Linwood Barclay: The Twenty-Three

Tammy threw the shift lever into park, said, “Be right back!” and jumped out of the ambulance.

The dispatcher said, “What’s happening?”

Ali couldn’t leave Audrey McMichael to tell him.

“Sir!” Tammy said, striding briskly toward the man, who looked to be in his late fifties, early sixties. “What’s wrong, sir?”

“Help me,” he whispered.

“What’s your name, sir?”

The man mumbled something.

“What’s that?”

“Fisher,” he said. “Walden Fisher. I don’t feel… something’s… not right. My stomach… just threw up.”

Tammy put a hand on his shoulder. “Talk to me, Mr. Fisher. What other symptoms have you been experiencing?” The man’s breaths were rapid and shallow, just like those of Audrey McMichael and Terrence Rodd.

This is one serious clusterfuck. That’s what this is, Tammy thought.

“Dizzy. Sick to my stomach. Something’s not right.” He looked fearfully into the paramedic’s face. “My heart. I think there’s something wrong with my heart.”

“Come with me, sir,” she said, leading him to the back of the ambulance. She’d put him in there with Audrey.

The more the merrier, she thought, shaking her head, then wondering, What next?

Which was when she heard the explosion.

When Emily Townsend had her first sip of coffee, she thought it tasted just a tiny bit off.

So she dumped out the entire pot-six cups’ worth-as well as the filter filled with coffee grounds, and started over.

Ran the water for thirty seconds from the tap to make sure it was fresh before adding it to the machine. Put in a new filter and six scoops of coffee from the tin.

Hit the button.

Waited.

When the machine beeped, she poured the coffee into a cup-a clean one; she’d already put the first one into the dishwasher-added one sugar and just a titch of cream, and gave it a stir.

Brought the warm mug to her lips and tentatively sipped.

Must have been her imagination. This tasted just fine.

Maybe it was her toothpaste. Made that first cup taste funny.

Cal Weaver was having breakfast-if you could call it that-in a room adjacent to the lobby of the BestBet Inn, which sat on Route 9 a quarter mile from the exit off 87, halfway between Promise Falls and Albany.

He’d been here most of the week.

It wasn’t a surveillance or any other kind of private detecting gig that had brought him to the lovely accommodations of the Best-Bet ( Free Wi-Fi! ). It was, however, the only affordable hotel close to Promise Falls that had any rooms available. He’d booked himself in here while he looked for a new place to live. Someone had firebombed the bookstore below his apartment and while his place had not burned to the ground, it was not a place where anyone could stay. The smell of smoke was overwhelming, and power had been cut to the building.

Cal was not going to stay with his sister, Celeste, and her husband, Dwayne. His presence would aggravate the tensions that already existed between his sister and his brother-in-law. The man did road repairs for the town, and with all the recent budget cuts, he was getting very little work.

So Cal found a hotel.

The BestBet advertised a free breakfast, and it was true what they said. You get what you pay for. The first day, when Cal came down, he was thinking he’d get a ham and cheddar omelet with home fries and brown toast. So he was dismayed when he found that his breakfast choices consisted of single-serving cereals in sealed plastic containers, hard-boiled eggs (preshelled, which he supposed was at least something), day-old muffins and donuts, bananas and oranges, containers of yogurt, and-praise the Lord-coffee.

The only time any hotel employee showed up was to make sure there was coffee in the tall, aluminum urn.

Miracle of miracles, it was drinkable.

He’d grabbed a free copy of the Albany paper in the lobby and was leafing through it, sitting at a table by the window so he could watch the traffic go by on 9, washing down a dry blueberry muffin with his paper cup of coffee. He’d already refilled it twice.

He hadn’t expected to find any Promise Falls apartment-for-rent listings in the paper, and he was not disappointed. And since there was no longer a Promise FallsStandard , he’d turn to the Net after breakfast to see whether any new places had come online.

His cell rang.

He reached into his pocket, checked out the caller.

Lucy Brighton.

It was not the first time she’d tried to reach him since he’d last seen her earlier in the week. He’d taken a couple of her calls, but had ignored the more recent ones. He knew what Lucy was going to say, what she was going to ask him. It would be the same thing she had asked him the time before.

What was he going to do?

He still didn’t know.

Should he tell the police what he knew? Should he call up his old friend Promise Falls police detective Barry Duckworth, and tell him he knew who had murdered Miriam Chalmers?

Cal knew he probably should. But he wasn’t sure that it was the right thing to do.

Because of Crystal, Lucy’s eleven-year-old daughter. The girl Lucy was raising on her own, ever since her husband, Gerald, had skipped off to San Francisco and rarely been seen since.

Cal didn’t know what would happen to Crystal if her mother went to prison. Lucy’s father, Adam, had died in that bombing at the drive-in. Her mother had died years ago.

Was justice served if it left a young girl without her mother?

And was that Cal’s problem? Wasn’t that something Lucy should have thought of before she-

The phone continued to ring.

The so-called dining area of the BestBet was not busy, but the handful of others having breakfast had glanced furtively in Cal’s direction, wondering whether he was ever going to answer his damn phone.

He tapped the screen, declined the call.

There.

Cal went back to reading the paper, which had been following the recent events in Promise Falls pretty closely. The police still hadn’t made any headway in finding out who’d toppled the drive-in screen. There was a quote from Duckworth, that police were pursuing several leads and hoped to make an arrest shortly.

Which sounded, to Cal, like they were nowhere.

His phone rang. Lucy again.

He couldn’t let it ring another dozen times. Either he declined the call right now, or he answered it.

He tapped the screen, put the phone to his ear.

“Hey, Lucy,” he said.

“It’s not Lucy,” a young voice said.

“Crystal?” Cal said.

“Is this Mr. Weaver?”

“Yes. Is that you, Crystal?”

“Yes,” she said flatly.

Crystal was, Cal had quickly learned, an odd, but incredibly talented, kid. She was constantly creating her own graphic novels, withdrawing into her own imaginary world. Her interactions with others, beyond her mother, were hesitant and awkward, although she had warmed to Cal after he’d shown an interest in her work.

Was Lucy using her own daughter to ensure that Cal didn’t go to the police? Using her to gain sympathy? Had she put her daughter up to making this call?

“What’s up, Crystal?” he asked. “Did your mother ask you to call me?”

“No,” she said. “She’s sick.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Has she got the flu?”

“I don’t know. But I think she’s really sick.”

“I hope she gets better soon. Why’d you call, Crystal?”

“Because she’s sick.”

Cal felt a shiver. “How sick is she, Crystal?”

“She’s not moving.”

Cal stood up abruptly from the table, kept the phone to his ear as he started heading for his car. “Where is she?”