Snake Eater (8 page)

He stared solemnly at me. “This is hard to believe,” he said. “I mean,
Daniel
? An
arrow
? Christ, there ain’t
nobody
—” I saw his Adam’s apple bob in his long throat, and then tears welled up in his eyes. “Ah, shit,” he said. He turned to Cammie and pulled her against him. “Ah, damn, anyhow,” he mumbled into her hair. “He was all we had,” he said to her. “Both of us.”

“Roscoe and Vinnie are here,” Cammie told him.

“Good,” said Sweeney.

The four of us went back to the house. Sweeney exchanged complicated ritualistic handshakes with Roscoe and Vinnie and then gave each of them a bear hug. The three of them wandered down to the end of the deck, where they stood close together, murmuring.

After a few minutes they came back. Tears glittered in Roscoe’s eyes.

“You guys want sandwiches?” said Cammie.

“Good idea,” said Sweeney.

Cammie and Terri went inside. I sat down with the other three men and lit a cigarette. Sweeney took a Sucrets box from his shirt pocket, flipped its lid, and removed a prerolled cigarette. He held the box to Roscoe and Vinnie. They both shook their heads.

Sweeney lit up, sucked in, and held it in his lungs. Then he sighed. “We were all there together,” he said to me, jerking his head at the other two men.

“Vietnam?”

He nodded.

“All of you stayed close.”

They all nodded.

“It was Daniel,” said Roscoe softly. “He kept us together. That’s why we all ended up around here. To stick by Daniel.”

“So who’d want to kill him?” I said.

The three of them shrugged.

“What about you?” said Sweeney to me. “Do you have any thoughts?”

“You mean, who killed Daniel?”

He nodded.

“Well, he was worried that he was running out of his medicine.”

“Yeah,” said Sweeney. “Me, too. Daniel kept both of us supplied.”

“You—?”

He nodded. “I got Oranged, too. We talked about it after they ripped up his garden. But Daniel wouldn’t deal with any supplier. I might,” he added with a sly grin, “but not Daniel.”

“The only other thing I can think of, then,” I said, “is this local cop, this Sergeant Oakley, the one who arrested Daniel. Cammie suspects him, I think. But that seems pretty farfetched to me.”

Sweeney shrugged. “Daniel was a lovable old bastard,” he said.

I flashed back on Al Coleman’s words. Coleman had called Daniel crazy and dangerous. “You sure of that?” I said.

The three of them all frowned at me. “What do you mean?” said Roscoe.

“Somebody didn’t love him. Somebody killed him.”

He shrugged. “Someone who didn’t know him, then.”

“A burglar, maybe.”

“Nah,” said Sweeney quickly. “No burglar would get the drop on him like that. Daniel was too quick and too careful for any burglar. Was anything stolen?”

“I don’t think so. The office behind his shop was ransacked. But apparently nothing was taken.”

Sweeney stared across the meadow. “I can do some checking around,” he said. He glanced at Roscoe and Vinnie. “We all can.”

“What are you thinking?”

He shrugged. “A man leads a team into the jungle…”

“You should share your thoughts with the police,” I said. “You all should.”

Sweeney turned to me. “I haven’t got any thoughts,” he said. “But I’m gonna check around anyway.”

L
IEUTENANT FUSCO CALLED ME
from Springfield a few days later. But I had no further insights for him. I realized that I hadn’t known Daniel McCloud that well. I had represented him when he was arrested, and I had tried to find an agent for his book.

He was more than a client. Most of my clients are. I considered him a friend. But he was also a private man. He hadn’t shared his demons with me, though I suspected that any man who had lived through the things he had lived through must be haunted. Cammie, more candidly than Daniel, had suggested as much.

Fusco had no insights, either, or at least none he chose to share with me. He did tell me that they had made no arrests, discovered no motive, identified no suspects. Cammie inventoried the shop for them, and they concluded that there had been no robbery. The office in the back had been messed up, but nothing appeared to be missing.

The medical examiner, Fusco told me, determined that Daniel had died almost instantly when the broadhead sliced through his heart. There was no evidence, either at the crime scene or on Daniel’s body, of a struggle between him and his assailant. They had found no useful fingerprints or footprints or tire tracks, no stray human hairs or bits of skin, no scraps of fabric or lost buttons, no cigar ashes or cigarette butts. No witnesses. Nothing.

Terri and I took turns talking with Cammie on the phone each day during the week following Daniel’s death. Roscoe Pollard and Vinnie Colletti, she told us, had left shortly after we did the day Daniel was killed. Brian Sweeney stayed a little longer, but then he, too, left. Daniel’s army buddies, she said, were a lot like Daniel. They didn’t like to stray far from home. But Sweeney, especially, was a comfort, and he called her every day, too, the way Terri and I did.

The state police had interrogated her repeatedly. She had to tell them her entire life story, and Daniel’s, too, or what she knew of it. She gave them the names of everybody she could think of who knew Daniel—Roscoe Pollard and Vinnie Colletti and Brian Sweeney and his other “brothers” from Vietnam and the local guys who liked to hang around at the bait and tackle shop. She told me she thought they had arranged for a Vermont state police detective to talk with Sweeney, who was Daniel’s best friend and had known him longer and better than anybody, including herself.

She had to tell them about how Daniel had rescued her from her Springfield pimp. That wasn’t easy, she said. She didn’t like the way the cops glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes or the exaggerated way they called her “Ma’am.” But they had to know about Boomer.

She was okay, she told us. She said she guessed it still hadn’t really hit her yet.

I figured the police regarded Cammie Russell as a suspect.

The following Saturday, just a week after the murder, Terri and I spent the day with Cammie. The three of us walked through the woods and along the river that Daniel had loved. Cammie and Terri seemed to like each other, which made sense to me, since I liked both of them. They whispered between themselves, and a couple of times Cammie laughed. Later, I grilled steaks for the three of us while Cammie and Terri tossed a big salad, and we ate out on the deck while Daniel’s favorite Jimmy Reed tape played through the sliding screens. We had some wine and watched the sun sink over the river. Darkness settled into the woods and the night creatures came out. We put our heads back and looked at the stars. We switched to coffee.

“As soon as they release his body,” said Cammie, “I’m going to give a party. I hope you both will come.”

“Of course,” I said.

“And then,” she said to me, “I’ll probably need to talk with a lawyer.”

“Yes. I’ll help all I can.”

She reached over and squeezed my arm. “I know. You already have.”

It was midnight. Terri yawned. We took the coffee mugs inside. “Thanks a lot for coming,” said Cammie.

“We can stay with you,” I said.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

I arched my eyebrows doubtfully.

She reached behind her back, then showed me the small automatic handgun that had materialized in her hand.

“Ah,” I said. “You’re armed.”

“Daniel insisted.”

“When?”

“Right from the beginning. I was afraid of Boomer coming for me. Daniel kept saying I shouldn’t worry, but I wasn’t very stable then. So he got this for me and showed me how to use it. I’ve never seen Boomer.” She shrugged. “But I’ve just kept it.”

“I thought Daniel hated guns.”

“He didn’t hate them. He just never felt he needed one. He thought I did.”

“Do you have a license for it?”

Cammie shook her head. “Daniel said it was none of anybody’s business. Anyway, he said it wouldn’t be such a good idea. I do have a—I’ve been arrested. You have to get permits from the local police, you know.”

“Oakley?” I said.

She smiled. “You know how he felt about Oakley.”

“You could get in a lot of trouble, lugging that around.”

“I don’t lug it around. I just keep it on me when I’m around here alone, that’s all. When Daniel was here, I kept it beside my bed. I feel better with it. For now. For a while.”

She tucked her little weapon back into the holster at the small of her back.

Terri and I took the back roads home, through South Hadley, the self-proclaimed asparagus capital of the world, through Granby and Belchertown and Pelham and New Salem, heading north parallel to the Quabbin Reservoir, through the dark rural parts of Massachusetts. On Route 2 a few trucks whanged past us. Their backdrafts tugged at my steering wheel. Terri and I didn’t talk much. I found some jazz on a Worcester radio station. They were playing a Miles Davis album. His trumpet had never sounded more blue.

“You’ve been awfully good to Cammie,” I said to Terri.

“She’s hurting a lot more than she shows.”

“Does she talk to you about it?”

“Not really. She talks about Daniel. He was more like a father to her than…”

“I guess he saved her life.”

“That’s how Cammie sees it. He
was
her life. It’s like she really doesn’t have one now. But she’s strong. I think she’ll be okay.”

I reached across the front seat and squeezed Terri’s leg. “Well, you’ve obviously been good to her.”

She laid her hand atop mine. “My nurse’s training,” she said.

As we approached the Acton turnoff, Terri said, “Brady, I think I want to sleep in my own bed tonight.”

“Sure. Okay.”

“Alone, I mean.”

I shrugged.

“I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” I lied.

“I want to get Melissa first thing in the morning.”

“I thought your mother had her for the weekend.”

“It’s what I want to do, okay?”

There was an edge to her voice that I had never heard before.

She kissed me hard and long at the door to her building, and I said, “Sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“Not tonight.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“Do you understand?”

“No.”

She put her arms around my neck and her cheek on my shoulder. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

“I really do want to get Melissa.”

“Sure, but—”

“Okay. I want to be alone.”

“You mean, you want to be apart from me.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Fine.”

“Try to understand, Brady. Cammie and I did a lot of talking. It’s been a… an unsettling day.”

“No problem.”

“You don’t understand, do you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She tipped her head back and looked into my face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish…”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

She tried to smile. It wasn’t convincing.

She kissed me and pressed against me. I held her tight. After a long time she gently pulled away. “Tonight,” she whispered, “I need to be alone. Just tonight. Okay?”

“You got it,” I said.

She hugged me quickly, then fumbled in her purse for her keys. “Call me?”

“I will.”

“Good night, Brady.”

“Night, Terri.”

I walked back to the parking lot. When I got to my car, I turned to wave to Terri. But she had already gone inside.

I
CALLED TERRI ON
Tuesday. “How’s the weekend look?” I said.

“Not that good. I—”

“Don’t give me an excuse, hon. You don’t have to.”

She hesitated. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I was going to tell you I was all tied up with Melissa. It’s true, but it’s not the point. I’ve been all tied up with Melissa plenty of times and you’ve been a part of it. I don’t want to get into lying or making up excuses with you, Brady.”

“You don’t have to. I’m a big boy.”

“My feelings for you haven’t changed.”

“But?”

“But… my feelings are making me nervous. I need space.”

“I guess,” I said, “true love is when both people feel the need for the same amount of space at the same time.”

“I always thought it was when you stopped feeling that you needed space.”

“No,” I said. “Everybody needs space.”

I ended up spending the first day of my weekend space with my friend Doc Adams. We drank beer and played chess in his backyard in Concord, and toward the middle of the afternoon Doc mentioned a local pond that, he had heard, the state stocked with trout every September. Nobody seemed to fish there, Doc told me. Doc wasn’t much for fly-fishing himself. He thought it a pretty yuppi-fied sport, actually. He tried it a few times, and on one especially windy afternoon on the Deerfield River he drove a hook beyond the barb into his earlobe. I yanked it out for him—Doc never uttered a peep—and that was enough fly-fishing for him. But he loved to eat fresh-caught trout and he wondered if a man who claimed to be a good fly-fisherman might be able to harvest a meal from this secret pond of his.

Doc even volunteered to paddle the canoe and clean the fish afterward as well, should I get lucky.

The surface of the pond was littered with crimson and yellow maple leaves, which skittered around like toy sailboats ahead of a light puffy breeze. We saw lots of migrating birds—ducks in the coves and warblers in the pondside bushes—and I managed to catch a dozen or so fat ten-inch brook trout on gaudy little wet flies. We kept six and brought them back to Doc’s house on Old Stone Mill Road. Doc sautéed them in butter with tarragon and shallots while his wife, Mary, and I drank wine and kibitzed. Mary asked about Terri. I told her that Terri was tied up with her daughter for the weekend. Mary cocked her head and looked at me sideways. I shrugged. She didn’t pursue it.

The trout were delicious. Doc asserted that we could’ve caught twice as many using spinning gear. We argued our respective definitions of sport.

Mary said she knew a young sculptress, recently divorced. I told her I didn’t think I was interested. She smiled and said she thought as much, but figured she should mention it.