Broken Promise: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  But his office at the Finley Springs bottling plant, five miles north of Promise Falls on a tract of land that had been in his family for five generations, lacked charm. A cheap metal desk topped with chipped fake-wood laminate. Plastic stackable chairs. He’d rehung a few framed photos that had adorned the walls of his mayoral office. Shaking hands with Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly. Fake fisticuffs with former wrestler and onetime governor Jesse Ventura.

  There’d never been a Penthouse calendar on the wall of the mayor’s office, however. Finley was thinking maybe he should have taken that down before inviting Fenwick to drop by. What the hell. It wasn’t like it showed anything she hadn’t already seen herself. In the mirror.

  Gloria Fenwick, forty, pencil thin, blond hair to her shoulders and decked out in Anne Klein, had been the general manager of the theme park, and was still in charge of the place, winding things down for the parent corporation. That meant dealing with creditors, selling off bits and pieces of the place, entertaining offers for the property. As far as that went, there had been none.

  “I don’t even know why I agreed to this meeting,” Fenwick said, standing, looking at the closest plastic chair. The seat was cracked, and looked as though it would pinch her in a delicate place if she dared sit in it.

  “You agreed to it because you know if an opportunity presented itself that would make you look good to your superiors, you’d go for it.”

  Fenwick picked up a plastic bottle of Finley Springs Water that was sitting on the man’s desk. She held it up to a flickering overhead fluorescent light and squinted. “This looks a little cloudy to me.”

  “We had a few quality issues with the last batch,” Finley said. “Perfectly safe to drink despite a few contaminants.”

  “You should put that on the label,” she said.

  Finley’s desk phone rang. He glanced at who the caller was, but ignored it. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “This chair is cracked.”

  Finley came from behind his desk and found another chair that looked less likely to pinch Fenwick’s very pleasant butt. She sat, and Finley returned to the chair behind his desk.

  “Your park was a huge shot in the arm for Promise Falls.”

  “Five Mountains is not reopening,” she said.

  “I think your corporate overlords are not taking the long view. A park like that, it needs time to develop, build an audience, as it were.”

  “What’s this to you?”

  He leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head, a posture that made his stomach loom in front of him like an upturned wok.

  “I’m looking to get back into politics,” Finley said. “I want back in the game. Promise Falls has hit the skids. This town is broken. Businesses closing, people moving away. Paper’s gone under. That private prison—which would have meant a shitload of jobs—didn’t get built here. A plant that was making parts for GM and Ford lost its contract to Mexico. And as if all that weren’t bad enough, the local theme park has folded up its tent. That’d be you.”

  “It was not a viable operation,” Gloria Fenwick said. “Building in that location was a miscalculation. Traffic patterns were misjudged. Promise Falls is too far north of Albany. There are no other attractions, like a discount outlet mall, to make this a logical destination point. People had to go too far out of their way to get here. People don’t pass Promise Falls on their way from point A to point B. So the place has been mothballed.”

  “Every time I drive by, it kind of freaks me out,” Finley said. “Seeing that Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, everything just sitting there, not moving. Abandoned like that. It’s creepy.”

  “Try being there,” Fenwick said. “My office is still on the property. It’s like living in a ghost town. Especially late at night.”

  “Anyway, when I get back in,” Finley said, putting his hands on his desk and leaning forward, “I can make it so Five Mountains pays no local business taxes or property taxes for five years. And in five years’ time, if the park is still not financially viable, that could be reexamined. Make it ten years. People having jobs is more important than filling local tax coffers.”

  The phone rang again. He let it go, but seconds after it stopped ringing, his cell went off. “Goddamn it,” he said. “It’s like having flies buzzing around your head all the time.”

  “Maybe you need an assistant,” Fenwick said.

  “Interested?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Because I’ve actually been scouting around, getting some names. What with running a business, restarting my political career, I’m kind of drowning.”

  “Is that a joke?” Fenwick asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You being in the water business.”

  “Oh.” He grinned. “I missed that one.”

  “When did you get into this?”

  “Three years ago. This has been Finley land for seventy-three years. We always knew there was a natural spring on the property, but I was the one who decided to look into its financial potential. I set up a plant, and now we’re going gangbusters.”

  “So what do you care about getting back into politics? You have a good business going here.”

  “I like to contribute,” Finley said. “I like to make a difference.”

  Fenwick wondered whether the man could keep a straight face. Finley managed it. But it didn’t stop her from pursuing the matter.

  “A man like you always has an angle. You don’t want to get back in to help the people. You want to get back in to help yourself. You get in, you do people favors, they pay you back. That’s how it works.”

  “A cynical theme-park operator,” Finley said. “It’s like finding out Willy Wonka hated chocolate.” He rubbed his hands together. “Here’s the thing. I’m not asking Five Mountains to reopen. I know that may not be feasible. But if you could find a way to say, after having a meeting with me, that you are at least considering taking another look at reopening, I’d really appreciate that.”

  “You mean lie,” she said.

  Finley waved a hand in the air. “Call it what you will. But just in this room.”

  “What’s in it for Five Mountains?” she asked. “Say I go to my superiors and make your pitch. What’s in it for me?”

  “All the free springwater you want?” he said, and grinned.

  Gloria took a second look at the clouded bottle. “If it comes with some antibiotics.”

  “And,” Finley said, taking a white letter-size envelope from his desk and placing it on top, “this.”

  The envelope was a quarter of an inch thick. Fenwick glanced at it, but did not touch it.

  “You must be kidding,” she said. “Who are you? Tony Soprano?”

  “It’s a consulting fee. I’ve been consulting you about your firm’s plans. Don’t you at least want to see how much it is?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said, standing.

  Finley slid the envelope off the desk and back into the drawer. “I know you can’t sell the place.” He chortled. “If I was you, I’d tell my bosses to torch the whole operation and collect the insurance. Only way you’ll get a fraction of your money back out of it.”

  Fenwick shot him a look. “What the hell made you say that?”

  Finley’s smile broadened. “I touch a nerve there?”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Finley. I can find my way out.”

  Finley didn’t bother getting up as she left the office.

  “Bitch,” he said.

  He wondered if maybe he could have handled that better. Maybe it was the Penthouse calendar. Maybe he’d never had a chance at winning over Fenwick once she’d seen that woman with her bush hanging out.

  The phone rang again. He looked at it and shouted, “Shut up!” He lifted the receiver an inch and slammed it back down. It was only then that he realized,
from the call display, that the call had come from his home. Which meant it was his wife, Jane, or Lindsay, who did double duty as housekeeper and care worker.

  “Shit,” he said, then picked up the phone and dialed the number.

  “Hello?” It was Lindsay.

  “Did you call?” he asked.

  “It must have been Jane,” she said. “Hang on.” The line was put on hold, then a pickup on an extension.

  “Randy?” Jane asked, her voice tired.

  “Hello, love. What’s up?”

  “Would you have time to go by the bookstore today? I finished the one I was reading.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’d be happy to.”

  “Anything else by the same author. His name is, hang on, his name . . . what is his name?”

  “Leave it with me. I’ll see you soon.”

  Finley hung up the phone, sighed, cast his eye across his empty office. Thank God he had Lindsay’s help on the home front, but he needed assistance here just as much.

  As he’d told Fenwick, he had too much on his plate. He needed help. Someone to keep him organized, manage a campaign, deal with media out of Albany. Talk to local business leaders, get them behind his candidacy.

  Finley knew he could sometimes rub people the wrong way.

  Trouble was, he’d burned a lot of bridges. People who’d worked for him in the past had sworn they’d never work for him again. Like Jim Cutter, who used to drive him around back when he was the mayor. Fucking Cutter had broken his nose while working for him. Finley, looking back, knew he probably had it coming, and if he thought there was a chance in a million Cutter would work for him again, put the landscaping business on hold, Finley’d have him back in a minute. Cutter was a smart guy. Too smart, Finley realized, to ever work for him again.

  So Finley had been asking around, looking for someone he hadn’t already pissed off. Someone with media savvy.

  He had a name. Someone who’d gotten turfed when the Standard went tits-up. Guy by the name of David Harwood.

  Finley had a number for him.

  What the hell? he figured, and picked up the phone.

  NINETEEN

  “WHAT’S happening?” Gill Pickens asked his wife, Agnes, in the police station lobby. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s in there being interrogated like some common criminal; that’s what’s going on,” she told him, hands on her hips. “Where the hell were you?”

  “Why aren’t you in there with her?”

  Agnes rolled her eyes. “They won’t let me. But Natalie Bondurant’s with her. I just hope she knows what the hell she’s doing.”

  “Natalie’s good,” Gill said.

  “You talking professionally, or is she one you’ve bagged I don’t know about?”

  Gill sighed. “Honest to God, Agnes.”

  “That’s not an answer,” she said.

  “She’s a good lawyer. A very good lawyer. And that’s all I know about her. You know it, too.”

  Agnes ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek. “Again, where the hell have you been?”

  “I told you. I was with a client. I met with him at the Holiday Inn Express in Amsterdam. He runs an industrial cleaning service, and he’s looking for ways to make it more efficient. Baldry. Emmett Baldry. Call him if you don’t believe me.”

  “Why’d you meet at the Holiday Inn?” she asked. “Were you planning on some other business there?”

  Gill shook his head as he whispered angrily, “Is this really the time? When we’ve got another crisis with Marla? This is what you want to talk about? I swear, Agnes, you’ve become fixated on this notion that I’m being unfaithful to you, which is complete and utter bullshit. I’m telling you, I had a meeting with Emmett Baldry, and I got here as fast as I could. Could we talk about what really matters? What does Natalie say? Does she think Marla’s in real trouble here?”

  “She’s still getting up to speed,” Agnes said, implicitly agreeing to her husband’s request to move on. At least for now. “But this isn’t like what happened before. I could control that. It happened under my roof. This time it’s different.”

  “Where did she grab this baby?”

  Agnes’s eyes went up, as though heaven would provide an answer. “I don’t know. She’s saying someone came to the door and just handed the kid over.”

  “And the mother? The real mother? She’s dead?”

  Agnes nodded gravely. “Our girl’s really done it this time.”

  • • •

  “My client has nothing to say,” Natalie Bondurant said.

  She was sitting next to Marla Pickens at a metal table in an interrogation room of the Promise Falls Police Department. Across from them sat Detective Barry Duckworth.

  “I understand,” he said. “Really, what I’m looking for here is some assistance. I’m not out to get you, Marla.” He looked directly at her instead of talking through Natalie. “I’m really not. I just want to find out what happened, and I think you may be in a position to help me with that. Fill in some of the blanks.”

  “Barry, please,” Natalie said.

  “I’m serious, Natalie. Right now no one is talking about kidnapping charges against Ms. Pickens or anything like that.”

  “Kidnapping?” Marla said.

  Duckworth nodded. “We don’t fully understand how Matthew Gaynor came into your care, Marla. That’s something I hope will come clear in time. Right now I’m trying to find out what happened to Matthew’s mother. I’m sure you’d like to do everything you can to help us in that regard.”

  “Sure,” Marla said.

  “Don’t answer him,” Natalie said, resting her hand on Marla’s arm.

  “But I do,” she said. “I want them to find out who did that. That was a terrible thing somebody did.”

  “It sure is,” Duckworth said. “Have you ever met Rosemary Gaynor before?”

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Natalie said.

  “But I haven’t. At least, I don’t think so. The name isn’t familiar to me.”

  Duckworth slid a picture across the table. A blown-up profile shot from Rosemary Gaynor’s Facebook page.

  “You’ve never seen this woman before?”

  Marla studied it. “I don’t recognize her.”

  “Okay. You know what, let me just get a few other things out of the way. What’s your address, Marla?”

  “You already know that,” Natalie said. “You took her driver’s license.”

  “Please, Counselor.”

  Marla rattled off her address and phone number. “I live by myself,” she added.

  “And what do you do?”

  “What do I do?”

  “What’s your job? Are you employed?”

  “Yes,” Marla said, nodding. “I write reviews.”

  Duckworth’s eyebrows went up. “No kidding? What sort of reviews? Movie reviews? Book reviews? Do you review restaurants?”

  “Not movies or books. Some restaurants. But mostly businesses.”

  Natalie, not sure where this was going, looked uncertain. “Maybe we should—”

  “No, it’s okay,” Marla said. “I do write-ups about businesses on the Internet.”

  “How does that work, exactly?” Duckworth asked.

  “Well, let’s say you run a—I don’t know—a paving company. You go around paving people’s driveways. I write a review of your company saying what a good job you did.” She smiled tiredly. “I don’t get paid a lot for each review, but I can get a lot done in an hour, so it adds up pretty fast.”

  “Wait a sec,” Duckworth said. “I’m confused. You use the services of enough businesses that you can write lots of reviews in an hour?”

  Marla shook her head. “No, no, I haven’t used any of them.”

  “I don’t think this h
as any bearing on anything,” Natalie said.

  “But hang on,” Duckworth said, holding up a hand. “I’m just curious, personally, how you can review businesses whose services you’ve never engaged?”

  Marla said, “The way it works is, if you’re the paving guy, you get in touch with the Internet company I work for, and you say you need lots of good customer reviews so that when people are looking for a paver, they pick you. So then the company sends me the info and I write the review. I’ve got, like, half a dozen online identities I can use so it doesn’t look like they’re all from the same person. So even though I don’t know a lot about paving, I can kind of figure it out, and say they gave me a good price, they were on time, the driveway was really smooth, like that.”

  “No more,” Natalie said, gripping Marla’s arm tighter.

  “That’s fascinating,” Duckworth said. “So you just completely make it up. You say a few good words about a business you know nothing about and have never used. I’m guessing it wouldn’t even have to be in Promise Falls. It could literally be anywhere.”

  Marla nodded.

  “So, in other words, Marla, you lie,” Duckworth said.

  Her head snapped back as though she’d been slapped. “Not really,” she said. “It’s the Internet.”

  “Well, let me ask you this, then. Why did you try to take a baby out of Promise Falls General?”

  Natalie blinked. She said, “Whoa, hold on. If you’ve got anything to substantiate the idea that Ms. Pickens took Matthew Gaynor from the hospital, then I’d like to see—”

  He raised a hand. “No, not Matthew.” He reviewed some paperwork in front of him. “The child’s name was Dwight Westphall. He was just a couple of days old when your client snuck into the maternity ward and—”

  “I would ask that you refrain from a word like ‘snuck,’ Detective.”

  “We’re not in front of a jury, Ms. Bondurant.” He paused. “Not yet. As I was saying, Ms. Pickens here was stopped by hospital security before she could exit the building. Police were notified, but an accommodation was reached between the Westphalls and the hospital and no further action was taken. Would that accommodation have anything to do with the fact that your mother is the hospital administrator, Ms. Pickens?”