Linwood Barclay - Stone Rain

If I’d been the cop, I probably would have done what he did.

He fired. Leo went down.

Just like that.

Even before the massacre at the Burger Crisp-Merker had walked directly behind the counter, fired two shots into Mrs. Gorkin and one each into Ludmilla and Gavrilla-the police were hunting for us. Sarah, Katie in tow, had gone to a house on the street behind ours and called 911. She’d directed them to our house on Crandall, and when she heard the sirens approaching, had left Katie with the neighbor and run back. But by then, we were all gone. Sarah gave them a description of Trixie’s car and the hunt was on.

I spent the rest of that day explaining things to the police. Detective Flint from Oakwood was brought in so he could hear it too.

I told them they’d find the Bennets, dead, in their barn in Kelton.

I told them about Merker’s plan, to use Katie to extort money from Trixie. About our trip to the prison. How Sarah had been coerced into going into the bank to empty the contents of the safety-deposit box.

I told them Merker had also told me, in the course of our conversations, that he’d killed Martin Benson. That he and Leo, while hunting for Trixie, had encountered Benson looking for more evidence of Trixie’s operation. That Merker had killed Benson in his bid to get information out of him.

And then I did something I suppose I didn’t have to do. I’m not even sure that I should have done it. But it seemed right.

I mentioned, more or less in passing, that Merker had alluded, at one point, to the deaths of the three other bikers at the Kickstart in Canborough.

How he’d taken care of them too.

The police wondered whether he had told me why. I said no. Best to play dumb. But when they got in touch with Detective Cherry in Canborough, he’d tell him his theory that maybe Merker had worked out some sort of deal with the opposition, that he’d already been the prime suspect in the death of his former second-in-command.

The thing was, they were already able to tie half a dozen murders to Merker. Why not throw in another three for good measure?

Other stuff happened later.

Trixie was released from prison. They’d been holding her as the chief suspect in the Benson murder. There wasn’t much point in that anymore.

She let me know, quietly, that the gun she’d pointed at me in the basement of her house, the same one Eldon Swain had given her and which had the potential to connect her to the killings in Canborough, had been dropped into a river from a highway overpass on her way up to Kelton. She’d been scared to hang on to it.

Brian Sandler, the health department inspector that the Gorkins dumped into the fryer, didn’t die. But his recovery will be long and difficult. He was soon well enough to communicate everything he knew about corruption in the health department. About his boss, and others, who’d turned a blind eye, either for money or out of fear, to a number of establishments’ health violations, as well as other illegal activities that were being conducted on the premises.

Sarah wrote the story for the Metropolitan . I put her onto Sandler and turned over to her everything I had, all my notes, the audio file that Lawrence Jones found in his e-mail.

I thought if it was her story, it would get her out of Home! and back into the newsroom. After all, I was already on suspension. Better to rescue a career that still had a chance to be redeemed.

It worked. And Sarah’s version of the story was better than what I could have done.

Managing editor Bertrand Magnuson did call me, however. He’d had some sort of change of heart, given everything Sarah and I had been through. He said he was willing to rescind the suspension and let me write about tracking down Trixie Snelling, her subsequent exoneration, the Gary Merker affair, the biker massacre in Canborough-the whole nine yards, as they say. A first-person exclusive.

I said Dick Colby could do a good job with it. I’m too close this time, I said. Let someone with a bit of distance write about it. The thing was, I didn’t see how I could write a story that I wasn’t prepared to tell in full. I didn’t want my byline on a story I couldn’t write honestly.

I knew who’d really killed those three bikers that night at the Kickstart. And I wasn’t feeling fully committed to the public’s right to know.

What business did I have being a reporter for the Metropolitan with that kind of attitude?

“Well,” said Magnuson over the phone, “if you change your mind and want to come back to work for us, let me know.”

I told him I would think about it.

To the best of my knowledge, Frieda never did get anyone to write a series on linoleum. I never saw it in Home!

So many stories that go untold.

Things could be better on the home front.

I had failed to keep my promise-make that promises-to Sarah that I’d stop getting mixed up in these kinds of messes. It’s a knack I seem to have developed of late, and I’d like very much to lose it. Sometimes, you make one mistake, and it’s like knocking over that first domino. I’d already allowed a couple of dozen to tip over, and had no idea how far down the row I was.

Lawrence Jones phoned. “You should have called me,” he said.

“Believe me, if it had been possible, I would have,” I said.

“How’s it going?”

“Sarah mentioned the other night that maybe we should…that maybe we should try some time apart.”

“Jeez,” Lawrence said. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I mean, I think she loves me. But look at what I’ve done, Lawrence. Look at the things I’ve fallen into. I’m a menace to my loved ones. Maybe I’ll just go back to writing science fiction novels. Keep to myself. Lock myself in a room someplace, where I’m not going to get into trouble, drag my family in with me.”

“I’d offer to let you bunk in with me for a while, but I think you’d drive me out of my mind.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I guess we’ll see how it plays out,” I said.

“Good luck, man,” Lawrence said.

A couple of weeks after the dust all settled, and we had our own car back, and Sarah had returned to work every day and I was home, still trying to figure out what to do, Trixie-she’d actually gone back, legally, to Miranda Chicoine but I still have a hard time thinking of her by that name-dropped by with Katie.

It was after Sarah had gotten home from work, and we both got to the front door at the same time.

When Sarah saw who it was, she began to retreat into the house. “I’ll let you two talk,” she said.

But I took Sarah’s hand and pulled her, gently, to my side, preventing her escape.

“We just came by to say goodbye,” Trixie said.

“Where you off to?” I asked.

“Out west,” Trixie said. “Seattle, maybe San Francisco. I’m looking at a few things.”

Sarah and I stepped out onto the porch. Katie slipped away from her mother and ran her fingers along the posts in the railing.

“How’s she doing?” Sarah asked.

Trixie smiled sadly. “She’s been through a lot. She sleeps with me. She’s afraid to let me out of her sight. It’s going to take a long time for her to ever feel secure again. Everything I do now is going to be for her. I’m starting over, with Katie. I’m selling the house in Oakwood. And there’s Claire and Don’s estate to settle.” Her eyes were moist. “My lawyer, Niles, is trying to get my three hundred thousand back. The police still have it, they retrieved it from the car after the accident, but they’re holding on to it as evidence. Niles says eventually we’ll be able to get it back. They can’t prove that I’m not entitled to it. But you know what? Even if we don’t, we have plenty to start over with, get another house somewhere, close to a good school. I want to always be there for her, so I might try to get some sort of job that allows me to work from home.” She smiled again. “But something different this time. That other job, that’s over.”