Too Close to Home

I persisted. “This place will be swarming with news crews in a minute. You’re going to have to tell them something. You can practice on us.”

He paused another moment, then said, “It was like an execution in there. Somebody, maybe two people, we don’t know yet, came in last night and shot them. All three.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

Ellen gripped my arm. “Dear God,” she said.

I looked up at the house, cops still going in and out, talking quietly, shaking their heads.

Barry continued, “Mr. Langley, he’s by the front door, looks like his wife was shot coming down the stairs to see what was going on, and the boy-Adam?” He looked at Derek for confirmation, and my son nodded. “Adam, he was shot going down the stairs by the back door. Looks like he was trying to make a run for it, took a bullet right about here.” Barry touched himself at the back of the neck, just under his left ear.

I was numb. And despite the kind of weather we were having, I felt chilled.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought they’d gone away. They were taking a vacation or something.” To Derek, I said, “Weren’t they going away for a week?”

“Yeah,” he said, his face still wet with tears.

“Wife got sick,” Barry said. “They were well on their way, but she was having stomach pains or something, it’s a bit sketchy. But on the way back, around ten, Langley phoned one of the secretaries from his law firm, phoned her at home. Said his wife was sick, they were postponing their trip and coming back home, that if she got better by the morning they’d try heading off again, but in the meantime, there was a case he’d been thinking about, wanted her to bring a file out to him this morning so he could work on it, maybe take it with him if they managed to get away again.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So she drives in here about nine this morning to drop it off, knocks on the door, nobody answers. She tries a couple times, figures maybe they’re sleeping in or something, so she phones the house from her cell, can hear the phone ringing in the house, but nobody’s picking up, which seems pretty weird to her, right?”

We were all listening.

“So she happens to peer in through a window by the door.” He pointed over to the house, the vertical windows flanking the door. “She can see Mr. Langley lying there, can just barely make out the wife on the stairs. That’s when she called 911.”

Ellen said, “The poor woman. How horrible. Imagine, finding something like that.”

Barry continued, “When Langley phoned his secretary last night, he said he was only about ten miles from home, so they must have arrived back here not long after ten. So whoever did this, it was sometime after that, and probably not that much later. They were all still dressed. No one in their pajamas, not even the mother. You figure, she was the one not feeling well, she would have gotten ready for bed pretty soon after they got home. They still hadn’t brought their stuff back into the house.”

“They might not have unpacked,” I said, “if they thought they were going to go back up this morning.”

“True,” Barry said. “It’s very early in the investigation. We’ve got a lot to do. Forensic guys are only just getting here.”

Barry said to Derek, “Adam was a pretty good friend of yours, right?” My son nodded. “He ever say anything to you, you ever hear anything when you were over to the house visiting him, to suggest that someone might have it in for them? That his dad might have been worried about anything, anyone threatening him maybe? Some case he might have been working on?” He glanced at me. “He handled a lot of criminal cases.”

“Yeah,” I said. “There was that one I just read about in the paper. That gang fight or something? One kid beat up another kid, killed him, Langley got him off?”

Barry nodded. “That’s right. The McKindrick case.”

Ellen said, “I read about that, too. Tom McKindrick, that was the boy? The one that died? He was in his teens, right?”

Barry nodded again but said nothing, deciding to let Ellen do the work.

“He took a blow to the head, and Albert, Mr. Langley, he got the jury to believe that he’d more or less provoked it, that the other boy-what was his name?”

“Anthony Colapinto,” Barry said hesitantly, as though he’d been forced to admit something that wasn’t common knowledge.

“That’s it,” Ellen said. “Albert persuaded the jury that Anthony Colapinto was acting in self-defense when he went at the McKindrick boy with a baseball bat. When they read out the verdict, not guilty, the boy’s father, Colin McKindrick, collapsed right there in the courtroom.”

“Yeah,” Barry said. “I was there.”

“But then didn’t he get up? And threaten Albert?”

Barry nodded. “He told Albert Langley he’d pay for getting the son of a bitch off.”

I think my eyebrows must have shot up. “I hadn’t heard about that,” I said.

To Derek, Barry said, “You ever hear Albert Langley, or even his son, Adam, talking about that? Like maybe they were worried this Colin McKindrick might try to get even?”