Far From True

by Linwood Barclay

  The phone was back in his pocket for only five seconds when it started to ring.

  “Yeah?” he said, expecting more questions from the dispatcher.

  “Barry?”

  A woman’s voice.

  Rhonda Finderman.

  “Yeah, Chief, hi.”

  “Have you heard what that son of a bitch Finley is saying about me?”

  “This isn’t a good time,” he said.

  “I’ll just bet it isn’t,” she said. “Where would he get something like that? That I’d taken my eye off the ball, that I’m at fault for not seeing a connection between the Fisher and Gaynor homicides? Far as I know, you’re the only person who’s come to me suggesting there is a connection. So where the hell else might he get an idea like that?”

  “Chief, I’ll tell you—”

  “You already told me Finley was sniffing around. Trying to dig up dirt on me, to use it against me for his comeback. If he didn’t get this from you, who’d he get it from? Carlson? Was it Angus Carlson? If it is, I swear, I’ll have him writing parking tickets for the rest of his natural life. I knew I’d made a mistake, moving him up to detective.”

  “Not Carlson,” Duckworth said.

  “Jesus, Barry, you gotta be kidding—”

  “Chief—Rhonda—I’m in pursuit of a suspect. I have to—”

  “No, hang on. You told that bastard—”

  Duckworth ended the call, put the phone back into his pocket. He got into his car and took off after Blackmore.

  • • •

  Professor Peter Blackmore struggled to get out his own phone as he drove randomly through the streets of Promise Falls. Glancing back and forth between the road and his phone, he called up a number and entered it.

  He had the phone to his ear. One ring, two rings. Then:

  “What is it, Peter?”

  “Clive, she’s dead!”

  “What?” Duncomb said.

  “Miriam’s dead!”

  “You’re out of your mind,” the security chief said. “Peter, you need to accept what happened. Georgina was killed at the drive-in. Miriam wasn’t. I spoke to her. You were there. I spoke to her and she’s fine.”

  “After!” he shouted into the phone. “She was killed after!”

  “What the hell are you saying? Where are you?”

  “Someone went to the house after you talked to her. That’s when it happened.”

  “Where are you getting this from? Who told you this?”

  “Duckworth! I just saw him!”

  Duncomb was quiet on the other end of the line.

  “Clive?”

  “I’m here.”

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” Peter said.

  “What?”

  “You killed her.”

  “Why the hell would I kill Miriam?”

  “Maybe she had something on you. Something more than a video with Olivia Fisher on it. Something about you and Liz, that’d be my bet. Maybe something from when you were in Boston. Was it something like that?”

  “You’ve lost it, Peter. You want to lay this on me, but you’re the one who was out all night. The one who shows up this morning with blood on him. What was your reason? Why’d you kill her? Because it wasn’t her in that car with Adam? Because she was the one who should have died anyway, and not Georgina?”

  “No! That’s not what happened!”

  “What did you tell him?” Clive asked.

  “What?”

  “What’d you tell Duckworth?”

  Blackmore didn’t speak for several seconds. Finally, “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” Duncomb said. “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t tell him a thing,” the professor lied, struggling to compose himself. “But he had questions about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “This isn’t something I should talk about on the phone.”

  “Jesus, you accuse me of killing Miriam, but suddenly you can’t discuss stuff on the phone.”

  “It’s complicated,” Blackmore said. “Where are you?”

  “I went to the bank. I’m downtown, on Claymore. I can meet you.”

  “Just stay there. Be out front. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m five minutes away, if that. I’ll tell you everything when I see you.” Blackmore ended the call, tossed the phone onto the seat next to him, cranked the wheel hard, and pulled a U-turn, nearly cutting off a Finley Springs truck.

  • • •

  When he was getting back on his feet, and touching his hand to the back of his head, Duckworth had noticed Blackmore’s car making a right turn before it had disappeared from view.

  Once he’d hung up on Rhonda Finderman—a move Duckworth predicted would see him, instead of Carlson, writing parking tickets until the end of time—and dropped in behind the wheel, he took off in the same direction, but there was no sign of Blackmore on the street he’d turned down.

  Duckworth’s foot was heavy on the accelerator. At each cross street, he glanced quickly in both directions. He hoped, now that all Promise Falls cruisers had been alerted, someone would spot the professor’s car.

  Where would the man go? Duckworth wondered. Home? Back to the college? Those would be the first two places the police would look for him.

  Based on the last comments the man had made, Duckworth had a feeling he was looking for Clive Duncomb. Which meant he was most likely going to the college. Duckworth grabbed his phone again, called dispatch.

  “Put me through to Thackeray’s security department,” he said.

  It took about fifteen seconds. A man answered.

  Duckworth identified himself. “This is an emergency. I need to speak to your boss. Right now.”

  “Not here,” the man said. “He went into town.”

  “Where?”

  “He said he was going to the bank.”

  “Which bank? Where?”

  The man said he thought it was on Claymore. Before he could say anything else, Duckworth hit the brakes, turned the car around, and went tearing off in the opposite direction.

  Red lights flashing, siren on.

  Within a minute, he got lucky.

  Ahead, he saw Blackmore’s car, coming from the other direction, turning onto Claymore. Duckworth had three cars in front of him, but with the siren wailing, they started shifting over to the right, out of his path. He turned hard onto Claymore, the car’s two right tires nearly losing grip on the pavement.

  About a hundred yards ahead, the professor had his right blinker on, was slowing, easing the car toward the curb.

  And there was Duncomb, out front of the bank, stepping off the curb, taking three steps out into the street.

  It all happened very fast.

  Once Blackmore was about ten yards away from Duncomb, he cranked the wheel hard to the right and floored it. Duncomb had no time to react. The car struck him midthigh, tossing his body onto the hood.

  “No!” Duckworth shouted, his hands locked on the steering wheel.

  Duncomb’s head came through the windshield as Blackmore’s car jumped the curb and crashed into the stone wall of the bank.

  The driver’s air bag deployed like a bomb going off.

  Duckworth screeched to a halt, threw open his door, and ran toward the scene. By the time he’d reached Blackmore’s car, the air bag had deflated, putting the professor nearly face-to-face with Clive Duncomb.

  At least, what was left of Duncomb’s bloodied and shredded face.

  Duckworth, breathless, opened the driver’s door of Blackmore’s car.

  Blackmore turned his head slowly toward the detective and smiled. “I got him,” he said. “I got him good.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  DAVID Harwood ca
ught up with Randall Finley at his water-bottling plant.

  “What the hell was that?” Finley shouted as David entered his office. “That was the fucking 9/11 of press conferences! A disaster! You’re an idiot! That’s what you are! An idiot! Why did I ever think you could do this?”

  David walked right up to the man’s desk, leaned over it, and pointed his finger angrily.

  “I’ll tell you who the fucking idiot is,” he fired back. “It’s a guy who won’t listen. I tried to tell you that this needed to be better planned. It needed to be thought out. We needed to work out a strategy. But no, you wake up this morning, and you go, ‘This is the day! Today we do it! I want a press conference in three hours! Make it happen!’ Well, that’s the way a fucking idiot does it.”

  Finley kicked his chair across the room. “They didn’t even care! About the stuff I had on the chief! They didn’t give a shit!”

  “They might,” Harwood said. “They probably will. But come on, you really thought they weren’t going to bring up the very thing that made you leave politics? And you honestly had no idea that this underage hooker was dead?”

  “I might have,” Finley said. “It slipped my mind.”

  “You used to be mayor of this town. There were, I’m sure, some people who actually liked you. They voted you in. But somewhere along the line, you lost all your political smarts. Because you’ve had your head up your ass, that’s why. You think I’m an idiot? Fine. I quit. Find someone else. But here’s a tip. Do the job interviews at the zoo. Find yourself a trained monkey. That’s what you need. Someone who’ll just do what you want, who’ll never tell you when you’re making a mistake, someone who hasn’t got an original thought in his head. Someone who’ll tell you you’re doing a great job when you’re actually making a horse’s ass of yourself.”

  David turned and walked out the door.

  “Good-bye and good riddance!” the former mayor said, looking for something else to kick or throw. He went over, grabbed the chair he’d already tossed to one side of the room, and threw it to the other.

  He stood there, steaming, breathing in and out through his nose, sweat bubbling up on his forehead. He did that for the better part of twenty seconds.

  Then said, “Shit!”

  Finley came around the desk, ran out of the office, heading for the parking lot. He found David getting into his Mazda.

  “Hey!” Finley shouted. “Hold up!”

  David, one hand on the top of the door, said, “You can’t fire me, you dumb shit. I quit. Weren’t you paying attention?”

  “I don’t want to fire you,” he said, catching his breath. “And I don’t want you to quit.”

  “What?”

  “I said I don’t want you to quit. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Forget it,” David said, dropping into the seat. He started to pull the door shut, but Finley gripped the top of it with both hands.

  “No, listen,” he said. “Just listen to me for a second.”

  David waited.

  “Okay, you’re right.” He grinned. “I shot my wad too soon.”

  David didn’t laugh.

  “Jesus, what do you want from me? I’m telling you, you were right. I should have taken your advice. I should have known what was coming, that they’d bring up the stuff about the hooker. I was dumb to think they wouldn’t. I’ll listen to you from now on. I will.”

  David slowly shook his head.

  “I’ll give you another two hundred a week,” Finley said. “Truth is, I don’t know who the hell else I could find. I mean, who’s as smart as you? Who’d work with me.”

  David turned his head away, looked at the dashboard.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  That was when Finley knew he had him. “You want me to say I’m sorry? I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not listening to you, and I’m sorry for calling you a fucking idiot.”

  David looked at him. “I should have had some supporters there.”

  “Hm?”

  “I should have rounded up some people, put some Finley for Mayor signs in their hands. Something for the cameras. Even if it was just friends and family. Half a dozen people. Even that would have helped. But I didn’t think of it. You didn’t give me enough time.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Totally.”

  “We have to sit down and figure everything out. Stake out your position on all sorts of issues. Work out your responses to the embarrassing questions. Because they’re always going to come out. You know that stuff is coming, so you have to get in front of it, turn it into a positive instead of a negative. You admit it: You’re a man with flaws—you’ve done things you’re not proud of—but that doesn’t mean you don’t care about this town, that you don’t want to do right by the people who live here.”

  “I like that,” Finley said. “Will you remember this, or should you be writing this down?”

  “You should be able to remember it yourself. You’re a fucking politician. You know everything there is to know about the art of persuasion. You just have to remember to use it.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  David sighed. “Four hundred,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll stay on, but on two conditions. You take my advice, and you give me another four hundred a week. What’s that, a couple hundred flats of spring water?”

  Finley made a hissing noise through his teeth. “I don’t know about four. I was thinking—”

  David turned the ignition.

  “Okay, four hundred. That’s fine. I can live with that.”

  David turned off the ignition.

  “There’s one other thing,” David said. “What we talked about just before the press conference.”

  “That stuff about your kid,” Finley said, nodding.

  “Don’t ever try to blackmail me again.”

  Finley raised his hands defensively. “Never.” He smiled. “So you’re back?”

  It took David Harwood several seconds to admit it. “Yeah, I’m back.”

  “That’s good, that’s good, because I’ve been thinking.”

  David closed his eyes wearily.

  “No, listen, I’m just spitballin’ here, but what I was thinking was, to make up for the disaster that was today, we need to do something big. Something that will show this town how invaluable I am to them. That even though I can be a bit of an asshole—”

  “Oh, stop,” David said.

  “Even though I can be a bit of an asshole, I love this town, that I’m there for the people of Promise Falls when they need me.”

  “You mean, like when you went up to the drive-in to have your picture taken helping people? Because that did not play well. It was opportunistic. It was insincere. It’s a good thing Duckworth booted us out of there before you made a total fool of yourself.”

  Finley looked hurt. “I did care. I felt terrible for those people. Those little girls, who were so scared when that screen came down? You may not believe it, but my heart went out to them.”

  “Sure, it did.”

  “But what I’m saying is, something like that, if it was to happen again, I need to get in there, roll my sleeves up, get my hands dirty, show the people I’m right there with them.”

  “What are you saying? We keep our fingers crossed for a flood, or a tornado?”

  “Well, of course not,” Finley said. “But if something like that does happen, I wanna be in there like a dirty shirt.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Cal

  I wanted to talk to Crystal. I wanted to talk to her without her mother present.

  Not a problem. I still had her lunch to deliver. Lucy had said her lunch hour began at twelve thirty. If I could get Angus Carlson’s permission to leave the scene, I’d get it to her in time.

  I went up to him, asked if there was any
thing else he needed. He said I’d have to come in and make a more formal statement, which I said I would be happy to do. Once he had my contact info, he allowed me to leave.

  Sam also wanted a moment before I took off.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Just making up for yesterday,” I said.

  She smiled. “I called the school, talked to Carl, said I’d be over for him as soon as possible. And the detective, he tells me they just picked up my ex-in-laws. I hear Yolanda passed out or something when the police showed up.”

  I smiled, gave her hand a squeeze.

  “Maybe they’ll finally get what’s coming to them,” she said.

  “I’d like to say all bad people do, eventually. Let’s hope in this case it really happens.”

  “So many bad people, they just get away with things,” she said. “And other people, they let them.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  I had to leave my laundry behind in the machines. Sam promised me that if Carlson would allow normal operations to resume, she’d look after it for me. I went out to the car, Crystal’s work in hand. I reached behind the passenger seat, where her bagged lunch was sitting. I arrived at the school at twenty minutes after twelve, making one stop along the way at a big-box office supply store.

  Lucy, as she’d promised she would, had told the school I’d be dropping by. An office secretary greeted me, and apologized for having to ask me for some identification. I showed her my driver’s license, which more than satisfied her. I thought showing her my private investigator’s license might unnecessarily alarm her. She said Crystal had already been told to come straight to the office when class was dismissed.

  She wandered into the office at twelve thirty-two. I was sitting in one of half a dozen chairs, waiting for her, her lunch, a plastic shopping bag, and her graphic novel all resting in my lap.

  “Hi, Crystal. I brought your lunch.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “I forgot it.”

  I handed her the bag. “You having a good day?”

  She shrugged.

  I held up the stapled pages. “I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your book. Your graphic novel.”

  “Okay,” she said.