Linwood Barclay: Clouded Vision

“I assure you, I-”

“Would you please hand me my wife’s robe? I don’t want you touching it anymore.”

“Oh, sure,” Keisha said. This certainly seemed to suggest that they were done.

“Thank you,” he said, gathering the robe up into a ball.

Keisha reached down for her purse. She set it into her lap, made sure it was zipped tight at the top, and started to stand.

Garfield said, “No, don’t go yet.”

“I can’t see what possible point there would be in staying any longer, Mr. Garfield. It’s clear you think I’m some kind of con artist. I’ve been at this too long to take offense. That is how some people react, thinking that what I do is a sham, and if that’s your conclusion, then I’m happy to be on my way.” Thinking, Don’t ask for the check back.

“Did I offend you? I’m very sorry if I did that.” He didn’t look at all sincere.

“You just accused me of having someone standing by to-to lie to you about my successes. Wouldn’t you expect me to take offense at that?”

He was still pacing, still fondling the robe, doing something with it, like it was a mound of clay he was shaping into something. Keisha watched as he took a few steps one way, then the other. It struck her that this was how he formed his thoughts, by making these little journeys around the room.

“You are very clever, I have to give you that,” he said.

Keisha said nothing. She was starting to get an inkling of what was going on. She should have caught on a little sooner.

“Very, very clever,” he said, stepping over to the window, pulling back the curtain to get a look at the street. This put him off to one side and slightly behind Keisha, and she had to twist around in her chair to see him. “I’d like to apologize. Forget what I just said. Why don’t you carry on, let me hear some more about your vision. ”

“Mr. Garfield, I’m not sure-”

“No no, please, go on.”

Keisha put her purse back down on the carpet and rested her hands by her thighs on the seat cushion. “Would you like me start again with the ice? Or move on to something else?”

“Why don’t you just say whatever comes into your head.”

Keisha had a bad feeling. She couldn’t recall dealing with anyone like this before, someone who’d seemingly lost interest in what she had to say, wanted her to leave, then had an abrupt change of heart. Judging by his tone now, she didn’t believe he was even interested in anything else she had to say.

He just didn’t want her to leave.

Something was very wrong here. She thought she had it figured out.

It’s him. He did it.

It explained his strange behavior. Keisha wanted to kick herself for not realizing it sooner. She’d been at this long enough, of course, to know that when a wife was murdered-or missing-the husband was always a prime suspect. It wasn’t very often people were killed by strangers. They were killed by people they knew. Wives were killed by husbands. Husbands were killed by wives.

The man had moved away from the window and was taking a route behind Keisha’s chair. She was going to have to turn around to keep her eye on him.

“On second thought, sure, tell me about the ice.”

What threw her off was the televised news conference. She’d figured, first of all, that if the police strongly suspected Garfield had offed his wife, they’d never have let him go before the cameras. Would they? She had to admit, Garfield was good. Those tears had looked real. The way he took his pregnant daughter into his arms to comfort her, that was pretty darn convincing, too.

Not that it had never occurred to Keisha that the people she preyed upon could be something other than innocent. Guilty people often made the best targets. They could be so eager to prove they were as much in the dark as everyone else that they leapt at the chance to pay to hear what she had to say.

Telling themselves, I look so innocent. A real murderer would never do this, right?

Maybe that explained why Garfield, at first, agreed to listen to her. But something had happened during their conversation. Things had shifted. He’d become anxious. Had she actually hit on something? By accident?

Was it when she said his wife was cold? When she said something about the car being off the road? Had those comments been close enough to the truth to make Garfield think she was on to something?

It was time to bail. Maybe-and she couldn’t believe she was even thinking of this-even give him back his check. Say something like, “You know what? Whatever vision I may have had, it’s gone. I’m not picking up anything. The signals have faded. The flashes, they’re over. So I think the best thing to do would be for me to return your money and I’ll just be on my-”

But just then, a flash of pink before her eyes. Not a vision this time, though. It was the sash, from the robe.

And now Garfield was looping it around her neck and drawing it tight.

Melissa

Before Melissa would tell her story to the detective, whose name was Marshall-which struck her as kind of funny, a policeman named Marshall-she wanted assurances that the police would go easy on her father. “There are, what do you call them, extenuating circumstances?”

Marshall, seated across the table from her in the interrogation room, said, “It’s kind of hard for us to make promises where your dad is concerned when we don’t know exactly what it is he’s done.”

“I don’t want to get him in trouble,” Melissa said. “Even though I know that’s probably what’s going to happen.”

“But he knows something about what really happened to your mother,” Detective Marshall said. “That is why you’re here.”

“Sort of,” Melissa said. “You know what? I know I only just sat down, but I really have to pee.”

“Sure, okay,” Marshall said. “Let me show you where to go.”

Melissa went to the bathroom and a couple of minutes later they were back sitting across from each other. Melissa had one hand on the table and the other on her belly.

“I really love my dad,” she said. “I really do.”

“Of course. And I bet you love your mom, too.”

Melissa looked down.

“Melissa,” Detective Marshall said gently. “Can you tell me… is your mother still alive?” She mumbled something so softly he couldn’t hear what she’d said. “What was that?”

“No.”

“No, she’s not alive?”

“That’s right. But if I tell you everything, you have to promise to be nice to Dad. Because he’s a good man, really.”

“Like I said, Melissa, without knowing the facts-”

“I don’t want to get him into trouble. He’s already going to be really mad at me.”

“We can make sure he doesn’t hurt you.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me, but he’s going to be super pissed.”

“I can certainly understand that,” the detective said. “But I’m guessing you’re thinking that sometimes you have to do what’s right.”

“Yeah, I guess that is kind of what I’m thinking.”

“And you want to do right by your mother.”

“Yeah, I’ve kind of been thinking that, too.”

“Why don’t we start with you telling me where your mother is.”

“She’s in the car.”

The detective nodded. “This would be your mother’s car. The Nissan.”

“That’s right.”

“And where’s the car, Melissa?”

“It’s at the bottom of the lake.”

The detective nodded again. “Okay. What lake would that be?”

“I don’t know the name of it, but I think I could show you how to get there. It’s about an hour’s drive, I think. Although, even if I take you there, I don’t know where exactly it is in the lake. And the ice has probably already frozen over. It’s been cold. I just know she’s in the lake. In the car.”