Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

He ran from the house, down to the street, and got behind the wheel of his car. He steered it up the driveway, then veered onto the grass and drove the car down between the Pickens house and the one next to it, flattening blades of grass, putting ruts in the sod along the way.

Once past the house, he turned hard left and brought the car right onto the flagstone patio.

Marla had the sliding doors open, Matthew now in her arms. David leapt from the car, opened a back door, then ran into the kitchen and dropped onto his haunches by Gill’s head. He got his arms under Gill’s and slowly lifted him to the point where David was standing, and his uncle stretched out in front of him. He dragged the man out of the kitchen, eased himself into the back of the car first, pulling Gill in with him as he shifted across the rear seat. David opened the door on the other side to get out.

“Come on,” David said to Marla, who exited the house, not bothering to close the doors, and got into the passenger seat, clutching Matthew, gently touching his head to her shoulder.

“What will happen to him?” she asked as David turned the car around on the patio and drove back down between the houses.

He didn’t look her way, but he was pretty sure she was talking about her baby and not her father.

“When did you give him his bottle?” he asked.

“In the last hour.”

“He seems fine.”

“I-I don’t know. I mean, he seems okay.”

David, first of all, didn’t know for sure the water was to blame. But assuming it was, he had no idea how long it took for symptoms to develop once it had been consumed. Everyone seemed to be getting sick this morning.

“When did you make it up?” David asked, glancing in the mirror for any signs of life from Gill as he sped toward the hospital. He had a bad feeling that even once they got Gill there, he might not get the attention he needed in time. But where else was he to go? He knew off-duty medical staff would be getting called in, that more help would be at Promise Falls General than even a few minutes ago.

“Make up what?” Marla asked. “Don’t you believe me? You don’t think my father’s sick?”

Marla had become so accustomed to people questioning her honesty, and sanity, that she’d misheard the question. “When did you make up the bottles of formula?” David asked, taking a second to look at her.

“Oh,” she said, shifting Matthew from one shoulder to the other. “It was… it was yesterday. In the afternoon? I think it was the afternoon. I made up half a dozen bottles.”

“Not today.”

She shook her head.

“Not this morning,” David pressed.

“No! It was yesterday.”

“Okay,” he said. “What about you? Have you had any water this morning?”

More thinking. “I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.” She craned her head around and said to her father, “Dad? Can you hear me? I love you.”

“I need you to do something for me,” David said, handing Marla his cell phone. “Call up the recents.”

She took the phone, looked at the screen. “Okay,” she said.

“See the one that says Sam? Call that number.”

“Who’s he?”

“Just call it. Whoever answers, tell them not to drink the water. It might be a woman. It might be a boy.”

Marla made the call, put the phone to her ear. “It’s ringing,” she said.

David’s grip on the steering wheel tightened while he waited. “Still ringing,” she said. “That’s eight rings.”

“Are you sure you touched the right number?”

“Sam. Yes. That’s the one. Ten rings. Who is this guy?”

“It’s not a guy,” he said. He took one hand off the wheel, ran it over the top of his head, pulling on his hair at the same time, trying to release the tension any way he could. He put the hand back on the wheel.

“Twelve rings. Wait. It’s going to message.”

“Never mind,” he said. David had already sent a text. He couldn’t see the sense, right now, of a voice mail. All Sam would have to do was look at her phone to see she’d missed several calls from him. “You can hang up.”

Marla ended the call and was about to return the phone when it started to ring in her hand. It startled her and she let out a short scream.

“Is it Sam?” David asked.

“I don’t think-hello? No, no, you have the right number. This is David’s phone. He’s driving. This is Marla.” She said to David, “Someone wants to talk to you.”

“Who is it?”

Marla said, “Who’s calling? Randy who?”

“No,” David said angrily.

“He can’t talk to you,” Marla said. “We’re on our way to the hospital. My father is-” Marla listened a few more seconds, then handed the phone to David. “He says it’s really important.”

“Jesus,” David hissed as he grabbed the phone. “This has to wait, Randy.”

“Listen! This is big! The town’s water may be-”

“I know!”

“-poisoned. David, do what you have to do. Help that woman’s father.”

“It’s my uncle,” David said.

“Christ, I’m sorry,” Randall Finley said. “How is he?”

David glanced in the mirror again. “Not great.”

“What can I do?”

For once, David thought his employer sounded sincere. But then again, Randy was good at pretending to care when he didn’t give a shit.

“Nothing,” David said.

“I want to help. Not just you, but everyone. It’s in my power to make a difference here, to do something good.”

“What are you-”

“I’m calling everyone in. I’m cranking up production. We’re going to distribute thousands of bottles of water. We’ll drop them off in the middle of town. In the park, next to the falls. There’s a crisis and we’re going to-”

“Exploit it,” David said.

“No!” Was that genuine hurt David was hearing? “I just want to do the right thing. I swear. Go. Save your uncle and call me later. In the meantime, I’m moving forward on-”

David didn’t hear the rest of it. He’d ended the call, but instead of putting the phone away, he gave it back to Marla.

“Go into the contacts. Hit ‘home,’ then hand it to me.”

Marla did so.

David listened for the rings. His mother picked up before the third.

“Mom,” David said, “I need you to get yourself to Promise Falls General.”

“I’m fine,” Arlene said. “I didn’t drink anything from the tap and I didn’t let your father have that pot of coffee he made.”

“That’s good, that’s good, but that’s not it. I may need your help. Dad can stay home, be there when Ethan wakes up, tell him not to drink anything. Or take a bath. Like I’d need to talk him out of that.”

“Oh, okay. I’m on my way.”

“What kind of help?” Marla asked once David had put the phone away.

“It’s crazy there,” he told her. “There may be questions to answer, forms to fill out, and you’ve got your hands full with Matthew. She can help with that.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her what he was really thinking: that if Gill wasn’t already dead in the backseat of the car, he very likely would be by the time they got to the hospital, and David was going to need his mother there to help Marla get through it. She was going to go to pieces. If she couldn’t pull herself together, she wasn’t going to be able to look after Matthew.

Arlene would be a great help there.

And David didn’t want to spend a moment longer at the hospital than he had to. He had to get to Samantha Worthington’s place.

He had to know whether the woman he was falling in love with and her young son, Carl, were already dead.

Duckworth

INthe car, heading toward the town’s water pumping and treatment center, I called home again. No answer. But I had asked Maureen to start banging on the neighbors’ doors to warn them about possible water contamination, so it made sense she wasn’t in the house.