Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

“We need to set up a news conference,” she said.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I mean, what we’ve found here, it looks promising, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”

“Barry, the town’s completely on edge. We need to give people something . We need to let the people know we’ve made a significant discovery.”

I didn’t see any way out of it. Maybe she was right.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s set it up for this afternoon. We’ll know even more then. Like if that’s George Lydecker in there.”

Rhonda thought that was fine. But she would put the word out to the media that something was coming.

“What about the others?” the chief asked me. “Rosemary Gaynor, and this latest one, at Thackeray. Lorraine Plummer?” She was doing better at keeping herself up to speed.

“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “It’s very possible all these dots connect, but I don’t know how.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know when we set a time to face the cameras.” She smiled and rested a hand on my shoulder. “Nice work, Barry. Really, really nice.”

I got back to the station two hours later. By that time, we’d pretty much confirmed that the deceased was, indeed, George Lydecker. I knew Angus Carlson was on leave, but I put in a call to him anyway, since he’d investigated the student’s disappearance.

I got him on his cell.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said.

“It’s okay.”

“We found George Lydecker. And very possibly our water poisoner.”

Angus told me Lydecker had a reputation for sneaking into unlocked garages and snooping around, stealing things. That got me wondering whether George had simply found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Victor had discovered him in that garage, and feared George might tell the police what he’d seen-even at the risk of getting himself into trouble for the break-in-Victor might have seen no option but to kill him.

One small tumbler falling into place.

“How you managing?” I asked Angus.

“Okay. I just want them to realize I had a good reason to shoot that guy.”

“I haven’t heard anything that suggests anyone feels you didn’t. This is just how it is in an officer-involved shooting. Things have to run their course.”

“Got it.”

“What are you doing today?” I asked. “I mean, look at the bright side. The whole town’s going to hell and you got yourself a day off.” When Angus didn’t say anything right away, I said, “Okay, not funny.”

“Might visit my mom,” he said.

“Well, hang in there,” I said.

“Barry?” Angus said quickly before I ended the call.

“Yeah?”

“Why’d he do it? Why’d Victor want to kill the whole town?”

“Not sure,” I said. “My guess is payback.”

“What do you mean, payback?”

“For Olivia Fisher. The town wasn’t there for her.”

“Jesus Christ,” Angus said.

“Yeah, I know.”

When we were done talking, I leaned back in my chair. Rubbed my chest. I was pretty sure it was nothing, what had happened in Victor’s driveway. A sharp pain that had lasted only a second. Probably cramped up somehow when I started running. I’d get myself checked out when the dust settled.

If it ever did.

The phone rang. I snatched up the receiver. It was reception.

“There’s a Cal Weaver here to see you.”

“Send him in,” I said.

I got up, leaving my sport jacket on the back of my chair, and met him coming down the hall. We shook hands. “Good to see you’re okay,” I said.

“Never had a chance to drink the water yesterday,” he said. “Had a fire at my place a few nights ago and was staying out of town.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Got somewhere we can talk?”

I led him into an interrogation room and closed the door. We sat down opposite each other.

“I remember this room,” he said.

“Feeling wistful?”

“I didn’t spend much time in here. Never made it to detective.” “Until you left.”

“Yeah,” he said. He put his palms flat down on the table’s cold, metal surface. “You haven’t closed the Miriam Chalmers thing.”

“No,” I said. “I like Clive Duncomb for it, but he’s dead. So we’re not exactly in a position to lay charges. Why?”

Cal gave that some thought. “You know my involvement. I’d been working for Adam Chalmers’s daughter after that thing at the drive-in.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Lucy Brighton.”

“That’s right. Lucy.”

“Does she have some information that might help us?”

“She’s dead,” Cal said. “Yesterday. The water.”

“Shit,” I said. “I haven’t seen a complete list of casualties yet.”

“Her daughter phoned me after she found her mother on the floor of the kitchen. Crystal. She’s eleven. She’s been through a lot.”

I shook my head. “I still don’t know why you’re here.”

He ran his hand across the surface of the table. “Like I said, I wondered if you had enough on Duncomb to satisfy you he was the one. He was bad news. He was a bad cop before he became a bad security chief.”

“Yeah,” I said. “No argument there.”

“It’s not going to hurt his reputation any if he gets saddled with Miriam’s murder.”

I leaned in. “What’s going on?”

“I just wanted to know if the investigation was more or less at an end.”

“Not if there’s someone else out there who needs to be brought to justice,” I said.

“There isn’t,” Cal said. “If Duncomb’s a good fit for this, that’s fine. I wouldn’t want to do anything that messes that up.”

“Cal.”

He smiled. “They talk a lot about victims of crime, and with good reason. The family members who have to deal with the loss of a loved one. They give victim impact statements at sentencing hearings. They get to tell the judge how their lives have changed. But there are other victims of crime, ones you don’t hear about so much. The relatives of perpetrators. Their lives get turned upside down, too. They’re not responsible for what happened, but they get blamed. They get shunned. They have to live with the shame of what someone with their blood did. They have to move away, start over again. Even though they go through a tremendous amount of pain, no one much gives a shit about them.”

I waited.

“Sometimes,” Cal said, “in a perfect world, under the right circumstances, it would be better if they never knew in the first place.”

He pushed his chair back, stood. “It was good to see you, Barry.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We should grab a beer sometime.”

He smiled, slipped past me, and left the interrogation room.

When I got back to my desk, I noticed the ends of two envelopes sticking out from the inside pocket of my sport jacket. They’d been jammed in there since yesterday. I grabbed them, tossed them onto my desk. They were the reminders from the Promise Falls police to Olivia Fisher to pay her speeding tickets. I’d taken them from Walden with the hope that I could get the town to stop sending them after all this time.

I slit the envelopes, pulled out the notices, and tossed them onto my desk as the phone rang again.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, dropping into my chair and grabbing the receiver at the same time.

“Ten minutes,” Rhonda Finderman said. “Presser’s going to be out front of the building.”

“Got it,” I said.

That meant making myself presentable, and that meant finding a mirror. I stood, threw on my jacket, and opened my bottom desk drawer to find a tie. I usually wore one to work but hadn’t bothered today. I found a blue-and-silver-striped one that looked more or less clean, if wrinkled, and took it with me into the men’s room.