Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

“Lindsay?” I said. She nodded. I told her who I was and showed her my ID. “What’s your last name?”

“Brookins,” she said, dabbing her eyes.

“I’m going upstairs, and then I’m coming back, and we can talk.”

“I didn’t murder her,” she said. “What he says, that’s not true. I didn’t know.”

Something dark and furry in the corner of the room caught my eye.

“The dog,” I said.

“Bipsie,” she said. “I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.”

I nodded. “I’ll be back.”

I went up the stairs and found Jane’s room without help. All I had to do was follow my nose. The woman was sprawled diagonally across the bed, facedown, her legs up by the pillow. The bedspread was awash in vomit. It looked as though maybe she’d been in the process of trying to crawl out of the bed before she succumbed.

On the bedside table, a tall, narrow glass with half an inch of pink lemonade in the bottom.

I made my way back down to the kitchen. Lindsay’s version of events was not much different from Randy’s.

She had taken Mrs. Finley her lemonade around ten in the morning. Jane had said she was tired and probably going to go back to sleep. Lindsay returned to the kitchen to tidy up and start lunch preparations, then went to the basement to do laundry. It must have been around then, she said, when the fire trucks with their loudspeakers went through the neighborhood. She had heard some indistinct noises outside, but didn’t pay any attention to them.

It wasn’t her habit to listen to the radio or turn on the TV through the day. During her downtime, she read. She showed me a dog-eared, used copy of a John Grisham novel. I looked inside the front cover, where it had been stamped “Naman’s Used Books.”

“I was about to go upstairs and check on Mrs. Finley,” she said, “when Bipsie started to act weird.”

The dog was throwing up. She cleaned up after her once; then the dog was sick again. As Lindsay was wiping up after her a second time, the dog keeled over.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I called Mr. Finley to tell him. He said the water was poisoned. And then I thought, oh no.”

I nodded understandingly. “Okay,” I said.

“He says I murdered her. I didn’t murder her. It was an accident. I swear it was an accident. It’s just, he is always telling me to use his water, and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, because one time, his water had some brown flecks or something in it. A bad batch, he said. But ever since then, I don’t use it all the time. When I make Mrs. Finley lemonade, I just use the tap, but I didn’t tell Mr. Finley. If he knew the water was poisoned, he should have told me before he went out.”

It wasn’t in my nature to come to Randy’s defense, but I said, “He probably didn’t know then. And once he did, he probably didn’t think he needed to call home. Because of what he was always telling you.”

She had both hands up to her mouth. “Oh God, I did kill her. I did. But I didn’t mean it.”

I went back outside, found Randy standing under a tree.

Weeping.

I came up on him from behind and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Randy.”

He had one hand on the tree trunk, supporting himself. He struggled to regain his composure, then said, “You saw her?”

“Jane? Yes.”

“She looks so… she’d be so humiliated.”

“She’ll be taken care of.”

“You talked to Lindsay?”

“I did.”

“What did she tell you?”

“It’s an accident, Randy. She didn’t know. It’s not murder.”

Finley turned, put his forearm on the tree, and rested his head on it. “I know.” He started twice to say something, then stopped. The third time, he managed. “It’s my fault. Soon as I knew what was happening, I should have called. I just thought-no, I just didn’t think. I was so consumed with… with taking full advantage of what was going on. That was all I could see.”

I said nothing.

“It was a tragedy, I knew that. It’s not like I didn’t care. I did care. But I saw an opportunity, and I took it.” He turned his face around enough to see me. “That’s what I do.”

“I know. It’s in your DNA.”

“I got so focused on that, I never thought about… and the thing is, she’s the whole reason I’ve been doing it.”

I took a step toward him. “What do you mean?”

A self-effacing smile came over his face. “You know what an asshole I am, right, Barry?”

Who was it who said “never bullshit a bullshitter”?

“Sure.”

“I was trying to show I wasn’t. Maybe not to you. I could never convince you. But after all the dumbass things I’ve done over the years, especially that stuff with the hooker a few years ago, I wanted to prove to Jane there was more to me than that. I was going to be mayor again, I told her. I was going to do some good. Some real good. I even had an idea to get some jobs here. I was working a deal with Frank Mancini. You know Frank?”

“I’m aware of him.”

“I mean, yeah, there was something in it for me, too, but he’s going to build this plant on the site of the drive-in. Jobs. Maybe not as many as that private jail that was going to move in here at one point, but some. I wanted to get this town back on its feet. I wanted to show Jane. I wanted her to be proud of me again. I wanted to pay her back for all the shame I brought down on her.”

I nodded.

“You believe any of this?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Maybe.”

He stopped using the tree to support himself and looked me in the eye. “You think I did it. That I somehow did this thing to the water, so I could rush in and be the white knight.”

“Maybe,” I said again.

“If I was going to kill hundreds of people to save my political career, you don’t think I would have made sure my wife wasn’t one of the casualties?”

I searched those eyes. I didn’t know the answer to that question. It was possible he was telling me the truth.

It was also possible Jane was already deathly ill, her days numbered, and in Finley’s mind, letting her go a little early was justifiable to advance his political objectives.

But for the love of God, he was only running for mayor of Promise Falls. This wasn’t the goddamn presidency. How could someone want something that insignificant that badly?

On top of that, Jane’s death really did come down to Lindsay going against her employer’s wishes, and not being aware of what was happening in the town.

No, Randall Finley did not intend for his wife to die.

I held out a hand. He looked down at it, puzzled, then slowly took it in his and gripped it.

“I believe you,” I said.

JOYCEPilgrim started with a call to the woman in charge of summer athletics. Thackeray ran a number of programs from May through September. They were open to any students taking courses during that period, as well as people from beyond Thackeray. In addition, Thackeray rented out its various fields to local baseball and soccer clubs through the summer.

The summer athletics director was Hilda Brownlee, and Joyce tracked her down at home.

“I’m looking for a jogger,” she said.

“A jogger?” said Hilda.

“Someone who likes to take a run around the campus late at night. I wondered if you have any students training for any track or long-distance running events.”

“I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head,” she said. “Can I get back to you?”

In the meantime, Joyce had compiled a list of all the young people who were living in Thackeray residences over the summer. There were seventy-three of them. She went through the list, name by name. Fifty-eight of the residents were female, fifteen male.