Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

Mrs. Coyne opened her purse. “A month ago I started carrying this old picture around so I could show it to you when we ran into each other, and then I haven’t seen you since. Isn’t that always the way?” She made paddling motions inside the huge bag, pushing aside innumerable contingency items like lip balm and pens and tissues and the keys to her sister’s house in Rockford.

“Here,” Mrs. Coyne said, her fingers on something. “Oh, yes. This.”

Sam and Martha huddled close for a better look while Justin stared out onto the sidewalk. The photo of Sam was taken when he was about eight years old. It was winter and Sam was dressed in snow pants and a parka and he was holding a sled. He wasn’t wearing a cap, but Sam wondered why his mother chose this photo to demonstrate his youthful resemblance to Martha’s son when she could have picked from dozens of others, in which he was not so obscured by nylon and fleece. He guessed it was because the house in the background showed off the Christmas lights his parents were so famous for in their neighborhood. Looking at it, however, he had to admit the resemblance to Justin was startling. They had the same blond hair (although young Sam’s had been shorter), similar cheekbones, the same chin.

“Wow!” Martha grinned, pulling away from the photo and then bending back down for a better assessment. “Justin, take a look,” she said. “Look at Mr. Coyne when he was your age. He looks just like you.”

“Wow,” Justin said flatly, blinking at the photograph. There was a moment of curiosity, when his eyebrows curled, indicating to Sam that the boy saw the resemblance, but it also was apparent that Justin wanted no part of a conversation that would keep him out shopping with his mother longer than necessary. Sam sympathized.

Martha handed the photograph back to Mrs. Coyne and looked Sam in the eyes. “Well, he has a lot to look forward to if he grows up as handsome as you.”

Flirtatious, Sam thought.

“Seventy-four!” Sal cried out.

Sam held out his ticket. “Here,” he said to Martha. “I’ll trade you. It looks like Justin would like to get this over with.”

Martha raised her eyebrows. “That’s kind, but you don’t have to.”

Mrs. Coyne stopped Martha’s hand as she tried to give the ticket back. “Take it. Really. We’re in no hurry.”

“Gosh,” Martha said. “Thank you so much.”

“Divorced,” Sam’s mother whispered to him, in answer to an unasked question, after Martha had waved good-bye and disappeared toward the checkout.

Sam returned to the city following an early supper on Sunday, and on the way home he called innocent-looking-but-uninhibited Tina, whom he had met and balled at a client’s holiday party last December. Tonight, their second night together, he lay on his back and Tina straddled him, facing away. The television news was on, with the sound turned down.

“Oh, Looord,” Tina purred. “This guy on the TV looks a little bit like you.”

Sam had forgotten how chatty Tina was. Even when they were coupled in her boss’s office the night of the party she was telling him stories about the weird guy in accounts payable who came by her desk every morning when she was in the ladies’ room and tongued the lipstick off her coffee mug.

“I’ve been getting that a lot lately,” Sam said, hands firmly on her hips, keeping her in proper time. “Who is he?”

“A football player. Jimmy Spears, it says.” She giggled and dug into his thigh with her red nails. “He’s hot.”

“He sucks,” Sam said. “What’s he doing on TV in the middle of July?”

“Don’t know,” Tina said. “Don’t care.” She arched backward and Sam snarled one hand in her auburn hair and slipped the other around her neck, just under her jawline, and when a finger got close to her mouth, she bit it hard enough to draw blood.

Later, as his hands caressed the faint but exquisite bruises, both his and hers, left by the scratching and teething and open-handed slapping, he tried to imagine Martha’s contours in place of Tina’s, tried to conceive of the sort of clandestine, muffled, normal sex they would have with the little boy who looked just like him asleep in the next room.

To his surprise, he almost could.

WEISS TRIAL DATE SET FOR FALL

Vic Fabian, Brixton Courier

It has been 32 years since John Francis McCullough was found guilty in the stabbing death of Calhoun resident Molly Bowman, but Brixton officials insist they will be ready on November 14 when Richard Cantrell Weiss becomes the first individual in three decades to be tried for murder in the Main Street courthouse.

The facts of the case might not be fully apparent until the end of testimony in what is expected to be a four-week trial, but a glimpse of the case was revealed recently in the prosecutor’s indictment.

Weiss, a graduate of Brixton High School and a former greenskeeper at Brixton Country Club, has been charged with the murder of Phillip Canella, a private investigator who had been making inquiries around the village last October. Canella was looking into the alleged infidelity of a Chicago-area doctor at the behest of the physician’s wife. Neither police nor the district attorney would comment on the connection between Weiss and the doctor (whose name was redacted from the indictment), although sources say he could be called as a witness.

The prosecutor’s office refused to comment on persistent rumors that Miami Dolphins quarterback Jimmy Spears, a Brixton native and high school classmate of Weiss, might be called to testify, as well. Originally alleged on the sports network ESPN, the story has been repeated in the New York Post and The Miami Herald, with reporters in each case citing “anonymous sources.” Spears has admitted that Brixton officials have been in contact with him concerning the case, but declined further comment.

Police were alerted to Weiss’s possible involvement in Canella’s murder after one of Canella’s associates supplied them with evidence allegedly obtained from Weiss’s wife, Margaret. A subsequent interrogation of former Brixton resident Herman Tweedy led police to a wooded area near Beck City, where Canella’s decomposed body was discovered. Margaret Weiss is said to be cooperating with police and charges against her are still pending. Herman Tweedy recently pled guilty to obstruction of justice and being an accomplice after the fact.

Although he was a longtime resident who was well known around town, Weiss’s close friends have been reluctant to comment. In Millie’s Tap Room, a favorite haunt of the accused, a recent patron (who requested his name be withheld) said, “Am I surprised that Ricky’s on trial for murder? Sure I am. Am I shocked about it? No, not really.”

Chicago newspapers covered the arrest of Richard Weiss, but Philly had no family in the area to add local interest, so ongoing coverage consisted mostly of Metro section wire stories and an occasional update on the sports page. Citing “anonymous sources close to the investigation,” a suburban paper, the Daily Herald, named Davis as the Chicago doctor purged from the indictment. The other papers followed, with the Sun-Times also naming Joan Burton as “Dr. Moore’s associate,” hinting that she was the alleged mistress Phil Canella had been trying to expose. Davis’s attorney, Graham Mendelsohn, noting his client had lost his own daughter to murder, his wife to depression and suicide, and had himself been the victim of an assassin’s bullet, refused comment. The local press didn’t pursue the Moore angle aggressively, but that could change, Graham told Davis, if he were called to testify.

“It could change dramatically, depending on what you have to tell them,” Graham said.