Far From True

by Linwood Barclay

  FIFTY-FIVE

  THE Chalmers-Duncomb-Blackmore triangle was starting to gel in Barry Duckworth’s mind. The three couples had been friends. Georgina Blackmore had been in Adam Chalmers’s car when the screen came down. The six of them were in some kind of group-sex lifestyle thing.

  There was that room.

  And, according to Cal Weaver, there were sex videos, which someone had spirited out of that house in a hurry after word spread that Adam and Miriam had been killed in an accident.

  Except Miriam hadn’t been killed.

  Not then.

  But she’d been murdered since her return home. And it happened after Duckworth had delivered the news that she was still alive to Duncomb and Blackmore—who were busy having a DVD viewing fest when he’d arrived.

  You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to think all those things were connected.

  Duncomb, Duckworth concluded, was one tough son of a bitch. But the professor wasn’t. He was the weak link. Duckworth figured if he could get that man alone in a room, he’d talk. If he didn’t confess to Miriam Chalmers’s murder himself, he’d point Duckworth in the right direction.

  Plus, there was the ex-wife Felicia Chalmers. Cal had seen her parked down the street from the Chalmers home shortly before Miriam showed up.

  Duckworth wondered what one called a group of suspects. It was a gaggle for geese. Herd for cows. Pack for wolves.

  Too bad the collective for crows was a murder. It would be so appropriate here for suspects. A murder of suspects. But since that was taken, maybe a guilt of suspects. A suspicion of suspects.

  Maybe he had more important things to think about.

  When he got to Felicia Chalmers’s building, he buzzed her apartment from the lobby. When there was no answer, he hit the button for the superintendent. A short, dark-haired man in a checked shirt with rolled-up sleeves finally showed up. Once Duckworth had shown his ID, the man answered his questions.

  “I think she works today,” he told Duckworth. “This is Tuesday, right? She gets Sunday, Monday off. If you think she’s done something wrong, I don’t think so. She’s good people. She never causes me any trouble.”

  “You know where she works?”

  “Nissan.”

  “What?”

  “Nissan dealer,” he said. “She sells cars.”

  Duckworth headed for Promise Falls Nissan. He parked in the visitors’ area and entered the showroom, where new cars sparkled under the artificial light. He was barely three steps into the showroom when he was pounced upon by a young, eager-looking man in a blue suit.

  “How can I help you today?” he said, flashing teeth with a game-show smile.

  “I’m looking for Felicia Chalmers,” he said.

  “Are you sure? Because if you’re looking to get into something new, I can certainly help you.”

  “No, it’s Ms. Chalmers I want to see.”

  The man’s face fell. He turned to a woman sitting behind the reception desk and said, “Can you help this guy find Felicia?” Dejected, he wandered off. The woman picked up her phone and instantly her voice could be heard throughout the building. “Felicia? Come to reception.”

  Seconds later, Felicia Chalmers approached. She’d learned to smile at the same place as the other salesperson.

  “You were looking for me?” she said, extending a hand.

  “Barry Duckworth,” he said. “I wonder if I could talk to you.”

  “Of course! Follow me to my office.”

  It was actually a desk surrounded on three sides by gray-fabric-covered partitions. Felicia slipped in behind the desk and motioned to Duckworth to take a chair.

  “So you’re looking to get a new car?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, if you’re looking for something previously owned, I could have you talk to Gary, but lease payments are so reasonable, it’s not hard to get into something new and not have to worry about—”

  “I’m with the Promise Falls police.” He flashed his ID for the second time in less than an hour. “I’m a detective.”

  “Oh! I see. If this is about the car that went missing, you should really be talking to the manager.”

  “A missing car?”

  “It was weeks ago. Someone took an Xterra out for a test-drive and never came back. He showed us a driver’s license, but it turned out to be bogus.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “I want to ask why you were parked out front of your ex-husband’s house last night.”

  She couldn’t have looked any more stunned if he’d stood up and dropped his pants in front of her.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Last night. You were seen parked in your car near the home of Adam and Miriam Chalmers. I’d like to ask you about that.”

  “Uh, I was just . . . sitting there is all.”

  “Why?”

  “Well . . . you know he died, right?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And I guess I was feeling—I don’t know—a little sad. Thinking about our life together. I was out driving and I went by the house where I once had a life with him. Is there a law against that? This has been kind of an upsetting time for me.”

  “And yet here you are at work, only a couple of days later.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Sit around at home and mope? Look, Adam was an okay guy, and I feel sick about what happened, but you have to move on, you know?”

  Duckworth asked, “What time did you get there? Last night.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t even know. Maybe eight or nine? Maybe a little after that?”

  “Did you get out of your car? Did you go up to the house? Knock on the door?”

  “No.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  Felicia thought. “This man came by—he’s a detective? He’d been out to see me yesterday morning. Weaver? He came by and saw me, and that was when I left.” A lightbulb went off. “Hang on, is he the one who told you I was there?”

  “You didn’t go back?”

  “What’s this about?” she asked. “So what if I went out there?” When Duckworth didn’t answer right away, she said, “Look, I’ll level with you.”

  He sat up in his chair. “Okay.”

  “I’ve been telling my lawyer I should be entitled to something as Adam’s only surviving ex, to some kind of claim on the estate. He says it’ll go to the daughter, but there has to be a loophole somewhere, right? I mean, we were still in touch. I gave him emotional support. Right? So I was kind of checking out the neighborhood, seeing if there were houses for sale. Then I was going to look them up online, see what they were going for. I mean, I don’t know what Adam might have left. In terms of an estate, you know? He kind of went through money. But just in case, I wanted to—”

  Duckworth leaned forward. “You didn’t see Miriam Chalmers arrive home last night? You’d left by then?”

  Felicia’s mouth opened, but it took a few seconds for her to find the words she wanted to say. Turned out to be only one: “What?”

  “Last night, did you witness Miriam Chalmers return home?”

  “What—what are you talking about? Miriam’s dead. She died in the accident with Adam.”

  “Miriam wasn’t killed in the drive-in bombing.”

  “Oh no,” Felicia said.

  “Oh no?”

  She tried to recover. “I mean, wow. I had no idea she was alive. But wasn’t someone killed in the car with Adam? They said someone was with him.”

  “Someone was. But it wasn’t Miriam.”

  “Who?”

  “Do you know someone named Georgina Blackmore?”

  Felicia shook her head. “Georgina? I think Adam might have mentioned her, but .
. . holy shit. This changes everything. I’m going to have to call my lawyer, tell him . . . I can’t believe this.” She cleared her throat, shuffled some car brochures on her desk, raised her head, an actress getting ready to shift roles. “Well, then, my heart goes out to Miriam. What a terrible tragedy for her. But at least she’s okay. So, maybe I’m not Adam’s only surviving ex-wife. And that’s fine. I probably wasn’t entitled to anything anyway. Not that this is about me.”

  She went to reach for the desk phone, then pulled her hand back. “I don’t understand why you’re here. What difference does it make where I was parked or what I was doing last night?”

  “Did you see anyone else, other than Mr. Weaver, last night, around the Chalmers home?”

  “No. No one. What is going on?”

  “You’re still Adam’s only surviving ex-wife,” Duckworth told her. “I wouldn’t call off your lawyer just yet. There may still be a silver lining in this for you.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  DAVID Harwood was bordering on being proud of himself.

  There were two TV news trucks out of Albany, each with its own camera operator and an on-air talking head, and reporters from the Times Union newspaper and WGY, the news-talk station. The vehicles were lined up along the street next to Promise Falls Park, the cascading water making the perfect backdrop for the news conference.

  Okay, so maybe CNN wasn’t here. Matt Lauer hadn’t made the trek up from Rockefeller Center to do a live feed back to New York. But this wasn’t bad, David felt. He’d made some hurried calls to people he knew at the two TV stations, the newspaper, and WGY. He’d called some other news outlets, too, and they’d passed. But this wasn’t bad. Getting two TV stations here was definitely a plus.

  David was chatting with the assembled press, telling them that the onetime mayor on the comeback trail had a couple of announcements to make. One, that he’d be running once again for mayor of Promise Falls, and two . . . well, they’d have to wait for that one. But they’d be glad they showed up.

  “Mr. Finley will be here shortly,” David said, then excused himself to run over to see Finley, who was hunkered down behind the wheel of his car. David got in on the passenger side.

  “We’re good to go,” he said.

  “That’s all you could get here?” Finley asked.

  “Are you kidding? This is better than I could have hoped for. Especially on such short notice. It’s only been a few hours since you decided this had to be done today.”

  “Did you call Anderson Cooper?”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m a good human interest story, David,” Finley said. “Everyone loves a comeback story.”

  “If you were Richard Nixon coming back from the grave, that might get Anderson Cooper here,” David told him. “But you’re not. This is a good crowd. Not one but two Albany TV stations. I didn’t think that would happen. This is good, Randy. Trust me.”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “But there’s something I want to tell you. Before you go out there, I want to make something clear between us.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ever pull that kind of shit you tried with me yesterday.”

  Finley’s face was a mask of innocence. “What are you talking about?”

  “Talking about my wife, about how much my son knows about her. Hinting that maybe you could be the one to fill him in.”

  “I was just making conversation.”

  “I told him last night. In fact, there wasn’t that much to tell. He’d already found out everything about her online. There aren’t any secrets anymore. So I’m telling you, don’t think you can hold that over me. You won’t ever blackmail me into working for you. You get that?”

  Finley nodded slowly. “I believe I do. But, David, you’ve totally misjudged me here. I—”

  “Save it for them.” David tipped his head in the direction of the gathered media. “We gonna do this thing?”

  “We are,” Finley said, and pulled on the door handle.

  They walked over together, David letting Finley lead the way. Finley smiled as he approached the small press pack, and at that moment David realized the huge mistake he had made.

  The former mayor was going before the cameras alone.

  Where were the supporters? Where were members of Randall Finley’s immediate and extended family? Where were the regular, everyday Promise Falls folk who wanted to see their town on the rebound? Why hadn’t David rounded up some people who’d lost their jobs because of the Five Mountains closing? How hard would it have been to find a few former coworkers who’d lost their jobs when the Standard went under?

  Shit shit shit.

  No, but wait. There was still time for all that. This was not Finley’s first and last news conference. There’d be plenty more. And the point of bringing out the media today was Finley’s bombshell. No sense confusing the message.

  Whatever, exactly, that message was.

  David hadn’t been able to get specifics out of Finley. He’d wanted to write his remarks for him, but Finley said he was going to do it off the cuff. He didn’t need a prepared speech. He didn’t need notes. A real politician, he told David, talks from his heart, not from a fucking teleprompter.

  David knew that approach was risky, but decided to be optimistic. Maybe this would go just fine.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Finley said, positioning himself so the falls were behind him, but not so close that they would drown out what he had to say. “Everybody ready to go?”

  The two men carrying video cameras moved in closer. The guys from the Times Union and the radio station were holding out microphones.

  “You people know me,” he began. “I’m Randall Finley, and today I’d like to talk to you from the heart about something that means the world to me. This town—the town of Promise Falls—and its people.”

  Should have brought a crowd, David thought. I’m an amateur at this.

  “Look at what’s happened in this town since I was mayor. An amusement park that was supposed to bring us jobs has packed up. The corporation behind a private-enterprise prison that was going to set up here changed its mind. Businesses small and large have left. The town is cutting back on basic maintenance and infrastructure upgrades.”

  Finley paused for dramatic effect. “If only our problems were just economic, maybe we could find a way out. But the problems here go much deeper, my friends. This is a town that’s living in fear. This is a town where people are afraid to leave their doors unlocked even when they’re home, in the middle of the day. There is, and I think some of you may snicker when I say this, but there’s an evil in this town. Something’s very wrong.

  “Just the other week, I witnessed a ritualistic slaughter of animals. Threatening messages were scrawled onto mannequins on the Five Mountains Ferris wheel. Last night, a bus in flames barreled down one of this town’s main streets. And clearly worst of all, a madman bombed the drive-in screen outside town, killing four people. That was an act of terrorism that shocked not only this town but the entire country. And now we know that those incidents are all strangely linked. The police admitted as much yesterday, but do they have anyone in custody? Do they even have any leads? If they do, they’re sure not telling us. They’d rather keep us in a permanent state of unease.”

  David heard a car pulling up at the curb. He craned his neck around, saw someone watching from behind the wheel. It was that detective. Barry Duckworth.

  “Unbelievable,” Finley continued. “How could these kinds of things happen here? What happened at the Constellation, that has every indication of being a terrorist act. And what’s being done? Someone blows up a drive-in theater today, and gets away with it, what will they do tomorrow? I repeat, what will they do tomorrow?”

  Duckworth had gotten out of his car and was slowly walking across the park, listening.

  �
��But this evil that has infected our town didn’t just happen in the last couple of weeks. It has been festering for three years. For three years at least. It began right here, right where we’re standing.” Another pause. Duckworth had taken a position behind the cameras, arms folded, watching.

  “This is the spot where a young woman named Olivia Fisher was brutally murdered. You all remember that night, I know you do. It was a monstrous crime, and three years have gone by without an arrest.

  “Perhaps you think that case has been closed. Maybe you’re thinking about that recent case, the murder of Rosemary Gaynor. The police would have you believe her doctor killed her to cover up an illegal adoption. But what the police haven’t told you is how astonishingly similar the murders of Rosemary Gaynor and Olivia Fisher were, and how unlikely it is the doctor could have committed both. Which means there’s a killer out there. A sick, sadistic killer waiting to strike again. And he may very well be the same person who’s embarked on a campaign of terror against this town. Mr. Twenty-three, they’re calling him.”

  Duckworth unfolded his arms.

  “But it gets worse,” Finley said, his voice rising. “The Promise Falls police were slow in recognizing the connection between these two crimes. They lost valuable time putting the pieces together. And the blame for that can be laid right at the door of the chief of police.”

  Duckworth spotted David, closed in on him, grabbed his arm, and said, “What the hell is going on here?”

  “He’s running for mayor,” he whispered.

  “What’s this bullshit about Olivia Fisher and Rosemary Gaynor? Where’s he getting this?”

  David pulled his arm away. “He’s got his sources.”

  Finley continued. “That’s right. I’m talking about Rhonda Finderman. Who was the primary investigator on the Olivia Fisher case. But she’s so wrapped up with bureaucratic nonsense, caught up with the perks and power of her position, that she took her eye off the ball. She didn’t know that the Gaynor case was a carbon copy of the Fisher murder, and who knows how much that put back the investigation?”

  Duckworth grabbed for David again. “He can’t say this.”