Bad News

by Linwood Barclay

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said quietly.

  Still holding the gun, she came up close to me. ‘Where are your car keys?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Zack, just tell me where they are.’

  ‘Front pants pocket,’ I said, and Trixie came alongside me and slid her slender fingers down into the pocket of my jeans as I once again tested the cuffs on the railing.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m only going after your keys.’ She found them, gave them a shake. ‘I’ll just take the car keys, not your house keys. I figure they know what kind of car I’ve got, so it’s better if I get a running start in yours. You can have my car. I’ll leave you my set on the kitchen counter.’

  ‘Trixie, you’re making a big mistake. Let me help you through this.’

  ‘I need help, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘But not the kind I think you’re up to.’ She leaned in close to me, her face so close to mine I could feel her breath. ‘I know I keep telling you this, Zack, but I’m really sorry about everything. Maybe someday I can make it up to you.’

  And she leaned in and kissed me, placed her mouth squarely on mine, slipped a hand behind my head so I couldn’t try to pull away. She moved her lips over mine for a second or more, pulled away, leaned in to me again for a small, follow-up peck, and smiled sadly at the shocked expression I guess was on my face.

  ‘Sarah’s a very lucky gal,’ she said, and climbed to the top of the stairs. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure someone comes and finds you.’

  ‘Trixie,’ I said, one last time. ‘Just tell me. Why are you doing this?’

  She paused, looked at me very seriously for a moment, and said, ‘I’m not going to let them get my little girl.’

  And then she was gone.

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  She was late.

  A couple of days, Miranda didn’t worry. Took note of it, but didn’t panic or anything. But then it was a week. Ten days. Now it was time to panic. She went to the drugstore and came home with a pregnancy test. Went into the bathroom, closed the door.

  ‘What’s up, Candace?’ Eldon said. ‘You seem funny.’

  She came out a few minutes later. ‘You’ve knocked me up,’ she said.

  ‘Huh?’ he said.

  ‘I’m gonna have a kid,’ Miranda said. She had no idea what he would do. Storm out, maybe? Start screaming? Accuse her of fucking up her birth control? She thought maybe he’d hit her. That’s the sort of thing her dad did when she said something that upset him. Just whacked her upside the head. Eldon had never hit her, but there was always a first time. There always had to be a first time when a guy you thought loved you took a swing at you.

  He said, ‘You think it’s a girl?’

  She said, ‘What?’

  ‘A girl. You think it’s a girl? Because, you’re so beautiful, if it’s a girl, she’ll be beautiful too.’

  The guy was full of surprises.

  Gary had already been letting her split her time between the stage and the office upstairs. He’d turned over the books to her, but once in a while, a girl would take off sick, Gary’d tell her, ‘Go downstairs and do some bump and grind. If we didn’t have the ol’ bump and grind goin’ on, there’d be no books to balance.’ Like Miranda should be grateful he was giving her a chance to take her clothes off because it gave her money to count upstairs later.

  But once she started showing, well, that was it. Nobody wanted to drink their beer watching some chick who was knocked up.

  So in a way, it all worked out okay. Sort of.

  But in the back of her mind, Miranda was thinking about the kind of world she was going to bring this baby into. She hadn’t known, for several years now, a particularly respectable life. Not like her sister, Claire. She and Don had gotten married, they had a decent apartment now, not some place over a pizza joint. She had her secretary job, he had his job at Ford. Not that they’d have to worry that much about bringing any kid into the world. Claire couldn’t have kids, it turned out.

  How crazy. Claire’s home was the perfect one in which to raise a child, but she couldn’t have one.

  And I’m the one who’s pregnant, thought Miranda. Working in a bar with strippers and hookers and dope dealers.

  I need my head read.

  But she did have a man in her life. Eldon seemed excited about the idea of becoming a father. She would talk to him – she still had not told him that her real name was not Candace – about getting some sort of new life. Of leaving the Kickstart. Of getting respectable jobs. Of making a proper home for their baby.

  ‘Yeah,’ he would say. ‘That sounds like a good idea. Maybe I should start looking for something else,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should take some courses too. You know what I’ve always been interested in? Electrical work. Wiring.’

  ‘Electricians make a fortune,’ Miranda said.

  So she worked all the time in the upstairs office, doing the finances, turning dirty money into clean. It was a gift, no doubt about it.

  And then one day, sitting upstairs at the computer, she knew this was it. She phoned down to the bar, asked for Eldon. ‘This is it,’ she said.

  It was a girl.

  Her name was Katie.

  TWELVE

  The moment I heard the front door close, I yanked on the cuffs. The stair railing didn’t budge but the cuffs cut sharply into my wrists and I winced from the pain. Already I could feel my fingers starting to go numb from reduced circulation. Outside, I could hear the door of my Virtue hybrid car open and close. The vehicle was so quiet, I didn’t hear it start or back out of the drive and pull away.

  I hadn’t heard Trixie make any phone calls from upstairs, but I had to hope, certainly if I couldn’t get free on my own, that she’d keep her word and send someone to rescue me. The handcuff keys were on a table only ten feet away, but they might as well have been in the next town for all the good they did me now.

  I glanced in the direction of Martin Benson, not wanting to look at him, yet not able to take my eyes off him. The slice across his neck was a macabre grin. Look what happens when you mess with me, it seemed to be saying. I tried not to think about what might happen if the person or persons who did that decided to return before I could get myself out of these handcuffs and the hell out of this house.

  Rather than yank on the railing with the cuffs again and make my wrists even more sore, I put my hands directly on the railing and pulled. If I could pry it off the wall and drag it just ten feet, I could reach the keys and get out of here. I pulled once, and nothing. Clearly, the screws that held the hardware to the wall had been sunk into studs and not just drywall. I tried again, really putting my back into it this time, still without success. I cursed under my breath.

  Even if I could free myself, it wasn’t necessarily my plan to run. I’d feel a lot safer than I did now as long as I had the freedom to move around. If Trixie wanted to make a break for it, well, that was her decision. Evidently she had her reasons, one of which had just been revealed to me.

  ‘I’m not going to let them get my little girl.’

  Just when I thought there was so little I knew about Trixie, I found myself realizing there was even more I did not know. Not long after I’d first met her, I’d asked her whether she had children, and she had said no.

  While Trixie might have had her reasons to flee before the police arrived, I couldn’t see myself following suit. I had to stay and explain this as best I could. Chances were I wouldn’t even need to call the police. They were probably on the way now, or at least would be soon. Once Trixie felt she had enough of a head start, I was reasonably confident that she’d let them know about me, and Benson.

  So I would explain this to the police as best I could. That was the Zack Walker way. You bring in the authorities. You extricate yourself from the situation and let the professionals take over.

  Not that that had always been my approach. There was that one time, when I found myself in a situation where I figured I was the most likely s
uspect in a homicide, that I did not pick up the phone and immediately call police. There were extenuating circumstances.

  But surely that wasn’t the case this time. I would not be the prime suspect this time. What possible reason would I have to want Martin Benson—

  Hold on.

  I started to work it out in my head.

  What would Martin Benson’s editor have to say when the police interviewed him? He was investigating this dominatrix, the editor would say. Must have been ruffling some feathers too, because some writer from the Metropolitan tried to talk him out of it. The M.E. there’s an old friend of mine. Told him all about it.

  And then the police would talk to Magnuson. And then they’d want to have another interview with me.

  So you tried to warn Benson off a story, the police would say, and when he didn’t go along with it, he ratted you out, and you got demoted.

  I couldn’t be sure the cops would use the word ‘ratted’, but I figured that would be about the gist of it.

  Maybe it made more sense to stop fighting with the railing. Maybe it made more sense to stay handcuffed until the police arrived. How likely a suspect was I when I was left handcuffed at a murder scene? I was a victim too, although I had to admit I’d gotten off a little bit better than Martin Benson.

  Of course, the only problem was, we hadn’t both been victimized by the same person. Being handcuffed by Trixie would no doubt lead police to suspect that she was also responsible for Martin Benson’s murder.

  Trixie did, after all, have some familiarity with the apparatus to which Benson was secured.

  What a fucking mess.

  I twisted my right hand around to look at my watch. Coming up on 2:30 p.m. Trixie had been gone at least half an hour, maybe more. Just how far away was she planning to get before she called someone to rescue me?

  It hadn’t occurred to me then that she might actually have called someone right after leaving the house. That she might have called someone who would need thirty minutes or more to get here.

  Finally, around 2:45, there was a hard knock at the door.

  ‘Down here!’ I shouted.

  Another knock.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘In the basement!’

  I thought I heard the door open, and then a voice, tentatively, called out, ‘Hello?’

  I think, of all the people Trixie could have called, Sarah would definitely have been my last choice.

  I went to say something but the words caught in my throat for a moment. I guess, for a fleeting instant, for nothing more than a millisecond, I must have thought I could keep Sarah from finding me handcuffed in Trixie’s basement only a few feet away from a dead guy strapped to a cross with his throat cut open. But it only took the briefest of moments to realize there was no way out for me that didn’t include immense dollops of shame and mortification.

  ‘Sarah!’ I shouted.

  ‘Zack?’ Sarah sounded scared, ‘Zack! Where are you?’

  ‘Just listen to me first, okay? Okay? Just stop and listen!’

  ‘Zack, what’s happened? Are you okay? Where are you?’

  ‘Sarah, stop! Are you stopped?’

  A pause from upstairs. ‘Okay, yes. I’m not moving. Zack, Trixie phoned. She told me to come out here, that something had happened and—’

  ‘Sarah! Listen to me!’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘First of all, I’m okay. I’m going to need your help, but before you come downstairs, I have to prepare you for what you’re going to see.’

  ‘Oh my God. Don’t tell me you’re trapped in some sort of leather thing. You’ve been coming to Trixie, paying her to—’

  ‘No, Sarah. Please just listen and don’t interrupt. I’m not hurt, but I am handcuffed to the stair railing and I need you to get the keys.’

  Even from where I stood, I could hear her intake of breath upstairs.

  ‘But Sarah, what I have to tell you is, I’m not exactly alone down here.’ I took a breath of my own. ‘I’m down here in the midst of a … I’m in a crime scene, Sarah.’

  ‘A crime scene.’

  ‘A man has been killed, he’s been murdered, and I’m down here with his body.’ I paused. ‘It’s very, very … bad.’

  From Sarah, almost a whisper: ‘Who is it, Zack?’

  ‘Martin Benson. The reporter from the Suburban. Somebody’s … oh man.’

  ‘Tell me you’re okay.’

  ‘I’m okay. Are you ready?’

  Sarah paused a second before she said, ‘I’m ready.’

  And then she appeared at the doorway at the top of the stairs, assessing my situation in a glance. She came down the steps slowly, and as she was able to see more of the room, she saw Benson at the far end of it.

  ‘Dear God,’ she said. She stayed on the last step, next to me, as if putting a foot on the floor would be an admission that what she was seeing was really true.

  ‘The keys are right there,’ I said softly, nodding at the table a few feet away. ‘If you give them to me, I can get these off and call the police.’

  ‘Zack, his throat’s been slit clear across.’

  ‘I know. The keys. Hand me the keys.’

  She was holding it together fairly well, considering. She’d been a police reporter back in her early days and had seen the odd corpse here and there. Usually after the police had arrived.

  She looked at the keys on the table. She’d have to put both feet on the floor to get there. As if she were putting her toe into icy cold water, she came down the last step and approached the table hesitantly. She delicately picked up the keys in her fingers, turned, and handed them to me.

  ‘Your wrists are bruised,’ she said as I struggled to work the keys into the openings. It took a minute or more for me to get the cuffs off my wrists. I didn’t bother to remove them from the railings. Perhaps, if they stayed there, it would bolster my version of events when the police arrived.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, leading Sarah up the stairs. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  I took her into the kitchen, where sunlight was streaming through the blinds and down through a skylight. Sarah slipped her arms around me and hugged me tight.

  ‘I didn’t know what to think,’ she said, starting to cry. ‘Trixie called, all mysterious, said you were in some trouble at her house, that she’d had to take your car, that she was very sorry, but that I should get out here as fast as possible.’

  I put my arms around my wife, held her tight.

  ‘I’m glad she called you. And I’m sorry you had to see what’s happened here.’

  She pulled back, looked into my face, put a hand on each of my cheeks. ‘What’s going on, Zack? What’s happened?’

  And then something caught her eye, something on my lip, and then she moved her left thumb over and rubbed at the corner of my mouth, then glanced at her thumb.

  She stared at it for a moment, as though transfixed, then looked at me and said, ‘The police. You better call the police.’ Then she turned and walked away.

  I realized then what she’d found on her thumb was lipstick.

  THIRTEEN

  Two blue and white cabs with uniformed officers arrived first. Sarah and I were waiting outside, leaning on her Camry. I had the keys to Trixie’s German sedan in my pocket, as well as the copy of the Suburban from the kitchen counter that had her picture in it. Sarah had her arms folded in front of her, and whenever I shifted my butt along the fender towards her, she moved away.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong,’ I said.

  ‘Stay away from me,’ Sarah said quietly.

  The uniforms, as I suspected, kept their interrogations to a minimum and set about making sure the crime scene was secure, well aware that the more senior detectives would be along shortly to conduct the investigation.

  An unmarked car parked at the end of the drive and a short, squat man in his late fifties, dressed in a dark suit and black fedora, got out. Who the hell wore fedoras anymore? And then I recalled that
I knew at least one detective who did, and that was Detective Flint, from the Oakwood Police Department, whom I knew from my earlier troubles in this neighborhood.

  Halfway up the drive he stopped, looked at Trixie’s house, then scanned two doors over to take in the house Sarah and I and the kids once lived in. Even with his eyes narrowing, it was possible to read them. I’ve been here before, he was thinking.

  And then he looked at me and smiled to himself, as if everything was starting to make sense. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Mr Walker. We meet again.’

  ‘Detective Flint,’ I said, trying to smile but not quite pulling it off.

  ‘And you would be?’ he said, turning to Sarah. I noticed that when I introduced her as my wife she hardly swelled with pride.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Walker. I’m going to want to talk to both of you, but individually.’ He called over one of the uniforms. ‘Why don’t you show Mr and Mrs Walker to separate cars so that they can rest comfortably while I check things out in there.’

  He disappeared into the house. Sarah and I were put into the back seat of different cruisers. I could see her from mine, but she wasn’t looking over in my direction. I couldn’t resist trying the door handle, to see whether it would open, and it did not. I sat there, feeling like a criminal, and feeling even greater shame that Sarah was being put through the same ordeal. It was about ten minutes before Flint reappeared. He got into the back of Sarah’s car first, questioned her for at least fifteen minutes before he got out and settled in next to me. Even though he appeared to be done with Sarah, she had not yet been allowed out of her cruiser.

  Flint shifted in the seat, got comfortable, and asked to see my wrists.

  ‘Ouch,’ he said empathetically, inspecting the bruises from the handcuffs. ‘That part checks out.’

  He got out his notebook, clicked his ballpoint a few times, made some scribbles. ‘Where’s Trixie Snelling gone?’ he asked.