Bad Move zw-1

by Linwood Barclay

  “We didn’t talk about that much. We just, you know. But she did seem, I don’t know, different.”

  “How do you mean, different?”

  “On edge, distracted. She had something on her mind.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “I don’t know. Why does it matter? Why don’t you just ask her yourself?”

  “I’m asking you. What did she say?”

  “She wanted to know how much it would cost to fly somewhere. The Bahamas, or Barbados, San Francisco. She was throwing out all these names of places. I asked her if she was going on a trip, and she said maybe. She said she might be going away.”

  “Alone, or with someone else?”

  “She, she didn’t say. It’s almost like she was talking about running away. Like she was scared. But I may have read that wrong. Maybe she’s just planning a vacation. Maybe she’s going away with her boyfriend.”

  “Boyfriend? She has a boyfriend?”

  “Well, I don’t know for sure that she does, but I have this sense that there’s someone else. Someone she’s seeing. Or has been seeing.”

  “That must hurt,” I said, “the idea that she might be unfaithful to you and all.” I thought Carpington might shoot me a look, but he missed the irony and kept staring down at his desk.

  “No, I know what we’ve got and what the limits are. I know she doesn’t like me. I know why she’s doing what she’s doing. I’m not stupid. I mean, look at me. What are the chances a girl like Stefanie Knight would be interested in a guy like me?”

  Well, he had me there, but I decided not to say anything. But what I was thinking was, Could this guy have any more motives for wanting Stefanie Knight dead? She was clearly part of some blackmail scheme against him. Maybe she’d been threatening to tell his wife about what they’d been up to. And there was the jealousy angle. Carpington figured she was seeing somebody else.

  I was starting to feel better already. I was moving down from the number one spot on the list of possible suspects. “Sure, Detective,” I could hear myself saying in an interrogation room, “I stole her purse, but you want an even better suspect? Check out this guy.”

  But all that aside, I didn’t think he was the one who’d struck Stefanie in the head with a shovel. He just didn’t seem to have it in him.

  I said, “You think this boyfriend was Rick?”

  “Rick?” Carpington, who I thought couldn’t look any worse, moved toward bilious. “Don’t even talk to me about him. He’s a total psychopath. He’s insane.”

  “We’ve met. To be honest with you, I don’t care much for him, either. We didn’t hit it off very well.”

  “Let me tell you what he did to me. He took me to this house they’d started building-this was back when he and Greenway and Mr. Benedetto first started talking to me about needing some help at the council level and at the planning committee-and all that was done was the basement, which they’d capped off with the beams and plywood for the first floor, and he took me down a ladder to show me-there were no stairs yet-how the first stages of construction are done. And I’m looking around, and I notice Rick’s gone, and so’s the ladder, and I’m trapped down there, in this wide-open basement with a layer of wood overtop, and then Rick drops this snake-and I’m not talking about some little snake or something-but this giant snake into the basement.”

  “Quincy.”

  “Yes! That was its name! And he starts slithering around, and I swear to God, I was never so scared in my life. I started screaming at Rick to let me up, to put the ladder back down, but he stood up there, looking down at me through this hole where the stairs would go, and he just laughed. I was running around the whole basement trying to stay ahead of this snake, and Rick’s asking me whether they can count on my support at the council, and telling me that when I say yes, he’ll put the ladder back and come down and deal with Quincy. He’s the biggest snake I’ve ever seen.”

  “Who, Rick? Or Quincy?”

  Carpington almost smiled. “Mr. Greenway apologized for him later. Said he wanted our relationship to be more cordial than that.”

  “The question was, do you think Stefanie is seeing Rick?”

  “I suppose it’s possible; they went out a long time ago. Rick still keeps in touch with her mother, that’s who looks after the snake, I think. But I don’t think Stef wants anything to do with him anymore. I think she’s scared of him.”

  “What about Greenway? I mean, she’s working with him every day in the office.”

  “Maybe.” Carpington thought. “Or maybe Mr. Benedetto. He usually gets what he wants.”

  “Greenway’s boss? Is that who you’re talking about?”

  “That’s right. He’s the one who bought the land for the development. But he turns things over to Greenway, to get the actual subdivision going.” Carpington took another look at the photo, pressed his lips together. “I can’t believe she’d be in on something like that. I thought she was better than the others, than the rest of that bunch at Valley Forest.”

  “Yeah, you must be very disappointed. You hang out with a woman whose coworkers resort to blackmail and drop you into basements with snakes, it must be a shock to learn she might be less than upstanding.”

  “I have to talk to her,” Carpington said. “I have to find out why she’d do this to me.” He grabbed the one print, folded it in half, and shoved it inside his suit jacket.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I have more. But I think you’re wasting your time.”

  “What do you mean? Has she left? Did she actually go away? It was only yesterday that she was talking about this.”

  “No,” I said. “Stefanie’s dead.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but there were no words. He got up suddenly, shoved his way past me to get to the hallway. By the time I was out of my chair and had my head out the door, I could see him running down the hall for the doors to the parking lot.

  When I got to the door, I spotted Carpington getting into a dark blue or black Cadillac. I ran to my Civic, got in, and debated my next move. I’d rattled Carpington’s cage, to be sure, and it seemed worth knowing what he’d do next. I’d set something in motion by letting him know I knew about his affair with Stefanie, and by telling him she was dead, and I wanted to see where it went.

  He didn’t immediately race out of the parking lot, as I’d expected. I could see him in the car, punching numbers into a cell phone, waiting for someone to answer, then talking rapidly, waving his one free arm around inside the car. He talked for two, maybe three minutes, then threw the phone down. The brake lights came on, the Cadillac was put into drive and squealed out of the lot.

  The Caddy had a lot more pickup than the Civic, which wheezed in pursuit. There weren’t many cars on the road this late at night, and I didn’t want to follow so closely that he’d notice me, and that was exactly how it was working out. The Caddy’s taillights receded into the distance as Carpington floored it.

  He was heading in the direction of Valley Forest Estates. He approached the subdivision from the south side, down by the creek, and I watched as the red lights sped into an area where the homes were in the earlier stages of construction.

  When I saw the red lights come to a stop, I hung back, pulled over to the side of the road and killed my lights. The Caddy sat there, idling, Carpington staying behind the wheel, evidently waiting for a meeting. I backed the Civic between a stack of lumber and an idle forklift, figured it was far enough off the street not to be noticed, and got out. I was a couple of hundred yards away from Carpington’s car, and crept along carefully, behind the houses, making my way between wheelbarrows and stacks of bricks and two-by-fours. The sky was clear, the stars were out and the moon was nearly full, so I could see fairly well once my eyes adjusted. Still, at one point, my right leg dropped down into a shallow ditch and I went down, but I was still far enough away from the Caddy not to have attracted any attention. I got up, worried that I might have twisted my ankle, but everything seemed to
be working properly. My jeans and shirt were scuffed with dirt.

  I wanted to get as close to the Caddy as possible without being detected. It was parked, the motor still idling, directly in front of a two-story house still in the skeletal stage. Boards that would later be covered with insulation and drywall marked out the exterior and interior walls. I bypassed the door frames and slipped between two studs into the house, making my way to the front, where I got down on the floor, made myself as flat as possible, and settled in to watch the show.

  Carpington constantly checked his mirror, made another call on his cell, fiddled with the radio, blotted his brow. The two of us waited nearly ten minutes before a set of headlights appeared at the far end of the street, followed closely by a second. The two cars approached slowly. The first, a four-door imported sedan, drove past the Caddy and angled in front of it, while the second car, a small Lincoln, pulled up tight behind it. Carpington was effectively boxed in.

  The driver of the Lincoln killed the lights and engine and got out. In the moonlight, I could see that it was Don Greenway, still in his suit. Carpington got out of the Cadillac, turning off the engine but leaving the headlights on. Rick, who got out of the import, shielded his eyes from the glare as he joined Greenway, who was standing in front of an already raving Carpington.

  “She’s dead!” he shouted. “This guy comes and sees me and tells me she’s dead!”

  “Roger, calm down,” Greenway said, trying to maintain a normal tone of voice.

  “How do you expect me to calm down? Stefanie’s dead!”

  “I only just heard about it myself,” Greenway said. “The police were by the office.”

  “Look, I never signed on for anything like this! Spender was one thing, and I never wanted to go along with that, but this is too much!”

  Rick said, “I think you should lower your voice, asshole. There’s houses over that ridge people are living in, dickwad, and they might hear you.”

  “Maybe I don’t care about that. Maybe it’s too late to care about anything.”

  Greenway looked at Rick and nodded. Suddenly, Rick slapped Carpington across the face savagely, sending the councilman sprawling up against the side of his Caddy. Before he even had time to touch his cheek, Rick had him by the shirt and was dragging him across the mud-caked street in the direction of his car. Rick reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of remote keys, and popped the trunk on the sedan, which opened about an inch.

  As Rick swung the trunk open a tiny light came on long enough for Carpington to see what was inside. There was barely time for him to scream “No!” before Rick had shoved him inside and slammed the trunk shut.

  21

  Maybe, if I’d ever served my country in the military or something, I’d be more familiar with the sounds of a man screaming. Once, when called out around midnight to a particularly grisly highway accident as a young newspaper photographer, I listened while a man burned to death in a car, rescue crews unable to get close to him. The driver of a tanker truck had fallen asleep at the wheel and gone through a red light, virtually crushing a Chevette that was crossing its path. It was a wonder the man in the Chevette remained alive long enough for police and fire officials, and me, to arrive and hear him die. His final cries of anguish had stayed with me for a long time. Even now, some twenty years later, I can still hear him calling “Princess!” which I learned later was the nickname of the nine-year-old daughter he’d left behind.

  And maybe those cries were worse than what I was hearing now. It’s a tough one to call. But there was something about Carpington’s screams that had nothing to do with pain. They were screams of outright terror and hysteria, and listening to them made my blood run cold. They were the screams-interspersed with cries of “Get me out!” and “Let me out!”-of a man finding himself locked in a trunk with his worst nightmare. The parked car bounced on its springs like it was being driven down a washboard road as Carpington rolled about and kicked and pounded at the trunk lid and walls.

  It was hard to hear what Greenway and Rick were saying to each other, but they couldn’t have looked more relaxed. At one point, Greenway pointed at the moon, and Rick looked up, nodded, as if to say “You’re right, it is a beautiful moon tonight, isn’t it?”

  Finally, the screams not subsiding at all, Greenway nodded to Rick, who popped the trunk open and hauled Carpington out. I was surprised, frankly, to see him still alive. At the very least, I figured Quincy would already be in the process of squeezing the life out of him, which I’d have almost welcomed if it would have meant an end to the screaming. But aside from his clothes being all rumpled, and a cut on his face from bumping into something in the trunk, the councilman didn’t look too bad.

  Rick said, “Now, are you ready to calm down?”

  “Yes, yes, thank you, thank you for getting me out of there.”

  “He’s still pretty drowsy,” Rick said. “Look at him, he’s practically sleeping like a baby.” He slapped Carpington in the face again. “I think you upset him.”

  “What, why isn’t he moving more?” Carpington asked.

  “He’s on Prozac for Pythons. Merle and Jimmy gave him something, it’s taking him a while to recover. But I think I can guarantee you that the next time we put you in there, if we have to put you in there, he’s going to be right back to his old self.”

  “Okay,” Carpington said. “Okay. That won’t be necessary, I promise.”

  Greenway approached Carpington and slipped his arm around his shoulder like they were old friends. “Now, Roger, what’s gotten you so upset tonight?”

  “This man came to see me. He wanted to know about Stefanie, and he told me she was dead.”

  “Who was this man?” Greenway asked.

  “I’m trying to remember his name. He said he lives in Valley Forest, on the street you named after yourself.”

  Rick cocked his head to one side. “Was his name Walker?”

  “Yes, that was it.”

  “That fucker. He’s turning up everywhere tonight. You know what he did?” He was asking Greenway.

  “What did he do?”

  “He fucking hit me right in the head with a robot.”

  Greenway appeared to be considering whether this was something he wanted to follow up on, then decided against it. But Rick wasn’t through: “And I was really prepared to like the guy, you know? He wrote this book I got from the prison library, about these Earthlings who go to another planet, and they try to get everyone to stop believing in God, but when they do, there’s all this shit.” He paused. “I don’t read all that many books, you know.”

  “Really,” said Greenway.

  “But I really liked that one. He told me he’s writing a sequel, although I got a feeling he may not get a chance to finish it.” He smiled to himself. “I’m gonna have to drop in on him again. He’s got some of the coolest toys. Check this out.” He pulled my Batmobile from his jacket pocket.

  “That’s very nice, Rick.”

  “You press this little button here on the hood, and this chain cutter pops out of the front bumper. It used to have an antenna, but I guess that snapped off.”

  That son of a bitch. Mint condition since I was seven years old, and now this.

  Greenway waited a second to see whether Rick was done, concluded that he was, and said to Carpington, “Roger, why did this Walker guy come to see you?”

  “Like I said, he wanted to know about Stefanie. What happened to her?”

  “From what I understand,” Greenway said, “someone broke into her house and killed her. She’d been hit in the head.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I know. It’s been a terrible blow for all of us. She was a very special lady. I still can’t believe it’s happened.” He said this all very evenly, as though he’d rehearsed it. Calmly, he asked, “It wasn’t you, was it, Roger? Did you have a bit of a tiff with Stefanie?”

  He recoiled in horror. “What? Of course not! It’s not my style to go around hitting people in t
he head. Or leaving them dead in creeks, for that matter.” Carpington was looking at Rick when he said this. “You said that was going to look like an accident.”

  Rick shrugged.

  “You said it would look like he’d tripped and hit his head and drowned. But the police say he was murdered, that his head was bashed in before he hit the water. You’re an amateur, you know that?”

  Rick said, “Maybe you need a bit more time in the trunk.”

  Carpington thought about that. “No. That won’t be necessary. All I’m saying is, it was supposed to be an accident.”

  “Water under the bridge, as they say,” said Greenway. “We have to deal with things as they are now, not as we wish they were. The police have been to see me about Mr. Spender, but I can assure you that they don’t think we have anything to do with this. We are businessmen. We don’t handle things that way.”

  Carpington swung his head back and forth briefly, as though trying to make the madness go away. He stopped, glared at Greenway accusingly. “Is it standard business practice to take pictures of people when they’re making love?”

  “I’m sorry, Roger, what’s that?”

  The councilman pulled the folded print out of his inside jacket pocket and thrust it before the developer. Greenway opened the Caddy door so the dome light would come on and examined the picture. Rick leaned in for a look.

  “I always said Stef had nice tits,” Rick said. “Do you have more of these?”

  “Well, Roger, how did you happen to come into possession of this?” Greenway asked.

  “Walker. He gave it to me. Said he’s got the negatives. How would he have these? Is he working for you? Did you have these taken? Walker said there was a camera in the ceiling.”

  “That is interesting,” Greenway said, thinking. To Rick: “Does any of this make any sense to you?”

  “I haven’t really had a chance to update you, Mr. Greenway. But you know how you sent me out earlier, to try to find Stefanie and see if she’d run off with the ledger-”

  Ledger?