Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

“Has anyone been in touch with you?” she asked.

“No,” said Lester. “You mean about the water? We’ve been watching the news. About the poisoned water. When did that happen? Has that been going on all week? Is Lorraine sick?”

“Is she in the hospital?” Alma asked.

“Dear God, did she drink the water?” Lester Plummer asked.

“No,” said Joyce. “She didn’t drink the water. The college is on a separate water supply from the town, so we weren’t affected here.”

She could hear both parents sigh in relief.

“I’m sorry,” Joyce Pilgrim said, “but the news is still bad.”

When she got off the phone, she did not immediately go into the tech room. Instead, she sat stone-still in her desk chair and felt herself start to shake. She gripped the arms of the chair.

I will not lose it.

She took several deep breaths, fought back tears. She’d managed to hold it together through the rest of that phone call. If she could listen to two people be overcome with grief and not start crying herself, she could do anything.

Right?

She thought about calling her husband. She wanted to hear Ted’s voice. But she was sure the moment he came on the line, she’d go to pieces.

She would talk to him later.

Joyce hoped the next time she talked with Duckworth, he wouldn’t ask whether she’d quizzed Lorraine Plummer’s parents about whether their daughter had ever mentioned a married man.

She couldn’t do it. The people were too distraught. She’d broken the news to them. Duckworth could ask them his questions.

Joyce seated herself at the desk in the tech room, moved the mouse around, entered in the time period. She wanted to see footage from 11:20 p.m. through to 1:20 a.m. Duckworth had said he believed Lorraine had been killed about twenty minutes past midnight.

Cameras were posted on the road near the library and the athletic center. There were other cameras, too, although none close to the dormitory where Lorraine lived. But anyone driving onto the Thackeray grounds, headed for that building, would have had to pass either the library or the athletic center.

She brought up the video that had been taken from the athletic-center camera first. Set it up to begin at 11:20 p.m.

There wasn’t a whole lot to look at. With so few students in attendance, there were no cars, and very few people walking about. At 11:45 a young man and woman, holding hands, walked across the screen.

At 11:51, a jogger. White male, late teens or twenties, pair of shorts, white T-shirt. Wires coming down from his ears. On-screen for maybe seven seconds. She made a note of his appearance, scribbled onto a pad: “runner 11:51.”

At 12:02 a.m., he reappeared, going the other way. Joyce made another note.

She was able to fast-forward through the stretches where there was no activity. And there was nothing after that jogger’s return trip on the athletic-center camera. At one point, she thought she saw something, rewound, started the video again at regular speed.

Something moving along the side of the road, up close to a building. Very low to the ground. Was it a person? Someone crawling? Was it someone who had been injured, or someone sneaking around?

She rewound, watched it again. It wasn’t one moving object, but three, or possibly four.

Raccoons.

Joyce laughed. Her first laugh in some time.

Time to turn her attention to the other camera, the one mounted near the library. One corner of the library building was in the upper-right quadrant of the screen. A road bisected the screen horizontally. The upper left was wooded area, and below the street, sidewalk. The camera itself was mounted atop a student residence-not Lorraine’ s-across from the library. The building where Lorraine lived was offscreen, to the right, maybe a hundred yards away.

The library was closed, of course, that late at night, and only about a fifth of the usual lights were on. Most of the road illumination came from streetlamps.

Joyce started at 11:20 p.m., and again fast-forwarded until something caught her eye.

A car entered the screen quickly from the left, stopped dead center. Joyce noted the time: 11:41 p.m. The driver’s door opened-the interior dome light flashed on-and a man jumped out carrying something square, and white.

A pizza box. It was a pizza delivery guy.

He ran toward the bottom of the screen, disappeared. Was he headed for the residence just out of view? Or could he have, once off closed-circuit, cut right and gone to Lorraine’s building?

Had she ordered a pizza? Duckworth had looked at her phone. If he’d seen a pizza delivery call, wouldn’t he have been all over that? But then again, she could have ordered it online, using her laptop. Or maybe she-

Hang on. The pizza guy was back, already. Only three minutes had passed. It was 11:44. He got behind the wheel, did a U-turn in the street, and tore off in the direction he’d come from.

Still, Joyce made a note.

11:45: nothing.

11:49: nothing.

11:55: nothing.

12:01: noth- Hello. What’s this?

A vehicle nosed into the screen from the left. Literally, nosed. A bumper and about six inches of hood. The vehicle nudged its way into the scene, and stopped.

There wasn’t enough vehicle showing to tell whether it was a car, an SUV, or maybe a pickup truck. The only thing it definitely did not look like was a van, where you would expect to see the hood sloping vertically up into a windshield.

Joyce hit pause, stared at the screen, brought her nose up to it, trying to tell what kind of car or truck it might be. But the image was grainy, the lighting inadequate.

She hit play, allowed the video to continue.

The headlights went out. For a few seconds, there was nothing. Then, a flash of light from the left. Two seconds maybe. On, and off.

The dome light, she thought. Someone getting out of the car, then closing the door.

And then, a person.

He-Joyce was guessing it was a he-came around the front of the vehicle quickly, mounted the curb, kept walking in that direction and out of the frame.

Gone.

Joyce paused the video, rewound, then went through the next fifteen seconds in slo-mo. Headlights off. Flash of light. Man coming around front of car.

Pause.

What could she actually tell about him? He was little more than a blurry, dark figure. No hat, but she couldn’t see his face well enough to know whether he was white, black, or brown. Anywhere from five-six to six feet, she guessed, which was not terribly helpful. That accounted for most men on the planet.

Pants, jacket. In other words, not naked.

“Shit,” Joyce said to no one in particular.

He was there, and then he was gone. A few seconds later, it was 12:02 a.m.

Joyce made more notes, then let the video continue. She resisted the urge to fast-forward. Her eyes stayed locked on the vehicle as the minutes ticked by.

At 12:07, a jogger.

Joyce was pretty sure it was the same jogger she’d seen from the other camera. He came in from the right side of the screen, ran to the left, and then he was gone. Instead of running on the sidewalk, he had chosen to run down the middle of the street.

She rewound, took a closer look at him. Same shorts, it looked like. And again, what looked like two strands of spaghetti running down from his ears.

Same jogger.

He’d run right past the parked vehicle. Within a few feet of it.

Joyce let the surveillance video play on.

It got to be 12:20 a.m., which was around the time Duckworth believed Lorraine Plummer had been killed.

Then it was 12:21.

12:22.

Joyce sat, eyes riveted.

He came out of nowhere at 12:34 a.m.

Coming from below the screen, running around the front of the car.