Linwood Barclay - Final Assignment

I watched Joel’s face to see how he’d react. I wasn’t expecting a grin.

‘Don’t you mean surprised?’ he said.

‘Why do you say that?’ Lucy asked.

‘Well, the fact that he handed in anything must have been kind of a shock.’ He looked at his mother and smiled, as though expecting some sign of approval for the comeback.

‘I take your point,’ Lucy said. ‘So you’re aware that Chandler doesn’t always hand in assignments?’

‘Oh, I think everyone’s aware,’ Joel said.

‘What surprised me ,’ Lucy said, ‘was that you might show any willingness to help him.’

Instant bafflement. ‘Huh?’ he said.

‘Chandler says you wrote the story for him.’

His jaw dropped. But it was Alice who spoke first. ‘Are you kidding me? What a lying little son of a bitch.’

‘Wow,’ said Franny. ‘Like he didn’t cause enough trouble for Joel. What a fucking douche.’

Alice shot her daughter a look. ‘I won’t have that.’

‘Well that’s what he is,’ Joel’s sister said. ‘He’s like the world’s biggest liar.’

Finally Joel weighed in. ‘Why would he say something like that?’

I said, ‘We were given the impression that it was your way of mending fences. You offered to do an assignment for him, and in return, he and Mike would never bother or make fun of you again.’

‘That sounds like a protection racket,’ Alice said. ‘Like extortion.’

‘According to Chandler, it was Joel who made the offer,’ I said.

Joel shook his head angrily. ‘I wouldn’t sharpen a fucking pencil for either one of those assholes.’

Alice saw no reason to admonish her son for that.

Joel continued. ‘Not only did I not write a story for him, but I have never even spoken to the guy since he and Mike did what they did to me. I mean, we had to be in the same room together when they made their stupid apology, but even then I didn’t say anything to him.’

Lucy and I exchanged looks. ‘I guess we’re done here then,’ she said. She pushed back her chair, and I did the same. ‘Sorry to have troubled you,’ she said, her eyes sweeping the room to include not just Joel and his mother, but Franny too.

In the car, Lucy said to me, ‘What now?’

‘We go back and see if Chandler would like to amend his story,’ I said.

‘Oh, oh,’ Lucy said as we approached the Carson house.

There was an unmarked police car parked out front just like the one I’d found Barry Duckworth in earlier.

Greta opened the door for me when I rang the bell. ‘The police just got here,’ she said breathlessly. ‘A detective. He’s talking to Chandler now. Malcolm’s with them. I have to go back.’

We followed her. Duckworth was in the living room sitting across from Chandler and his father. When he saw Lucy and me, he smiled and stood.

‘Cal,’ he said. I introduced him to Lucy.

Malcolm said, ‘I’ve called my lawyer. They’re going to send someone over. I’ve told Chandler he doesn’t have to answer any questions.’

‘But I didn’t do anything,’ the boy protested. ‘So what’s the big deal?’

‘Tell me again about the story you wrote,’ Duckworth said.

So, the principal had talked.

‘I didn’t write it,’ he said. ‘Joel Blakelock wrote it. I’m not very good at writing stories so he gave me one to hand in, which was pretty nice of him considering.’

‘Considering what?’ Duckworth asked.

Evidently Barry wasn’t up to speed on everything.

‘I don’t see any point in getting into this,’ Malcolm said. ‘We’re not answering any more questions without a lawyer present. You’re trying to turn this into something it’s not. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

Duckworth sighed and got to his feet. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, and made his way past Lucy and Greta and me. Greta closed the door behind him and turned the deadbolt, as though she thought Duckworth might be back with a battering ram.

‘This is terrible,’ she said.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ Malcolm said. ‘Other than that stupid story, they don’t have anything on Chandler. Absolutely nothing.’

‘We need to talk,’ I said.

Chandler and his parents turned their heads toward me.

‘We spoke to Joel,’ I said.

Chandler nodded with what looked like innocent confidence, as though waiting for his side of the story to be confirmed.

‘Chandler,’ Lucy said, ‘Joel says he did not write that story for you.’

‘What?’ he said. ‘But he did. I mean, you said yourself I’m not smart enough to have written it.’

Lucy frowned. ‘That’s not exactly what I said. What I did say was that your record for completing and handing in assignments gave me reason to doubt that you’d done that story on your own.’

Educational doublespeak. I thought Chandler’d nailed it when he said he just wasn’t smart enough.

‘Why would he lie?’ the boy asked.

I weighed in. ‘Not only did Joel say he hadn’t written that story for you, he said he hasn’t even spoken to you since you and Mike splashed his picture all over the Internet.’

Chandler nodded. ‘Yeah, well, that’s true.’

That stopped me for a second. ‘You haven’t spoken to him at all?’

He shook his head. ‘I mean, I get that. What Mike and I did, it was pretty shitty, and he’d probably feel funny talking to me directly, which was why I guess he used a whaddya call it, an intermediary.’

Lucy said, ‘He had someone else approach you with his offer of a story?’

Chandler’s head went up and down this time. ‘That’s right. It was Franny.’

‘His sister?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I could hardly believe it.’

‘Let’s go through this from the beginning,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ Chandler said. ‘So, like, a week ago, I’m in the cafeteria, and Franny Blakelock comes in and sits down across from me. And I’m like, oh boy, she’s going to dump a Coke on me or hit me or something, and I’m getting ready to defend myself, and she says, chill out, it’s okay.’

He ran his fingers through his hair, scratched his scalp. ‘So I’m like, okay, what’s up? And she says her brother Joel wants to put all that stuff we did to him into the past, what me and Mike did, and as a kind of show of good faith or whatever, he wants to do me a favor. I’m still thinking maybe it’s a trick, that I’m being set up for a joke, like maybe she’s going to give me something and when I go to put it in my locker, they’ve booby-trapped it, you know? Because Franny, she has kind of a rep.’

‘What kind of rep?’ I asked.

‘Like, kind of unhinged?’ Chandler said. ‘Like, she’s one of those people you never really know what they’re thinking. One time, she got reamed out by Mr Landers, in history, and four days later all his tires had been slashed, and everyone figured it was her, but she never said anything and there was no way to prove it, but sometimes she gets this look, like she knows something that you don’t? You get what I’m saying?’

Lucy said, ‘I remember the incident with Mr Landers.’

‘Yeah, so I don’t really want to get on her bad side, and if her brother wants to help me out, then who am I to say no? She says he likes to write stories anyway, and he can knock off one for me in like minutes, so do I want it or not, and I say sure. So she takes out her laptop, and I’ve got my own right there in front of me, and she emails me something, then she goes on my computer and copies and pastes and stuff and makes it look like I did it myself.’

It was starting to gel for me.

‘And she made me swear that I’d never tell anybody, and if I did, she’d deny it, and so would her brother, because everybody knew what me and Mike had done, and if I ever said anything against Franny or her brother, people would know we were just trying to get back at them.’