Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

Connections. Degrees of separation.

But all I really knew was that Helt had attacked Pilgrim. I didn’t know, for certain, that he’d attacked the others. Was it possible he’d had a partner? Rooney’s admission that Thackeray was part of his jogging route had me wondering.

I didn’t know that Rooney was linked to the man Clive Duncomb had fatally shot, but it didn’t stop me from asking, “How did you know Mason Helt?”

If the question in any way unnerved him, he hid it well.

“Who?” Rooney said.

“Mason Helt. A Thackeray student.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

He turned the handle on the double-wide garage door and swung it upward. Inside was an old, rusted van that had been squeezed in between shelves and assorted piles of junk.

He unlocked the van door, got in, slammed it as I stood there by the back bumper, off to the side. As he turned the ignition, black exhaust belched from the tailpipe. I took a step back, waved the fumes away from my face.

The van backed up until it was fully on the driveway, at which point Victor got out, left the driver’s door open and the engine running, and walked back to draw the garage door back down.

But before he did, something on one of the shelves caught my eye.

“Hang on,” I said, raising a hand.

“What?”

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

The garage was cluttered, so it was possible Victor’s puzzlement was genuine.

Already my mind was wondering about the legality of a search. This was not Victor Rooney’s garage. It belonged to his landlady, who was deceased. But would a court see the garage, where Victor had parked his van, as his property?

It would be better if I had his permission.

“Do you mind if I go in here?” I asked.

“I guess not,” he said cautiously.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

I wished I had a witness, but there you go.

“What is it?” he asked.

I led him over to a set of metal shelves that were littered with paint cans, winter car brushes, garden supplies, coiled hoses, even a box filled with old long-playing records. The back wall of the garage was a mess of stacked wood scraps. Partial sheets of plywood, posts, some scraps of Styrofoam board used for insulation. But right now, I was focused on the shelves.

One shelf in particular.

“What’s that?” I said.

It looked like a wire cage, dimensions similar to those of a loaf of bread. About a foot long, five inches tall and wide. At one end there was a funneled opening. It would be easy enough to stick your hand in-if it was small enough-but when you pulled it out, you’d get caught on the pointed wire ends of the funnel.

I was pretty sure I knew what it was. I wondered whether Victor knew. And if he did know, whether he’d admit it.

He shook his head. “Emily kept a lot of shit out here.”

“So you don’t know what that is?”

Victor shrugged.

“Beats me.”

I said, “I think it’s a trap.”

“A trap?”

I nodded. “For squirrels.”

“No shit.”

And then something else caught my eye. Something poking out from behind one of the scrap plywood sheets leaning up against the back wall.

“JESUS, Brandon, what the hell are you doing here?” Samantha asked when she turned around and saw her ex-husband.

He smiled. “I bet you thought I couldn’t find you.”

Sam said, “Are you out of your mind? Breaking out of jail?”

Brandon shook his head. “I didn’t break out. I was on a trip to see my mother in the-”

“I know,” she said. “Same difference.”

“She had a heart attack,” he said. “She’s in intensive care.”

“Shit, I never sent a card.”

Brandon sighed, took a step toward her.

“Don’t come near me,” she said. “Stay right there. If you get any closer, I’ll start screaming. I swear to God.”

He raised his hands defensively and took a step back. “Okay, okay. Don’t have a hissy.”

“A hissy? Really? After what your parents did? And your dumbass friend Ed?” She had reached for the empty pot that was sitting on the Coleman. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it would have to do. The one she really wanted was in the car, behind the tent.

What a smart idea that turned out to be.

“Do you have any idea the shit they pulled?” she asked him, her voice starting to rise.

Brandon glanced left and right. “You’re going to wake up all the other campers.”

“You think I care?”

“Look,” he said, “I know what they did. I heard all about it. The police came to interview me, in jail. They wanted to know what I’d had to do with it.”

Sam cocked her head to one side, waiting for an answer.

“Nothing,” he told her. “I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I had no idea what was going on.”

“Bullshit.”

He nodded understandingly. “I don’t blame you for saying that.”

The tent flap opened. Carl stuck his head out, saw his mother first, and said, “I thought I heard-”

His eyes landed on his father and he said, “Dad!”

“You stay in there!” Sam said to her son.

“I just wanted to see-”

“Hey, sport,” Brandon said, not moving. “How’s it going?”

“Okay,” Carl said warily. “You’re supposed to be in jail.”

Brandon grinned. “Yeah, I know. I’m sort of playing hooky.”

That made Carl laugh. But the laughter was cut short when his mother said, “I told you to get in there and you pull that zipper down.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, drawing his head back in like a frightened turtle.

“Wait,” Brandon said. “There’s something I want to say, and I want Carl to hear it, too.”

All that was sticking out beyond the edge of the tent now was Carl’s nose, but his face remained visible.

“He can hear anything you have to stay with the tent zipped up,” Sam said.

Brandon looked at his ex-wife imploringly. “Please. Five minutes. It’s all I ask.”

Sam was weighing the request. Her eyes moved between Brandon and Carl. She was afraid for herself, and afraid for him, but Carl did not show any signs of fear. He looked like he wanted to hear what his father had to say.

“Five minutes,” Sam said.

Brandon nodded slowly, took a breath, as though getting ready to make a speech. “So, you need to know why I came here, why I tracked you down. I didn’t know I was going to get a chance like this. That kinda just happened. When they let me out to visit my mom-”

“I hope she dies,” Sam said.

Brandon wasn’t flustered. “I get that. Anyway, when they let me visit her in the hospital, I had a chance to get away, and I took it. Because I wanted to see you, and Carl. To talk to you. I mean, I figured any letters I wrote, you’d just throw them out. Anything I wanted to tell you, you’d never know. I figured it would be better if I could talk to you face-to-face.”

“You nearly killed that guy in the hospital.”

“No, I didn’t. I just choked him enough to make him pass out, is all. He’s fine.”

“Four minutes,” Sam said.

“So, once I slipped away, and, well, you know, stole a car, I started heading this way. Because I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

The word hung there for a few seconds.

“Sorry,” Sam repeated.

He nodded. “That sounds kinda short of the mark, I know. I don’t quite know what else to say. My mom, I know she’s crazy. She’s a nasty, vindictive… well, she’s a piece of work, no doubt about it. That’s what she is. And she’s mean enough and scary enough that she makes others go along with what she says. It’s not that big a surprise that she got Ed to do what she wanted. He’s just dumb. He was my friend, I admit it, but he hasn’t got the smarts of a beanbag. What’s scary is that she gets my dad to go along with so much of her crazy shit.”