Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

Finderman hadn’t tracked him down on her own. He came into the station to confess his sin.

“I was one of them,” he told Rhonda. “I was one of the people who did nothing.”

Finderman, in her notes, described how the man had wept as he told her what he’d heard.

“I was just getting into my car. I’d gone into the smoke shop there to look for something on the newsstand.” He had built a model train layout in his basement for his grandson, Ethan, and was looking for the latest issue of a magazine about Lionel Trains. “I found it, and when I came out, I heard the screams. They sounded like they were coming from the park, and I looked that way, and I thought about whether to do something, but I looked up and down the street and no one else was doing anything or calling anybody, so I guessed there was nothing to worry about. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

There was other fallout from the Fisher murder.

Victor Rooney started drinking heavily. He lost his job with the fire department and had been in and out of work ever since. He was racked with guilt, according to Rhonda’s notes, over not being on time to meet Olivia. I had wondered, when I started looking into the case, whether the source of his guilt might be something different.

Like, maybe he’d killed Olivia. Nine times out of ten, it was the boyfriend or the husband.

But Rhonda had checked out his alibi. She had interviewed his drinking buddies at Knight’s. He’d been there at the time of Olivia’s death.

All of which left me nowhere.

Which was why I wanted to pay another visit to Walden Fisher. To see whether there was something we’d all overlooked.

The last time I’d seen Olivia’s father, he’d been waiting at Promise Falls General for a doctor to have a look at him. Considering how many patients were up there, he might still be waiting.

If he wasn’t dead.

Last I’d heard, Angus Carlson was still at the hospital talking to people. I phoned him, aware that if he was still in the ER, the call might not get through to him.

He answered.

“Hey,” he said. He sounded subdued, which probably shouldn’t have surprised me, given what we’d all been dealing with.

“Hey,” I said back. “I need you to do something for me.”

“I can’t.”

“You haven’t even heard what it is.”

“Don’t you know?” Carlson asked.

“Know what?” I wondered if Carlson himself had taken ill.

“Some shit went down here at the hospital. I’m outside now, giving a statement.”

“What happened?”

“I shot a guy.”

“What?”

He filled me in.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. What next, right? A zombie apocalypse?”

It was a typical Carlson attempt at a joke, but I heard no levity in his voice. For maybe the first time, I felt for him.

“It sounds like you did the right thing,” I said. “And you got lucky. You brought him down without taking a life. There’s no telling what that guy might have done once he started firing.”

“Yeah, well. What was it you wanted, anyway?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“No, go ahead.”

“I want to talk to Walden Fisher. He was up there in the ER when I left. You seen him lately?”

A pause. “No,” he said. “I remember when you were talking to him, but I didn’t see him around later.”

“Maybe he was admitted.”

“Maybe. And they’re moving a lot of people out of here.” A pause. It sounded as though Carlson was talking to someone else. “I’m going to have to go,” he said when he got back. “What did you want to talk to Mr. Fisher for?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’ve got enough to deal with right now. Hang in there, okay, Angus?”

“Yeah,” Carlson said. “Thanks, Barry.”

I could have returned to the hospital and hunted for Walden Fisher, but it would still be chaotic there-especially now that there had been a shooting there-and even if he was in the building, it could take a long time to locate him. I decided it might be more expedient to go by his house first, in the event that he’d been treated and released.

When I parked out front of his place, I could see through the porch’s screen door straight into the house, the main door wide open. It didn’t necessarily mean he was home. He probably hadn’t taken time to lock up the house when he came running out, sick. What had he told me at the hospital? That he’d nearly been run over by an ambulance.

I scanned the surface of the road, and sure enough, I saw what looked like the remains of someone’s stomach contents. The kind of deposit one often saw on the sidewalk outside any Promise Falls bar on a Friday or Saturday night.

I went up to the door, rapped lightly, and called through the screen, “Mr. Fisher?”

The sound of a chair being pushed back. I could see down a short hallway to the kitchen, and several seconds later, Walden appeared. He walked very slowly to the screen door, pushed it open.

“Oh,” he said. “Hey.”

“You’re home,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I threw up a cow. They kicked me out of the ER, wanted me to go to Albany to get checked out.”

“You’re back already?”

“Didn’t go,” he said wearily. “Didn’t have it in me. I hadn’t died yet, so I figured I wasn’t going to, but I’m still kind of shaky.”

“Can I come in?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. I was just sitting in the kitchen staring out the window. I’d offer you a coffee, but I think that’s what got me in trouble in the first place.”

As I followed him back into the kitchen, I asked, “Did a doctor even look at you?”

“Some lady gave me the once-over. But there were people way worse than me, people keeling over dead, and she had to go tend to them.”

“You’re feeling better?”

Walden nodded. “Yeah. I only had a couple of sips of the coffee I’d made myself. Guess that’s what saved me. I make kind of lousy coffee anyway, never drink all that much of it.” A weak grin. “Bad coffee saved my life, I guess.” He waved his hand at the kitchen, the dirty dishes in the sink, an open cereal box on the counter. “Place is a bit of a mess.”

“That’s okay.”

“I got beer in the fridge if you’d like that, maybe a can of pop or something. Some lemonade? In a carton, not something with tap water in it.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you know how long it’ll be before we can drink the water again?”

I shook my head. “No. Mind if I sit?”

“Be my guest.”

I pulled out a chair and dropped myself into it. Walden Fisher sat opposite me. A metal nail file sat on the table. He picked it up, slipped it into his shirt pocket. His fingernails looked ragged from biting. He’d said something to me once about his nerves being all shot to hell these last few years. Not very surprising.

“How’d you get home from the hospital?”

“Victor gave me a lift,” he said. “So, did you come by just to see if I was okay, or is there something else on your mind?”

“We talked the other day, about Olivia,” I said. “I wanted to talk some more.”

“Shoot,” he said.

“We haven’t given up trying to find out who killed your daughter.”

Walden shrugged. “So you say,” he said.

“I can’t get into specifics, but there’ve been times when I thought I had an idea who it might be. Individuals who were already in custody, or possibly even deceased.”

“Like who?”

“As I said, I can’t get into that. But I’m less sure of that now.”

“What are you saying?”

“Just that. That he’s not someone we’ve picked up for some other offense.”

Walden leaned in. “Has he done it again?”