The Twenty-Three 3 (Promise Falls)

by Linwood Barclay

“You gotta have that fire in your belly,” his dad liked to tell him. “You’ll never get anywhere in life if I just hand everything to you.”

  Not that Yolanda didn’t try to do an end run around her husband. Whenever she could, she’d slip her son a hundred dollars, sometimes two hundred, sometimes even more. Always cash. She knew her husband reviewed all the checks she wrote, but she skimmed where she could.

  But it wasn’t enough. Not enough to live the way he expected to live.

  Sam, however, wasn’t troubled by living in a small apartment. She hadn’t come from money, and she hadn’t been left much after her parents died. Her father had been a midlevel manager at a big-box hardware store, and her mother had worked in a high school cafeteria.

  “We’re good. We’re okay,” she so often told him. “We’ve got each other. You’ve got a good job.”

  Seriously? Working for the post office?

  His perpetual anger and resentment poisoned the marriage. Brandon became abusive. He never actually beat her, but there was the time he shoved her a little too hard and she crashed into their piddly entertainment unit, knocking one of the small speakers off the shelf.

  Landed right on her fucking toe.

  If she hadn’t walked around the place barefoot, she’d have been fine.

  So now and then, Sam would move out for a few days at a time, taking young Carl with her, bunking in with a girlfriend. Brandon would apologize and swear it would never happen again and talk Sam into returning. He became convinced that if he had enough money, he could buy them a better life.

  He figured there was a way to solve his financial problems and stick it to his father at the same time.

  So he went into a sister branch to the one his dad managed, and stuck the place up. Had the gun, the ski mask, the whole thing.

  Just might have worked, too, if a cop wanting to exchange the fifties the ATM had given him for smaller bills hadn’t wandered in at that very moment.

  Sometimes you couldn’t get a break.

  Sam filed for divorce. Brandon went to jail.

  Ed Noble, who of all of Brandon’s friends was the one with the most screws that needed tightening, came under Yolanda’s influence, started doing her bidding. Yolanda wanted Carl to herself. She’d lost her son to prison, but she was not going to lose her grandson, and she’d figured that with the right amount of intimidation, Samantha would give him up. She got Ed to do her dirty work.

  It hadn’t exactly worked out.

  It wasn’t just Brandon in jail now. Ed was there, too, awaiting trial. Garnet and Yolanda were facing multiple charges, and out on bail.

  Then Yolanda went and had a heart attack.

  At first, Brandon wondered whether she’d faked it, hoping to get some sympathy from the prosecuting attorney’s office. But it was pretty hard to fake an EKG. She ended up in intensive care, and for a while there it was looking touch and go.

  Yolanda asked to see her son.

  “Bring me my boy,” she whispered to the doctor from her ICU bed. “Don’t let me die without seeing him.”

  Arrangements were made.

  Brandon stood at Yolanda’s bedside, held her hand, looked sadly into her eyes. Yolanda whispered something he could not hear.

  “I’m sorry. What was that?” he said.

  She said it again, but he still could not make it out. So he leaned down, put his ear so close to her mouth that she could have kissed it.

  Yolanda whispered, “Find the bitch, get your son.”

  And then that orderly came in. A guy about Brandon’s height and build, maybe a little bigger. Brandon had spent a lot of time working out in prison, learned a thing or two.

  He didn’t even have to think. He just acted. Looped his arm around the orderly’s neck and squeezed. The dumb bastard struggled, but Brandon just squeezed harder. Within seconds, the guy had passed out. Brandon stripped off his pants and shirt, pulled them on over his own clothes.

  His mother smiled the whole time.

  Brandon pushed the orderly under the bed, gave his mom a kiss good-bye, and walked right out of that ICU like he owned the place. Dumbass cop posted at the door was playing Angry Birds on his phone. Probably caught a glimpse of legs in pale green pants striding past him, never looked up.

  Brandon flew down the stairs, came out into the hospital parking lot. He needed to find a car, but searching for one with the keys left in it would be a waste of time. No one did that anymore. He needed a car that was already running.

  So he kept hoofing it until he got to a plaza where there was a 7-Eleven. Sooner or later, some idiot would leave a car running while he ran in for a pack of cigarettes. While he waited, he stripped off the scrubs and stuffed them in a garbage can. Half an hour later, a woman pulled into the lot in a little shitbox Kia. He wasn’t going to be choosy. She parked right close to the door and got out, and as soon as Brandon noticed exhaust still coming out of the tailpipe, he made his move.

  He stayed off the Mass Pike and the New York Thruway. So it took a lot longer to get to Promise Falls than he’d hoped. He was worried Samantha would hear that he was out before he got there.

  Which was exactly how it had turned out.

  But now he had an idea where she might have gone. A camping trip made sense. Once she’d learned he’d escaped custody, she’d have been looking for a place to go. But a hotel—even a motel—was going to be a strain on Samantha’s budget, especially when she didn’t know how long she was going to have to stay there. She didn’t exactly get paid a hundred grand a year to look after a Laundromat. But finding a space to put up a tent in a nearby campground wouldn’t cost her all that much.

  And Brandon was pretty sure she still had the tent. One time, about a year back, when Carl’s mother had allowed him to visit his father in prison, the boy had mentioned how much fun he and his mother had had on a recent camping trip.

  So there you go.

  All Brandon had to do now was a bit of research. See how many campgrounds there were within a short drive of Promise Falls. Odds were Sam had checked in at one of them, although there was the distinct possibility she wouldn’t have done so under her real name.

  He decided to check around the Lake Luzerne area first. It wasn’t that far a drive, and there were a bunch of campgrounds up that way. Those places were usually gated, so he wouldn’t be able to just drive in without registering. But he figured if he parked down the road, he’d be able to walk in. If anyone stopped him, he’d say he was already a guest, heading back to his campsite.

  It worked like a charm at the first place, which was called Sleepy Pines. He strolled the entire campground, but never spotted the blue-and-yellow tent he and Sam and Carl had shared many nights years ago.

  So he scratched Sleepy Pines off the list.

  No luck at Canoe Park, either. But there were still plenty of places to go. Like Camp Sunrise, and Call of the Loon Acres.

  All he wanted to do now was find Sam. Find her and Carl.

  Have a little word with them.

  A nice chat.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Duckworth

  I was on my way to Victor Rooney’s place when Wanda Therrieult phoned.

  “You saw what I saw,” she said.

  “You tell me what you saw.”

  “Well, I have to do a full autopsy, but I’d say this Thackeray student, this Lorraine Plummer, is the latest.”

  “After Olivia Fisher and Rosemary Gaynor,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That was my thinking, too,” I said. “When will you get to the autopsy?”

  “The body’s being taken to the morgue now, but honestly, Barry, I don’t know when I’ll get to her. All those other bodies, we may think we know what happened to them, that they were poisoned by the water, but I have to do the due diligence. Every one of them has to be autopsied.”

  “You’re getting out-of-town help,” I said.

  “Sure, but you’re going to have to wait. And if I don’t lie down soon, in a prop
er bed, I’m going to collapse wherever I’m standing.”

  I knew how she was feeling. I’d been running on empty for several hours now. I wanted to go home, have something to eat—even a salad—then crawl into bed with Maureen and sleep till Christmas. Maybe, after I’d had a chance to talk to Rooney, I could do that. Even just a few hours of sleep would do me. I could be back at this by six in the morning, if not earlier.

  “I hear ya, Wanda,” I said.

  “Barry,” she said, “you know me.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m a woman of science. I believe in science. My life is all about science. It’s about facts and evidence and data. You know what I mean?”

  “Yup.”

  “There’s nothing mystical about it. But these last few days, I can’t help but wonder, are we being punished for something? Did we do something bad, and God’s taking it out on us?”

  “Maybe not God,” I said. “But I get what you’re saying.”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” she said.

  I dropped the phone onto the seat next to me, and it hadn’t been out of my hand for ten seconds before it rang again. I glanced at the screen, saw the name Finley come up.

  “Fuck off,” I said out loud.

  It rang ten times before he gave up. But a few seconds later, it started ringing again.

  Finley.

  Was he going to keep doing this until I answered? I reached for the phone and put it to my ear.

  “What is it, Randy?” I said.

  His voice was more subdued than I expected it to be. Shaky, too. “Barry, can you come by my house?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I think . . . I think there’s been a murder.”

  “What? Randy, what’s going on? Who’s been murdered?”

  “Jane,” he said. “Jane’s dead.”

  “Randy, what happened to her?”

  “She’s dead. Lindsay killed her.”

  “Lindsay?”

  “She works for us. Looks after Jane, takes care of the house. She did it. She killed Jane. She killed our dog, too. Bipsie. Bipsie’s dead. Lindsay killed both of them. I need you to come over. Barry, would you come over? Please, come over. She’s still here. Lindsay’s here. I told her she couldn’t go home yet.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said.

  Finley was waiting for me out front. He walked up to my car, spoke to me through the open window before I even had my seat belt off.

  “I want her charged,” he said. “You need to charge her with murder.”

  “Okay, Randy,” I said, getting out. “Let me get up to speed.”

  “I was handing out water. Lindsay called me to say that Bipsie was sick. She’d been drinking out of the toilet.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “That’s the same water that comes out of the tap,” he pointed out to me.

  “I know.”

  “So the dog started throwing up and died. And she called to tell me. And I said, ‘How could you let the dog drink out of the toilet when the water’s poisoned?’ and she says, ‘What are you talking about?’ Can you believe that? She didn’t know? How could she not know?”

  “Tell me about Jane,” I said as we walked to the house.

  “Lindsay poisoned her,” Finley said. He was moving slowly, as though he were pulling a concrete block with each leg.

  “How did she do that?”

  “Lemonade. She gave her lemonade. There’re a hundred bottles of fresh springwater in the fridge, plus a watercooler. But that stupid bitch thought it was too much trouble to crack open a few bottles. I’ve told her a hundred times, use the bottled stuff for everything. Drinking, cooking. But she made the lemonade—”

  “You talking about the frozen stuff? You add four cans of water?”

  “That’s right. I always told her, use the bottles. Because my water is better. Even before what happened today, my water is cleaner and better. But she thought it was easier to make it with water from the tap.”

  “She didn’t know,” I said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Finley said. “It was murder.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in the kitchen, crying her eyes out,” Finley said.

  “I meant Jane.”

  “Oh.” He swallowed hard. “She’s upstairs, in her room. Since she got sick—not today, but in the last year—I’ve been sleeping in the guest room so I wouldn’t disturb her with my snoring and turning over and all.”

  “Sure,” I said. We were at the front door. “Why don’t you wait out here?”

  “If Lindsay tries to leave, I’ll stop her.”

  “Okay.”

  I went into the house. The stairs to the second floor were right there in the foyer, but I went into the kitchen first. Just as Finley had said, Lindsay was sitting, and crying, at the kitchen table, a box of tissues in front of her, a mound of used tissues surrounding it. She looked at me when I came in, her eyes bloodshot.

  “Lindsay?” I said. She nodded. I told her who I was and showed her my ID. “What’s your last name?”

  “Brookins,” she said, dabbing her eyes.

  “I’m going upstairs, and then I’m coming back, and we can talk.”

  “I didn’t murder her,” she said. “What he says, that’s not true. I didn’t know.”

  Something dark and furry in the corner of the room caught my eye.

  “The dog,” I said.

  “Bipsie,” she said. “I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.”

  I nodded. “I’ll be back.”

  I went up the stairs and found Jane’s room without help. All I had to do was follow my nose. The woman was sprawled diagonally across the bed, facedown, her legs up by the pillow. The bedspread was awash in vomit. It looked as though maybe she’d been in the process of trying to crawl out of the bed before she succumbed.

  On the bedside table, a tall, narrow glass with half an inch of pink lemonade in the bottom.

  I made my way back down to the kitchen. Lindsay’s version of events was not much different from Randy’s.

  She had taken Mrs. Finley her lemonade around ten in the morning. Jane had said she was tired and probably going to go back to sleep. Lindsay returned to the kitchen to tidy up and start lunch preparations, then went to the basement to do laundry. It must have been around then, she said, when the fire trucks with their loudspeakers went through the neighborhood. She had heard some indistinct noises outside, but didn’t pay any attention to them.

  It wasn’t her habit to listen to the radio or turn on the TV through the day. During her downtime, she read. She showed me a dog-eared, used copy of a John Grisham novel. I looked inside the front cover, where it had been stamped “Naman’s Used Books.”

  “I was about to go upstairs and check on Mrs. Finley,” she said, “when Bipsie started to act weird.”

  The dog was throwing up. She cleaned up after her once; then the dog was sick again. As Lindsay was wiping up after her a second time, the dog keeled over.

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I called Mr. Finley to tell him. He said the water was poisoned. And then I thought, oh no.”

  I nodded understandingly. “Okay,” I said.

  “He says I murdered her. I didn’t murder her. It was an accident. I swear it was an accident. It’s just, he is always telling me to use his water, and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, because one time, his water had some brown flecks or something in it. A bad batch, he said. But ever since then, I don’t use it all the time. When I make Mrs. Finley lemonade, I just use the tap, but I didn’t tell Mr. Finley. If he knew the water was poisoned, he should have told me before he went out.”

  It wasn’t in my nature to come to Randy’s defense, but I said, “He probably didn’t know then. And once he did, he probably didn’t think he needed to call home. Because of what he was always telling you.”

  She had both hands up to her mouth. “Oh God, I did kill her. I did. But I didn’t mean it.”

&nb
sp; I went back outside, found Randy standing under a tree.

  Weeping.

  I came up on him from behind and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Randy.”

  He had one hand on the tree trunk, supporting himself. He struggled to regain his composure, then said, “You saw her?”

  “Jane? Yes.”

  “She looks so . . . she’d be so humiliated.”

  “She’ll be taken care of.”

  “You talked to Lindsay?”

  “I did.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “It’s an accident, Randy. She didn’t know. It’s not murder.”

  Finley turned, put his forearm on the tree, and rested his head on it. “I know.” He started twice to say something, then stopped. The third time, he managed. “It’s my fault. Soon as I knew what was happening, I should have called. I just thought—no, I just didn’t think. I was so consumed with . . . with taking full advantage of what was going on. That was all I could see.”

  I said nothing.

  “It was a tragedy, I knew that. It’s not like I didn’t care. I did care. But I saw an opportunity, and I took it.” He turned his face around enough to see me. “That’s what I do.”

  “I know. It’s in your DNA.”

  “I got so focused on that, I never thought about . . . and the thing is, she’s the whole reason I’ve been doing it.”

  I took a step toward him. “What do you mean?”

  A self-effacing smile came over his face. “You know what an asshole I am, right, Barry?”

  Who was it who said “never bullshit a bullshitter”?

  “Sure.”

  “I was trying to show I wasn’t. Maybe not to you. I could never convince you. But after all the dumbass things I’ve done over the years, especially that stuff with the hooker a few years ago, I wanted to prove to Jane there was more to me than that. I was going to be mayor again, I told her. I was going to do some good. Some real good. I even had an idea to get some jobs here. I was working a deal with Frank Mancini. You know Frank?”

  “I’m aware of him.”

  “I mean, yeah, there was something in it for me, too, but he’s going to build this plant on the site of the drive-in. Jobs. Maybe not as many as that private jail that was going to move in here at one point, but some. I wanted to get this town back on its feet. I wanted to show Jane. I wanted her to be proud of me again. I wanted to pay her back for all the shame I brought down on her.”