Heartstone

PART SIX. HEARTSTONE
Epilogue

Caproni looked through the swirling sheets of snow for a street sign that would tell him how close they were to the Hotel Cordova. He saw none. The car skidded on a patch of ice and Louis Weaver grabbed the door handle for support. Caproni settled back in his seat and listened to the metronomic swish of the windshield wipers.

There had never been a second trial. Esther Pegalosi had retracted her testimony and the charges against Billy Coolidge had been dismissed. Philip Heider did not care. He had won his party’s nomination for State Representative and, later, the general election. Now he was a United States Senator.

Mark Shaeffer had not suffered either. The Murray-Walters case had made him one of the best-known criminal attorneys in the state and he had parleyed the publicity into one of the most lucrative practices in the state shortly after he divorced his first wife. Shaeffer rarely touched a criminal case now, concentrating instead on corporate and tax work.

Esther Pegalosi had moved out of state soon after the trial ended and Caproni had heard nothing about her since. Billy Coolidge had served the rest of his prison term and had been shot to death in a half-empty parking lot shortly after his release. Traces of cocaine had been found on the body and there had been some talk about a drug ripoff. The crime had never been solved.

And Roy Shindler. There had been rumors after Esther left town. No one had ever substantiated them. Shindler was still on the force, but he had changed after the Murray-Walters case. He was still good at his work, but he no longer seemed to care. The intensity that had characterized him was gone. Caproni had used him as a witness several times in the past and spoken to him on business on many occasions, but in all those years since the trial Shindler had never once mentioned the Murray-Walters case.

Caproni closed his eyes and reviewed the cast of characters again. There was only one he had not covered: Albert C. Caproni, the youngest elected district attorney in the history of Portsmouth. Would Bobby Coolidge have taken his life if he had gone to Judge Samuels with the information he had? For a while Caproni had deluded himself into believing that he had acted the way he had because he did not want a murderer to go free because of a hasty judgment. But he knew better. What Heider and Shindler had done was wrong whether or not Coolidge was guilty. They had destroyed evidence. That was a criminal and unethical act. He should have gone to the judge, but he hadn’t and he knew now that he hadn’t because of selfish reasons having to do with his own career. He had been afraid that he would lose his job. It was that simple. So he had taken the middle road when faced with the greatest moral decision of his life. And a man had died.

The Hotel Cordova bore a faint resemblance to the Cedar Arms. As Caproni climbed the stairs to Heartstone’s room he felt the same chill he had experienced those long years before when he had walked up the poorly lit staircase to meet William Heartstone that first time.

Louis Weaver opened the door to the room and stood aside to let Caproni and Pat Kelly enter. The odors of disease and death filled the air. The shades were drawn and darkness added to the funereal atmosphere. Heartstone was asleep and Caproni could not make out his features in the dark.

“Willie?” Louis whispered when the door was closed and the shades raised. Caproni found it hard to believe that the man on the bed was still alive. He could almost see the skull beneath the skin. The gnarled hands that so pathetically clutched the soiled blankets looked paper thin.

Heartstone coughed and his eyes opened. It took a moment for them to focus. Then a smile suffused Heartstone’s ravaged features.

“You’ve come,” he said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

Caproni pulled a chair over to the side of the bed and leaned close to Heartstone. He started the tape recorder.

“Willie, how did you remember?”

Willie smiled.

“The card,” he rasped as a fit of coughing shook him. He motioned toward Weaver and Louis drew a stained and crumpled business card out of his pocket. It was the card Caproni had given to Heartstone on the evening they had first met. Caproni was astonished.

“You kept it? All these years?”

“As many as received Him to them gave he the power to become the children of God.”

Willie’s features were serene. He held out his hand. The hand moved with great difficulty. It shook when Caproni took hold of it.

“Tell me, Willie. Who killed Elaine Murray?”

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“Tell me, Willie.”

Tears welled up in the dying man’s eyes. Caproni knew that Heartstone was not that much older than he was, yet he could have been one hundred.

“Tell me,” he repeated softly.

“Ralph done it. We had her so many days, then Ralph got tired.”

It took a great effort for Heartstone to speak and he lapsed into another coughing fit. Caproni wondered if he would last until the doctor arrived.

“Tired, Willie? What do you mean?”

“Feedin’ her. Carin’ for her, what little we done.”

He began to cry again.

“It’s all right now, Willie. Just tell me.”

“He killed her and we left her by the road.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. It was after New Year’s.”

“Willie, did you know a man named Eddie Toller?” Willie looked confused.

“A man you sold Elaine to for sex.”

“There was so many,” Willie sobbed. He grasped Caproni’s hand tightly. “Will I be saved? I sinned so long. I don’t want to burn in hell.”

“If you tell me everything, God will forgive you, Willie. Now tell me about Toller.”

“We sold her to so many. I don’t remember. She begged us not to at first, but we beat her and starved her and soon she lost her spirit.”

Willie was overcome again. Caproni let him cry and leaned back, exhausted.

“Then Bobby Coolidge was innocent all along,” he said.

“No! Guilty! Sinful!”

The words were Heartstone’s and the voice was filled with such power that it shocked everyone in the room.

“But you said…”

“‘He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there was no truth in him.’ Innocent?” Heartstone laughed, the cruelty of that laugh burning like ice in the stillness of the death room. “Who do you think sold her to us?”

Elaine Murray had been crying ever since they had dropped Esther in front of her house. Billy had grabbed Esther by the throat and had said something to her in a voice too low for Bobby to hear. But Bobby could guess, from the look on her face, what he had said. Esther was very drunk and very scared and Bobby knew that she would keep quiet, if for no other reason than fear of implicating herself in what had happened that night.

Billy was thinking fast as he headed the car into the country. Bobby had suggested that they take Elaine to a deserted house that the gang sometimes used for parties. The house was isolated and they would not have to worry about prying eyes.

What to do with her once they got to the house was the question. Walters was dead. There was no doubt about that. Billy had stabbed him and Bobby had hit him with the tire iron. They could not let her go, but, even for Billy, killing a girl in cold blood was different from killing a man during a fight.

Elaine’s whimpering was starting to get on Billy’s nerves. Bobby was holding her in the back seat to make sure that she did not try to get away, but Bobby was almost in a state of shock himself. Billy loved his brother, but Bobby was soft. Oh, he was good enough in most fights, but he did not have the killer instinct. The desire to fight and to inflict pain. Bobby had hit Walters out of panic. Billy had enjoyed it every time he had stabbed that rich bastard. Enjoyed stabbing Walters, who was Cooper and every other rich snob who had looked down on him and treated him like he did not exist. Only Walters knew that Billy Coolidge existed. He knew it every time that the blade struck home. Knew it every time he screamed. Knew that he, Billy Coolidge, was taking-had the power to take-his life.

Billy found the dirt road that led up to the house. A farmer had built it in the late eighteen hundreds and it had been remodeled after that, but the farmer had died and his children had moved away and it was empty now. It was a bulky house. Thick and wide, a two-story silhouette, black space against the early morning night sky.

“Shut her up, Bobby,” Billy yelled.

“Easy, Elaine. Everything will be okay. Don’t be frightened.”

The girl continued to cry. Billy parked in the backyard so that it would be more difficult to see the car. He got out and ran around the side of the house. He peered in the side window that looked in on the kitchen. It did not appear that anyone was living in the house. Last time out they had had to beat up some hobos who were squatting.

Billy was about to double-check through the front window when he heard Bobby curse. He raced toward the back of the house. The car was empty and the door on the back driver’s side was open. He could see a vague shape thrashing through the high grass that had once been a wheat field. He ran as fast as he could after the disappearing figure. He heard a grunt and a high-pitched, female scream. Two bodies crashed to the ground. In an instant he was pushing his brother off the fallen girl, straddling her, slapping her face from side to side, screaming “bitch” in a voice filled with animal lust and hate.

“Stop it. You’ll kill her.”

Bobby was grabbing his arms. His chest was heaving. The girl was moaning. Blood was trickling from her nose. Billy took a deep breath. He glared at the girl. He was sexually aroused by the sight of someone he had desired, but had been denied, now powerless and under his control.

“Let’s get her in the house,” Billy said.

They forced her to her feet and half dragged, half carried her, into the house and up to the second floor bedroom. There were a few mattresses on the floor, carried there during the last party and left for the future.

Billy threw her down roughly on the floor. He turned to Bobby.

“Wait outside.”

“But, Billy…” Bobby started to say, but one look at his brother’s face silenced him.

A half hour later, the bedroom door opened. Billy looked played out, his anger and hatred spent. He nodded toward the naked girl huddled on the floor.

“She’s yours, if you want her,” he said wearily.

Bobby shook his head. He couldn’t. It wasn’t just the fear and fatigue. It was the horror of what they had done that night, creeping up on him as he waited for his brother in the darkened hallway. His mind had been racing in a dozen directions, searching for a solution to the problem the girl presented.

“Billy, we have to get rid of her.”

“Kill her?” Billy asked. He was too weary to do it tonight.

Bobby shook his head.

“I couldn’t.”

“We can’t let her go. She knows about Walters.”

“I have an idea. Remember those two guys you owe the money to on the dope deal.”

“Pasante and Heartstone?”

Bobby nodded.

“You still owe them, right?”

“Yeah.”

“See if they’ll take the girl.”

“As payment?”

“Or to…to do it for us. Billy, I can’t do it. Not like that.”

Billy looked at him.

“I can do it.”

“Billy, don’t,” he said desperately. “Besides, if they get caught with Elaine, everyone will think they killed Richie.”

“I don’t like it. They might let her go or she might get away.”

It was then that Bobby broke down. Sobs wracked his body. Billy did not know how to react. It was unmanly to cry, yet he vaguely understood what his brother was going through.

“All right, kid. I’ll try it.”

Bobby had turned away from him. He let him cry. The girl was out of it. She was curled in the corner, looking at him. He looked at her with contempt.

“He paid us one hundred dollars to kill her. Sold dope for us to cover the debt. We said we’d do it right away, but we didn’t. He never knew. Thought we done it the first night.”

Heartstone coughed again. This time he spit up blood and the coughing seemed to go on forever. Caproni stood up and walked to the window. Guilty and innocent. It had never occurred to him that two people had done the killings.

“Mr. Caproni,” Louis Weaver yelled. He turned from the window and walked rapidly to the bed. It only took him one look to tell that Willie Heartstone was dead.

The snow had stopped falling and the streets were starting to fill with five o’clock traffic. Caproni sat in the back seat of the car with his eyes closed. It was all over. Coolidge had been a murderer after all. Now that he knew, it didn’t seem to make any difference. He realized that what he had done in his youth was no more and no less than what all his fellow human beings had done at one time or another. He had been idealistic and naive and he had failed to live up to the goals that he had set for himself because he was a human being. He was not perfect. But he tried to be a good man. If he had failed on that one occasion, he had succeeded on many, many others.

Caproni looked at the tape recorder in his lap and ejected the cartridge. No need to keep this around, he thought. He would erase the tape tomorrow. He was too tired right now.

“Back to the office?” Pat Kelly asked from the front seat.

“No, Pat. I think I’ll just go home.”