Judgment of the Grave (28 page)

Sweeney drove straight to the showroom, and when she saw Quinn’s car parked in the lot, she pulled in next to it and waited for a minute. No one came out, so she got out, put the flashlight and her cell phone in the pocket of her jacket, and approached the door to the showroom. It was dark inside and the door was locked, so she went around the side of the building and found a door. Through the glass she could hear voices and she got down low and listened as best as she could through the door.

“I told him to stay away from her, to let her be Pres’s mother while she still could,” Bruce Whiting was saying. “But he kind of laughed and said I couldn’t stop love. ‘The heart wants what the heart wants,’ he said. He laughed at me. He said something about how it wasn’t enough for me to be happy, I wanted Cecily to be unhappy. I don’t know what happened. I just…I went for him. I thought I’d beat him up, but he came after me with his musket, with the bayonet. I don’t really remember this part. I took it from him and I stuck it in him.”

Sweeney crawled around the corner of the building so that they wouldn’t see her through the window. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but she thought there had to be another door and, sure enough, as she rounded the corner by the driveway, the voices got louder again and she found herself standing in front of an open garage door. From their voices, she could tell that they were in the next room over, so she inched her way inside and kept herself pressed against the wall. Finally, she found herself in a doorway and she had a good view into the workroom. At one end of the room, Bruce Whiting was standing, wearing a leather apron and talking, and at the other end, Quinn was standing stock-still, pointing a gun at Whiting.

“I’m going to have to take you in, Bruce,” Quinn said finally. “You know that, don’t you?”

“You can’t. Pres is in the hospital. I’m not going to let you do that. I’m not going to let you wreck things. He was a bastard. He was married, did you know that? He was cheating on his wife with Cecily. He deserved to die.”

“I have to. Let’s go get in my car and I’ll—”

“No!” Bruce Whiting yelled. Sweeney, watching, knew what he was going to do before he did it. He picked up a crowbar from the workbench next to him and swung it over his head at Quinn. But Quinn had been expecting it and he ducked and put a hand up to block the crowbar, knocking Bruce Whiting on to the ground. He kept the gun trained on the other man.

“You don’t want to add assaulting a police officer to everything else,” Quinn said good-naturedly. “Come on, Bruce. It’s time to go. You know I’m right.” Sweeney watched him plant his feet.

“Just leave me alone. Can’t you just do that? Just leave me alone, let me be with my son. Why can’t you do that?”

Sweeney, not sure what to do, eased the cell phone out of her pocket and held it up so she could see the keypad. Carefully, she held the phone out in front of her and dialed 911. She pressed it to her ear and when a voice answered, she whispered her name and where she was, then pressed
END
. But as she was replacing the phone in her pocket, she dropped it and it clattered on the concrete floor.

“What was that?” Bruce Whiting turned and saw her, and in the same instant Quinn saw her too and the look on his face told her what he was thinking.

“Where’s Megan?” he called out to her.

“It’s okay. She’s safe. She’s not here.”

His face relaxed, but in the moment he had been distracted, Whiting made his move. He rushed across the room, so fast that Sweeney barely saw him, and the crowbar came down hard on Quinn’s right shoulder. The gun went skittering across the floor, under a workbench. He groaned with pain, and Sweeney saw blood run down the torn white cloth of his shirt. Even from across the room, she could see that Whiting had opened a gash the size of Sweeney’s fist on Quinn’s bicep. She saw him reach for the arm, and realize what had happened.

Then Whiting came at Quinn from below, grabbing him around the waist and knocking him to the ground. He got a couple of good punches in, and Sweeney heard Quinn groan and saw blood flow from his nose. He rolled Bruce Whiting over and punched him once, then tried to get Bruce’s hands behind his back, but his arm was nearly useless and he couldn’t hold him.

Whiting rolled over and got on top of him. Sweeney could hear the crunch of bone and cartilage as Whiting punched Quinn’s face over and over. He was going to kill him.

“I called the police,” Sweeney said. “They’ll be here any minute. Stop it.” The look of shock on Bruce Whiting’s face was so great that she thought maybe he just might do it, but instead, he came at her so quickly that she barely had time to scream, and before she knew it, he was holding her against him, her arms pinned painfully behind her back. She could smell sweat and something tinny that she knew was blood.

Quinn staggered to his feet. “Let her go, Whiting,” he said.

“No.” He looked wildly around the room. “I’m taking both of you out of here before the police get here.” He picked up the crowbar and held it over Sweeney’s head. She could smell him, the sweat from his body, and feel his heart beating fast.

“Let her go,” Quinn said. “I’m warning you. Let her go.” She met his eyes and they stared at each other for a long moment before Quinn put his hands up in the air and started walking toward them. Blood from his arm drip-dropped onto the floor. “Come on, Whiting, I’m going to let you go. I’m giving you a head start. Just let her go first.”

Whiting tightened his grip on Sweeney’s arms, and she heard herself groan. “No,” Whiting said. “She said she already called the police. I need her to get out of here.”

“I was lying,” Sweeney whispered. “I just said that to get you to stop hitting him. I dropped my keys back there. Look, I don’t even have a cell phone. You can search me.”

Whiting hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“Search her,” Quinn said, meeting Sweeney’s eyes again. She held his gaze, and suddenly it was as though she knew exactly what he was going to do. Whiting let her arms go and reached into one jacket pocket and then the other, and then there was a loud scream and she was knocked to the ground, and when she opened her eyes she saw Quinn catch Whiting from behind. Whiting didn’t lose his balance, but Quinn got him around the middle and for a second they looked like lovers embracing. And then she saw the stack of granite headstones leaning against the far wall, and she saw Quinn see them at the same moment she did.

“Come on, Whiting. Let it go,” he said as he slowly, carefully backed him across the room. His face was glistening with sweat and his shirt was nearly red with his blood. “Come on. You know it’s over.”

And as Whiting swung for Quinn’s face, Sweeney watched Quinn take his face in his hands and snap his whole head back against the granite. The sound was like a gunshot, and Whiting’s face held a look of innocent surprise as he slid to the ground, blissfully unconscious.

Sweeney crawled over to Quinn. He was lying against Whiting, his arm flopped onto the floor, and she pulled him into her lap, taking off her sweater and tying it tight around his lower arm as a tourniquet.

“Is he…?” Quinn whispered.

“I think you knocked him out,” she said. “But I don’t think he’s dead.”

Quinn relaxed against her and she felt the weight of him, his back and arms and head. She wasn’t even sure if he was conscious, so she just held him like that until she heard the sirens and Andy Lynch was rushing in.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 25

The hospital was quiet Sunday morning, and Sweeney found Cecily Whiting sitting by her son’s bed, holding his hand, not talking. She looked up and smiled when Sweeney came in, and stood up to greet her. They went out into the hall.

“He’ll be glad you’re here,” she said. “He’s alert, but very, very tired. He keeps asking for Bruce and I don’t know what to say.”

“Are they still going to let him visit?”

“Yes, later today. They’re not going to tell Pres anything. Why don’t you go in with him. I’m going to go get something to eat and I’ll be back in an hour.”

Sweeney went into the room. He was lying in the middle of the hospital bed and seemed so small, so fragile against the blue sheets, an IV snaking out of his arm, oxygen whispering in his nose. The room was painted to look like a giant aquarium, with tropical fishes scattered across the blue walls. She sat down and took his hand, and he opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them again.

“How are you?” she asked him.

He opened his eyes again and gave her a funny little smile, as if to say, “How do you think I am?”

“I went and checked on the General,” she said. “This morning. He’s fine. He has lots of food and water. I’ll keep checking on him until you can do it again.”

“You take him,” Pres whispered. “You take him home.”

Sweeney squeezed his hand. “Let’s see, Pres. You’re going to be out of here soon, and maybe your mom will change her mind. It’s you he loves.” She was speaking just a little too fast and she was conscious of the tightness of her throat, of how it was suddenly hard to breathe. Another second and she was blinking back tears.

“No,” he said. “I won’t. Please. Please take him.”

It took her a moment to get control of her voice, but she did it and squeezed his hand again. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll take him.”

“Good.” He gave a faint smile.

“Now,” she said, “do you want to hear about Scherezade?”

He nodded and she began to read to him about the king and his brother, and the death sentence on Scherezade, how she called for her sister and asked her to request a story so that she might entice the king to spare her life, for one night at least.

“‘The Fisherman and the Jinni,’” she read. “‘It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that there was a fisherman well stricken in years who had a wife and three children, and withal was of poor condition. Now it was his custom to cast his net every day four times, and no more. On a day he went forth about noontide to the seashore, where he laid down his basket and, tucking up his shirt and plunging into the water, made a cast with his net and waited till it settled to the bottom.’”

Pres smiled and she read until he slept, until his breathing was a soft, even hush, and then she closed the book and left it there for when he woke up.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30

It had been hard with his right arm in a sling, but Quinn had cleaned the house and even gotten some roses at the supermarket, red ones with white inside, and he’d arranged them on the mantel in a crystal vase that he and Maura had gotten as a wedding present. He’d given Megan a bath and she was wearing a little yellow dress he’d bought, with matching yellow-and-white tights and her white patent-leather shoes. He wasn’t sure why he’d dressed her up. He guessed he wanted to make a good impression.

Looking around at the house, he was happy with how it looked, as though a real family lived there, Megan’s toys stacked neatly in one corner of the room, some magazines on the coffee table. He was going to try to keep things nice, he decided, for Megan. So Megan would have a real home.

He’d called Debbie as soon as he got out of the hospital. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for us, Deb, I really do. And you’ll always be an important part of Megan’s life because you’re her only aunt, but I think I’ve gotta figure out the child-care thing on my own, you know?” She had taken it okay, considering, said maybe she’d look for a new job, something at a day-care center. Quinn had told her she’d be great. Then he’d called the agency.

“She’s excellent,” the woman said. “Nothing but the very best references from her previous employers. And she has a lot of experience with young children. I should warn you, though, that she was, well, in some difficulty back in her country, back in Africa. She was attacked. I don’t know much about it. There was a civil war. But the scar can be disturbing if you’re not prepared.”

He heard the taxi pull up in front of the house, and he picked up Megan and went out to find her getting out of the cab.

“Patience?” he called out.

“Yes. Mr. Quinn?” She spoke in precise English accented with French. She was very tall, and her cornrowed hair fell to her shoulders like water. “I can tell the taxi to wait?”

“No, that’s okay. I can drive you home after the interview.” He could see her studying him, studying them. When she turned, he could see the scar running down one side of her face.
Will they be good to me?
he saw her thinking. He could see her studying him, his black eye and his nose, still taped and stuffed with cotton. It wasn’t a pretty picture, but he thought Megan helped. He could see her wondering,
Is this what I am meant to do, to be the nanny for this child?

He wanted to tell her that there wasn’t any way of knowing, that you didn’t know anything about anything before it happened, that you just had to go ahead and…live.

“Okay,” she said. He saw her lean in to pay the driver, and then she turned and came toward them, smiling shyly.

“This is my daughter, Megan,” he said, smiling back at her. “Do you want to come inside?”

I should first of all like to thank the town of Concord, Massachusetts, for being such a wonderful place to be forced to take research trips. And I apologize for littering its lovely, peaceful woods with dead bodies.

A number of books were helpful to me in my study of Colonial stonecarvers and the beginnings of the Revolutionary War in Concord and Lexington. Among them are:
Lexington and Concord: The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution
by Arthur B. Tourtellot;
Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolution Through the Eyes of Those Who Fought and Lived It
by George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin;
The Minutemen: The First Fight: Myths and Realities of the American Revolution
by John R. Galvin;
Gravestone Chronicles
by Ted Chase and Lauren Gabel;
Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650–1815
by Allan I. Ludwig;
Memorials for Children of Change: The Art of Early New England Stonecarving
by Dickran and Ann Tashjian;
Early American Gravestone Art in Photographs
by Francis Y. Duval;
The Masks of Orthodoxy: Folk Gravestone Carving in Plymouth County, Massachusetts 1689–1805
by Peter Benes;
Early New England Gravestone Rubbings
by Edmund Vincent Gillon. I’m also appreciative of the Revolutionary War enthusiasts who shared their time and expertise with me. Thanks, especially, to Roger Fuller of HM 40th Regiment of Foot.

As always, a huge bucket of thanks to the terrific folks at St. Martin’s Minotaur. There isn’t a better editor than Kelley Ragland, and I am thankful for the sharp eye of Stephen Lamont, the assistance of Carly Einstein, and the amazing abilities of Linda McFall. So many, many thanks to my terrific agent Lynn Whittaker for her enthusiasm and friendship. And last but not least, I am so grateful for my wonderful family—Susan, David, and Tom Taylor—and to Vicki Kuskowski, Josh, Michelle, Jamison and Logan Dunne, and of course, to Matt Dunne, my best critic and best fan.