Linwood Barclay - A Tap on the Window

“Get out.”

“Call her. Just let me speak to her.”

“Get out.”

“All I’m asking is—”

Sanders held his palm up in my face. A strong gesture, betrayed by a tremble.

“Now,” he said.

When she gets home, she sees a sliver of light beneath his door, so she decides to check on him. He could have fallen asleep with the light on, and if that’s the case, she’ll turn it off. But maybe he’s sitting in his chair, reading. He does that sometimes when he can’t sleep.

Once she has the door open, she finds he is, indeed, awake, but not in his chair. No book or magazine in his hands. Just looking at the ceiling, as though some movie is being projected there.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Just thinking,” he says.

“About what?” she asks, although she has a good idea.

“I thought about what we could say.”

“Say about what?”

“About why I’ve been away.”

It’s never been this bad before, she thinks. Him harping on things like this. The events of the last few weeks — that boy’s unexpected visit — have agitated him. He’s not the only one.

“Okay,” she says, since part of her is curious about what he’s come up with. “Why have you been away?”

“I was in Africa.”

“Africa,” she says.

“On a safari. I got lost. In the jungle. In the rain forest.”

“I think that’s in South America,” she says. “I think you’d have a hard time keeping your story straight.”

“We could work on it together so I’d be sure to get it right.”

“You should turn off the light and go to sleep,” she says.

“No!” the man shouts, and the woman recoils. He is usually passive, manageable.

“Don’t you raise your voice to me,” she says.

“I went to the Arctic! I was on an Arctic expedition! And now I’m back!”

“Stop it. You’re getting yourself all worked up. You’re talking nonsense.”

“Or maybe I was in the desert. I was wandering the desert.”

The woman sits on the edge of the bed and places her hand on his clammy forehead. She pats him gently.

“You’ll never get to sleep if you get yourself all wound up,” she says soothingly. “You’re overtired.”

He wraps his hands around her arm and pulls her to him so her face is inches from his. His breath smells like the inside of an old leather bag.

“I don’t blame you,” he says. “I understand. But it has to end. It can’t go on forever like this.”

She’s been thinking that herself for a while now.

As I walked back to my car, I got out my phone, called up the number for my brother-in-law, Augustus Perry, and entered it.

Something didn’t add up. The police were looking for Claire Sanders, but her father claimed she wasn’t missing. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out he was hiding something, lying to me. Claire had to be in some kind of trouble. She’d gone to a lot of effort to outwit someone who’d been following her.

Was it the police? An ex-boyfriend?

Her father?

If I couldn’t get any satisfactory answers from him, best to go back to the police and learn what prompted them to start looking for her. But I didn’t want to talk to Haines or Brindle. It made more sense to go to the top. Not that Augie was naturally disposed to help his sister’s husband. He more or less considered me a horse’s ass.

The feeling was mutual.

We managed to be civil to one another through most family get-togethers, so long as discussions did not turn to politics, religion, or some of the really contentious topics, like the quickest route to Philadelphia, how much it rained last week, or who was getting better gas mileage.

We’d really gotten into it summer before last, at a barbecue in our backyard, when Augie said that if we accepted that certain racial groups were more intellectually superior, from a genetic standpoint, than others, and that if we further accepted that intellectually inferior racial groups were more likely to break the law, then racial profiling wasn’t racism at all because it could be supported by scientific data.

“I’d love to see that data,” I said.

“Look it up,” he said. “It’s on the Internet.”

“So if it’s on the Internet, it must be true.”

“Well, if it’s scientific data, it is.”

“If I saw something on the Internet that said a new study had determined that you’ve got the IQ of a bucket of bolts, would it be true? Because it’s going to be on there in about five minutes.”

His wife, the long-suffering Beryl, had to hold him back.

I had to concede that, attitude aside, Augie wasn’t all bad as a cop. He had good instincts. He was tireless. Before he was a chief, and not spending a large chunk of the day sitting on his butt behind a desk, he’d knock on doors all day and all night if that’s what it took to find someone who might be a potential witness to a neighborhood crime. When we had an eight-year-old boy go missing five years ago, Augie came out from behind his desk and participated in foot searches for six days, getting less than four hours of sleep a night, until he found that kid in the basement of an abandoned mattress factory. The kid had fallen through a hole in the floor and couldn’t get out. Augustus Perry was also skilled as an interrogator. He knew how to get information out of people.

But I also knew Bert Sanders had his number. My brother-in-law was a great believer in expediting the justice system. Why go to all the trouble of a trial to encourage a troublesome out-of-towner to stay out of Griffon when a good swift kick in the nuts could accomplish the same thing in a lot less time?

But the men and women under Augustus Perry’s command were careful. They covered each other’s asses. They didn’t teach someone a lesson in front of witnesses. And the corners they cut, they cut with their heads held high because they believed, in their hearts, that they were making Griffon a better place.

I’d entered the number for Augie’s cell, not his home phone. He always carried his cell. It rang several times before it went to message.

“Augie, it’s Cal. I need to talk. Call me when you get this.”

I wasn’t going to spin my wheels waiting for him to call back. I was going to take another run at Sean Skilling. I wasn’t through with that kid.

I drove back to the Skilling place, an expansive two-story house with a triple garage and three different models of Fords out front, although none of them was the Ranger Sean had been driving. I parked around the corner, walked back, and pressed my thumb hard on the doorbell.

It didn’t take ten seconds for someone to answer. A small woman with porcelain skin and light blond hair to match. Without makeup, she gave the appearance of having had all the blood drained out of her.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Skilling?”

“Yes? I’m Sheila Skilling.”

“I’m Calvin Weaver.” I flashed my license. “I’m a private investigator.”

“What do you want?”

“It’s about Sean.”

Alarm consumed her face. “Sean? Is he okay?” She turned her head. “Adam! The police are here about Sean!”

I didn’t see the need to correct her yet.

“What’s happened?” a man shouted, his voice muffled. A moment later, a door swung open and Adam Skilling emerged from the basement. Running up the stairs had winded him, which wasn’t too surprising, given that he looked to be at least two hundred and fifty pounds. He had a round face, his cheeks currently crimson, a moustache, and a full head of brown hair.