Broken Promise

by Linwood Barclay

  “Who did it?”

  I shook my head. “Far as I know, there hasn’t been an arrest.”

  “So it wasn’t Bill, then,” he said, nodding.

  That threw me. “If it had been, would you have been surprised?” I asked.

  “Well, yes and no. Yes, because he sure doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d do it, but no, because isn’t it usually the husband who does it when a wife gets killed? I spent a lifetime analyzing statistics, so you kind of look at what’s most likely to happen. What’s your interest in this?”

  “Like I said, I was here when Mr. Gaynor found her.”

  That seemed to be enough for him. He nodded. “Nice couple. Hell of a thing. Everybody on the street’s probably making damn sure their doors are locked tonight, but most of these things, it’s somebody you know that does it. Even if it wasn’t Bill, which I’m not saying I think it is.”

  “I get that.”

  “Cute little baby, too. Baby’s okay, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Thank God. I’m freezing out here in my bathrobe. Nice talking to ya.”

  “You mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

  He hesitated. He’d have to invite me in if he wanted to warm up. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Hang on one second.” He went back into the house, closed the door. It reopened in ten seconds. Now he had a phone in his hand.

  He held it up in front of me. “Smile.”

  I smiled. There was a flash. He turned his attention to the phone, tapped away.

  “I’m just gonna e-mail this to my daughter in Des Moines. If I end up dead, they’ll have your picture.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  There was a whoosh as the e-mail was sent. “Come on in,” he said.

  I followed him into the house. He said, “I keep a lot of lights on until I go to bed. I don’t sleep too well, wander the house a lot. Don’t usually go to bed till about one in the morning. Try watching one of those classic movies on Turner, then I go to bed, but I wake up early.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Usually can’t sleep in past six. Used to read the paper in the morning, but the goddamn assholes shut the Standard down.”

  “I heard,” I said.

  “Come into the kitchen. Want some hot chocolate? I usually make some hot chocolate at night.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  The place was done in lots of wood: wood cabinets, wood floor, even wood panels over the fridge and other appliances. Not one thing out of place, either. Nothing in the sink, no piles of bills and envelopes by the phone. A real estate photographer could have walked in and not had to do a moment’s prep.

  “Beautiful home,” I said.

  He filled two mugs with milk from the fridge and put them into the microwave. Set it for ninety seconds. “I’ll give it a stir halfway through,” he said.

  “Did you know the Gaynors well?”

  Terrence shrugged. “Said hi coming in and out, that kind of thing. And they have a nanny, too, comes by most days. Name of Sarita. She was the nicest of the bunch, really.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sweet girl. I know you’re not supposed to call them girls anymore. She was a woman. Tough little thing. Went from one job to the other. I think she was sending money back to family in Mexico. Don’t think she was here legally, but hey, people do what they have to do.”

  “Do you know what her other job was?”

  “Nursing home. I was trying to remember the name of it earlier, when the cops were here asking questions, couldn’t think of it. There’s only about fifty of them in the area. Reason I know she worked at one is, I asked her what it was like there, in case I get to the point I can’t look after myself here on my own, and it sounds like an okay joint, but truth is, I hope one day, when it’s my time, I just go.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. I go to bed one night and just don’t wake up the next day. What do you think about that?”

  “Who was it who said, ‘I expect to die at one hundred and ten, shot by a jealous husband’?”

  “Thurgood Marshall, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court,” Terrence said, and chuckled. “That sounds good, too.” The microwave beeped. He took out the mugs, gave each a stir, and put them back into the oven for another minute and a half.

  “I think I had more conversations with Sarita in the last ten months she’s been coming over than I’ve had with the Gaynors since they moved in. Although, a year back or so, they weren’t around much anyway.”

  “Where were they?”

  “Boston. Bill, he works for some insurance company based there, and he had to be away for several months, so Rosemary went and lived with him. Did the last few months of her pregnancy there; first time I saw them after they came back, she had the baby.”

  The oven beeped again. He took out the mugs, handed one to me. I blew on it before taking a sip. It was good hot chocolate.

  “I don’t have any marshmallows,” he said apologetically. “Used to buy them once in a while, would forget I had them; I’d open up the bag and they were hard as golf balls.”

  We ended up straying off topic, at least from the topic I’d come to discuss. Terrence used to own horses, and he wanted to tell me all about it. I didn’t pay much attention, but he was a nice man, and the time passed pleasantly.

  I thanked him for the hot chocolate and the conversation, and as I was heading back to the Taurus he said, “Davidson.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Davidson Place. It just came back to me. That’s where Sarita works.”

  I headed back in the direction of my parents’ house, not sure I really knew anything more than when I’d set off from there. At least, not anything useful. But the following morning I’d do the same again. Ask questions.

  I’d go to Davidson Place. I would look for Sarita.

  I didn’t drive straight home. Made a couple of turns along the way that took me into a neighborhood I’d visited earlier in the day.

  I pulled the car over to the curb and killed the engine. Left the key in the ignition. Sat behind the wheel, watching a house. There were no lights on.

  Probably everyone had gone to bed.

  Carl, as well as his mother, Samantha.

  I stared at the house for about a minute, feeling hungry all over, before I turned the key and continued on my way.

  THE SECOND DAY

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THE naked woman was sitting on the edge of the bed, weeping.

  The man who remained under the covers on the other side of the bed stirred, rolled over. He reached out and touched the tips of his fingers to the woman’s back.

  “Hey, babe,” he said.

  She continued to cry. Her face was in her hands, her elbows on her knees.

  The man threw off the covers and huddled behind her on the mattress, on his knees, pressed his naked body up against hers and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

  “How can it be okay?” she asked. “How can it ever be okay?”

  “It just . . . I don’t know. But we’ll find a way.”

  She shook her head and sobbed. “They’ll find me, Marshall. I know they’ll find me.”

  “I’m going to look after you,” he said comfortingly. “I will. I’ll keep them from finding you.”

  She broke free of him and walked to the bathroom of his small apartment, closed the door. He put his ear to it, said, “You okay in there, Sarita?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I just need a minute.”

  Marshall stood outside the door, wondering what he should do. He looked about his place, which consisted of a single room, not counting the bathroom. A small fridge, hot plate, and sink over in one corner, a bed, a couple of cushioned chairs he’d scored on junk day when people were putting things out on the street.

  A toilet flushed, a tap ran, and then the door opened. Sarita stood in
front of him, head down, and said, “I’m going to have to go home. I’m going to have to go back to Monclova.”

  “No, you’re not going back to Mexico,” he said, taking her into his arms again. “You’ve got a life here. You’ve got me.”

  “No, I have no life here. I go home, or I just disappear somewhere, get a job, start doing the whole thing all over again.” She sniffed. “I need to make a living. I have people counting on me. I can make more money here.”

  “I can lend you some,” he said. “Shit, I can give you some money. I don’t have a lot, but I got two, three hundred I could give you.”

  Sarita laughed. “Seriously? How long would that last me?”

  “I know, I know. It’s not like I’m a fucking millionaire, you know? But now that you mention money, I was kind of thinking about something in the night.”

  She pushed past him and found her underwear on the floor at the foot of the bed. She stepped into her panties, then slipped on her bra while Marshall stood and watched her.

  “Whatever it is, I don’t want to know,” Sarita said.

  “Come on, you have to at least hear me out. It could be the answer to your problems. For both of us, really. If you need to get away, that’s cool; I get that. But I could come with you.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re in this together.”

  “No,” Sarita said. “We’re not. You haven’t done anything wrong. Except for hiding me. When they find out you’ve been keeping me here, you could be in all kinds of trouble, and not just because I’m not supposed to be here.”

  She pulled on her jeans, then put on a blouse and began to button it up. Marshall glanced around, saw his boxers on the floor, and stepped into them. “I’m gonna call in sick,” he said. “We’ll figure out something.”

  He picked up a cell phone on his side of the bed. “Yeah, hey, Manny, I’ve got some kind of bug, been puking my guts up all night. Can’t afford to give something like that to the geezers. Yeah, okay, thanks.”

  He put the phone back down.

  “That’s disrespectful,” Sarita said. “They’re nice old people.”

  “I don’t mean anything by it,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t have to go in. So now we can talk about my idea.”

  She shook her head. “My only idea is to get as far away from here as fast as I can. Maybe you could drive me to Albany or something? And then I can catch a train.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “New York? I got a cousin there. I just have to find her.”

  “Sit down,” he said.

  “I don’t—”

  “Just sit down and hear me out, okay?”

  She dropped onto the end of the bed and looked up at him. “What?”

  “There’s stuff this Gaynor guy isn’t going to want to come out, right?”

  “Maybe it’s already out there,” she said.

  “Yeah, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s not going to come out. Maybe they’ll pin his wife’s murder on someone right away and they won’t find out about the other stuff. You put in a call; you tell him you can keep that from ever happening. For, you know, a price.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Sarita said. “It’s all going to come out.”

  “’Cause of what you did,” Marshall said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I had to do it,” she said.

  “But maybe it won’t matter. Maybe it won’t come out.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “I have to get out of here. You think the police aren’t looking for me? I guarantee it.”

  “You won’t be easy to find. How do they trace you? You got no phone, no license, no credit cards. You’ve bailed from your apartment. You’re, like, totally off the grid. It’s like you don’t even exist.” He smiled, tickled the underside of her chin with his index finger. She turned her head away. “Come on; it’s like you’re a spy or something.”

  “I am no spy. I feed old people and babies and then clean up their piss and shit. That’s what I do.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Listen, you hide out here while I go empty out what I got at the ATM. You take it, get on a train to New York. But you have to promise you’ll get in touch when you get there. I need to know you’re okay. I love you. You know that, right? I love you more than anything in the whole world.”

  Sarita was tearing up again. She put her hands over her face.

  “I can’t get it out of my mind,” she said.

  Marshall hugged her again. “I know, I know.”

  “Seeing Ms. Gaynor like that. It was so awful, how she looked.”

  “I’m tellin’ ya,” he said. “It’s an opportunity. He’s got money. Fancy house, nice car. Guy like that has to have money. I mean, shit, you worked for them. You ever see financial statements, that kind of thing?”

  She brought her hands down, thought a moment. “Sometimes,” she said quietly. “But I never really looked at them. I didn’t bring in the mail or anything. I just helped with the house and the baby. Ms. Gaynor, she was so upset. She thought having a baby would make her happy, but it just made it worse.”

  “Yeah, well, raising kids is no joke,” Marshall said. “I think I’d get pretty depressed if I had to look after a baby.”

  Sarita shot him a look.

  “Unless it was with you,” he said quickly.

  “I think her husband knew all along what was going on, but when Ms. Gaynor found out . . .”

  “You have to stop thinking about it,” Marshall said. “You just have to move on, you know?”

  “It’s my fault,” Sarita said. “If it hadn’t been for me she never would have started putting it together.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t mean it has anything to do with what happened to her,” Marshall said. “Unless you think it was him. The husband.”

  She shook her head. “He loved her. I mean, he was away a lot, and he hardly ever talked to me, but I think he loved her.”

  “Yeah, but sometimes, even people who were in love once, they do bad shit to each other. All the more reason to give him a call, tell him what you know. He’ll come across; I guarantee it. You’ll have enough money to get settled in someplace else, and have some left over to send to your folks.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “No.”

  He put up his hands. “Okay. You say no, then it’s no.”

  “All I ever wanted to do,” she whispered, “was the right thing. I’m not a bad person, you know?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ve always tried to be good. But sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s wrong.”

  Marshall gave her a kiss on the forehead. “You wait here while I get you some money. And I’ll pick up something to eat, too. Maybe an Egg McMuffin and some coffee.”

  Sarita said nothing as Marshall finished getting dressed. Before he left, he double-checked that the slip of paper where he’d written Bill Gaynor’s phone number was still in his pocket.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  BARRY Duckworth was up at six.

  He hadn’t gotten in until nearly midnight. As he’d pulled into the drive he’d noticed a white van parked at the curb opposite his house, but didn’t give it much thought. He hadn’t noticed the writing on the side.

  He struggled up the stairs, stripped down to his boxers, and collapsed into bed next to Maureen. She mumbled, “Hmmm,” and went back to sleep.

  He was worried he’d lie awake all night. Haunted by the sight of that student with half his head blown off. Rosemary Gaynor on the autopsy table, the ghoulish smile cut across her abdomen. Those three mannequins on the Ferris wheel.

  Even those goddamned squirrels.

  But he didn’t dream about any of those things. He went into a six-hour coma. He’d set his mental alarm for six thirty a.m., but his eyes opened at five fifty-nine. He glanced over at the clock, decided it wasn’t worth trying to get
back to sleep when he’d be getting up so soon. He swung his thick legs from under the covers, planted his feet on the carpeted bedroom floor.

  Maureen rolled over. “That was late last night.”

  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing his eyes, then reaching for his phone to see whether he had any messages. There was nothing that needed his immediate attention.

  “I tried to wait up for you,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “To celebrate.”

  “Huh?”

  “Twenty years. On the job. I didn’t forget.”

  Now, with light coming through the window, he saw two tall fluted glasses on the dresser. An ice bucket, a bottle of champagne. By now, the bucket would be full of water.

  “I didn’t see that when I came in,” he said.

  “My detective,” Maureen said. “Nothing gets past you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Shh,” she said. “I should have said something. But we can have a little celebration now.”

  She reached down under the covers, found him.

  • • •

  When they were finished, he said, “I have to get moving.”

  Maureen threw back the rumpled sheets. “Go. I’ll put on the coffee.”

  He padded down the hallway to the bathroom, reached into the shower and turned on the water, stuck in his hand to test whether the hot water had traveled two floors up from the old heater yet. He caught a brief glimpse of himself in the mirror before stepping in.

  It always depressed Duckworth to see himself naked. What the hell happened? How could Maureen enjoy making love with someone who looked the way he did? He hadn’t been this heavy when he was in college, and he was certainly in better shape when he joined the Promise Falls police. He blamed, in part, all those hours he sat in a cruiser as a uniformed officer. He hated that the cliché, at least where he was concerned, was true: Barry Duckworth liked to stop at doughnut shops. It wasn’t just that he liked doughnuts, which he did, very much. It was a way of breaking the boredom. You went in, you had a coffee, you ate a doughnut, you talked to the people behind the counter, took a seat and shot the breeze with a few of the customers.