A Tap on the Window

by Linwood Barclay

  “You think you’ve just about got the well capped now?” I asked. “What did Ricky tell you? That he got Dennis and Claire? That I’m the last one left who knows what happened? Now that you’ve got that piece of evidence in your hands, and you’ve taken care of Donna and me, you’ve got this under control?”

  Her jaw trembled slightly. “Something like that.”

  “Claire’s alive,” I told her. “Ricky didn’t hit her. And she’s home now, with her father. So now Sanders knows. And I’ve talked to Augie, and he knows. You’ll end up killing half of Griffon before you’re done, Phyllis.”

  The color was draining from her face. “You’re lying.”

  “No,” I said calmly. “I’m not.”

  “We . . . we never wanted anyone to get hurt,” she said. “It was that boy’s fault. He had no business coming into our house.”

  “Ricky killed Hanna Rodomski, didn’t he?” I asked. “When he found out the girls had tricked him.”

  “She wouldn’t tell him where Claire went,” Phyllis said. “Sometimes he gets angry. But most of the time he’s a good boy. He’s a police officer. He does good things all the time.”

  I wanted to know whether Ricky had told her about what had happened between him and our son, but I couldn’t bring that up, not now, with Donna present. What she was going through, at this moment, was traumatic enough without learning that everything we thought we knew about what had happened to Scott was wrong.

  “I’m sure that’ll be taken into account,” I said. “Don’t make things worse by hurting anyone else. Everything has to end here. You and Ricky will have to answer for the things you’ve done, and it’s not going to be easy, but this can all come to an end quietly, or it can come to an end very badly.”

  “You brought help, didn’t you?” Phyllis asked.

  “I’m all alone,” I said.

  “You’re lying!” she said, waving the gun. “Someone else is out there.”

  I got half out of my chair, pulled back the sheer so we had an unobstructed view of the street. “You see anyone?”

  Phyllis glanced out. “I don’t believe you.”

  I sat back down, looked at Donna. Her face was rigid.

  “Phyllis, give it up.”

  “I could . . . we could take her with us,” she said, waving the gun at Donna. “Until we got somewhere safe.”

  “Think it through, Phyllis. You have secret bank accounts somewhere? False identities in place? That doesn’t strike me as your kind of thing.”

  I looked out the window again. Something had caught my eye. Something to do with Phyllis’ Crown Victoria.

  “I’m somebody in this town,” Phyllis said. “I’m Phyllis Pearce. I know things about people.”

  I looked back at her. “You think you know enough to get out from under this mess?”

  This time, when I glanced out the window, I squinted. Something was dripping from below the trunk of the woman’s car, close to the bumper. Enough that a small puddle was forming at the back of the car.

  I said to Phyllis, “Seems like a funny place for a car to be leaking oil.”

  She said, “What?”

  She moved closer to the window and glanced out. “Oh no,” she said quietly.

  Phyllis was holding the gun, at that moment, down at her side, her back to both Donna and me. I was thinking: This is my chance. Jump her now.

  I was getting ready to spring when I realized Donna was already on the move. Reaching up into the sleeve of my borrowed sweater, taking something out.

  The small can of fixative spray.

  She had her index finger on the nozzle, and as Phyllis turned back around, Donna pressed it.

  SIXTY-SIX

  Donna raised the canister to within six inches of Phyllis’ startled face and let loose. The spray, which took my breath away when she sprayed it too close to me in the house, completely clouded Phyllis’ mouth and nose and eyes.

  She screamed, then gasped for air.

  The gun was coming up, but before she could aim it anywhere, I was on my feet, grabbing her right forearm with both hands and slamming it against the windowsill.

  Phyllis held on to the gun. I slammed her wrist again, much harder this time, against the sill, and the gun clattered out of her hand. Donna was still spraying. It was like her hand had gone into spasm, was frozen into position.

  Phyllis coughed and hacked and clawed at her face with both her hands. But once her fingers touched her cheeks, they became adhered to them, and she struggled to pull them away.

  I went for Donna’s arm, steered it away from Phyllis’ face. “It’s okay,” I said. “Nice going.”

  She threw the can to the floor and put her arms around my neck. “Oh God oh God.”

  As much as I wanted to hold her, I broke free to get Phyllis’ gun before she dropped down and started patting around to find it. Something she might have been inclined to try the moment she got her hands unstuck from her face.

  Phyllis was screeching.

  Donna had moved to the window. “Cal,” she said. “Ricky’s coming.”

  I bolted out the front door, grabbing my Glock from the table in the hall along the way. The moment I was outside I glanced up the street.

  Even if he couldn’t make out exactly what he was seeing from where he was parked, Ricky must have noticed some commotion in the window as I struggled with his mother. Now he was out of the truck, coming our way, gun in hand.

  The front door to the house that was closest to his truck flew open and Augie charged out.

  “Haines!” he bellowed. “Haines!”

  Ricky glanced back, saw Augie, but kept on going. “Freeze!” Augie shouted, but Ricky was not about to follow orders from his chief right now.

  There was the sense that all hell was breaking loose.

  Feeling exposed, I charged toward Phyllis’ car for cover. I dropped to the ground near the rear bumper, my knee just missing the puddle that I now had little doubt was blood.

  I had a pretty good idea what—who—was in that trunk.

  There was screaming coming from the front door of my house. I glanced that way, saw Phyllis Pearce stumble out. Her hands were free but her face was streaked with blood where her fingers had pulled away skin. Donna appeared in the doorway behind her, still holding the gun, but raising her arm in a gesture of futility, as if to say, “I couldn’t shoot her.”

  Ricky was nearly to Phyllis’ car. Still on one knee, I raised my weapon over the trunk and yelled at him: “Stop!”

  Ricky raised his gun and fired.

  I dropped down behind the car. There was another shot. I couldn’t be sure, but I guessed it was Augie, trying to stop Ricky.

  Haines ran past the end of the car, turned the gun in my direction, fired wildly, missing me. Then he stopped, pivoted, aimed the gun back at Augie. I raised my head, saw my brother-in-law running this way.

  Raised the Glock, aimed for the center of Ricky’s body, and pulled the trigger.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Ricky staggered back as though he’d been hit with an invisible sandbag. He dropped left, put out an arm to break his fall, but by the time his palm hit pavement it offered no resistance. He crumpled into a heap.

  Augie was on him a second later, stomping on the hand that still clung to the gun. Haines didn’t move.

  Phyllis ran past me, screaming, fell to her knees at her son’s side, threw her arms around him and began to weep. Augie bent over, pried the gun from Haines’ dead fingers, and started to walk toward me.

  He had a sudden look of alarm on his face. He was looking past me.

  I spun around.

  Donna was standing ten feet away, looking down, her hand pressed to her stomach, where there was a growing dark blotch.

  Donna eyes met mine as she said, “Something’
s wrong, Cal. I think something’s wrong.”

  TWO

  WEEKS

  LATER

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Phyllis Pearce lived, and the story came out. About how one night her son had cracked a chair across Harry Pearce’s back, then thrown him down the stairs. How they had covered up the crime, faked his death, and looked after him for seven years.

  The rest we more or less knew.

  Phyllis faced a raft of charges, including the unlawful confinement and murder of her husband, Harry Pearce. Even though she hadn’t actually strangled Hanna Rodomski, or shot Dennis Mullavey, she was charged as an accessory in those crimes, too.

  Patchett’s was up for sale.

  Augustus Perry submitted his resignation as Griffon’s chief of police, and Bert Sanders accepted it. Augie believed the actions of Officer Ricky Haines reflected so badly on his own leadership that he had no moral authority to continue leading the department. He was talking about moving to Florida with Beryl.

  He wanted to put Griffon behind him as much as I did. We both carried a heavy burden from this place.

  We were damaged men.

  Haines wasn’t going to be facing a trial, of course. When they brought him into Emergency he had no vital signs. I think he may have been dead before he hit the pavement.

  I’d never wanted to kill a man, but I was having a hard time working up any sense of remorse for what I’d done. First of all, I did it because Haines was firing at my brother-in-law.

  So it was, as they say, justifiable.

  But there was something else going through my head in the initial moments after I’d pulled the trigger twice.

  This is for Scott.

  What I didn’t know, and wouldn’t for another few seconds, was that it was for Donna, too.

  It was that one wild round Haines got off when he ran past the end of the car. The bullet had ripped past me, past Phyllis Pearce, and found a home in Donna’s stomach.

  I’d told her to stay in the house.

  I’d told her.

  Things had been looking so good, minutes earlier. I thought Phyllis had done something to Donna’s wrist, but she’d been holding it to keep the fixative from sliding out of the sleeve of my sweater.

  Clever.

  There have been some who’ve suggested, as horrible as it was, that maybe I should find some small comfort in the fact that Donna went quickly.

  People say a lot of astonishingly stupid things when they’re trying to console you, and it can be hard to accept that they mean well. I suppose they think, in the overall scheme of things, in the course of a lifetime, that five minutes is quick.

  It’s not.

  Not when you are easing your wife gently down to the ground, rolling up your jacket to put under her head for a pillow, applying pressure to the wound, telling her that things are going to be okay, waiting to hear the siren of an approaching ambulance, wondering what’s taking it so long to get here, getting down on your knees and touching her hair and her face and telling her you love her and that she just has to hang in, that help is coming soon, putting your head close to her mouth so you can hear her whisper that she loves you, too, that she is scared, that she wants to know what it is you wanted to tell her, and you say you can’t wait to ride the cable cars, that as soon as she’s okay we’re going to go away, and she says that sounds nice, but she still doesn’t have anything to wear, and also doesn’t feel too good, and you tell her she’s going to be okay, that the ambulance is almost here even though you still don’t hear it, and she finds the strength to raise one hand and touch it to your cheek, and she says now it doesn’t even hurt that much, and that she’s not all that scared after all, that things really are going to be okay, and you tell her again to be quiet, to just hang in, and her hand comes away from your cheek and falls to her breast and her eyes go glassy and you finally hear the ambulance coming but it doesn’t matter anymore.

  Five minutes. Long time.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  More people turned out for the funeral than I might have expected. At least a hundred. Donna was more loved by her colleagues, and the entire Griffon Police Service, than she ever would have imagined.

  I knew Augie would show up—it was his sister, after all—but I was still surprised when I saw him walk into the church with Beryl. I wasn’t surprised by his attendance, but by how quickly the events of the past few days had worn on him. His wife was a sapling next to Augie’s oaklike stature, but she seemed to be propping him up as they made their way to a pew.

  It was blame and guilt eating us all up, like a cancer. Mayor Bert Sanders was feeling it, too. He had to be asking himself why he hadn’t kept a closer eye on Claire, why he’d been so easily duped when she’d said she was going to see her mother in Canada.

  Annette Ravelson showed up, too, along with her husband, Kent. She made a point of not sitting anywhere near Mayor Bert Sanders.

  I was relieved when Sanders offered to say a few words about Donna. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it together, and when I’d asked Augie if he wanted to say anything, he could only shake his head.

  “Darkness has visited our town,” he said. “It has touched us all, but it has touched some more than others, and we mourn for them.” He was speaking, of course, about Hanna as well.

  But not Ricky.

  Instead of offering up one of those “insert name here” kind of eulogies, Sanders had asked around about Donna, particularly among her coworkers, and pulled together a brief, touching portrait of a woman who had already lost so much.

  Besides the minister, there was one other speaker: a woman Donna’d kept in touch with over the years, and who’d gone all through public and high school with her. She uttered some nice platitudes. At least, I’m told they were nice. I’d stopped listening by that point. I was imagining being someplace else. Someplace with Donna and Scott. How I ached, sitting in that church, to believe in the tenets that had led to its construction. I had little expectation that I would find myself reunited with them one day.

  The Skillings came. Sean, of course, had been released from jail, within twenty-four hours of Donna’s death. His parents were threatening a massive lawsuit that included the town of Griffon and Augie personally. I was betting the Rodomskis would get in on that.

  They’d do what they had to do.

  Then the service was over, and people were filing out of church, offering their condolences.

  I was surprised to see Fritz Brott, owner of the butcher shop. He took my hand in his and squeezed.

  “Read about this in the paper,” he said. “So sorry about your loss.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to call you. I made a promise to someone a few days ago.”

  “Tony,” Fritz said.

  “That’s right. Tony Fisk. I found myself in a situation . . . and he helped me out. I promised him I’d speak to you, ask you to maybe reconsider, give him another chance. I didn’t promise him I’d be successful, but that I’d at least make the pitch.”

  Fritz nodded knowingly. “He came to see me.”

  “He did?”

  “Came in, maybe the day after you saw him. Said you were going to come talk to me, that you were going to make me give him his job back.”

  “No,” I said. “That wasn’t the deal.”

  “I figured, and told him so. And then he took out a gun and started waving it around and called me a bunch of names and for a second there I thought he was going to shoot me.”

  I felt my heart sinking. “No.”

  “After he left, I called the police. He’s been arrested. Tony’s in jail right now.”

  You don’t think you can feel any sadder. But you can.

  Fritz moved on, and a few more people stopped and shook hands, but I couldn’t tell you who they were or what they said. I believed Tony Fisk had some good in him, b
ut not enough to keep him from being a hothead.

  Then Sean stopped, along with his parents. They all shook hands with me, said the things people are supposed to say at a time like that, and moved on. But then Sean held back.

  “Could I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I mean, private like?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and steered him back into the church, which was now empty.

  “What’s up?” I asked him.

  “Well, first, I just want say thanks again,” he said. “For getting me out of jail.”

  “It wasn’t really me,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I guess, but it was you, finding Claire and everything, that made it happen.”

  I waited to hear what it was he really wanted to tell me. He was looking at his shoes, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his suit pants. The jacket was tight around his shoulders. The suit probably fit him six months ago, but he was at that age where he was having his final growth spurts.

  “There’s something I gotta say,” he said.

  “Something you don’t want to tell me in front of your parents.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But maybe you’re going to tell them anyway, and if you do, I guess I have to live with that. But you’ve been good to me, and I think I owe you the truth.”

  “What is it, Sean?”

  He licked his lips, then lifted up his head to look me in the eye. “It was me. I did it.”

  I leaned my head in closer to him and put a hand on each shoulder, as much to steady myself as anything. What the hell was he talking about? There was no doubt Haines had killed Hanna, that he’d planted Hanna’s clothes in Sean’s truck. Phyllis Pearce had confirmed those details since her arrest.

  So what was Sean talking about?

  “Sean, what are you saying? You killed Hanna?”

  He shook his head violently and his eyes went wide. “God, no, I didn’t do that. No way. I loved Hanna. I just wish I’d gotten there in time, picked her up before . . .” He shook his head sadly and looked down again.