Too Close to Home

by Linwood Barclay

  “No, Jim, it doesn’t fit,” Ellen maintained. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Who else but Conrad would want it? He stole that book from that kid, and all these years later, he’s still covering his tracks. I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed that kid years ago, threw him off the falls, made it look like he killed himself. What choice did he have? How could he have Brett Stockwell going around telling everyone he’d written that book, that Conrad Chase was this huge, fucking fraud?”

  “Jim,” Ellen said, “you have to listen to me.”

  “No, you have to listen. I don’t know why you keep defending this guy. I know he’s your boss, but now it’s looking like he’s a killer, too. If he didn’t kill the Langleys, then he sent those two to do it. And when he found out there was still a disc with that book on it, he sent them here to get it.”

  “I gave him the disc,” Ellen said.

  I looked at her. I couldn’t process what she’d said to me. “What?”

  “The disc. The one you gave to Natalie Bondurant. I asked for it back from her today, I told her she didn’t have to worry about it anymore. And I gave it to Conrad. I met him at lunch.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you do such a thing? Why would you do that without talking to me about it first?”

  “Jim, he’s not a killer. He’s an arrogant asshole, I’ll grant you that. But he’s not a killer. He couldn’t have sent those two men here tonight. He had no reason to. He has the disc.”

  My head already hurt. Now it was getting much worse.

  “This isn’t making any sense at all,” I said.

  And then Ellen, who had been looking in the general direction of the back door, screamed.

  I whirled around, saw the shadow of someone standing there. A man, a big man.

  As he came into the light, I saw that it was Drew.

  He opened the door. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. He looked at me. “I decided you were right. I came back. I’ll tell the police what happened.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  IN ANOTHER MINUTE, we heard the sirens.

  The ambulance was far too late for Mortie. Drew stood by the door to the shed, watching uncomfortably as the paramedics assessed Mortie’s condition. Once they’d determined he was, in fact, dead, they made no attempts to move him.

  By the time Barry Duckworth arrived, there were half a dozen cop cars on the scene. I figured it wouldn’t be long before the TV news crews arrived. At least they wouldn’t have to ask for directions. It would be the second time in a week that they’d been to this part of Promise Falls.

  Ellen put on a large pot of coffee. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to be the best host a crime scene ever had. She just needed to keep busy. I guessed it was a good thing that she’d already decided to pour out her booze.

  Drew and I came back from watching the paramedics’ examination of Mortie, sat down at the kitchen table. Ellen was looking in the fridge and the freezer, trying to find any treats to put out. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Coffee’s good.”

  “Bingo!” Ellen said. She pulled out, from the farthest reaches of the freezer, a frozen cake. It was like an archeological dis covery.

  “It’s good you came back,” I said to Drew.

  “We’ll see,” he said as Barry appeared in the doorway.

  First, we gave him the Reader’s Digest version of what had transpired. When Barry understood that one of our attackers was still at large, he asked Drew, who’d chased the man and seen him get into his car, for a description of the vehicle. Something GM, he said. A Buick, or a Pontiac. Four doors, white. Some mud splattered around the wheel wells. Barry phoned it in so police throughout the Promise Falls area could be watching for it.

  Barry took a seat at the kitchen table, accepted Ellen’s offer of coffee and a piece of frozen cake, and asked us to lay it out for him.

  I told him my end of the story. The two men showing up, tying me up in the shed, taping my fingers to the hedge trimmer. Ellen told her half, about the dark-haired man bursting into the house, tying her to a chair and leaving her there. Then, later, bringing her out to the shed when I’d demanded to know that she was okay.

  That brought us to Drew.

  “Where do I know you from?” Barry asked, looking at him warily.

  “I robbed a bank,” Drew said matter-of-factly.

  “Son of a bitch, that’s who you are,” Barry said.

  “Five years ago,” Drew added. “The one at Saratoga and Main.”

  “That didn’t go very well,” Barry said.

  “If by not going very well, you mean I got caught as I was walking out the door, yeah, that’s right. I spent a little too long in there, someone hit the silent alarm, and you guys were waiting for me when I walked out.”

  Barry nodded. “I don’t know that you were cut out for that line of work.”

  “No.”

  “And you’re out now?”

  “About six weeks,” he said. “Mr. Cutter here gave me a job cutting grass.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice of him,” Barry said, glancing at me. “And what were you doing out here tonight?”

  “I’d busted one of Mr. Cutter’s mowers and was dropping by to fix it before we started out for work again tomorrow.”

  Barry looked at me for confirmation. I nodded.

  Ellen and I both told Barry what happened after Drew arrived. How he’d seen the dark-haired one take Ellen from the house to the shed, then seen the predicament I was in. How, when Ellen managed to unplug the hedge trimmer, the one whose name I knew to be Mortie lunged for her, and then Drew came in and hit him with the shovel he’d taken from the back of my truck.

  “He saved our lives, Barry,” I said.

  “These guys,” Barry said, “you ever see either of them before?”

  We explained that we’d only gotten a look at Mortie, and only since he’d been dead, but we didn’t know him. And neither Ellen nor I had any idea who the other guy was. “But he had a tattoo,” I said. “On his arm. A knife. And he appeared to have dark hair.”

  “That sound right to you?” Barry asked Ellen. She nodded. “You didn’t hear his name at all?”

  “Mortie was smart enough not to say it out loud,” I said.

  “Maybe he wasn’t planning to kill you,” Barry said. “Otherwise, why be careful about that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “And you say they were here for a disc?”

  “Of a book. I told you about this before but you weren’t interested,” I reminded him. “It was a copy of a book that was on a computer owned by Brett Stockwell, a student of Conrad Chase’s years ago, when he was still a professor and not Thackeray’s president.”

  Barry was scribbling things in his notebook. “And this disc would be interesting why, again?”

  “Because Conrad later published a book that was pretty much that book.”

  Barry frowned. “So what are you saying here? The president of Thackeray College sent a couple of thugs to torture you and get that disc and maybe kill you, too?”

  “No,” Ellen said. “He’s not saying that. That wouldn’t make any sense because Conrad already has the disc. I gave it to him earlier today.”

  I gave her another puzzled look and shook my head.

  A uniformed officer came into the kitchen to speak with Barry. “We checked the dead guy for ID,” he told the detective. “Nothing on him but some cash in his pants pocket. Quite a bit of it, too. Looks like a couple grand.”

  “Okay,” he said, and the officer went back outside. Barry looked up from his notebook. “So who the hell else would want this disc, then? Who else knew you had it, who might still think you had it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Conrad’s wife, Illeana, suspected I had it, but if Conrad knew we didn’t have it, it stands to reason she knew, too.”

  “Anyone else?”

  I tried to think. Penny had said she might have mentioned the existence of t
he book on a computer Derek had found, but had she mentioned a disc? I didn’t think so.

  Barry made some more notes, then put down his pen so he could work his fork through his slice of frozen cake, shove it into his mouth. “You know, Jim, I’ve known you a long time, and you’re a pretty good guy, with a pretty good head on your shoulders, but honestly, this is really getting way out there.”

  “Barry,” Ellen said, “don’t you think it’s possible that these men who came here tonight are the same ones who killed the Langleys?”

  Barry put down his fork. “I don’t know, Ellen.”

  “Whatever the reason, whatever they were looking for, isn’t it a bit much to think that what happened here tonight isn’t related to what happened at the Langleys’ a few nights ago?”

  Barry slowly finished chewing the cake in his mouth and swallowed.

  “The Langleys get murdered, a computer goes missing, and then a few nights later, two men terrorize us, wanting a disc related to that computer. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “I see where you’re going with this, Ellen,” Barry said.

  “Our son—Derek—he certainly didn’t have anything to do with this tonight,” my wife told him. “He’s in jail. And he wouldn’t exactly send someone to torture his parents. He didn’t have any more to do with what happened here than he did with what happened at the Langleys’. Barry, you have to let Derek go. He’s innocent.”

  Something flashed in Barry’s eyes, like maybe he knew it, too. I hoped he wasn’t the kind of person to sacrifice the life of an innocent to protect his reputation. The arrest of our son was a feather in Barry’s cap for a couple of days there, and plucking it out was going to be embarrassing.

  “We’ll see, Ellen,” he said noncommittally. “You know that there’s more to Derek’s relationship with the Langleys than meets the eye.”

  We were all silent for a moment, until Ellen leaned in close to Barry, looked him in the eye, and said, “He didn’t do it, and you know it. You know it in your heart.”

  Barry pushed the plate away from himself. “I want to talk to all three of you individually.” He looked at Drew. “You first.”

  He took Drew outside with him.

  Ellen said, “A bank robber?”

  “My lawn company doesn’t yet have an advanced screening process for new hires,” I said.

  “No no,” Ellen said. “I’m not second-guessing you on that. I just, I don’t know, I don’t think I ever met a bank robber before.”

  “I don’t much care at this point if he’s the Boston Strangler,” I said. “I just hope Barry doesn’t do anything stupid and charge him.” I got up, leaned against the fridge, feeling exhausted. The attack on us by our two visitors would have been enough to knock the wind out of me, but the questions surrounding everything that had happened were equally draining.

  Some of them needed to be directed at my wife.

  “Ellen,” I said, “why’d you give the disc to Conrad?”

  “I thought it was the right thing to do, for reasons that are hard to explain.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “I wonder if you still feel something for him.”

  Her eyes looked tired, and almost sad. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “What?”

  “I despise that man.” She paused. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  “Then why are you helping him? Don’t you understand what’s going on here? Can’t you connect the dots? Don’t you see what he’s done?”

  “You’re just seeing what you want to see,” Ellen said.

  “No, you’re turning a blind eye,” I shot back. “Even if Conrad didn’t send those goons to get us tonight, he’s involved. Somehow, he got wind of the fact that a computer, belonging to his student, the one he stole a book from, had resurfaced. He realized what was on it, and either went over to the Langley house himself or sent someone there to get it. And it all went horribly wrong, and they all ended up dead.”

  “No,” Ellen said. “He already had the computer.”

  “What?”

  “He told me. Earlier, on the Friday that the Langleys were murdered, Albert Langley called him.”

  “Wait a minute. Langley gave him the computer?”

  “Adam told his father about the computer he and Derek were messing around with, what they’d found on it. Albert immediately recognized what it was, knew the book, knew it was the same as Conrad’s. So he called Conrad, told him about it, and Conrad came by Albert’s office and took it away. He was Conrad’s lawyer. And his friend. From way back.”

  I moved away from the fridge, walked slowly to the sink and back again, rubbing my forehead.

  “He told you this?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You believe him?”

  Ellen paused. “Yes.”

  “God, this is totally . . . this is completely fucking with my head,” I said. “But if those guys who came here tonight didn’t know Conrad had the disc, then they must not have known the night they went to the Langleys’ that he already had the computer, too.”

  Ellen said, “I don’t know. And I don’t care about any of that. It doesn’t mean anything to me. All I care about now is getting Derek out of jail. I want him out, and then I want to put all this behind us. I don’t care about that goddamn book, I don’t care about Conrad, I don’t give a shit about any of it. None of it matters as long as Derek’s in jail.”

  I approached her, slowly at first, then put my arms around her. “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  But there were still questions. So maybe Conrad didn’t have anything to do with what had happened here tonight. And maybe he didn’t have anything to do with the murder of the Langleys.

  But there was still the matter of his book. And who wrote it.

  And if it was Brett Stockwell, and if Conrad wanted to steal his book, how, unless he’d made some deal to pay the boy off, could he allow the boy to live and expect to get away with it?

  ONCE BARRY WAS DONE with interviewing Drew, he spent some time with Ellen in the living room. That left me and Drew alone in the kitchen.

  “So,” I said, smiling, standing by the counter, “a bank robber.”

  “I wasn’t very good at it,” Drew said. “My first holdup, I blew it.”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  “I needed money,” he said, looking at me like I was some kind of an idiot. “I had a child to support.”

  I recalled his comment, that he didn’t have kids anymore. Rather than pursue this, I asked, “How’d it go with Detective Duckworth?”

  He shrugged, happened to glance up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was nearly midnight. “We still workin’ tomorrow?” he asked.

  I smiled tiredly. “How about I pick you up at nine instead of eight?”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “If they don’t take me in.”

  I wanted to say something encouraging, but I had no idea how his talk with Barry had gone.

  He said to me, “You could have just said you killed him. The cops would’ve believed you without even thinking. But not me. Not with a record.” He frowned. “I was starting to think maybe you’re actually an okay person.”

  If I’d made a bad impression when I’d first met Drew, I wasn’t sure how I’d done it. And besides, was that what you had to do to qualify as an okay guy in Drew’s book? Claim to kill someone when you hadn’t?

  Wasn’t that a lot for Drew to ask of me, even if he had saved my life? And Ellen’s? Maybe it wasn’t. The thing was, I might have done it if I’d thought the police would buy the story. But there was still Mortie’s accomplice out there somewhere, and no matter how disreputable he might be, his version of events could end up undercutting mine.

  It seemed better to stick with the truth. I just hoped it didn’t end up getting Drew screwed.

  Finally, Barry and I had some one-on-one time, but we ended up covering the same ground again, and if Barry had found any inconsistencies in our stories, he wasn’t
letting on.

  The last thing I said to him was, “They won’t charge him, will they? Ellen and I’d probably be dead now if Drew hadn’t shown up.”

  Barry shook his head slowly, as if to say no. But all he said was, “How’s your hand?”

  There were marks where my fingers had been jammed into the teeth of the hedge trimmer, but the skin hadn’t been broken. “Okay,” I said.

  “You were damn lucky.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got horseshoes up my ass.”

  WE WALKED BACK into the kitchen together. Ellen and Drew were outside on the deck, talking. A different uniformed officer, who was holding something down at his side, out of view, sidled past them and came into the kitchen.

  “Detective,” he said, and presented Barry with a plastic evidence bag. There was a gun inside it.

  “A Glock 19,” Barry said. “Nine mill. The Langleys were killed with a nine-millimeter weapon.”

  I felt my own eyebrows go up.

  “Where’d you find it?” Barry asked the cop.

  “Alongside the lane, just by the grass. We’ve marked the spot.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “You saying this is the gun that killed the Langleys?”

  Barry shook his head. “Nobody’s saying that. Not yet. If it’s the same gun, it’s made an amazing reappearance. Every square inch around here was searched after the Langleys were killed.” He told the cop to keep the recovered gun out of sight, and called Drew in.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “You said you followed the second guy?”

  “Yeah, but he had a head start, I couldn’t catch him. I’m strong, but I’m not a good runner.”

  “You notice anything funny when he got to the car, whether he dropped anything?”

  Drew thought. “He was just getting in and the door was closing, then he went to open it again, but I was getting close, and he closed it and backed up like crazy, kicking up gravel and everything.”

  “Come show me exactly where the car was,” Barry said.

  We all walked up the lane together, Barry and Drew and the cop who’d brought in the gun in the lead, me and Ellen following.