Linwood Barclay: The Twenty-Three

But Hillary called the police anyway.

They took down all the relevant information. But a young man who liked to party hard, who had a history of mischief, was not exactly a high priority for the local police. And it wasn’t as though they had nothing to do. There’d been some crazy shoot-out at a Laundromat the other day, and it hadn’t even been a week since some nutcase had blown up the drive-in on the outskirts of Promise Falls and killed four people.

Whoever’d done that was still out there.

The Lydeckers had not just sat around doing nothing the last four days. They’d been out every day, driving around town, going out to the college, popping into local bars, checking back in with George’s friends. They felt they had to be doing something.

They’d been back to the police, too, who were finally starting to take this more seriously. On Thursday, they sent around a detective named Angus Carlson. He sat down with the parents and Cassandra, made notes. He even took Cassandra aside later, said he wondered if she might know anything about her brother that she wouldn’t want to say in front of her parents. Something that might help him find George.

“Well,” she’d said, “he likes to break into people’s garages and look for stuff.”

“Do your parents know about that?”

Cassandra had shaken her head no. Said maybe she should tell them.

Carlson had made a note.

And now here it was, Saturday morning. Hillary and Josh in the kitchen, Cassandra upstairs in bed. Hillary had been down here since five, making a pot of tea, and then drawing up a list of things they should do today in their search for George.

The list, so far, read:

• call Detective Carlson, update

• call friends again. D. Cutter

• check places George might explore, abandoned factories, Five Mountains park, drive-in disaster

• make flyers with George picture, put up around town, call printer

When Josh entered the room, Hillary had turned on the kettle to make another pot of tea. She showed her husband the list.

“Okay,” he said wearily. “I’d been thinking about Five Mountains. I could imagine him looking around there, now that it’s closed down. It’ll probably be all locked up. I could call the management, or maybe get the detective to do that.”

“George would find a way in, even if it was locked. You know what he’s like. He’s always sneaking into things.”

Josh hesitated. “About that. Cassie told me something, last night.”

“Told you what?”

“Sometimes… sometimes George breaks into places. Not like a school or something, just goofing around. He looks for unlocked garages, gets in, takes stuff.”

“He does not,” Hillary said angrily. Her face had become flushed, and beads of sweat had sprouted on her forehead.

“I’m just telling you what she said. I think… at first I didn’t want the police brought in, in case George had done something stupid, but I’m past that. We should ask them if there have been any break-ins. Of garages. Maybe that would be a lead to finding out what-Hillary, are you okay?”

“Seriously?” Hillary said. “I’ve had three hours’ sleep this week. Now you’re saying my son is a thief, and you ask if I’m okay?”

“I’m just saying, you don’t look good.”

“I can’t sleep, I’m worried sick about what’s happened to my baby, I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack, and-”

Hillary’s cell phone, which was on the table next to her cup of tea, vibrated. A text.

“Oh my God, maybe it’s George!” she said, and dived for the phone, snatched it up, looked at it with puzzlement. “It’s Cassie.”

“Cassie?” Josh said. “She’s upstairs.” He hesitated. “Isn’t she?”

Hillary, her face crumpling, turned the phone to her husband.

The text read:

I think I’m dying

• • •

Ali Brunson said, “Hang in there, Audrey. You’re going to be fine. You just have to keep it together a little bit longer.”

Of course, Ali had said that many times in his career as a paramedic, and there were many of those times when he hadn’t believed it for a second. This looked as though it was turning into one of those times.

Audrey McMichael, age fifty-three, 173 pounds, black, an insurance adjuster, resident of 21 Forsythe Avenue for the last twenty-two years, where she lived with her husband, Clifford, was showing every indication of giving up the fight.

Ali called up to Tammy Fairweather, who was behind the wheel of the ambulance, and racing it to Promise Falls General. The good news was, it was early Saturday morning and there was hardly anyone on the road. The bad news was, it probably wasn’t going to matter. Audrey’s blood pressure was plummeting like an elevator with snapped cables. Barely sixty over forty.

When Ali and Tammy had arrived at the McMichael home, Audrey had been vomiting. For the better part of an hour, according to her husband, she had been complaining of nausea, dizziness, a headache. Her breathing had been growing increasingly rapid and shallow. There had been moments when she’d said she could not see.

Her condition continued to deteriorate after they loaded her into the ambulance.

“How we doing back there?” Tammy called.

“Don’t worry about me. Just get us to church on time,” Ali told her, keeping his voice even.

“I know people,” Tammy said over the wail of the siren, trying to lighten the mood. “You need a ticket fixed, I’m the girl to know.”

The radio crackled. Their dispatcher.

“Let me know the second you clear PFG,” the male voice on the radio said.

“Not even there yet,” Tammy radioed back. “Will advise.”

“Need you at another location ASAP.”

“What’s the deal?” Tammy asked. “All the other units take off sick? They go fishing for the weekend?”

“Negative. All engaged.”

“What?”

“It’s like an instant flu outbreak all over town,” the dispatcher said. “Let me know the second you’re available.” The connection ended.

“What’d he say?” Ali asked.

Tammy swung the wheel hard. She could see the blue H atop Promise Falls General in the distance. No more than a mile away.

“Something going around,” Tammy said. “Not the kind of Saturday morning I was expecting.”

Whenever Tammy and Ali got the weekend morning shifts, they usually started them with coffee at Dunkin’s, chilling out until their first call.

There’d been no coffee today. Audrey McMichael, it turned out, was their second call of the day. The first had been to the Breckonwood Drive home of Terrence Rodd, an eighty-eight-year-old retired statistician who’d called 911 after experiencing dizziness and chest pains. Tammy had pointed out that he lived right next door to where that Gaynor woman had been murdered a few weeks ago.

Terrence never made it alive to the ER.

Hypotension, Ali thought. Low blood pressure.

And here they were again, with another patient experiencing, among other things, dangerously low blood pressure.

Ali raised his head far enough to see out the front window just as Tammy slammed on the brakes and screamed, “Jesus!”

There was a man standing in the path of the ambulance, halfway into their lane. “Standing” was not quite accurate. More like stooping, with one hand on his chest, the other raised, palm up, asking the ambulance to stop. Then the man doubled over, and vomited onto the street.

“Goddamn it!” Tammy said. She grabbed her radio. “I need help!”

“Drive around him!” Ali said. “We don’t have time to help some geezer cross the road.”

“I can’t just-he’s on his knees, Ali. Jesus fucking Christ!”