Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (36 page)

Cartilage popped. Then flesh tore.

I reached a tipping point. The ear, the shoulder, my head. They were adding up. I needed out
fast
.

Bloomquist was making sounds now like a man getting off, his grunts growing stronger and longer each time he tore at my ear.

Time to do a little playacting.

I made myself shriek again with the next twist. I set my right knee on the floor like a man who'd been beaten. I even loosened my grip on the gun's barrel a hair—just enough to goad Bloomquist into a final overconfident push.

It worked. He let go my ear so he could wrench away the shotgun with both hands. Then he could reload at his leisure and put me down.

On one knee, my head was now level with his belt buckle.

I drew back my free right hand.

Then I funneled every last bit of energy and hate into my right shoulder.

Then I punched Brad Bloomquist in the balls as hard as I could.

He doubled over so hard his teeth clicked my collarbone.

He made exactly the sound you'd expect.

He let go the gun.

Just like that.

The gun fell to me so fast it surprised me. Momentum spun me against the sofa.

At the same time, Bloomquist straightened.

With my back to him, I now had both hands on the shotgun's barrel in a baseball-bat grip. Just as I'd held the barstool in the Hi Hat.

I didn't hesitate.

It wasn't exactly a baseball swing. It was more of a Wednesday-night-league softball swing, a don't-give-a-damn, home-run-or-pop-up swing. Weight transferred from my right foot into the thigh and hip, up through the torso, out through the arm muscles.

It was a hell of a torquey swing.

The gun's maple butt connected with Brad Bloomquist's temple.

He was a big man. The impact jerked him off his feet anyway.

It caved in the temple.

He went down next to Haley. Her squirt-gun bleeding began to wet him.

Haley's mouth moved. She pointed at nothing.

I told her hush, told her she was going to be okay.

I didn't believe it.

The cottage landline was on the granite kitchen countertop. I fumbled at it, dialed 911.

“Do you know where I'm calling from?” I said when a lady picked up.

“Yes sir, what is the nature of your emergency?”

“Send everything,” I said. “Send everyone.”

I didn't bother to hang up.

Haley again. Pointing. Trying to prop herself on an elbow, slipping in her own blood. “Ma ma ma,” she said.

“Emma?”

She nodded, fell back, lay still. Her pulse was strong. She was going to live.

I scuttled to Randall. He was out cold, oozing blood from his forehead, but now I saw his shotgun wounds were few and minor.

Well I'll be damned.

I rose.

It was hard.

I weighed a thousand pounds. My joints were filled with busted lightbulbs. Cool air where my ear ought to be attached felt odd. The rest of me just felt awful.

I thumped one slow step at a time down the hall, dreading every pace.

What had he done? What had Brad Bloomquist hauled off and done?

Tried the door to my left first, Rinn's bedroom. Hit the light.

Nothing. It was no different than when I'd tossed the place.

I heard something from the other room.

Cocked my head, heard it again, whipped open that door, flipped on the light.

And saw it. The crib that used to be up at the main house was now in here, crowded among the sacks and stacks from Rinn's shopping expeditions.

I heard nothing. Had I imagined it?

Forced myself to take a step toward the crib.

Then another.

And there she was.

Emma.

Pink pajamas with footies. Matching pink hat with a butterfly sewn on.

She was tangled in a yellow blanket. Didn't seem too happy about it.

Or about the sudden light.

She blinked. She squinched. She began to cry.

But not for long.

Because I picked her up.

I held her to my belly, to my chest.

I put my back to the ceiling light to make it less harsh on her.

I shook.

I heard something. Cocked my head to confirm. Sirens, all three types. Headed this way.

Emma was looking up at me. Her eyes were blue and pure. She looked like she wanted to ask me something.

I leaned to her.

I kissed her forehead.

I drew back.

I'd left lip prints: Haley's blood, Rinn's blood, Randall's blood, mine.

My tears.

The sirens were loud now, damn close. The noise threw Emma for a loop. I saw it in those pure blue eyes.

To settle her, I began to dip one knee, then the other.

Again.

Again.

Rocking her, feeling the rhythm of it.

Emma closed her eyes, sirens or no.

She smiled some.

Or maybe I imagined that.

Dip one knee. Dip the other.

I looked up, saw the first blue lights strobe into the Biletnikovs' drive.

I looked back down at Emma's sweet face.

“In the great green room,” I said, “there was a telephone.”

 

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Just a bench facing a four-pack of public tennis courts on a perfect mid-May day, a Windbreaker-in-the-morning, T-shirt-in-the-afternoon day.

Sophie and I had made it our regular spot. It was close enough so she could bike over. And it was shielded from Route 20 by trees, so if Charlene happened to drive past she wouldn't see us.

Wouldn't see
me
.

I was out of the house until further notice.

Randall was alive.

So was Haley.

So was Brad Bloomquist. More or less. They'd induced a coma to make it easier to pluck skull fragments from his brain. From what I heard, he wasn't coming out of the coma very well.

I had trouble getting bent out of shape over that.

The cops had found a diary in Bloomquist's apartment. A real Unabomber job, Lima'd called it: tiny, precise block printing all about Brad's unquenchable love for Gus. And what would befall anybody who came between the two of them.

Brad had smelled trouble when Gus finally agreed to spend a month in rehab. He'd moved to Framingham from the Cape to set up stalker headquarters.

As Brad had feared, the Gus who came back from Hazelden wasn't sure where he was at in a hundred ways, including sexually—but he knew for sure he wasn't with Brad.

Brad went nuts. Betrayed by his one true love, he filled a dozen pages in the journal that night. Revenge plans, mostly.

Step 1 of his revenge: he knocked on Teddy Pundo's door and offered to lead him to the slow-pay who'd cheated him for a year and laughed about it.

Teddy, prodded by Boxer, was interested.

When Brad ponied up a fancy shotgun from Peter Biletnikov's well-hidden gun safe, which he'd learned about during his Three Musketeers days with Gus and Rinn, Boxer (and therefore Teddy) was even more interested. A major statement was needed if they were to show the world, especially the New York Mob, that weak old jazzman Charlie Pundo was no longer the boss of Springfield. The shotgun looked like a low-risk way to make the statement.

Boxer never asked if the ridiculously expensive shotgun had a twin. Hell, who would?

Per Brad's diary, it was Boxer who blasted away at Almost Home. It went pretty much the way I'd figured: Boxer had a decent description of Gus and he knew which room to look in, so poor old Brian Weller got it. Not to mention the others, who were just standing on the stairs at the wrong time.

The snafu rattled Boxer. Even a pro—hell, especially a pro—will think twice after taking the wrong three lives for no reward.

Brad Bloomquist's revenge plans: hit by a big-ass setback. He took it out on his diary and played for time.

The shotgun went back in the gun safe until the night Brad, already setting up Donald Crump for the frame job, swiped a pair of Donald's boots, trimmed nearly all the leather away, and wore them like flip-flops while he killed Gus.

Unlike Boxer, who had his own supply of heavy-gauge shot, Brad had to scrounge through Peter's ammo. That explained why lighter bird shot was used to blow Gus open.

Back went the shotgun into the safe—until Brad talked Boxer into completing the frame on Donald by killing the con man and hiding the shotgun in his spare-tire well.

Boxer the consummate pro, who was getting uneasy because of me, jumped at the chance.

But Brad slipped him the wrong shotgun, the
other
shotgun. Was it an intentional move by a guy who'd gotten hooked on lies and scams? Or was it a mix-up on Brad's part because he didn't know much about firearms?

His diary didn't say.

Boxer didn't know there
was
a second gun, and the two looked identical.

The frame-job shotgun, it turned out, was frozen from disuse and lack of cleaning.

Which was the only thing that prevented the frame from being perfect.

A bicycle bell is one of the last old-fashioned sounds.

I heard one and smiled, knowing it belonged to Sophie.

She covered my eyes with her hands and said, “Guess who?”

“Bad breath, dishpan hands, cheap ring. It could only be…”

It was an old gag by now—we visited every few days—but she laughed and came around the bench and sat next to me. “Who goes first today?” she said.

“You, of course.”

“Davey's asleep, as usual. Dale spends every waking moment missing you, as usual.”

“And your mom?”

“Your name does not pass her lips.”

“As usual.” We said it at the exact same time. And both tried to smile. And almost did.

“How's the new shrink?” I said.

“Better than the other one. Much better, actually. She's so young I forget she's a shrink. We just … talk.”

“Does it help?”

“It helps more than counting down the minutes while listening to the first shrink suck cough drops. He was a dud.”

I started to speak. My throat went tight. I forced my way past it. “The things you saw that day. Nobody should … if I could take it back…”

Sophie patted my arm.

“Question,” I said. “Did you ever tell Charlene about the baby? About how I used Emma in Chicopee?”

“No.” She stretched the word. “I can't decide whether that would make things better or worse.”

“Same here. Best not tell her.”

“Would you really have…”

“Don't ask it again, Sophie.”

“Sor-
ry
.” She folded her arms.

I said, “Anything on Jessie?”

She slumped against the bench. “Still nothing.”

In the days of chaos, with Randall in the hospital, me scrambling to stay out of jail, media hyenas everywhere, and Charlene somehow coordinating everything without slacking at work, Jessie had gone on a paper-hanging spree in Worcester County, forging checks to the tune of nearly six grand and withdrawing the maximum on her mother's bank card each day.

Then she'd split for parts unknown.

I'd spaced. Sophie was saying something.

“What?” I said.

“I said your son seemed sad when I told him. He had no idea Jessie was gone. I'm sure of it. In case you thought they'd run off together.”

“You spoke with Roy? Just like that?”

“He returned my call in fifteen minutes.”

I closed my eyes. “How'd he sound?”

“He sounded like you,” Sophie said. “Only lighter.”

“I was a beanpole myself at his age.”

“That's not what I meant.”

We were quiet.

“I know,” I finally said. “I'm glad he sounds that way.”

We hushed up as two men and two women, none of them younger than seventy, set their gear on the next bench over and hit the court for mixed doubles, the four of them chattering away.

“Your turn,” Sophie said.

“It looks like the insurance company will pay off on the shop. They're pissed about it, but they'll pay.”

“You still haven't dimed out Andrade, have you?”

I said nothing.

“
Con
way!”

“Like I said, they're paying off. If I had to dime him to get the dough, I would.”

“Bullshit you would.”

I smiled.

Sophie said, “Job prospects?”

“I've got a standing offer in Springfield. Trouble is, I can't spell consigliere.”

She gasped. “You
wouldn't
!”

“I wouldn't. But it was nice of Pundo to ask.”

The foursome warmed up. They could really play. They all liked creeping up to the net. Sometimes the ball went back and forth a half-dozen times without touching the ground.

“Everything's going to be different,” I said. “You know that.”

“It doesn't have to be.” But her voice told me she knew what I meant. How could she not?

“Got no shop,” I said. “Got no Charlene. Not sure where I stand with the Barnburners. Different. Just warning you.”

We were quiet awhile.

When Sophie finally spoke, I knew what was coming before she said it. “Are you sleeping?”

“Here and there. Not really.”

“And you won't see someone about it, and you certainly won't take a pill.”

“No and no.”

Rinn had been Brad Bloomquist's final kill. And, judging by the diary, the one he'd most looked forward to.

He'd planned to kill her baby while Rinn watched.

See, by the time Peter and Rinn and Gus and Pundo did their sick little sleight of hand over who fathered Emma, Brad had been frozen out by the group—he'd let his true colors show here and there, and nobody trusted him.

So Brad was in the same club as Peter, thinking Gus was the proud pop.

And that, more than anything else, drove Brad around the bend. To be tossed aside by his one true love, who then switched over to
girls,
of all things, was good for a couple of spittle-flecked diary pages every night. The diary told the cops that Brad had high hopes for his meeting with Gus in the apartment—Brad had big plans to convince Gus to rekindle.