Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. The reason I’ve come to see you is to learn more about Olivia. Tell me about her.”

He leaned back. “She was wonderful. She was smart. She was everything to me and Beth. She would have been somebody. She already was. But she’d have shown the world how amazing she could be if she’d been given the chance.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Olivia was never mean to anyone. She never held a grudge. She was always happy when something good happened for someone else. You know how some people, they don’t like it when someone else has a success. They’re bitter or jealous or whatever. But she wasn’t like that.”

“She grew up here?” I said, casting my eye about the kitchen.

“Yup. Beth and I were living here when we had her. This was the only place she ever lived. She didn’t bunk in at Thackeray. Didn’t make any sense, and it was a heck of a lot cheaper to live at home when she went to school.”

“Of course.”

“She’s still got her room upstairs,” Walden said. “Haven’t touched it.”

“Really?” I asked. I might have sounded surprised, but I wasn’t. Grieving families often left the rooms of those they’d lost untouched. It was too painful to go in there. Cleaning out a bedroom was a final acknowledgment of what had happened. And even if the bedroom could be used by another family member, who wanted to be the relative that moved into it?

“Beth wouldn’t touch a thing in there, and since she’s died, well, I haven’t felt the need, either.”

I couldn’t imagine that seeing the room would help me any, but I wanted to just the same. So I asked.

“Sure, why not?” Walden said. “You might want to lead the way up the stairs. I’m still feeling pretty weak. I’ll catch up to you. It’s the first door on the left.”

I found my way.

The door was closed. I turned the knob, opened it slowly. The air inside was stale. Olivia’s bedroom was maybe ten by ten, a double bed taking center stage. The walls were pale green, what Sherwin-Williams would probably call “foam green” or “seaweed.” Puffy yellow spread on the bed. One wall was dominated by a magnificent framed photo of a whale breaking the surface of the water.

“When she was a little girl,” said Walden, who’d caught up to me and was standing in the hall, “she loved that movie Free Willy . You know the one? About this little boy who wants to free a killer whale from an aquarium because they’re going to kill it?”

“I know it.”

“She cried every time she saw it. Had it on videotape, then on a DVD. Had the sequels, too, but even Olivia had to admit they were pretty lame. That was her word for them. ‘Lame.’”

The other pictures on the wall were not as large as that one, but they all featured sea creatures. Photos of a pod-I think that’s what they call them-of dolphins. A sea horse, an octopus, a photo of Jacques Cousteau.

“She hated Jaws ,” Walden said. “Just hated it. That shark, she said, was just being a shark. It was just doing what it naturally does. It wasn’t a monster. That’s what she said. Made her mad when people said they loved that movie.”

I noticed several unopened envelopes on the desk, some with the Promise Falls municipal logo in the corner.

“What’s all this?” I asked, picking them up, leafing through them.

“She still gets mail,” he said. “Like a credit card statement, or an ad, something like that. Companies that don’t know what happened. Beth got so upset when something for Olivia came in the mail, she’d just put it there on her dresser like Olivia was going to come home one day and deal with it. And I haven’t got the energy to tell those idiots that it’s been three years. What really gets me is that the town doesn’t even know.”

I held up one of the envelopes. “What are these?”

“Warnings about paying a speeding ticket.” His face went red with anger. “How can one part of the police department be trying to figure out who killed her, and another department is busy nagging her about a ticket?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. It shouldn’t happen, but it does.” There were three such envelopes, unopened. “I’ll take these, if you like, and make sure they stop.”

“I’d be grateful,” he said. “Last time you were here, you sounded like you were going to talk to Victor.”

“I popped by,” I said.

“He’s not in a good frame of mind. I think he’s taking the anniversary harder than I am.”

I knew that in two days it would be three years since Olivia’s murder.

“He’s just so angry,” Walden said.

“Of course he is,” I said. “It’s a natural reaction to an act of senseless violence.”

“It’s not the killer he’s angry with,” Walden Fisher said.

I had a feeling where this was going. “The others,” I said.

“The ones that heard her screams and couldn’t be bothered to do a thing. That’s what really eats at Victor. You know all about that.”

“I do.”

“He nearly started a fight with complete strangers in a bar the other night, accusing them of being cowards.”

“Were they some of the people? Who did nothing?”

“Hell, no. No one even knows who those people were. But the way Victor sees it, the whole town’s guilty. If those random citizens of Promise Falls would turn their backs on Olivia, maybe anyone in this town would have. Sometimes I think the anger’s just going to consume Victor. He’s drinking a lot. I worry about him.”

“You said he drove you home?” I asked.

“That’s right. He came by the hospital, to see what was going on. Saw me there. The doctor said if I wanted someone to look at me, maybe I should go to Albany. I figured, I wasn’t dead yet, so I might as well come home.”

“Was Victor sick?”

“No,” Walden said. “He got lucky. He hadn’t had any of the water to drink. But he was telling me his landlady died. Spotted her dead in the backyard.”

“That must have been rough.”

Walden nodded. “Yeah. Like we haven’t all been through enough.”

I scanned Olivia’s room one more time, getting a small sense of who she was and what she cared about, but I wasn’t coming away with anything useful.

We made our way back down the stairs. Walden stepped with me out onto the porch.

“There were twenty-two of them, you know,” Walden said.

“Yes.”

“Those are the ones Victor really blames. Well, those twenty-two and himself. I don’t know that there’s anyone he blames more than himself, for not showing up on time to meet Olivia.”

I thought about that.

Twenty-two, plus himself.

I could do the math.

ONCEhe had left the water plant, Randall Finley decided to head back to the park, where his people were still handing out free flats of water from the backs of the Finley Springs trucks. Many of the trucks had already run out and been sent back to the plant for more.

Along the way, he put in a call to David. There might be some more photo opportunities, and he wanted David to be there.

David picked up on the first ring.

“My man,” Finley said. “I’m going back to the park. Should be there in five. Meet me.”

“I can’t,” David said.

“Come on, the good people of Promise Falls are counting on us.”

“I know, it’s all about helping the people.”

“Am I hearing a tone?”

“Forget it,” David said. “I’ve got something else I have to deal with.”

“What could be more important than helping people get good, clean water?”

“That Sam person you were asking me about before? I’m worried she and her son may be in trouble.”