Linwood Barclay: The Twenty-Three

“Maureen?”

“I’m here. I’m just… I’ve been just barely holding it together all day. There’s a list online.” She paused. “Of the dead.”

“Oh.”

“Some of them are people we know. Alicia, who I work with?”

“Right?”

“She lost both her parents. At one of the nursing homes. They said on the radio that there were forty-two fatalities in facilities for the elderly. They died before anyone could even get them to the hospital. It brings the number of dead to over two hundred.”

The scale of the tragedy had gotten so big I’d become numbed by it. I had lost the capacity to be shocked.

“I have a couple of things to do yet,” I told her, “and then Rhonda and I are going to make a statement about Angus Carlson’s arrest, and then I’ll be home.”

“I love you,” Maureen said.

“I love you, too.”

• • •

By the time I’d mounted the steps to Walden Fisher’s porch and rapped my knuckles on the door, I wasn’t sure I had anything left. I could feel the exhaustion washing over me. It was just as well Walden took the better part of thirty seconds to come to the door. I needed that much time to keep my head from spinning.

“Hello?” he said as he swung the door open. Then, recognizing me, he said, “Oh, Detective.”

“Mr. Fisher,” I said, extending a hand.

He had been rubbing the tip of his right thumb with his index finger. He spotted something scraggly on the nail and quickly bit it off. “Sorry,” he said. He offered that same hand and I took it with some reluctance.

“May I come in?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, and made way for me. “I was thinking you might come by.”

Had he already heard about Carlson?

“Really?” I said.

“It was on the news. About Victor. My God, I just can’t believe it. It’ s-it’s unthinkable what he did.”

Of course. That much had become public.

“I apologize for not coming by to tell you about that,” I said. “I should have. But there’s been another development, something even more important to you.”

He looked at me expectantly. “What?”

“I wouldn’t mind getting off my feet,” I said.

We took seats in the living room. Walden was on the edge of his, leaning forward. Next to him, on an end table, was a picture of his wife, Beth, and daughter, Olivia, taken, I guessed, when Olivia was around twelve years old.

Both smiling.

I said, “We have someone in custody in connection with Olivia’s death.”

His mouth dropped open an inch. “Victor?”

“No, not Victor. It’s a man named Angus Carlson.” I drew a breath. “A member of the Promise Falls police.”

Walden sat back in his chair, stunned. “Carlson?”

“That’s right.”

“But I met him. Yesterday, at the hospital.”

I nodded. “That’s right. Carlson has confessed to Olivia’s murder, and two others here in Promise Falls. There may be more, in Cleveland, that happened before he moved here.”

“Dear God,” he said. “He just came in and confessed?”

“No,” I said. “There were things that led to him. In fact, you played a role there, when you gave me those letters the town had sent to Olivia. We found Carlson just before he was going to do it again, I think. There’s going to be a statement this afternoon, but I wanted you to be the first to know about this.”

He shook his head slowly, still disbelieving.

“Why?” he asked.

I told him what Angus had told us. “I can’t say that it makes any sense.”

“In his mind it did,” Walden said.

I nodded. “You never really know what’s going on inside people’s heads.”

He was mulling it over, trying to take it in. “They’re going to show up at my door, aren’t they?”

“They?”

“Reporters,” he said. “Soon as you tell them about this, they’ll be swarming around out front.”

“That’s a reasonable expectation,” I said. “We can ask them to give the families-people like you-some space, but they don’t tend to listen.”

He looked down at himself. His plaid flannel shirt had several minor stains on it.

“Beth would kill me if I went before the cameras looking like this,” he said with a sad smile. “I should throw on a clean shirt. They might show up any minute.”

I didn’t think that was so, but then again, Finley had already heard about Carlson. Someone might have phoned in a tip to the media.

“It’s possible,” I said.

Walden stood. “Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

I stood as well as he crossed the room and went up the stairs.

Suddenly, I felt woozy.

It was a bit like how I’d felt when I’d chased Victor Rooney down the driveway, before the pain in my chest.

I took a few deep breaths. Oxygen, I thought. I needed oxygen.

The wooziness passed after several seconds, but there was a lingering feeling that I might be sick to my stomach.

There was probably a bathroom on the first floor. I walked in the direction of the kitchen, passed one door I thought might be a powder room, and opened it, only to discover it was a closet. But I got lucky with the second door.

I stepped into the two-piece bathroom, left the door open. There was a white porcelain pedestal sink next to a toilet. Behind me, a towel rack and a shelf with some knickknacks. What I wanted to do was splash some water on my face. I still wasn’t going to drink it, but if it was safe enough to shower with, I could splash some on my cheeks.

I turned on the cold tap, held one hand under it until the water was good and chilly, cupped my palms beneath it. I closed my eyes tight, tossed the water on my face.

Did it again.

I turned off the tap, reached behind me for the hand towel hanging there, and dried my face off.

I needed to take some weight off my feet. I placed my hands on both sides of the sink, and inadvertently knocked something off the side.

I looked down between the sink and the toilet and saw that I had knocked Walden’s metal nail file to the floor. About six inches long, with a clear blue plastic handle. It had landed next to a plastic wastepaper basket. I was worried the blood would rush to my head when I bent over to pick it up.

I needed a second.

While I was looking down, something in the trash basket caught my eye. Amid a few wadded tissues there was a small bottle, the kind that might contain cough syrup. But a glance at the label told me it was not cough syrup.

Bracing myself against the sink with one hand, I reached down into the basket with the other. Got my fingers around the bottle and brought it up to eye level.

I read the label.

Syrup of Ipecac.

I didn’t even know they still made that stuff. I remembered back when I was a kid, it was in most people’s medicine cabinets. But it had, over the years, fallen out of favor.

I certainly hadn’t forgotten what it was for.

It made you throw up. Violently.

I sensed someone standing just outside the door. I turned, the bottle of ipecac still in my hand.

Walden Fisher, wearing a nice, crisp white shirt, was staring at me.

OH, shit.

Duckworth

“Iwas feeling dizzy,” I told Walden. “Came in here for a minute to pull myself together.”

Walden said nothing.

I held up the bottle. “What’s the story on this, Walden?”

“That’s ipecac,” he said.

“I know. I can read. I haven’t seen this in a long time. But this looks like a relatively new bottle.” I took a closer look at it, turned it sideways. “Empty, too. Where’d you get this?”