Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

“No, it is, it really is. I love it when I see you excited about something like this. Because sometimes…”

“Sometimes what?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“No, sometimes what?”

“All I was going to say is that sometimes, you know, you get in this very dark place. And I get that. We all have moments when we get down. But I worry about you when you’re like that, when you start obsessing-”

“Obsessing?”

“That was the wrong word.”

“No, no, it’s the right word. I know that’s how I can be when it comes to my mom.”

“I really see you moving forward,” Gale said. “Like, right now, you’re in a different place altogether.”

“I am,” he said.

Angus leaned in close to his wife, kissed her lips. She slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him into her. They tumbled over onto the bed.

“I love you,” she said.

“I have to go,” Angus said. “I have to do this thing.” He untangled himself from her. “But later, when I get back home, we’ll talk about Montreal.”

“Really?”

“Sure. You’re right. We need to get away. I’m starting to wonder why anyone lives here at all.”

Duckworth

“WHAT’Sthis?” I asked Victor Rooney, pointing to the back wall of the garage.

“What?” he said, the engine still running and the door to his van still open. He was standing with me, just inside the garage, where we had been looking at the squirrel traps on the shelves that lined one wall.

I was pointing to something wrapped in dark plastic sheeting sticking out from behind a sheet of plywood that was leaned up against the wall. There was about two feet of it showing, whatever it was, and it was shaped roughly like a rolled carpet. But at the end there was something sticking up.

Like feet, I thought.

I became very aware of the gun at my side, that at any moment I might be reaching for it.

“I don’t know what that is,” Victor said. “She kept all kinds of stuff out here.”

“You want to move that piece of plywood for me?” I asked. “I want to get a better look at it.”

I’d have attempted to move it myself, but I wanted my hands free.

“Why should I do that?” he asked.

“I just thought you’d want to help.”

“I’ve got things to do,” he said. “You should get out of the garage. I want to close the door.”

“You asked me in, remember?” I said. “Just give me another second. Do you mind?” I pointed to the plywood.

Hesitantly, he walked over to the sheet, put a hand on each side, and lifted it out of the way.

That rolled carpet was about six feet long. But it got broader in the middle, and there was something round at one end.

What we had here was a mummy.

“Jesus,” Victor said. “That looks like a person.”

Indeed it did. But who? Who was missing? My mind raced back through the last few days.

A kid. Not a kid, really. A young man. George something. George Lydecker. Angus Carlson had been working on it. A recent grad from Thackeray. Could that be who was wrapped up tight here?

I turned and faced Victor, felt my heart starting to pick up speed. “Mr. Rooney, I need you to lie flat on the floor with your arms behind your back.”

“What?”

“Flat on the floor, hands behind your back. I’m placing you under arrest.”

“I don’t have anything to do with this,” he protested. “This isn’t even my garage. I just park my van here. This is total bullshit.”

“Mr. Rooney-”

He pointed to the object wrapped in plastic. “Is that a fucking dead guy? Because if it is, I’m as surprised to see it as you are. I don’t ever remember seeing anything like that before. Or any of that other shit.”

He nodded toward the squirrel traps. I glanced back for half a second, and spotted something I had not seen when I’d looked that way earlier.

A hand.

Turned sideways, palm out, it was poking out from behind some paint cans.

“Don’t move,” I said to Rooney, and shifted toward the shelves. As I got closer, the hand looked shinier and less lifelike.

It was from a mannequin.

I’d just won the lotto.

I looked back at Rooney. There was panic in his eyes. I’d reached into my pocket for a plastic cuff, just like the one I had used to secure Randall Finley to the door at the water treatment plant.

“This is the last time I’m going to ask nicely,” I said. “On the floor, hands behind your back.”

He bolted.

He went straight for the van. With the door open and the engine running, it wasn’t going to take him long to get away.

I brought out my gun.

“Freeze!” I said, arms outstretched, both hands on the weapon. Victor had very little interest in doing what I asked.

I wasn’t going to shoot him. My life was not in jeopardy, and I had a lot of questions for him. I did not want him dead. So as Victor got behind the wheel and threw the van into reverse, I aimed for the tires.

That’s the sort of thing they do all the time in the movies, but a tire doesn’t present as a large target, especially when you’re not standing beside the vehicle. Which was why I didn’t hit the front right tire until my third shot, by which time Rooney was halfway down the driveway. The van lurched to one side, but Rooney wasn’t slowing down as the wheel rim dug into asphalt. He was going so quickly in reverse the transmission was whining in protest.

I aimed for the other front tire as he reached the sidewalk. Took out a headlight.

I started running.

Once Rooney hit the street and cranked the wheel, the side of the van would present itself to me. I’d have a brief opportunity to take out another tire. With two out, he wouldn’t get far. I’d be on the phone in thirty seconds and police all over town would be looking for him.

As it turned out, he didn’t get much past the end of the driveway.

The moment the van emerged onto the street, there was a tremendous, teeth-rattling crash.

A fire truck broadsided Rooney’s van.

It couldn’t have been answering an urgent call, because there’d been no sound of sirens. But the Promise Falls Fire Department was still making regular rounds of the city, looking for people in trouble, still reminding them it was not yet safe to drink the water.

The truck-it was a pumper, not a ladder truck-hadn’t been going all that fast, probably no more than thirty miles per hour, but there’s a lot of weight to a truck like that, and it pushed Rooney’s van a good forty feet up the street before the driver behind the wheel of the truck had fully applied the brakes.

I had my phone out, ready to call 911, then figured, What the hell?

The fire department was already here. Chances were they were putting in a call for an ambulance.

I hoped so. Because at that moment, I felt a stabbing pain in my chest.

FROMwhere David had been sitting in the woods, he could see Sam, and he could see Brandon, but he could not see Carl anywhere. He had a view of the back and the side of the tent. David didn’t know whether Carl was still inside it, or had gone off to use the central bathrooms, and he didn’t know which would be worse. If Carl was in the tent, it might be tricky for Brandon to try to drag him out. But if Carl had gone to the bathroom, he might end up walking back into the middle of this confrontation at any moment.

He could hear only a little of what they were saying. Brandon was doing most of the talking. But he wasn’t always speaking directly to Sam. His eyes were moving from her to the tent and back again.

Carl, David guessed, was in the tent, maybe looking out. Yeah, that was it. Sam turned to look at the tent at one point and spoke sharply. Loud enough that David could hear. She’d told him not to come out.