Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

He looked down, scraped his foot across the dirt. Carl’s entire head was out of the tent now.

“They told me all the stuff they did. Trying to grab Carl at school, then Ed coming to where you work and, well-”

“Trying to kill me,” Sam said.

“Yeah, that. I didn’t know, and if I did, I’d have done everything I could to stop it. And even if you believe me, even if you accept what I’m telling you, I’ll understand if you don’t forgive me. Not asking for anything like that. Fact is, if you’d never gotten mixed up with me, you’d never have gotten mixed up with my fucked-up family and friends. I’m the cause of all your troubles, when you get right down to it.”

He looked at his son.

“I’ve been just about the worst father in the world for you, for all the same reasons.” He chuckled weakly. “You didn’t pick so good when it came to dads.”

“You can’t really pick your dad,” Carl said.

“He’s trying to be funny,” his mother said.

“Oh,” Carl said. “I get it.”

“I’ve done a lot of thinking while I’ve been in jail,” Brandon said. “Sorting out the mistakes I made while I was still outside. How I expected everything to come to me without working hard for it. I get that now. When I get out-’cause, let’s face it, I’ll be going back in, and for probably a lot longer-I hope I’m gonna be a different kind of man. Someone who takes responsibility for things. Who doesn’t blame others.”

“One minute,” Sam said, folding her arms across her chest.

“Okeydoke,” Brandon said. “I’m going to leave now. I’m going to find the office and have them call the cops and I’ll sit and wait for them to come. I’ll never bother either of you again. If you ever want to get in touch”-and here he looked straight at Carl-”I’ll be most grateful to hear from you. I would like that a lot , to be honest. If you ever want me in your life, I’ll be there, but you gotta be the one that takes the first step. I’m not gonna push it.”

Brandon took a long breath.

“I’m sorry. I truly am. I did what I set out to do. Now I can go back to Boston.” He grinned. “I’m sure there’re plenty of cops happy to give me a lift.”

He bowed his head, turned, and started to walk away.

“Wait!” Carl shouted, and Brandon spun around.

Carl shot out of the tent, arms outstretched. His intention was clear. He wanted to give his father a hug good-bye. But in his rush to come out, his foot caught on a stretch of upturned canvas that ran across the bottom of the open tent flap.

He went flying. His arms went out to break his fall. He hit the ground hard and yelped in pain.

Brandon, instinctively, suddenly charged toward his son.

Sam, still standing there, wielding the pot by its handle, also started running toward Carl.

David brought the shotgun up to his shoulder and aimed.

“YOUdidn’t sleep at all, did you?” Gale asked her husband in the morning.

Angus Carlson was sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

“No,” he said.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said. “They’re going to decide you did the right thing.”

“Probably,” he said, getting up and walking naked into the bathroom. “But it could still go all to shit. A cop does a righteous shoot-then they turn the facts all around later.”

“We should do something today,” she said, propping herself up in bed, rearranging the pillow at her back. “Something fun. We should just get in the car and get out of this town. Try to forget everything that’s happened.”

She could hear a familiar trickle. Once she had heard the flush, she continued. “I know it’s hard to do, but we need to try to put all these things out of our heads, even if it’s just for a few hours.”

“I don’t know,” he said from the other room.

“Why don’t we… I’ve got it. Why don’t we drive to Montreal? It’s not that far. I could throw some things into a bag, have us ready to go in an hour. We could be there by the afternoon. I could find us a hotel online. I’m already off today and tomorrow, and I could call in sick Tuesday and Wednesday, or maybe they’ll just give me the time off anyway. What do you say?”

Nothing from Angus.

“Or do you have to be available?” she asked. “Like, even if you’re on leave, do you have to go in and answer questions about what happened? Haven’t they kind of got enough to deal with right now? In fact, I can’t believe they’re making you take a leave of absence when there’s so much going on.”

She could hear the sound of teeth being brushed.

“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?” Gale asked. Angus Carlson reappeared. He walked naked across the room, opened a dresser drawer, grabbed a pair of boxers, and stepped into them.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Angus said.

“About going to Montreal?”

“No. What you said last night.”

She looked blank. “Which thing? What?”

“About when you went to the bookstore,” Angus said. “To Naman’s.”

“Yes?”

“The book about poison that you saw there.”

Gale threw back the covers, crawled forward, and perched herself on the bed in a kneeling position. She was excited. “Yes? You think it means something?”

He was buttoning up a shirt. “I don’t know if it does or not. But I’m not sure it’s the kind of thing that can be ignored. I mean, it might really be nothing. But if it turns out Naman did have something to do with all this, we’ll be kicking ourselves later if we didn’t bother to check it out.”

“Oh my God, you really think he could be behind it?”

Angus pulled on a pair of jeans. “There’re all kinds of these things happening. These lone-wolf, rogue terrorists who get inspired by jihadists overseas. They’re not linked to any actual terror group. They’re acting totally on their own. He could be one of those.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, close to his wife. “What if this Naman guy blew up the drive-in? Maybe that was just a warm-up for what happened yesterday.”

“That’s terrifying,” Gale said, “that there could be someone like that, just living among us. It could be someone you know, someone you live right next door to, and it turns out they’re some kind of monster.”

“I know,” Angus said. “That’s what always happens, when they finally arrest some killer or terrorist. Turns out, he was a member of the chamber of commerce or he was a Scout leader or he played on the local hockey team. These kind of people, Gale, are like you say. They’re among us.”

“So what are you going to do? About Naman? Are you going to tell Detective Duckworth what I saw?”

Angus thought about that. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how it would look.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, I get put on leave, and then call in with a tip. Like I’m trying to impress them, wheedle my way back in. I’m not going to do that.”

“But if Naman actually had something to do with this-”

“I’ll do it myself,” Angus said.

“Go on,” Gale said slowly.

“I’ll go over there and talk to him. Not as a cop, but just someone dropping by, seeing how he’s managing after the place got firebombed.”

“Can you do that?” she asked.

“Why not?”

“And then,” Gale said, “if you do find something, if you really do believe he might have had something to do with it, then you’ll go to Duckworth?”

“Exactly,” he said.

Gale threw her arms around him. “I’m so proud of you.”

“It’s no big deal,” Angus said.