A Fine Line - Hardcover

Tapply, William G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312303521 ISBN 13: 9780312303525

Verlag: Minotaur Books, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Walt Duffy was a world-renowned ornithologist, outdoorsman, and nature photographer who spent his life traveling and taking some of the most highly regarded photographs of birds in their natural habitats. Until, that is, over a year ago, when a climbing accident left him paraplegic. Now he spends his time in the backyard of his brownstone in Boston, with only his dog and his teen-aged son Ethan for company.

Brady Coyne, Walt's long-time friend and attorney, handles his routine legal affairs and is asked by Walt to deliver a set of Meriweather Lewis letters to a rare book dealer for authentication. Shortly after, responding to a call from Duffy, Coyne stops by after work only to find Walt dead - murdered - in his backyard. Robbery is dismissed as a motive when the only thing that turns up missing is Walt's laptop. Equally disturbing is the fact that Ethan, Walt's son, is missing without a trace, any sign of struggle, or any clue to where he may have gone. There is also evidence that Walt was somehow involved in a notorious eco-terrorist group that is currently taking deadly action around the Boston area.

With the FBI and the Boston police watching him closely, the eco-terrorists escalating dramatically, and Ethan still missing, Brady finds himself in the center of an increasingly dangerous plot. With the death toll mounting, Brady realizes he has to find the missing Ethan and unravel the complex puzzle before either of them becomes the latest victim.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William G. Tapply is the author of over twenty novels, many of which feature Brady Coyne. He is also the author numerous books on fly fishing and the outdoors as well as being a contributing editor to Field & Stream. He lives in Hancock, NH.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

ONE
A pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds—a male and a female—were darting and hovering and dipping their beaks into the pink hollyhocks that grew against the brick wall. Up there inside Walt Duffy’s patio garden on Mt. Vernon Street at the crown of Beacon Hill, the June sun had sunk behind the walls and the late-afternoon city noises were far away and muffled, and I could actually hear the soft buzz of the hummingbirds’ wings.
Walt was sitting on his chaise with his useless legs sprawled in front of him, watching the birds through the long telephoto lens of his Nikon. He snapped a couple of pictures, then put the camera on the patio table and picked up his gin-and-tonic. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” he said.
I nodded. “They are beautiful.”
“Old habit,” he said, “taking their pictures. I like to frame them, bring them close, catch that iridescence when the sun hits their breasts.” He took a sip, held it in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed. Then he laughed. “Pretending I’m still the great globe-trotting bird photographer. Hummingbirds in my garden. Jesus.”
It had been a little more than a year since the drizzly May morning when Walt Duffy climbed a granite outcropping near the Quabbin Reservoir to photograph a nesting pair of bald eagles. He’d somehow slipped and crashed onto the rocks thirty feet below. It took him half a day to crawl out of the woods to the cell phone he’d left in his car, dragging his lifeless legs behind him.
And that, abruptly and irreversibly, ended Walt Duffy’s career as the country’s—maybe the world’s—best-known photographer of wild birds.
I’d handled his divorce nine years before his fall. I’d helped him organize his various business ventures. I’d vetted his publishing contracts, counseled him on tax law, and helped arrange syndication in forty-two city newspapers nationwide for his weekly “The Urban Birder” columns, which combined natural history, practical advice for city-dwelling bird lovers, and environmental polemic.
After his accident I helped him negotiate the medical insurance maze and did all the other things a jack-of-all-trades lawyer does for a client—including drop in for gin-and-tonics with him most Tuesdays on my way home from the office.
He, in turn, paid me a pretty nice retainer.
Walt Duffy, who had photographed birds on every continent on the globe and in every state in the Union, who had climbed mountains and traversed deserts and floated jungle rivers, was now stuck in his Mt. Vernon Street townhouse, and as far as I knew, aside from weekly visits from me and biweekly sessions with his physical therapist, his only companions were his son, Ethan, a freshman at Emerson College who’d come to live with Walt when he got out of the hospital, and Henry, his fat Brittany spaniel.
Well, he did have his birds. When Walt bought the townhouse after his divorce, the first thing he did was build what he called his “bird garden” in the little twenty-by-thirty-foot walled-in patio area that backed up to the alley. “If you build it, they will come,” he liked to say. He cleaned out the junk, dug the whole place up, trucked in yards of topsoil, laid the bricks, planted the bird-attracting flowers and vines and berry bushes, installed the water fountain and bird-bath pool, and hung the feeders. When he wasn’t on the road, he liked to sit quietly among his birds, photographing them and admiring them and writing about them on his laptop computer.
When it came to birds, Walt Duffy was a democrat. He liked the English sparrows and blue jays that came to his Beacon Hill backyard as much as the rare and exotic species he’d tracked down in Belize and Madagascar and Hudson Bay before his accident.
Now a robin was splashing in the pool and a downy woodpecker was jackhammering the suet. Three goldfinches pecked thistle seed from the feeder. The hummingbirds continued to buzz among the hollyhocks, and squadrons of chickadees and titmice were swiping sunflower seeds.
Walt drained his gin-and-tonic, put his glass on the table, then lay back on his chaise and closed his eyes. He was, I happened to know, forty-eight years old, just a few years older than me. He had once been a tall sinewy man with a ruddy sun-creased face, a quick smile, and boundless energy and enthusiasm. But in the year or so since his accident, his hair had grown thin and gray, his belly had thickened, and the skin on his face and neck had begun to sag.
Suddenly, the door in the back wall to the alley pushed open. All the birds whirred away, and Henry, the pudgy spaniel, came bounding into the patio. He headed straight for Walt and leaped onto his chest.
“Jesus,” muttered Walt. “You’re all wet.” He pushed Henry off his lap, and the dog came waddling over to me. I held my hand down to him, and he licked it a couple of times. Then he sat beside me and gazed into my eyes.
“I like dogs,” I said. “Dogs make eye contact.”
“They think if they look at you lovingly, you’ll give them something to eat,” said Walt. He snapped his fingers. “C’mere, you.”
Henry stood up, sauntered over to where Walt was sprawled on his chaise, and lay on the bricks beside him.
A moment later Ethan came in through the door in the wall and shut it behind him. “Hi, Brady,” he said. He came over and held out his hand.
I shook it. Ethan was a small kid, skinny and quick like Walt used to be and with the same lopsided smile. Even with his shaved head and the gold stud in his left nostril, he looked about twelve. He was studying screenwriting at Emerson.
“The damn dog got mud all over me,” said Walt.
“We went down to the duck pond,” said Ethan. “I told him to wipe his feet.”
“Get a towel or something. I don’t want him tracking mud all over the house.”
Ethan gave Walt a quick salute. “Aye, aye, sir.” He looked at me and rolled his eyes, then went into the house.
Henry had rolled onto his side beside Walt’s chaise. Walt’s arm dangled down so he could scratch the dog’s belly. “You see that fucking earring in his nose?” he said. “What’s with that?”
“One of my sons got an earring when he was in college,” I said. “Wore it for about a year, then let the hole heal up.”
Walt rolled his eyes. “You should see the kids he hangs out with. Purple hair, pierced tongues, girls dressed like boys, boys dressed like girls. You can’t tell one from the other. They all think they’re artists.”
At that moment, Ethan came back with a towel. “We are artists,” he said. “We’re just not very good at it yet.” He knelt down on the bricks, wiped Henry’s feet, then stood up and looked at Walt. “What do you want for dinner?”
“I don’t care,” said Walt.
“Pasta okay? I can make some pesto sauce.”
“Don’t overcook it,” said Walt. “Last time you overcooked the damn linguine.”
Ethan looked at Walt for a moment, then turned to me. “Brady? Join us?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
“Stay,” said Walt.
“Nope. Thanks. Gotta go.”
He waved the back of his hand at Ethan. “Go cook,” he said. “I got something I want to talk to Brady about. And bring the damn dog with you. He scares the birds.”
“What do you expect,” said Ethan. “He’s a bird dog.” Then he whistled to Henry, and the two of them went inside.
“I don’t know how he puts up with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Minotaur Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312303521
• ISBN 13: 9780312303525
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar