Tim Conyer was as slight as his brother Brian was massive, both in body size and demeanor. He rose nervously as I entered and immediately offered me a cup of coffee.
“Please. Have a seat.”
I accepted both offers, adding milk and sugar to my mug. “You know why I’m here?”
“I figured they’d be sending somebody.”
“Why’s that?”
He gave a quick, automatic smile. “Well, Billy… I don’t know. Isn’t that what you always do?”
I took a sip. It was hot and sweet and very good. “I suppose so. I heard you called Brian about it this morning.”
He allowed a small frown. “Yeah. Shouldn’t have bothered.”
“That’s basically what he said. According to him, there was no love lost between any of you.”
“He’s speaking for himself. We were a family, regardless how good we were at it. Brian just never made the effort.”
“Where’s he fit in terms of age?”
“The oldest. I’m the youngest. Maybe that has something to do with it. I didn’t see everything he did when we were growing up.”
“Your dad beating your mom?”
He smiled again, this time sadly. “He told you about that? I’m surprised. He usually writes it off as no big deal. I bet he didn’t tell you how it ended. Brian beat the crap out of him one night, and that was that. Dad split to find a different punching bag.”
“How did Billy fit into all this?”
Tim stared into the dark pool at the bottom of his own mug. “I always thought he and Robbie were the real victims-too young to defend themselves, too old to be oblivious like me. Bri and I were the lucky ones.”
“It was Robbie who died in Boston?”
He looked up at me sharply. “OD’d in Boston. Yeah. I had a nightmare once where I saw my mother and father swinging Robbie by his hands and feet and then throwing him onto an enormous needle-big as a spike-at the bottom of a ditch, skewering him like a butterfly to a corkboard. I didn’t need a shrink to explain that one to me.”
“But Billy stayed in town.”
“Yeah. His reaction was a little more complicated. He wanted to be a tough guy like Brian, but it didn’t come naturally. You could call his bluff pretty easily. For a while, all he did was hang out with younger kids-he could dominate them. But I guess that didn’t do it for him, ’cause later it was just the opposite. He’d spend all his time with older jerks who pretended they were God’s gift to cool.”
“Like who?”
He glanced around the room vaguely. “Oh, I don’t know. Jamie Good, Walter Freund, people like that.”
Both names had been mentioned by Janice Litchfield in connection with Brenda Croteau. The bridges between the Resnick homicide and Brenda’s were multiplying. “He hang around with Dwayne Matthews?” I asked, figuring I’d start with Croteau’s boyfriend.
But I drew a blank. “Who?”
“Janice Litchfield?”
“Oh, sure. He knew Janice. Everyone knows her. That wasn’t anything special, though. They were just friends.”
“Owen Tharp?”
His eyes widened at a name that was now headline news. “Owen? Is that what this was all about? Billy got killed because of Owen?”
I shook my head emphatically. “I didn’t say that. Owen comes from that circle-so did your brother. I just wondered if they knew each other.”
“Sure, they did. Owen was one of the younger kids Billy liked to push around.”
“Sounds like everyone pushed him around.”
Tim Conyer suddenly became pensive. “Yeah. He used to remind me of Robbie that way, sometimes-everybody’s punching bag, including his own.” He looked at me quizzically. “That’s what makes his killing that woman so weird. I never would’ve thought Owen had that in him.”
“Witnesses said he’d lash out sometimes-violently.”
Conyer nodded. “I suppose so. I saw it, too. But that was like when my brothers and I were kids. We’d slug it out-sometimes pretty good, too-but there was always a limit.”
I finished my coffee. “Tim, we have evidence Billy was involved in the killing of that man on the railroad tracks a while back. That’s why we went to see him last night-and why we think he decided to shoot it out. Do you know anything that might explain that? Did he talk recently about some money coming his way, or landing a big score, or maybe making some new friends?”
Tim was already shaking his head. “No. He was excited about something, but he never told me what it was. He probably knew I’d give him flak about it. I used to tell him he was headed for trouble, not that he ever listened.”
“How ’bout this last crowd of his-Good and the others? Any of them likely candidates for the railroad tracks killing? There might’ve been three people in on that.”
He looked at me helplessly. “Maybe. I don’t know. I have a hard time thinking of anybody killing somebody else. Billy’s friends aren’t nice people, but I always saw them more as show-offs, not killers.”
That night, as if by unspoken arrangement, Gail and I were at home at close to a normal hour. We set about making dinner as usual, dividing the labor, where I sliced and diced and she did arcane things at the stove. At first we spoke tentatively, generally touching on the day’s activities, acting as if this were a first date and we two people only vaguely acquainted. There was an oddly competitive feeling about it, as if each of us were daring the other to open an intriguing but ominous package placed between us.
“Gail,” I finally began, “I know some of this is probably just in my head. Maybe it’s a midlife crisis or something.”
We had finally settled down at the small breakfast table in the kitchen, in front of a meal neither one of us had the appetite to eat.
“Midlife crises don’t happen to two people simultaneously,” she argued. “This isn’t just your problem.”
I waved an empty fork at the roof over our heads. “Is it this? Living together? We were doing pretty well before.”
Her smile was forlorn. “Moving in together wasn’t what changed things, Joe.”
I was irritated she thought I’d belittle what she’d been through. “I know that. But it’s something we can do something about. I can’t take back the rape.”
Now she looked angry. “The rape isn’t yours to do anything about. It just happened. It wasn’t preventable. But it did happen to me. It affected both of us-I know that-and it cost you, too. But it cost me more.”
I replaced the fork carefully, struggling to choose correctly from a tangle of emotional options. “I’m not trying to take ownership of it, Gail. Or play it down. I just meant there has to be a way for us to move onwards-as a couple. It was a life-altering thing, but I don’t see why it has to destroy how we feel about each other.”
“Was it the rape that started you feeling differently?” she asked, still suspicious.
I knew most of my choices were charged with harm and hurt. We were like two glasses, filled to the brim, balancing on an unsteady tray held between the both of us.
“It was the rape,” I began slowly, “that changed the course of your life. I’d gotten used to the ways things were, and I had trouble keeping pace with the new direction you were taking.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but I held up my hand, suddenly clear on what I wanted to say. “Please, hang on. There’s no fault implied there. I was amazed at how you rallied-I still am. And even more amazed at how you grew from an event that’s ended other women’s lives. In fact, it made me feel like I was standing still in the middle of some road, while you were making tracks like there was no tomorrow. Your rebirth, if you want to call it that, left me wondering what I had done lately-stuck in the same job, the same town, the same routine. I began wondering what possible worth I could be to you.”