Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

Linda grimaced and averted her eyes when she approached me. Then she stopped with her hand on the door.

“He said he wanted to give me his condolences,” she said.

“Well,” I said. “Ray’s always been a special kind of guy. You could call the police, tell them he’s been bothering you.”

She shook her head. “There’s no point.”

“I could talk with him.”

“Just let it be, Charlie. He won’t come back again.”

Then she smiled and crossed her fingers and hurried back inside. I thought two things almost simultaneously: Linda looked guilty, and she was beautiful when she smiled.

The next morning I woke with a world-class hangover and a phone ringing in my ear. I snared the phone on the third ring, grimaced at a lightning bolt of pain behind my eyes. After I’d left Linda’s house, the nagging feeling that she had lied to me about her conversation with Ray Brady and the troublesome grating in my head that had started while Buck Greenwood was talking about life insurance wouldn’t leave me alone. Like the Einstein I am, I decided the best way to quiet what was bothering me was to drown it with Budweiser and Jim Beam. Now I growled a hello and winced when Harry Jewell’s voice boomed in my ears.

“We got him,” he said. “You believe it? We got the son of a buck dead in the water. Let’s see if his smarmy lawyer can get him out of this.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Nearly noon,” Jewell said. “It doesn’t matter what time it is. I’m looking at a lab report right here on my desk. Want to guess whose prints were on the .22 that killed Bad Luck Boyd?”

“Ray’s,” I said.

“Give the man a cigar,” he said. “Way it looks, Brady put the gun in Willie’s hand, fitted his finger on the trigger, and fired. But he got sloppy. We got four clean compares. Razor Ray’s going to take the fall. In fact, he’s in the backseat of a squad car as we speak.”

I sat up in bed, tried to wipe the sleep from my eyes. “He put the gun in Willie’s hand? Why would he do that to shoot him twice?”

“I’m figuring he shot Bad Luck in the chest, missed his heart by a couple of inches, and then forced the gun into Boyd’s hand for the final shot in the head.”

“That doesn’t make sense, either. Why would he go to the trouble?”

“Who knows? Maybe he got a kick out of forcing Boyd to do it. Guys like Ray Brady aren’t exactly normal.”

“Maybe,” I said. “How many murders you think Ray’s responsible for?”

“A dozen at least, probably more.”

“But there’s never been a real piece of evidence to tie him to any of them. He’s slick and he’s a professional. Doesn’t it seem odd that he’d be careless enough to leave his prints on the gun and leave the gun at the scene? This is almost too easy.”

“Look,” Jewell said, and sighed. “You’re driving down the highway at sixty miles an hour and a big old rattlesnake crawls right out in the middle of the lane. Maybe you’re the kind of guy who stops and wastes half an hour pondering why the thing was dumb enough to crawl out of its hole. What I do is gun the engine and run right over its head. See what I’m saying?”

I did and I told him so. But as I rolled out of bed and stumbled towards my coffeepot, the certainty that something was wrong wouldn’t leave me alone. Razor Ray Brady was a lot of things — a lowlife, a psychopath, and a stone-cold killer — but he was also very good at what he did. Professional killers didn’t make amateur mistakes, not when they were as smart, as ruthless, and as successful as Ray Brady. I filled a mug with coffee and lit a cigarette and told myself it didn’t matter. Maybe Ray had been distracted, maybe Willie had pushed his buttons so hard that he hadn’t been thinking straight. Maybe, I thought, Ray had a secret wish to be caught, a hidden bit of conscience that demanded he be punished for his crimes. Sure, I thought. Then I dumped my coffee into the sink and headed out the door.

Linda Boyd looked tired and haggard and every bit forty-two years old. With the mourners and well-wishers gone, the house seemed empty and quiet and lifeless.

“Is Eric home?” I asked.

She blew on her coffee before taking a sip. “He wanted to go back to school. I told him he didn’t have to, but I didn’t stop him.” She sighed. “Maybe if I’d known how quiet it would be here without him I would have made him stay home.”

“They arrested Ray Brady this morning.”

She looked away and then asked if she could have a cigarette. I lit it for her, watched her take a deep drag and grimace.

“That man belongs in jail, Charlie.”

“Yes, he does,” I said. “But not for killing Willie.” I reached for her hand. “Why didn’t you leave him, Linda?”

“Because I loved him,” she said as if it should have been self-evident. “And he was sick, Charlie, really ill. If you love someone, you don’t leave him when he gets sick with cancer or Parkinson’s or something. You stay and you do the best you can, even if it isn’t easy.”

I nodded and squeezed her hand softly. “Those are terminal diseases, aren’t they?”

“So is gambling,” she said.

“Then Willie’s death could be seen as a mercy killing. But how did you set up Brady for your husband’s murder? I don’t understand how you pulled it off unless you and Ray were working together and you double-crossed him.

She jerked her hand away and grimaced. “I didn’t murder my husband,” she said. “And you’re right. Ray Brady didn’t, either, but he’s a wicked man, Charlie. A couple of years ago Willie lost money he didn’t have on a college basketball tournament. Ray held the markers and was threatening to hurt him, so I went to see Ray about it. I knew he liked me in high school and I thought he might listen.” She gave me a bitter, angry smile. “He listened. Then he said he’d take it out in trade.” She shivered. “I slept with him for a month. When I finally told him I couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t stand it, he beat me and raped me. Willie swore he’d get even.” She stood from the table, went to a kitchen drawer, and pulled out a cassette tape. “You need to listen to something.”

I followed her into the living room and sat on a sofa while she hunkered in front of a stereo and put on the tape. After a brief hum, Willie Boyd’s voice filled the living room.

“Hey, Charlie,” he said. “You must have been asking the right questions. Congratulations. I always knew you were a smart guy, and decent, too. You always stuck up for your friends, Charlie. That’s why I knew I could count on you.”

“Wee Willie,” I said, shaking my head. “He always had a line.”

“Shut up,” Linda said, surprising me by the harshness of her tone. “Just listen to the tape.”

“All right, Charlie. Here’s the deal. I got myself in a bind. Another run of bad luck in a lifetime of them, huh? I don’t know. I try and try to stop, but I can’t do it. Not for Linda or Eric or even myself.” There was a cough and then the sound of Willie gulping a drink. “Doesn’t matter now. Eric’s college fund is gone, there are beggars in Calcutta who’ve got better credit ratings than we do, and the bank is thirty days away from foreclosing on our house. I’m not trying to bore you with our problems, but I want you to see. This was the only way. With the life-insurance policy, the house will be safe and Eric will get a free ride to college. They’ll be okay.” Another cough and then the flick of a cigarette lighter. “I never could quit anything, Charlie. Not cigarettes or booze or betting on long shots. It’s like the wires got crossed in my head. Anyway, here’s the thing. The life insurance will take care of my family. But the policy won’t pay on a suicide.”