Broken Promise: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  They just figured, What the hell. Let’s have another kid.

  Despite having an older brother and sister, Agnes felt as though she were an only child. The age difference meant her siblings had very little to do with her. They were either in or just starting high school when she came along. So they were never playmates, never went to school together. Arlene and Henry, being two years apart, had a bond Agnes could only dream of. She resented it for years, until Henry was killed in a car accident nearly two decades earlier. Only then, it struck Agnes, did Arlene begin to take a greater interest in her.

  Well, it was too late by then.

  Arlene seemed to believe she had some kind of family monopoly on wisdom. Did she run a hospital? Had she had that kind of responsibility? Had Arlene worked her way up from nothing to oversee a multimillion-dollar budget? And had David ever been the source of worry to Arlene and Don that Marla had been to her and Gill? Marla had been a challenge from the get-go. The teenage years were a nightmare. Sleeping around, drinking, drugs, ignoring school.

  Agnes and Gill had figured that once Marla hit her twenties, things would settle down. But troubles remained. Hints of a personality disorder, difficulty recognizing people, mood swings. One doctor thought she might be bipolar. But at least, with her parents’ financial help, she was living independently in a small house of her own, getting the odd job here and there, and then, more recently, this thing where she reviewed businesses on the Internet.

  It gave Agnes hope. Maybe, just maybe, Marla was getting her life back on track. So long as there were no setbacks, she might be able to move on to a more conventional kind of job. Agnes would have tried to find her something at the hospital, but after the incident with the baby, that wasn’t possible.

  Agnes might be able to pull some strings somewhere. She knew people in this town. The mayor, the head of the chamber of commerce, the police chief. All of them, as it turned out, women. They understood how important it was to help a child find her way in the world.

  But then Marla met that boy.

  A student, for God’s sake. From Thackeray College. A local boy, the son of, if you could believe it, a landscaper.

  And he’d gotten her pregnant.

  What had Marla been thinking, getting involved with someone so young, someone who wasn’t even finished with school? Someone who had no prospects, other than to help his father cut lawns and plant shrubs? Agnes had done some checking up on him. A few years ago he’d even been a suspect in the murder of a local lawyer and his family. The boy turned out to be innocent, but you had to wonder, would the police have even looked at him in the first place if there hadn’t been something off about him? He was getting a degree in English or philosophy or something else equally useless.

  Yes, Agnes conceded, what had happened with the baby had been tragic for Marla, and she was more than entitled to grieve. She’d needed time to get over her loss, and Agnes believed she herself had been a good mother through this period, helping to get Marla back on her feet. But who could have predicted what Marla would do? That she would sneak into Agnes’s own hospital and kidnap a newborn?

  Several months had passed since then, and Agnes now believed Marla was getting better. She was back doing her Internet reviews from home. The next step would be getting her out of the house, out into the world.

  But now this.

  Marla with another baby.

  “Are they at the house?” Agnes asked Arlene.

  “Last time I talked to him, yes,” Arlene said. “I think David was wondering whether to call the police.”

  “Tell me he has not done that,” Agnes said sternly. “This does not have to be a police matter. We can sort this out. Whatever’s happened, we can deal with it. Did you call Gill?”

  “I called the house and left a message. I don’t seem to have his cell phone number.”

  Gill, a management consultant who worked from home, had said something about meeting with a client that morning, Agnes recalled.

  “Okay, I’m heading over,” she said, and ended the call.

  The boardroom door opened and Jack Sturgess emerged. “Is anything the matter, Agnes?”

  Her eyes locked briefly on his. “Marla,” she said.

  “What?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

  She brushed past him as she returned to the conference room. The board members had the look of guilty children who’d been throwing spitballs while the teacher had been down to the office.

  Pickens stood behind her chair. “I’m afraid we’ll have to reschedule,” she said evenly. “Something has come up that demands my immediate attention.”

  She tossed her phone into her bag and left the room, passing her office and heading straight for the stairs. The elevator could take forever, especially if a patient transfer was under way. Once Agnes was out of the building, she had her phone out again, brought up a contact, tapped it.

  It rang nine times before someone answered. “Yeah?” A man, sounding both surprised and annoyed.

  “Gill, we’ve got a problem with Marla,” she said.

  “Jesus, when don’t we,” her husband said. “Hang on, let me just . . . Okay, I was with a client. What’s happened?”

  “She’s done it again. She’s taken another baby.”

  “Fucking hell,” he said.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Let me know what you find,” Gill Pickens said.

  “You’re not coming?”

  “I’m right in the middle of something,” he said.

  “You’re unbelievable,” she said, and dropped the cell back into her purse.

  Agnes wondered what, exactly, Gill was really in the middle of. More than likely, some slut’s legs.

  EIGHT

  David

  I ran after Bill Gaynor as he sprinted toward my car. Marla had worn a blank expression up to now, but as Gaynor charged in her direction, her face changed. Her eyes widened with fear. I saw her glance down, probably checking to see that the car’s back door lock was set. Then she scooped Matthew into her arms and held on to him tightly.

  “Matthew!”

  “Mr. Gaynor!” I shouted. I reached out, tried to grab his shoulders to slow him down.

  Gaynor spun around, tried to throw a punch, and in the process tripped over his own feet. As he hit the lawn I stumbled over his ankle and hit the ground next to him. I scrambled over before he could get up, leaned over him, and said, “Just listen! Listen to me.”

  All I really wanted now was to keep Gaynor from hurting or frightening Marla. I wanted to bring some calm to the situation, as unrealistic as that might sound. Only moments earlier, Gaynor had found his murdered wife in their home, and he had every reason to be acting the way he was. But I was afraid, in his state, anything could happen.

  He brought himself up to a sitting position, then launched himself at me. Two broad palms against my chest. I went flying backward.

  He was on his feet in a second, and heading toward the car again. When he got to it, he was moving so quickly he had to brace himself. His outstretched hands hit the top of Marla’s door, and the car rocked. He reached down for the handle, yanked on it, but found it locked.

  Marla screamed.

  Gaynor yanked on the door handle two more times, maybe thinking he could bust it open.

  “Go away!” Marla shouted.

  Gaynor shielded his eyes with his hand long enough to peer through the window and get a good look at the baby. He made a fist and banged on the glass. “Open the goddamn door!”

  Marla screamed a second time for him to go away.

  I was to the car now, fumbling in my pocket for the keys. I’d be able to unlock the doors as quickly as Marla could lock them, but I wasn’t sure that doing so was a good idea. Marla and the baby were better off in that car, at least until the police arrived.

  “Matthew!”
Gaynor shouted. He ran around to the other side of the car, but before he could reach the back door, Marla leaned over awkwardly, baby still in her arms, and locked it, too. He yanked on the handle a second too late.

  “He’s mine!” Marla yelled, her voice muffled by the cocooning effect of the glass.

  A woman who’d no doubt heard all the commotion was coming out of a house on the other side of the street. She took two seconds to take in what she was seeing, and ran back inside.

  Make the call, I thought.

  Gaynor banged on Marla’s window twice with the flat of his hand, then decided to try the driver’s door.

  Shit.

  Marla hadn’t been able to reach into the front to lock that one.

  I raised the remote, hit the button, but I was too late.

  Gaynor got the door open and dived in, putting his knees on the driver’s seat so he could reach into the back. As he lunged for Matthew, Marla freed one hand and slapped at his arms.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “Stop it!”

  I wasn’t sure which of them I was yelling at. I just wanted everything to stop before anyone got hurt.

  I got behind Gaynor and put my arms around his waist, tried to pull him back out of the car. He kicked back at me, catching me on the front of the leg, below the knee. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but I kept my hold on him.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “We’re trying to help!”

  Although, as I said it, I had to wonder at the truth of my words. Maybe I was trying to help, in the sense that I was trying to figure out what had happened here.

  But Marla was another story.

  Marla had Bill Gaynor’s child, and I was not yet in a position to explain how that had come to pass.

  And in that instant, in that millisecond, in the midst of all this chaos, I recalled the bloody smudge on Marla’s door.

  Oh, no.

  “Give him to me!” he shouted at Marla, who was still hitting any part of him she could catch. She landed a couple of blows on his head.

  “Marla! Stop it! Stop it!”

  While I struggled with Gaynor, managing to drag him almost all the way out of the car, Marla tucked Matthew under one arm like a football, threw open the back door on the other side, got out, and started to run.

  Gaynor managed to turn around—he was younger and in better shape than I was—so that he could push me up against the inside of the driver’s door and drive a fist into my stomach. I let go of him and my knees hit the pavement.

  The wind was gone from me. I gasped for air as Gaynor tore around the back of the car and caught up to Marla as she ran across the lawn. As I struggled to my feet, I saw him grab Marla by one arm.

  “Go away!” she screamed, twisting her body, shielding the baby from the baby’s father.

  Again I yelled, “Wait!”

  Gaynor kept his focus on Marla, and his hand on her arm. He was digging his fingers into her flesh, and she was screaming in pain.

  “I’ll drop him!”

  That did it. Gaynor released his grip on her, took half a step back. For several seconds, everything froze. All you could hear was breathing. Shallow and rapid from Gaynor, his tie askew, hair tousled, arms down at his sides. Marla, jaw dropped, inhaling huge gulps of air. And then there was me, still struggling to get my breathing back to normal after that punch to the gut.

  Half doubled over, I came around the car, one arm raised, palm out, in some weak kind of conciliatory gesture.

  Gaynor’s wild eyes went from Marla to me and back to Marla. There were tears running down her face, and Matthew was starting to cry, too.

  “Please,” Bill Gaynor said to her. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Marla shook her head, stunned by the request. “Hurt him? You’re the one who’s trying to hurt him.”

  “No, no, please,” he said.

  I managed to stand fully upright as I stepped over the curb and walked onto the lawn.

  “Marla,” I said. “What matters now, more than anything, is that nothing happen to Matthew. Right?”

  She studied me warily. “Okay.”

  “He’s our number one concern, agreed?”

  “That’s my son,” Gaynor said. “Tell her to give me my—”

  I raised a hand in his direction and nodded. “We all want the same thing, and that’s for Matthew to be safe.”

  In the distance, for the first time, sirens.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Marla, something’s happened in the house, and the police are coming, and it’s all going to get very busy here in a few minutes, and the cops are going to want to ask all of us lots of questions, and we don’t want to subject Matthew to that, do we? Some people are going to believe one thing and some people are going to believe something else, but the bottom line is, Matthew needs to be safe.”

  She said nothing, but tightened her grip on the baby.

  “Do you trust me, Marla?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “We’re cousins. We’re family. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. I want to help you, and I want to help you through this. You have to trust me.”

  Gaynor’s eyes continued to bounce between us.

  “I guess I do,” she said. I could see her grip on Matthew, who was continuing to cry through all of this, relax ever so slightly.

  The sirens grew louder. I took my eyes off Marla for half a second, saw a Promise Falls cruiser turn the corner a long block away, lights flashing.

  “Give him to me,” I said. I looked at Gaynor. “Is that okay with you, if she gives him to me?”

  He searched my eyes. “Okay,” he said slowly.

  Marla stood frozen. She’d taken a quick look up the street, too, and the imminent arrival of the police had prompted a more frightened look in her eyes.

  “If I can’t have him . . .”

  “Marla.”

  “If I can’t have him, then maybe no one . . .”

  “Don’t talk that way, Marla.” Jesus, what might she do? Run into the street, throw herself in the path of the police car, baby in her arms?

  The cruiser—only the one so far—screeched to a halt and two male officers, one black and one white, jumped out. I was pretty sure I recognized both of them from my time reporting for the Standard. The black officer was Gilchrist, the white guy Humboldt.

  “Give him to me!” Gaynor yelled at Marla, and advanced threateningly toward her.

  Gilchrist drew his weapon, but kept it pointing toward the ground. “Sir!” he barked, his sharp voice a thunderclap. “Back away from the woman!”

  Gaynor looked at the cop, pointed to Marla. “That’s my son! She has my son!”

  Christ on a cracker, this very bad situation was milliseconds away from getting a fuck of a lot worse. The cops had no idea what they’d walked into. They probably thought it was some kind of custody dispute. A full-scale domestic disturbance.

  “Officer Gilchrist?” I said.

  The man’s head snapped my way. “I know you?”

  “David Harwood. Used to work for the Standard. This is my cousin, Marla. She’s under a lot of . . . stress right now, and she was just about to hand the baby to me. And I think that’s okay with Mr. Gaynor here, right?”

  “Everyone just stay right where they are,” Gilchrist said as his partner came alongside. “Would you like to bring us up to speed, Harwood?”

  “It’d be easier to explain once Marla hands me the baby.”

  “That work for you?” Humboldt, speaking for the first time, asked Bill Gaynor.

  Gaynor nodded.

  “How about you, Marla?” Gilchrist asked.

  Marla took four slow steps in my direction. Carefully she handed the crying child to me. I supported him against my chest with one arm, wrapped the other around him. Felt his warmth. The stirring of his s
mall limbs.

  Gilchrist holstered his weapon.

  “In the house,” I said, my voice feeling as though it might break. “You have to go . . . into the house.”

  “What’s in the house, sir?” Humboldt asked.

  It was Gaynor who spoke. “My . . . wife.” The way he said it, the way the two words came out so brittle, neither of the cops seemed to feel the need to ask what her situation was.

  Humboldt drew a weapon and slowly approached the open front door. The house swallowed him up as he entered the foyer.

  Gilchrist spoke into the radio attached to his shoulder, said he was going to need more units on Breckonwood. Probably a detective and a crime-scene unit.

  Marla’s red eyes looked my way. I wondered whether she would ask me what was in the house, but she didn’t.

  Instead, she slowly melted to the grass. Once she was on her knees, she put her hands over her eyes and began to weep so hard her body shook.

  My phone rang. Tucked into my inside jacket pocket, against my chest, it felt like I’d been hit by one of those paddles paramedics use. With a wailing Matthew pressed against me, I worked my free hand into my jacket to retrieve the phone. I saw who it was before I put the phone to my ear.

  “Agnes,” I said.

  “I’m at Marla’s and there’s no one here. What the hell is going on?”

  Matthew cried. “We’re not there,” I said.

  “Who is . . . Oh, dear God, is that the baby?”

  “Yeah. Look, Agnes—”

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

  I couldn’t even remember where I was. I was numb. I glanced at the house, read the number to her.

  “A street, David? That would be enormously helpful.”

  I had to think a moment. “Breckonwood. You know where that is?”

  “Yes,” Agnes snapped. “What are you doing there?”

  “Just come,” I said.

  “Your mother said you had some wild idea that you might call the police. Whatever’s happened, you are not to call the police.”

  “Aunt Agnes, we’re way past that now.”

  NINE