“I have to go out,” Cal told Celeste.
“You taking Crystal with you?” she asked.
Cal shook his head. He definitely did not want Crystal to see her mother’s body being taken out of that house.
He went into the living room to talk to her.
“Does your sister have any paper I can draw on?” she asked, looking up from her clipboard.
“I think so. Why don’t you ask her?”
Crystal started to slide off the couch, but Cal put a hand on her knee to stop her. “In a second. I have to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“I have to let the police into your house. They just phoned me. They saw the note I left on the door.”
“Oh.”
“You can stay here, okay?”
“How long will you be gone?”
His shoulders went up and down. “I don’t know. I’m also going to go to my hotel and get my stuff so I can stay here. With you.”
She looked at him, her face devoid of emotion. He was trying to read her, trying to figure out what she might be thinking.
“Okay,” she said, then continued her slide off the couch and walked into the kitchen to ask for paper.
It took him ten minutes to get to Lucy Brighton’s house. There was a Promise Falls police car in the driveway, two cops in the front seat. Cal edged his car over to the curb, got out, and approached them.
“You Weaver?” the one behind the wheel asked.
Cal told them what he knew. The call from Crystal, where he found the body. He gave them Gerald Brighton’s number, but could not guarantee when, or if, the man would show up.
“The kid still with you?” the same cop asked.
He nodded.
There wasn’t anything else they needed from him at this time, so he got back in his car with the intention of heading to the highway that would take him south, out of town, to his temporary home. He figured he could be packed and checked out in less than twenty minutes, be back to his sister’s place by late afternoon.
His phone rang just as he was about to turn the key in the ignition.
“Weaver,” he said.
“Mr. Weaver, my name’s David Harwood?”
Making it sound like a question, as though Cal was supposed to ask, “Okay, is it really?” Instead, he said, “How can I help you?”
But then he realized he recognized the name. Harwood was the guy who’d rescued Carl Worthington when Ed Noble snatched him from his school at the end of the day. Sam had called Cal for help first, but when he couldn’t get there in time, she had called David Harwood.
“I’m a friend of Sam Worthington’s. I—”
“I know who you are. Thanks for getting to the school when I couldn’t.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“No. I mean, we spoke after what happened at her place of work a couple of times, but I haven’t heard from her lately.” The hairs on the back of Cal’s neck started to rise.
Sam and her boy drank the water.
“Shit,” Cal said. “Have you been by the house?”
“Yes,” David said. “It’s not about what’s going on. Not about the water. The house is empty—her car is gone.”
“Okay,” Cal said, his hairs settling down. “Then what’s this about?”
“Do you know about her ex-husband?”
“Just lay it out for me, David.”
David brought him up to speed. Brandon Worthington escaping custody. Sam not answering her phone. It was all news to Cal.
“Call the police,” he advised.
“I did that,” David said. “They’ve got their hands full at the moment.”
“So have I,” Cal said, then thought that sounded too dismissive. “Look, Sam probably got word that he was out, took off with her kid for a few days. Not telling anyone, not taking your call, that might be the smartest thing she could do.”
“Maybe,” David said. “But what if the reason she’s not answering is because he’s already found her? This guy, he was in for robbing a bank. And you already know his parents are lunatics, that they sent Ed Noble to kill her.”
“I was there.”
“I know. So you see what I’m saying? I’m not worrying for nothing.” The man’s voice was breaking. “There was a time, maybe, when I was able to handle this kind of stuff. But not anymore. I feel helpless. I want to help her, but I don’t know what to do.”
Cal closed his eyes, leaned his head up against the headrest, thought of Crystal. Until her father showed up, she was his responsibility. He couldn’t go charging off to help this Harwood guy find Sam. Not now.
“You said you’ve been to the house?”
“Yes,” David said quickly, sounding encouraged that Weaver was taking the time to ask questions.
“See if you can get inside, see if—”
“I did that. It looked like they’d packed up.”
“What did the neighbors say?”
David didn’t answer right away. “Shit,” he said finally. “I didn’t even talk to them.”
“Start there,” Cal said. “Let me know how it goes.”
He felt bad, ending the call, but there was only so much he could deal with. He’d promised Crystal he wouldn’t be long. Right now, he believed she needed him more than Harwood did. David had reason to be concerned about Samantha and her son, Cal knew, but he also knew Sam was no fool. If she’d heard her ex-husband was on the loose, then she’d have done what she had to do and gotten out of town.
Cal hoped David was wrong in thinking Sam wasn’t answering her cell because Brandon had already found her. But hadn’t Harwood been a reporter once? Cal recalled hearing that he was. So let him nose around, use the same basic skills Cal would have employed.
Cal turned on the engine. It was time to check out of his hotel. Before long, he was at a T intersection, about to make a right, when he saw a familiar vehicle approaching from the south.
It was Dwayne, in his pickup truck.
Cal’s brother-in-law blew past, Dwayne’s focus on the road ahead. He never glanced in Cal’s direction, didn’t notice the car.
Cal wasn’t sure what made him decide to turn left, in the opposite direction of the hotel.
He told himself he wasn’t actually following his brother-in-law. Not in any surveillance kind of way. It wasn’t as though he’d set out this afternoon to tail Dwayne.
It just happened.
Dwayne drove by, and Cal decided to see where he might be going. Told himself that if Dwayne pulled off the road to go into a 7-Eleven to buy a Slim Jim, he might just follow him in, strike up a conversation, see how the guy was doing. Maybe see if he wanted to go for a beer.
Tell him something like, “Look, I’m sorry that little girl and I have crashed at your place, but I really appreciate it, and we’re going to get out of your hair as soon as possible.”
Yeah. Maybe something like that.
Cal told himself he was definitely not following his brother-in-law even though Celeste was worried he might be seeing another woman. Was that something Cal really wanted to stick his nose into? Okay, maybe a little. This was his sister they were talking about. You go messing around on my sister and that’s likely to piss me off.
But then again, they were all adults. And if there was one thing Cal had learned from his years working with the police and as a private investigator, there were usually two sides to every story. He hadn’t heard Dwayne’s. Maybe he had some serious complaints about Celeste, and maybe he didn’t. It was possible whatever story Dwayne had to tell was bullshit.
Maybe whatever problems there were in his marriage were one hundred percent his fault.
Cal wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He had no wish to be mediator. If their marriage was in trouble, they should talk to a marriage counselor.
Cal had enough problems of his own to work through without taking on anyone else’s.
Except for Crystal’s, of course.
He’d look after her u
ntil her father showed up. If he showed up. If he was honest with himself, he’d admit that he was hoping Crystal’s father would take his time getting here.
Cal liked Crystal. He found her quirkiness endearing, even challenging in a way, and there was a mix of vulnerability and toughness about her. Maybe his feelings had something to do with losing his son. There was a part of him that yearned to care for someone, to—
Dwayne made a turn. He was heading downtown.
Cal decided to stick with him. But he held back, keeping at least one other car between himself and Dwayne. The kind of thing he did when he did have someone under surveillance.
Okay, he thought, so maybe I am following him. Just for a few blocks.
If he did see Dwayne meeting another woman, what would he do then? Reach under the seat for his camera with the telephoto lens? Show the shots to his sister? Unlikely. But he might, just might, take Dwayne aside at that point. Tell him he knew. Tell him to get his fucking house in order.
Once they were well into the business district, the truck’s brake lights came on. Then the right blinker. Dwayne rolled the truck over to the curb, killed the engine.
Cal drove on, eyes forward.
He checked the passenger door mirror, saw Dwayne get out of the truck and cross the street. Once on the other side, he walked in the same direction Cal had been driving. Cal saw an open spot at the curb and wheeled into it, sat there and waited for Dwayne to come up parallel to him on the opposite side of the street.
Dwayne slowed as he neared a bar, Cal thinking he was going to go inside. But instead, Dwayne disappeared into a narrow alleyway between the bar and a shoe store.
“What the hell?” Cal said.
He had to ease the car ahead a length to get a better view down the alley. Dwayne was heading in from the street, and another man was approaching from the back. They stopped in the middle.
Cal settled back in his seat and reached under the passenger seat from behind. He pulled out the camera with the telephoto lens. The one he often used when he was doing work like this for hire.
It wasn’t so much that he wanted to take a picture. But the camera was as good as, or better than, a pair of binoculars.
He quickly wrestled the camera out of its case, took the lens cap off, and brought the camera to eye level.
The guy meeting Dwayne was mid-forties, short, about 250 pounds. Jeans and a black Windbreaker.
They were talking.
Nodding.
Then the other guy reached into his pocket, handed something to Dwayne.
Click.
It was just reflex, hitting the shutter button when he did. Because if this were a real job, this might be evidence of something. Of money changing hands. A thick wad of it, too, it looked like to Cal.
TWENTY-EIGHT
GILL Pickens was faceup on a gurney that hugged the wall in a hallway some distance from the emergency ward, somewhere between radiology and the cafeteria, but he was not alone. The ER, and the adjoining examining rooms, had not been able to accommodate the huge influx of patients, and there was no space in any of the hospital rooms, so the spillover had left the sick languishing throughout the building. Patients lined both sides of the hallway, which resulted in a lot of shifting and squeezing as staff and family members jockeyed for position.
So when Marla, with Arlene Harwood at her side and Matthew in her arms, finally had an opportunity to talk with Dr. Clara Moorehouse about her father’s condition, there was little in the way of privacy. The discussion was held at Gill’s side. His skin looked like concrete and his eyes were closed, but he was alive.
“Surely you can find a room for him somewhere instead of dumping him here,” Arlene said.
“We’re doing the best we can,” Moorehouse said.
“You would think, for someone who was married to the woman who used to run this hospital, that you—”
“Please, Aunt Arlene,” Marla said. “It’s okay.”
“The word we’re receiving,” the doctor said, “is that it’s some kind of chemical poisoning. There’s no treatment. We’ll do everything we can for your father. But it’s out of our hands. He’s luckier than many, who clearly consumed much more water than he did. It’s wait and see.”
“But he might make it?” Marla asked, shifting Matthew from one arm to the other.
The doctor said, “I don’t know if you’re a religious person. I’m not. But if I were, I’d say a few prayers for him, because it’s out of our hands. He might very well make it. But if he does, you need to know that there may be some permanent effects.”
Arlene put her arm around her niece. “Thank you,” she said. “Can we stay here?”
“Stay as long as you want,” Moorehouse said. “If a room opens up, we’ll move him, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. We may even end up transferring him to one of the hospitals in Albany. I’ll let you know.”
The doctor excused herself to talk to some other equally anxious family members farther down the hall, including a woman wearing a hijab that covered her hair and neck who was attending to a sick man who looked Middle Eastern.
Matthew, who had been crying off and on ever since they’d arrived at the hospital, started up again.
“He’s hungry,” Marla said. She took a sniff of him. “And he needs to be changed.”
“You need to go home,” Arlene said. “You need to look after Matthew and yourself. You must be starving.”
“I can’t leave,” she said. “What if they move Dad to another hospital? I have to stay with him.”
Arlene said, “I have an idea. I’ll call Don to come pick you and Matthew up and I’ll stay here with Gill. If anything happens, I’ll call you right away.”
Marla’s face had grown long with weariness. “I don’t know. Maybe I—”
“Marla!”
She whirled around, and standing there in the middle of the hallway, his eyes red, arms outstretched, was Derek Cutter. The recently graduated Thackeray student and father of Matthew.
“I’ve been looking everywhere!” he said. “I tried to call you, and I went to your house, and I didn’t know what had happened to you or to Matthew and—”
Marla burst into tears, kept hold of Matthew with one arm, extended the other, and wrapped it around Derek. His hug encircled mother and child. But then he saw Gill, released Marla and Matthew, and said, “Oh no.”
Marla said, “He’s hanging in there.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“What about you, and your parents? Are they okay?”
Derek nodded, said his parents were out of town, and he’d heard the loudspeakers from a passing fire truck while still in bed. Marla filled him in on how her cousin had brought them to the hospital, what the doctor had said, how she was thinking of going home to change and feed the baby.
“I can take you,” he said.
Arlene thought that was an excellent idea. “I’ll stay here,” she said. “Go.”
Marla made a token protest before allowing herself to leave. Derek, slipping an arm around Marla, whispered, “I don’t think . . . I didn’t realize how big a part of my life you and Matthew are until I thought maybe I’d lost you.”
It was the first thing in several hours that made Arlene Harwood smile. She said to Gill, “I don’t know if you can hear me or not, Gill, but I think things are going to be okay with Marla. I really do.”
Gill’s lips appeared to move slightly, although his eyes did not open.
“What was that?” Arlene said, bending over, putting her ear close to his mouth. The lips moved again.
Arlene reversed things, shifting her mouth close to his ear. “I’ll tell Marla no such thing. You’ll tell her yourself when you’re better. And she knows, Gill. She knows.”
She stood back, hoping he might open his eyes. She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze.
At the far end of the hall, a man in his forties who was standing over a silver-haired woman parked on yet another gurney caught sig
ht of the woman wearing the hijab. She was speaking in whispers to the patient Dr. Moorehouse had been attending to moments earlier.
The man raised a hand, pointed, and said, “You’ve got your fucking nerve.”
He spoke loud enough that it was hard for anyone not to hear. Heads turned, looked his way. The woman in the hijab looked, too, and realized quickly she was the one being pointed at.
The man said, “Being right here, among us. That takes some gall, lady.”
The woman, with a pronounced accent, said, “Are you talking to me?”
“You see any other terrorists around?”
The woman clearly didn’t consider that worthy of a response, and returned to comforting her loved one.
“You think we don’t know what’s going on?” the man said, taking measured steps up the hallway.
The woman turned her head again. “Please leave us alone,” she said.
“You know who that is back there?” he said, pointing to the woman he’d been looking after. “That’s my mother. She’s only sixty-six years old, and yesterday, she was the healthiest woman in this goddamn town. But now, she’s just clinging to life. I don’t know if she’s going to make it or not.”
“This is my husband,” the woman said. “And he is dying.”
“But isn’t that what you people do? You sacrifice a few for the cause? Like when you send a woman into some public square with dynamite strapped to her chest?”
“Stop it!” Arlene said.
The man looked past the woman he’d been harassing to take in Arlene. “Don’t you see? They’re hiding in plain sight. They’re here—they’re everywhere. This is how they’re doing it.”
“Shut up!” Arlene shouted. “Go take care of your mother and leave that woman alone.”
A door halfway up the hall opened and Angus Carlson emerged.
“What’s going on?” he asked, glancing first in Arlene’s direction, then at the man who was still pointing. Except now there was something in his hand that was not there before.
The Twenty-Three 3 (Promise Falls) Page 18