Broken Promise

by Linwood Barclay

  “We’re moving out shortly,” I said. “I just got something else.”

  Had I already made up my mind about Finley’s offer, or did I reach a decision in that instant to deflect shame?

  “Oh, that’s great,” she said. “Congrats.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What do you do?”

  “I work in a Laundromat,” she said. “It’s pretty exciting. Cleaning the washers, emptying out the coin holders, keeping the detergent dispensers full.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “Are you kidding me? Every day I want to kill myself.”

  “Sorry. My sarcasm detector is in the shop.”

  “Yeah, well, you should get it fixed. Who the hell would want to work in a Laundromat? The only good thing is, I’m on my own; if things are slow I can read. And I can nip out and do things if I have to, like pick up Carl at school.” She rolled her eyes. “And when the school calls in the middle of the day and says he’s being suspended for fighting, I can go and get him.”

  Carl seemed too old to be chauffeured to and from school. Samantha must have been reading my thoughts.

  “If I don’t watch him, they’ll snatch him.”

  “They?”

  “Brandon’s—that’s my ex—parents, or maybe even friends of his, or theirs. They’ve got money—his parents, that is—and his friends, like Ed, that asshole, are just dumb enough to think grabbing Carl would be a smart thing to do. My former in-laws always hated me, and hate me even more now that I’ve moved away from Boston to Promise Falls. Once Bran got sentenced for those holdups I was gone.”

  “Holdups?”

  “Bank robberies, actually,” she said offhandedly. “Armed. He’s not even up for parole for ten years. And they think it’s my fault. Like someone else stuffed all that money in the trunk of his car.”

  This woman had problems like the Standard had typos.

  “That’s who you thought might have been at the door when I came knocking,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Samantha said. “But I wouldn’t have shot ya.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You got nice eyes.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WALDEN Fisher was driving through downtown Promise Falls shortly after nine, heading home, when he thought he saw Victor Rooney’s aging, rusted van parked at the curb.

  Not parked all that well, either. It was a parallel-parking spot that Victor appeared to have gone into nose-first. The van’s back end was jutting out a good three feet into the path of traffic, about half a block past Knight’s, one of Promise Falls’ downtown bars.

  Walden was betting that was where he’d find Victor, should he choose to go looking for him. He took his foot off the gas pedal of his Honda Odyssey and held a quick debate in his head about what to do.

  He found a vacant spot in the next block, pulled up alongside the car ahead, and backed in, the way it was supposed to be done. Walden got out and walked back almost two blocks to Knight’s and went inside.

  It could have been any neighborhood bar in America. Rock music coming out of the speakers, but not loud like a nightclub. Patrons could still carry on a conversation without having to shout at the top of their lungs. Low lighting from Tiffany lamps, a pool table in the back, a few tables packed with guys who’d just finished playing together on some team for some sport in some local community center, a handful of guys on stools watching a baseball game on a flat-screen hanging on the wall above the bar.

  At the far end, sitting alone, watching the game without really watching it, was Victor, his right hand wrapped around a bottle of Old Milwaukee. Here was the man who’d almost become Walden’s son-in-law.

  Walden hauled himself up onto the stool next to him. “Hey, there, Victor.”

  The man looked at Walden, blinked twice, focused. “Jesus, Mr. Fisher, how are you?”

  “I’m okay, good. Saw your van out there. Thought I’d pop in and say hello.”

  “Funny seeing you,” he said, raising his bottle to him. “Uh, would you like a beer?”

  The bartender, a thin, elderly man who looked like a walking twig, had approached. Walden glanced at him and said, “Just a Coke.”

  The bartender nodded, retreated.

  “You sure you don’t want a beer?” Victor asked. Walden thought Victor sounded as though he’d had a few already, and judging by how he’d parked the van, probably a few before he’d arrived.

  “I’m sure,” Walden said. “What are you up to these days?”

  Victor shrugged. “A bit of this, a bit of that. Odd jobs. Construction. I’m in kind of a lull at the moment.”

  “I heard you and the fire department came to a parting of the ways.”

  “Yeah, well, that really wasn’t for me. It’s a pretty macho environment, you know? I gave it a shot, but I never felt comfortable there. Too gung ho for my tastes.”

  “Sure.”

  “Fuck ’em, I say. I get by. I do.”

  “If you ever need anything, you know you can give me a call.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Fisher. It really is. But what I need, I don’t think you or anyone else can provide.”

  “What would that be?”

  “I need someone who can help me get my act together,” he said, setting the bottle down and miming something with his hands, as though he were assembling something. “You see, my act is in pieces. Isn’t that a funny saying? Get your act together? What’s that supposed to mean? That we’re all actors? That all of this is some performance? What was it Billy Shakespeare said? That all the world’s a stage and men and women merely players. Something like that. I think what we’re in is a tragedy without any kind of ending. What do you think, Mr. Fisher?”

  “I think you’ve had a lot to drink, Victor.”

  “You are correct,” he said. “Don’t think I’ll be jogging tonight. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get up every day and go about your business. How do you and Beth manage that?”

  “Beth passed on,” Walden said. “Just a while ago.”

  “Oh, bloody fuck,” Victor said, shaking his head, taking a drink. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.” Another head shake. “I almost—this is going to come out wrong, and I apologize in advance—but I almost kind of envy her. If I died, I could stop being so sad.” He paused. “And angry.”

  “It’s been three years,” Walden said.

  “Later this month,” Victor said, nodding, indicating he was already well aware. “Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend. Isn’t that kind of ironic? We shall remember Olivia on Memorial Day. Oh, yes, we shall.” He raised his beer in a toast. “To Olivia.”

  “You should probably head home,” Walden said.

  “Like I said, I don’t know how you manage. I mean, I was never actually married to her. She was the love of my life—God, what a cliché—but it’s true, you know? But I only knew her a couple of years. But she was your daughter. That’s got to be worse.”

  “You find ways to manage,” Walden said.

  “I don’t even know if I’m still grieving, exactly,” Victor said. “But it was like what that writer said in that book. It was a tipping point, what happened to Olivia. I went off the deep end then, and I’ve been trying to climb back up ever since, but once you’re down there, all this other shit happens to you that keeps you there. Is this making any sense?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, I’ve had plenty of time to get over Olivia, right? Lots of time to move on.”

  “You never get over it,” Walden said.

  “Yeah, I get that. But people have to find a way to move forward, right? I mean, fuck, look at all those people who were in concentration camps. What could be worse than what they went through? Yet they went on with their lives when they got freed and the war was over. I mean, sure, they probably never got over it, but they became functioning members of society.” He squinted at Walden. “Wou
ld you call me functioning?”

  “I don’t know that I’m qualified to judge that,” Walden said.

  “Well, let me answer it for you. I am not. But I’ll tell you what I am, to this day. I’m angry.”

  “Angry,” Walden repeated.

  “At myself. And all the others. What do you think they’ll do on the third anniversary?”

  “I bet they won’t give it a thought.”

  Victor pointed his index finger at Walden. “Right you are, Mr. Fisher.”

  “Walden. You know you can call me Walden.” He paused. “What do you mean, angry at yourself?”

  Victor looked away. “I was late.”

  Walden nodded. “I know.”

  “I was late meeting her. If I’d been on time, none—”

  Walden rested a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Don’t torture yourself.”

  The younger man looked at him, smiled. “I think you’d have been a damn fine father-in-law.”

  Walden was less certain Victor would have been the best son-in-law in the world, but it did not stop him from saying, “And I’d have been proud to be your father-in-law.”

  The bartender set a Coke on the counter but Walden didn’t touch it.

  Victor surveyed the room. “You think it was any of them?” he asked, taking another pull off the bottle.

  “Any of them what?”

  “You think it could have been any of these guys sitting right here? Who did it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Every time I walk around this town, I look at everybody and wonder, Was it you? Or you?” He finished off the bottle. “These are our neighbors. I was born in this town, grew up with these people. For all I know I’m living next door to a maniac. Maybe hanging out in a bar with one.”

  Victor raised the bottle, then rammed it straight down onto the bar, shattering it, leaving him with nothing in his hand but the neck and shoulder.

  “Hey!” the bartender said.

  But other than that, the place went silent. All the patrons stopped their conversations in midsentence and turned to look down toward the end of the bar, where Victor had come off his stool and was standing, staring at all of them.

  “Was it any of you?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “Vick,” Walden said quietly. “Stop.”

  “You need to take your son home,” the bartender told Walden.

  “He’s not—” Walden started to say, then decided not to bother.

  “Was it?” Victor Rooney asked again, moving closer to a table where five men were sharing a pitcher. “Was it any of you assholes?”

  One of the men, broad of chest and more than six feet tall, kicked his chair back and stood up. “Think maybe you’ve had enough, pal,” he said.

  Walden tried to take Victor by the arm, but the younger man shook him off.

  “Oh, I’ve had enough, that’s for sure,” Victor said. “I’ve had enough of the whole lot of you.”

  Another man stood. Then a third.

  “Come on,” Walden said, getting a firmer grip on the man’s arm. “I’m taking you home.”

  This time Victor didn’t shake him off. He allowed Walden to lead him toward the door, but not before whirling around for one last shot.

  “Assholes!” he said. “Every last one of you!”

  Walden got him through the door and pushed him out onto the sidewalk.

  “You pull a stunt like that again,” Walden said, “and you’re going to end up in the hospital. Or worse.”

  Victor was fumbling in his pocket for his keys. Once he had them out, Walden grabbed them.

  “Hey.”

  “I’ll drive you home,” Walden said. “You can come back for your van tomorrow.”

  “What if I don’t remember where it is?”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “I guess.”

  “And then I think we need to talk,” Walden said. “About getting your life back on track.”

  “I’m going to leave this town,” Victor said. “I’m going to get the hell out of here.”

  “When? Do you have something lined up? A job?”

  “I just want out. Everywhere I look, I’m reminded of Olivia.”

  “How soon are you leaving?” Walden asked, unable to hide the concern in his voice.

  “Not sure. Still got a few things to do here; then I’m gone. End of the month, I’d say.”

  “Hang in, at least till then,” Walden said. “Maybe something will still work out for you here. I could ask around.”

  Victor smiled. “Don’t waste your time on me.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  BARRY Duckworth had learned less from his search of Sarita Gomez’s room than he’d hoped.

  The detective already knew the Gaynors’ nanny had no phone of her own. But she didn’t have a computer, either. At least not one that she’d left behind in the apartment. So there were no e-mails to check, no bookmarked Facebook page. No electric bill. No monthly Visa statement. No invoice from a visit to the dentist. Nor were there any personal letters, or even an address book. Sarita either packed up everything in a hurry, or she led a very simple, off-the-grid kind of existence. No digital trail here.

  No bloodstained uniform, either.

  Duckworth had asked the nanny’s landlord, she of the amazing banana bread, whether she might have any pictures of Sarita. “On your phone, anything like that?”

  No such luck. Duckworth didn’t even know what this woman he was searching for looked like.

  He was driving back to the station when he realized there was something big he had allowed to slip through the cracks.

  The Thackeray College predator.

  The Gaynor murder had so completely taken over his day that he’d neglected to do anything following his chat with the college’s head of security. Clive Duncomb. “Asshole,” Duckworth said to himself behind the wheel of his unmarked car. Duckworth had left his business card with Duncomb and told him to e-mail him the names of the three women who’d been attacked. They needed to be interviewed by the Promise Falls police. But the day had gone by and no names, no e-mail at all from Duncomb. Duckworth could just guess what the ex–Boston cop thought of the local police. That they were a bunch of know-nothing rubes.

  “Asshole,” he said again.

  Duckworth called the station and asked to be put through to Chief Rhonda Finderman.

  “Hey,” Finderman said, answering right away. “I was just about to check in with you.”

  Finderman wanted to know what progress was being made in the Gaynor case, and apologized for not knowing much about it. “I’m on this national association of police chiefs that meets all the time, the mayor’s committee on attracting jobs, plus this task force with the state police about coordinating data. I’m up to my ass in administrative shit. So, Rosemary Gaynor. Someone killed her and kidnapped her baby?”

  Quickly Duckworth brought her up-to-date. Then he told her about how Clive Duncomb, Thackeray’s head of security, didn’t think he needed to bother letting the Promise Falls police know they might be dealing with a possible rapist on campus.

  “That horse’s ass,” Finderman said. “I’ve had the pleasure. We had lunch one time; he said he really liked my hair. Take a guess how that went over.”

  “You know anything about him? Beyond his being a horse’s ass, I mean?”

  Rhonda Finderman paused. “What I hear is he worked vice in Boston. And that he left. And brought along his new wife, who may have been someone he met in the course of his duties, if you get my drift.”

  “The thing is, I’ve got my hands full, but we need someone out there, taking statements from the students who’ve been attacked, that whole drill. We need to find this guy before he ups his game.”

  “I’m down two detectives,” she said. “I’m going to have to move someone up, temporarily at least.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know Officer Carlson? Angus Carlson?”

  Duckworth paused.
“I do.”

  “Try not to gush.”

  “It’s your call, Chief.”

  “We were all young once, Barry. You telling me you weren’t a know-it-all when you started?”

  “No comment.”

  She laughed. “He’s not that bad. He presents this front of being a wiseass, but I think there’s more to him than that. We got him about four years ago, from Ohio.”

  “It’s your call.”

  “I’ll have him call you; you can bring him up to speed.”

  “Fine.” There was still something else on Duckworth’s mind. “One other thing. I ran into Randy this morning.”

  “Finley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus, him and Duncomb in one day. It’s like an asshole convention.”

  “He called me directly after finding all these squirrels someone had strung up on a fence near the college. He said he’s running for mayor again, and he was looking for me to be a department snitch, maybe give him something to run on. I’m probably not the only one he’s asking.”

  “He’s looking for something on me?”

  “He’s looking for anything he can get on anybody. I think you’d be near the top of the list. So would Amanda Croydon.”

  “The mayor’s squeaky-clean,” the chief said.

  “Finley could find a way to make that negative.”

  “He’s a weaselly son of a bitch,” the chief said. There was a long pause.

  “You there?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Rhonda said. “I’m just thinking about how he might go after me.” Another pause. “I think I run a clean department. Maybe he’ll go after something I did before this job.”

  She’d come up through the ranks, becoming chief nearly three years ago after several years working as a detective, often alongside Duckworth.

  “You did good work,” he said. “I wouldn’t want it getting back to you that an approach like that had been made, and that I hadn’t told you.”

  “Appreciate it, Barry.”

  Three seconds after he’d ended the call, another one came in.