Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

Lance interrupted. “You never should have called him at all that night, boss. You should have just called me. Then nothing woulda happened.”

“Maybe,” I said to Lance, “if you hadn’t set up Randy here with jailbait, nothing would have happened then either.” I turned to Randall Finley. “And as for you, you can’t be serious, thinking you were doing me a favor when you didn’t press charges? Think of the witnesses you’d have had to call. How old was that girl? And her friend in the hallway? They’d have had to get permission slips to skip class so they could testify.”

“Here’s the thing,” Finley said. “I could find you a job, Cutter. Working for me, on my campaign.”

“Hey,” said Lance, “you’re not giving him his old job back, are you?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Lance, would you just fucking drive?”

“What? I’m supposed to pretend I can’t hear?”

“Jim, ignore him. What I’m proposing to you is some other kind of job in my campaign. There’s plenty of work to go around. And you’d be paid well. A lot more than I’m sure you’re getting cutting people’s lawns, for Christ’s sake. What the hell’s happened to you? Have you no pride?”

I wanted to tell him that if I had no pride, I’d still be working for him, but I didn’t have to justify my life to him or anyone else.

He wasn’t done. “Driving around in a silly truck, doing that kind of work, it’s totally beneath you, Cutter. You’re a capable man with a lot of skills. You know how to deal with people. You have great instincts. You’re not easily flustered. I like that. And that business, punching me in the nose, water under the bridge. It’s like it never happened.”

To Lance, I said, “Can you take me back to my truck?” To Randall Finley, “Look, I don’t care what you do. Run for whatever you want. I don’t have anything to say to anybody.”

“You’re a stand-up guy, Jim.”

“Because if I told people what sorts of things I’d witnessed, I’d have to explain why I worked for you as long as I did. And I don’t know how I’d do that. So you don’t have a thing to worry about. And as for the job offer, I’ll pass. I like what I do. I like working with my son. I can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day.”

Finley nodded thoughtfully. “I can’t ask for anything else,” he said. “You don’t want to work for me, I accept that. And I’m grateful for your discretion.”

“That girl,” I said. “The one in the room. What ever happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” Finley said. “Never saw her again. I cleaned up my act after that night, Cutter. Swear to God.”

I could see my truck up ahead. The town car slowed and pulled over to the curb.

Finley extended a hand. Shaking it seemed to take less effort than refusing it, so I gave him mine. I tried to tell myself I wouldn’t be compromising my principles if I didn’t squeeze too hard. While he was pumping my hand, Finley said to Lance, “Go around and get the door for Mr. Cutter here.”

“Huh?” said Lance. “You kidding?”

“You heard me.”

Lance got out and started walking around the car. For a second I thought, fuck it, I can open my own goddamn door, then figured, why not let Lance do what he’s paid to do?

The door opened and I got out. As Lance closed it, he leaned in close to me from behind, his chin over my shoulder, and whispered in my ear, “That’s a first. Don’t think I ever opened the door for a fucking lawn boy before.”

I drove my elbow back, fast and hard, taking him just below the rib cage. The air went out of him and he dropped.

“Sorry,” I said. “That’s my weed-whacking arm. It gets twitchy.”

Once Lance had gotten himself off the pavement and driven away with Finley, I got out my phone again, ready to dial the number on Barry’s card. Then I stopped myself.

What did I actually intend to tell him?

There was the short version of the story, of course. That it had occurred to Derek, after our tour of the Langley house, that he hadn’t seen one of the computers that had been in Adam’s room a couple of days earlier. “For what it’s worth,” I could say to Barry.

And he could do what he pleased with the information.

The truth was, I didn’t know that the computer had anything to do with the Langleys’ deaths. For all we knew, Adam had put it in his closet. Barry hadn’t opened it up for us to examine.

And if the computer didn’t have a damn thing to do with this, was there any point in getting into this can of worms of what Derek and Adam had found on it? Other than to cause some possible grief for Conrad Chase? I might enjoy seeing him squirm, but at the same time, I wasn’t vindictive enough to drag an innocent man into a murder investigation purely for my own entertainment. Almost, but not quite.

I decided the best course of action was to know a little more before calling Barry Duckworth. That’s why, for now, going to see Mr. Burgess, Brent Stockwell’s high school teacher, seemed like a plan.

Mothers always think their sons are brilliant. Sometimes they even turn out to be right, but Burgess could supply an unbiased assessment. He could tell me whether Brett really was the gifted writer his mother believed him to be. If he didn’t share that opinion, then there had to be some other explanation for Conrad’s book being on the boy’s computer. I’d realize my rush to judgment, my conclusion that Conrad had stolen his bestseller from a student, was totally off base.

And then, holding off on calling Barry would look like a wise move.

I found the Burgess I was looking for when I called the second of the three numbers I’d taken down from Agnes Stockwell’s phone book. He wasn’t much more than a ten-minute drive from her house, and I didn’t need a map to find it. I’d lived and worked in Promise Falls long enough to know my way around.

I didn’t know what exactly to tell him when I got him on the phone. Once I’d told him my name, and determined that he was an English teacher from Promise Falls High School, I said I needed to talk to him about one of his former pupils. When he’d asked for more information, I’d said it would be a lot easier if I could talk to him about this in person.

“Fine, come on over,” he said. But I could hear the suspicion and distrust in his voice.

Along the way, I was feeling a buzz about what had happened with Lance. It wasn’t exactly a buzz of excitement. Mostly it was a feeling of agitation, with dollops of anxiety and regret thrown into the mix.

It was a stupid thing to have done, to have sucker punched him with my elbow. Briefly satisfying, yes, but I should have been above that kind of behavior. The thing was, he’d pushed my buttons once too often. I guess, when you’re driving around an asshole mayor, there aren’t that many occupations you can feel superior to. So sticking it to a guy who cuts grass for a living, well, that’s an opportunity too sweet to pass up.

I wasn’t particularly worried that Lance would press charges. He’d have a much better chance seeing me convicted of assault with a solid witness in his corner, and I knew he didn’t have one in Mayor Finley. He wasn’t going to jeopardize my pledge to keep my mouth shut by testifying against me for the likes of mullet-headed Lance.

Lance had to know that. But the thing was, a guy like Lance Garrick no doubt had plenty of other ways to seek justice that were outside the court system. Now, because I’d felt the need to show I had some balls, I was going to have to be watching my back for the indefinite future.

It was an aggravation I really could have done without at the moment.

I pulled up out front of the Burgess house-I had yet to learn the man’s first name-and killed the engine. It was a simple, one-story home with a carport at the side, sitting about ten yards back from the street on a small lot. The treeless yard was well kept, not a dandelion or blade of crabgrass in sight. An older model Toyota and a new Civic sat in the driveway. Before I could knock on the glass-and-aluminum storm door, a man appeared there. In his early sixties, I guessed, thin, with hair to match. If he weren’t slightly round shouldered, he might have been six feet.