/11. That's how I met him.”
“Crisis response, down at Ground Zero?” His face screwed up, what I'd said not making any sense to him.
“It was right here in the neighborhood, a post-traumatic stress men's group, on West Eleventh Street at the church. Maybe you saw the signs? The psychologist leading the group called me in because the men weren't talking.”
I waited a moment to see if he'd react. He didn't. He wasn't talking either.
“Once Dashiell was there, the men began to speak, about how they couldn't get by what had happened, not even enough to fake it, how they were having trouble sleeping, how they couldn't think of a reason to go to work, call a friend, get out of bed.” Thinking of the simplicity of it, the change that happens when a dog is there, puts his head in your lap, lets you know whatever it is you have to say, it's okay with him.
“That's where you met Tim? In this group?”
Tim?
Timothy, the shrink had called him, trying to get him to talk about why he was there, first names only in the group, including me. But even though I was a volunteer, I'd been given the professional courtesy of getting the list of names, last names on the list, the list somewhere with my pet-therapy files.
I nodded. “We figured he'd lost someone in the attack, but he never said so. He never said a word. And he surely never asked me to do
this
Ӊnow my finger pointing to the will.
The phone rang and Brody picked it up, turning his back. I picked up the will and turned it back to the first page, to the beginning. “I, Timothy William O'Fallon⦔
How had this come to pass, a man I didn't know asking this of me? He'd show up early every week and take the same seat in the circle, facing the courtyard. Hands in his lap, back straight, he'd listen but not contribute. There'd been only one time O'Fallon had spoken. It was on the last day. When nothing else had worked, not direct questions, not encouragement from the
other men, not the stories they told, stories that could tear your heart to pieces, the room so full of grief and tears, I'd tried the last thing I knew to do, asking an unresponsive person for help with the dog. Doing this work, I'd told him during the break, a dog picked up a heavy burden of stress. I asked if he'd take Dashiell out for a minute or two, let him just be a dog. He'd taken the leash and gone out into the courtyard, Dashiell following along behind him. He went to the other side of the planters that divided the yard and he must have crouched down because when I looked, all I could see was Dashiell's tail, slowly stirring the wind. When they came back in, I'd thanked him and taken Dashiell back to my seat. Then I reached down to touch Dashiell and he was wet, his head and neck soaked with O'Fallon's tears. It was at the end of that last meeting that he'd spoken to me, just a sentence, but not in the group. We were outside then, where no one else could hear him. “You seem like a very kind person,” he'd said. It seemed too trivial to repeat to the detective now that O'Fallon was dead, just a lonely man's way of saying thank you, nothing more.
What if, in fact, he
had
asked for this favor back then? How could I have said no? If he'd asked a perfect stranger to do something so intimate for him, didn't that mean he had no one else?
Brody hung up the phone and turned back to me. “You were saying Tim never asked you to be the executor of his estate.”
“That's right.”
“And that you met him because he attended
this group where you and the dog did pet-assisted therapy?”
I nodded.
“That's what you do, for a living?” he asked.
“No, it's volunteer work. It's just something I do.”
He was waiting for more.
“I'm a researcher,” I told him, the way I always explained what I did for a living, unless I knew that the person asking was looking for what I really did. Saying I earned my living as a private investigator made civilians paranoid and cops contemptuous. It was way more information than I wanted Detective Brody to have. “Freelance,” I added.
He was still waiting.
“And before that, I was a dog trainer.” I left it at that. He was a detective. He could figure out the connection himself.
“And Tim was there in a professional capacity as well, to answer questions, offerâ¦?”
“No, Detective. He was there as a participant.”
“You're saying Tim went to a
civilian
group?”
“You mean he wasâ¦?” Stopping mid-sentence, the air in the squad room suddenly feeling very cold.
“Twenty-one years on the job, detective for the last sixteen.”
He sat back, putting more space between us.
I touched my left leg. Dashiell sat. I reached for his collar, the small brass tag in my fingers now, my last name and phone number on it, some people thinking it was his name, calling him Alexander. No trick at all, Detective O'Fallon digging up my full name and address, not after being alone with Dashiell that last day.
“How did he die, Detective? Was it in the line of duty?” There'd been nothing in the paper. Unless, of course, there had and I'd missed it.
“An accident, Ms. Alexander. A very tragic accident.”
“A car accident?”
“No, ma'am, an accident in the home.”
I nodded. “And what sort of accident are we talking about?” Like a lawyer, knowing the answer before I asked the question.
Brody looked away for just a moment. When he looked back at me, for just a flicker, I saw the man, not the cop, in his eyes. He held up his left hand, the thumb pointing to the wall behind him, the pointer directed toward the ceiling, the other fingers curled into his palm.
“An accident while cleaning his service revolver?”
This time
he
nodded.
Reputation protected, department protected, insurance and benefits protected. Or was I being too cynical?
Brody was looking at Dashiell. “Just having him there, is that how it works? Or does he have to actually do something?”
But before I got the chance to answer him, Dashiell stood and put his head in Brody's lap. Brody let his hand rest on top of Dashiell's neck for a moment, then he finally lit that cigarette. We sat there for what seemed like a very long time, the smoke curling slowly upward, thinning out and spreading wide as it rose, neither of us saying a word.