Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

Shook-up, though. Big-time.

There was an office at the back where Sam often hung out when she wasn’t tending the machines. The door was closed. David walked briskly from one end of the place to the other, turned the knob on the door, and stepped in without knocking.

“What the hell do you want?”

It wasn’t Sam asking. It was a thin, balding man in his seventies, sitting at a desk.

“Who are you?” David asked.

The man reared back. “Who am I? Who the fuck are you, busting into my office?”

“I’m sorry,” David said. “I was looking for Sam. Samantha Worthington.”

“Yeah, well, she ain’t here, is she?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m David Harwood. We-we were kind of going out. Who are you?”

“I own this place. Sam runs it for me. Or she did.”

“What’s going on?”

“Maybe you can tell me,” he said gruffly. “She calls me Thursday afternoon and says she won’t be coming in anymore. I tell her, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ She says she’s quitting. I say okay, but I need two weeks’ notice. She says she’s leaving right now.”

“What do you mean, right now?”

“Like, right fucking now . She calls me from this desk, says she’s walking out the door soon as she hangs up the phone.”

“Why?”

The owner raised his shoulders. “Damned if I know. So I had to get down here right away and I don’t even live around here. I’m in Albany, for Christ’s sake. This place is my pension. I own it-she runs it and looks after it. And then, just like that, she takes off on me. Goddamn her, anyway. I don’t need this kind of shit at my age. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the water’s poisoned or something. I’m tellin’ people to put in extra soap.”

“She must have said something,” David persisted. “About why, or where she was going.”

“I didn’t ask her where to send her last check because damned if I was going to pay her if she was going to leave me in the lurch like this. I gotta find someone else to run this place. I can’t do it. I got a bad ticker. You need a job?”

“No.”

“Know anyone who does?”

David shook his head.

“Go try her at home,” the man said. “Maybe she’s there. You see her, tell her thanks a bunch from me.”

“Already been there,” David said. “No sign of her. And she’s not answering her phone.”

“So maybe you two weren’t the item you seem to think you were,” the owner said, “if she took off without letting you know where she was going.”

That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it was what he’d been thinking.

“Maybe it’s you she was running away from,” the man said, and laughed.

“I just don’t understand,” David said.

“Any man says he can understand how a woman thinks is living in a fool’s paradise,” the man said.

“Sorry to have bothered you,” David said, backing out of the office. “Uh, you probably shouldn’t be letting these people wash their clothes with this water.”

The owner shrugged. He said, “Maybe the other guy will find something out. You can find out from him.”

David stopped. “What other guy?”

“The guy who was in here yesterday asking around for her.” David immediately thought of the private detective. “Was his name Weaver? Cal Weaver?”

The man shook his head. “No, that wasn’t it. What was the name he gave me? Hang on. Oh yeah. Brandon. That was it.”

David felt a chill. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Brandon. Nice guy. Wanted to find Sam, but mostly he was looking for the boy.”

ONCEhe was back at his place, he didn’t go into the house. He wanted to check the garage first.

He used his key to unlock the side door. He’d been making sure the door was pulled closed since his carelessness a few nights ago, when he’d thought he’d locked it, but had failed to pull it tightly into the jamb.

That boy had gotten in.

Well, not exactly a boy. A young man. A check of his wallet turned up a driver’s license in the name of George Lydecker. A Thackeray College student.

Stupid bastard.

Thought he’d sneak in and steal something. But when the man caught him in the act, George wasn’t stealing anything. He was trying to figure out what was in all the clear bags.

Hundreds of them, piled in a heap in the center of the garage floor. All filled with something white and powdery looking. They’d been hidden under a tarp, but curiosity had gotten the better of George, and he had pulled it back.

The dumb kid figured it was cocaine.

If it had been cocaine, the man wouldn’t have come into the garage wearing a gas mask, would he?

The bags were all gone now. The same could not be said for George. After the man had stabbed George with a croquet post, sprinkled the body liberally with lime, then rolled it up in plastic sheets secured with duct tape, he’d dragged the body to a corner of the garage and hidden it behind some boxes.

Couldn’t have George telling anyone what he’d seen.

Not just the bags of chemicals.

Those squirrel traps on the shelf, for example.

Or the random leftover limbs from some mannequins.

The various items that had been used to assemble the bombs that brought down the drive-in.

The man couldn’t keep the body here indefinitely. Once it, and the other incriminating items, were disposed of, he’d have to give the garage one hell of a vacuuming. Eliminate any chemical traces.

Only now was he starting to think about how to cover his tracks. He’d been so consumed with the mission that he’d never given a lot of thought to evading capture.

There was once a time when he’d thought he didn’t care about being found out. Once he’d made his point.

Only now, he wasn’t so sure he was finished. Many had died, there was no doubt about that.

But was it enough?

Maybe I’m not done.

CALWeaver said to Crystal, “You okay here if I go into the kitchen and talk to my sister?”

Crystal, sitting on the couch, her eyes alternating between the Weather Channel on TV and the drawing she was working on, said, “Are you going away?”

“No. Just to the kitchen. And even if I do have to go somewhere, I’ll be coming back here.”

“Not your motel.”

“No. But I have to go back there to check out, get my stuff.”

“Can I come with you when you do?”

Cal nodded. “Maybe. We’ll talk about that. And I’m going to try to get hold of your dad again.”

Crystal said, “It’s going to be sunny all weekend.”

“Isn’t that great?” Cal said. He patted the girl’s knee, got up from the couch, and went into the kitchen.

“The poor thing,” Celeste said. Even though Cal and Crystal had recently eaten, Celeste had thrown herself into making sandwiches. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to get a glass of water and had to stop myself.”

“Yeah,” Cal said.

“Have you been able to get in touch with her father?”

“Not yet.” Cal put a hand on his sister’s arm. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“What?”

“About imposing. I thought it would just be the girl, for a while, but now it’s both of us.”

“It’s okay,” Celeste said.

“I know Dwayne’s not happy about it.”

Celeste bit her lip, turned away, took a jar of mayonnaise from the refrigerator. “Yeah, well, that’s tough for him.”

“I know you guys are already under a lot of stress, and now-”

Celeste turned swiftly. “What do you know, really?”

“Excuse me?”