Linwood Barclay - Bad Move

Penner hesitated. “Mr. Walker, do you know something about this?”

“I’m interested,” I said. “I’ve followed it from the beginning, and I’ve been thinking about maybe doing a book on the case.”

“I thought you just wrote science fiction. That’s what it said in the paper.”

“Up to now, yeah.”

“So, you think maybe this Smythe guy, he was an alien?”

You see what I mean about respect and sci-fi writers? I didn’t take the bait, and said instead, “Will you fax it to me, or not?”

“Give me your number. Five minutes.” And he hung up.

I sat in my study, staring at the fax machine for a good half hour before it rang, started doing its little hum.

And then the sketch started sliding, scalp first, out of the machine. Then it beeped, disconnected. I took the single sheet out of the tray, turned it around, and looked at it.

Howdy, neighbor.

I kept coming back to the shovel.

Walking over to Mindy’s Market-it was only about a twenty-minute stroll-to pick up some ground beef and buns and some fixings for salad, I tried to work things out in my head.

Let’s say Roger Carpington had killed Stefanie Knight. Waited for her inside her house. That would explain the broken glass at the back door. Maybe he already knew he was being blackmailed. Or Stefanie had threatened to expose him. To tell his wife. To ruin his political career. She had the ledger by this point. Maybe she was going to rip the lid off the whole Valley Forest Estates thing. He takes her into the garage, grabs the shovel from its hanging place on the wall, strikes her in the head with it. Runs.

Okay, possible.

I show up, find Stefanie. See the bloody shovel. And then I hightail it out of there.

Carpington thinks, Hey. My fingerprints are on that shovel. I have to go back and get it before the police arrive.

It would make sense. Except by this time, Carpington’s at the town council meeting. And according to at least one witness, never left the meeting.

So someone else grabbed that shovel. It was either (a) someone helping cover Carpington’s tracks, or (b) a different killer, coming back to grab the shovel for the same reason Carpington would have: fingerprints.

If it was someone helping Carpington cover his tracks, to keep him from being connected to the crime, then why did the shovel show up in the trunk of his car?

But if the killer was someone else, and had that shovel, placing it in Carpington’s trunk was a stroke of genius. Its presence there was guaranteed to incriminate.

But this killer would have to know that Carpington was a logical suspect already. This killer would have to know that a bloody shovel in the trunk would be just one more part of the puzzle.

“That’s $14.56.”

“Huh?”

It was the cashier at Mindy’s. She’d rung through my groceries and informed me of my total. I handed her a twenty and held my hand out for the change.

I was in another world.

On the way back, I thought about the conversation Earl and I had had on the way to the Valley Forest Estates sales office. How he’d wanted to confirm that Carpington had been caught on film with Stefanie, how he’d even suggested that the councilman had a pretty strong motive to kill her.

How, when we pulled into the parking lot, Earl asked whose car was whose.

And how, once we’d gotten the jump on Greenway and Carpington, Earl insisted that I stay and keep them covered while he left with their keys and moved their cars behind the office.

That would have been when he took the shovel from his pickup and put it in the trunk of Carpington’s car.

The only thing I hadn’t worked out a theory for was why Earl killed Stefanie Knight. But I had enough.

I started running, the grocery bag flopping at my side. I jogged all the way up Chancery Park, was struggling to catch my breath as I inserted my key into the door. I dumped the groceries on the kitchen counter and grabbed the phone.

I got the main police switchboard, then keyed in Lorenzo Penner’s extension. It rang three times before the voicemail cut in.

“This is Detective Lorenzo Penner. Leave a message at the tone.”

“Hi, it’s Zack Walker. Call me back as soon as you get this message.” And I left my number.

I glanced at the clock. After five. Sarah would be home soon. Where were Paul and Angie?

I’d grabbed the receiver off the phone so quickly when I’d come in that I’d failed to see the flashing message light. There were two, one from Paul and one from Angie.

Paul said, “I’m at Hakim’s, hanging out, should be home by six.”

Angie said, “I’m working in the school darkroom. I’m getting a lift, see you around five-thirty.”

Ever since that night, we’d all been very good about letting each other know where we were going to be, and if we were going to be late.

I unpacked the groceries, tore the wrapper off the ground beef and began forming patties. It looked as though Paul and Angie were going to join us for dinner, although with teenagers, you never knew until the last second who was actually hungry or not.

So I made half a dozen. Paul, if he had any appetite at all, could be counted on to eat at least two. I rinsed lettuce leaves, cut up some tomatoes, glancing every few seconds at the phone, willing Penner to call.

“Come on,” I said out loud. “I’m solving your goddamn case for you, asshole.”

Maybe my message hadn’t been detailed enough. Maybe he’d think I wanted him to call back because I had more questions. I should leave another message. Tell him I’d found Devlin Smythe. That Jesse Shuttleworth’s killer was living right across the street from us. And that he’d killed someone else, too. A woman out here in Oakwood, whose murder at the moment was being pinned on somebody else.

But first, I’d fire up the barbecue. While it was heating up, I’d try Penner again, maybe get the switchboard to try to find him.

The phone rang. I had the receiver off the hook before the end of the first ring. “That was fast,” Sarah said.

“Oh, hey,” I said.

“Sorry, expecting someone else?”

“Actually, yeah. I’m waiting on a call.”

“Something going on?”

“Sort of, but let me tell you all about it when you get home. How close are you?”

“Another fifteen minutes, I’ll be there.”

“Great, I was just about to get the barbecue going.”

I opened the sliding glass doors, stepped out onto the deck with a plate of patties. I set the plate on the counter to the left of the barbecue, opened the lid, and turned the valve on the gas tank. I heard the familiar hiss of gas escaping from the jets in the bottom of the barbecue.

I pressed the red ignition button. Click. Nothing.

I pressed it a second time, faster and harder, figuring this would force a spark. Again, nothing.

We were going to have to use the old drop-the-lit-match-in-the-bottom trick again, I figured, and-

“Zack.”

I whirled around, startled. Earl was standing at the step that led up from the backyard to the deck. He was in a pair of dirt-caked jeans, his Blue Jays sweatshirt, and there was the familiar cigarette tucked between his lips. In his right hand, he held his gun. The same one we’d taken with us the other night.

“Earl, Jesus, you scared the shit out of me there,” I said. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

Earl took a step toward me, and I backed up, away from the barbecue, toward the door into the kitchen. “Earl, what’s with the gun?”

“You know who I am,” he said. “When you saw the tattoo, you knew.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Earl.” As I took another step back, Earl moved forward. He was standing almost in front of the barbecue now.