Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

Dozens of patients had been transferred to hospitals in Albany and Syracuse, and a handful had even been sent to New York City. The local emergency staff had been stretched far beyond their capabilities.

If there was any good news, it was that most people had now gotten the message. The number of people coming to the hospital for treatment in the last couple of hours had dropped off considerably. As bad as it was, it could have been worse, Chief Finderman pointed out. Had this happened on a regular workday, and not on the Saturday of a long weekend, far more people would have been up early, and consumed the contaminated water.

“Oh!” Gale had said while watching the conference when she caught a brief glimpse of her husband walking past the camera.

She wanted to phone him then, ask how he was doing, but she knew this was the wrong time to bother him. She felt she’d been bothering him a lot lately, and watching what Angus had to deal with, she felt awash with guilt.

Maybe her husband was right. Maybe this was no world to bring a child into. Although that had never been his argument, exactly. It wasn’t the state of the world that worried him. It was the quality of parenting, and what he’d endured as a child was certainly not the best.

But Gale knew she would make a wonderful mother, if only given the chance. She’d spent hours on the Internet Googling “my husband does not want a baby,” and been inundated with stories from marriage-counseling and parenting sites. Gale was hardly alone. Millions of women were married to men who did not want to become fathers.

Sometimes what Gale really wanted was just one good book, instead of being overwhelmed with online material. Given that she was going stir-crazy at home, she decided to take a walk downtown.

A walk would do her good. She’d have her phone with her should Angus need to get in touch.

She had a destination in mind.

There was a bookstore in the Promise Falls Mall, but there was a used bookstore downtown where she loved to browse. Although the manager stocked mostly fiction, he also had a nonfiction section and, within that, some books on parenting and psychology.

Maybe she’d find something there, something that would help her persuade Angus that they should take that leap of faith.

Get pregnant.

And after all, it wasn’t as though the baby-making process was without its fun. At least, most of the time.

Gale grabbed her purse. She stepped outside first to see whether she needed a jacket, but it was a pleasant, late-spring day, temperature in the midseventies. No jacket required.

She and Angus lived in a small two-story house not far from the central business area of Promise Falls. When they first moved here from Ohio, they’d often walked down to the park by the falls, but the novelty of that had worn off. Gale found she strolled down there more frequently on her own, especially when Angus had to work evenings. That had been a regular occurrence when he was in uniform, and likely would still be the case now that he was a detective.

She thought she might go down there today, after her bookstore visit.

Gale set herself a steady pace. It didn’t take long before she had walked the several blocks to her destination.

She was taken aback by what she found.

There were sheets of plywood where the windows of Naman’s Books used to be, and the brickwork was stained with soot. She’d had no idea that there had been a fire here. When had that happened?

“Oh, no,” she said under her breath. There were enough bookstores, used and new, going out of business without one having to go up in smoke.

She thought she heard noise inside, things being shuffled about, and noticed that the glass door, which had been covered over with cardboard on the inside, was ajar. She peeked inside.

“Naman?” she said.

“Hello?”

“Naman, what on earth has happened?”

The owner of the store appeared in the sliver between the door and the jamb, one dark eye taking Gale in.

“It is you,” he said, and opened the door wide enough that she was able to see him. The corner of his mouth went up in an attempt at a smile. “One of my best customers.”

“I didn’t know,” Gale said. “What happened?”

“A fire,” he said.

“When?”

“A few nights ago.”

“How did it happen?”

He shook his head, suggesting he did not want to talk about it.

“Come on,” Gale said. “Tell me.”

“Some guys in a truck. They drove by, threw something through the window. A what-do-you-call-it. Cocktail. Molotov cocktail. A bottle on fire. It broke the glass and landed in the books and the fire started.”

“Oh my God,” she said, peering in to try to see the damage. “I’m coming in.”

“It’s not safe.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m tough.”

He stepped back to allow her to come in. He had set up two spotlights on stands so he could see what he was doing.

“They haven’t turned the electric back on yet, so I am running extension cords out back, borrowing power from a neighbor. It’s not as bad as it was. It was all wet after the fire department came, water in the basement, thousands of books wet and ruined. I have a Dumpster out back for the stuff I cannot save. But I am going through, book by book, seeing what is salvageable.”

“This is horrible. Did they catch the people who did it?”

Naman shook his head.

“Why would someone do this?”

“They called me a terrorist,” he said.

“Oh, Naman.”

“They see a different kind of name out front, and suddenly I am the kind of guy who would blow up a drive-in theater. Good thing they already set the store on fire, or they would be back today to blame me for what has happened to the water.”

“Those kinds of things, they bring out the ugly side of people.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I don’t know what to say. Do you want me to ask my husband if they are having any luck tracking them down?”

“Your husband?”

“He works for the police. He’s a detective now.”

“I don’t think you ever mentioned that before,” Naman said.

“Maybe not.”

“I think I would have remembered.” He glanced upward. “The man who had the apartment upstairs, he was a private detective. Not with the police, but working for himself.”

“Really?”

Naman nodded. “But he is gone. I don’t think he will come back. Anyway.” He went over to the counter, where he’d been sorting books into boxes. “What were you looking for today? I mean, I am not open, but if I have what you want and it is a little water damaged, I would give it to you for free.”

“I was looking for…” Her voice trailed off.

“What?”

“It’s kind of personal.”

“Oh.”

She laughed. “But if I’d found it, I’d have been bringing it up to you to pay for, so…”

“What kind of book?”

“Just… advice about marriages. The different things that couples go through.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

She laughed again. “It’s not that .”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But I know what you were thinking. It’s just, Angus-that’s my husband-and I can’t seem to agree on whether to start a family. I want to, and he’s hesitant.”

“Oh. I don’t know if I have any books like that. In good condition, or damaged. You know, you should go to the bookstore in the mall, maybe. Or look online.”

“I guess. I just-I’ve always liked coming here. I love books, and old books. I love the smell of them.”

“They all smell of smoke now,” Naman said sadly.

“Are you going to reopen?”

“We’ll see. I have to clean up first.”

“I should let you get back to it. I’m so sorry.” Gale turned and, as she took a step toward the door, stumbled over something. “Stupid me,” she said, bending over and picking up a book that had clearly been drenched by the firefighters. It had dried, and expanded to twice its original thickness.