Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

“I don’t think so. Except for his dad. Like I told you, he said his dad was upset about it.”

Albert Langley. Lawyer for, among others, Conrad Chase.

“Would he have done that, you think? I mean, did Adam talk about things with his dad? Does it make sense that he might have said, ‘Hey, you wouldn’t believe what Derek and I found on this computer he got from Agnes Stockwell’? Would he have done something like that?”

Derek gave it some thought. “He might have. I guess. I don’t think he would have told his mom, though. For the same reason I didn’t want to talk to my mom about it. Because of what the book was about.”

I settled into one of the chairs on the deck. My beer was still sitting there, but the bottle was now warm to the touch. Derek took a seat opposite me.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.” I drank some of the warm beer. “I’m so goddamn tired I can’t think.”

Something caught Derek’s eye. I turned and saw him looking at the forensic cops I’d noticed earlier, still examining every blade of grass behind the Langley house. “Why are those guys searching around in the woods like that?” Derek asked. “What are they looking for?”

It seemed as though all of Promise Falls showed up for the funeral two days later. St. Peter’s must have easily been able to hold five hundred people, and it was a standing-room-only affair. Albert Langley ran one of the town’s biggest law firms, his wife, Donna, was one of Promise Falls’s most recognized power spouses, and their son, Adam, if not the most popular kid at his high school, was at least well liked. That produced a pretty big pool of friends, acquaintances, and associates to draw from.

Not to mention family.

There was Donna’s sister Heather, and her husband and two children, who’d flown in from Iowa. Albert’s mother, an elderly woman who had moved down to St. Petersburg, had come, accompanied by Albert’s brother Seth, from South Carolina. There were cousins and nephews from across the country, an uncle of Albert’s from Manitoba.

A whole lot of crying.

It was the first funeral Derek had ever been to. In a perfect world, we would have started him out with something smaller, a little less overwhelming than a combined funeral for three people, all taken much too soon in an act of horrific violence.

A funeral for a grandparent, that would have been a good place to start. Ellen’s mother had passed away when he was six, but we’d decided he was too little to attend, that the ceremony would be too upsetting.

We sat together, Ellen and Derek and I, around the middle of the church, off to one side. As close as we were, geographically, to the Langleys, a great many of the people attending the service were more connected to them, and we weren’t interested in sitting up near the front anyway.

Mayor Randall Finley said a few words, and he performed true to form, with an abundance of platitudes and almost convincing expressions of sincerity. “Albert Langley,” he opined, “exemplified what made this community special, through his commitment to his fellow citizens, his pursuit of equality and fairness, his dedication to making Promise Falls a better place.”

No mention of the fact that he often treated his wife like shit, but you couldn’t expect Randy to say something like that in a speech that was clearly a warm-up for his imminent announcement that he was seeking a congressional seat.

There was an unusual amount of whispering going through the church about three-quarters of the way through the service, and not just because Finley had gone on too long. Some story, a rumor, we didn’t know what, at least not until it spread to our row.

A woman sitting to my right whom I did not know had just been told something by a man I took to be her husband sitting on the other side of her.

“No,” she whispered. “Oh my.”

I leaned in a bit closer to her and whispered, “What’s happened?”

“A man took his own life,” she said. “Someone the police wanted to question.”

“Who?”

“The police came to the house to interview him and he killed himself.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know the name. He had something to do with that case of Albert’s, where he got the boy off.”

Now Ellen was nudging me in the ribs. I whispered to her what I’d heard. “Who?” she asked. I shook my head. We’d have to wait for the service to end to learn anything more.

Once it was concluded, and mourners started spilling out of the church, the women dabbing their eyes with tissues, the men trying to be stoic, everyone started quizzing one another, trying to learn more.

I saw Donna’s sister Heather, whom I recognized from the times she and her family had come to Promise Falls to visit.

She was standing with her husband, Edward, when I approached, with Ellen and Derek flanking me. It took her a second to realize who I was.

Ellen said, “We’re so sorry.”

Heather nodded, and said, “Have you heard?”

“We’ve heard something,” I said. “But just bits and pieces.”

“I was speaking with Detective Duckworth,” she said. I had spotted him in the crowd earlier. “They went to speak with a man, his name was Colin McKindrick.”

Of course, I thought. The man whose son had been beaten to death with a baseball bat by Anthony Colapinto.

“Yes?” I said.

“And when they were knocking on the door, saying they wanted to talk to him about the threats he’d made to Albert, he told them to go away, told them he’d shoot if they came in. And then, a minute later, a gun went off in the house, and when they went in, Mr. McKindrick was dead.” Heather put her hand over her mouth, overcome. “He’d shot himself in the head.” Edward put his arm around her and held her close.

“Dear God,” I said.

Edward asked me, “Who’s this McKindrick?”

“McKindrick had said something to Albert, that he’d get even with him, or something along those lines, when the boy who’d been charged in his son’s death was acquitted. Albert persuaded the jury that the Colapinto boy had acted in self-defense.”

Heather shook her head, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.

Ellen reached out and touched Heather’s arm. “Again, we’re so sorry. We’ll let you go.” Our signal to move on.

Once we had moved away, Ellen said, “What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Has to make you wonder.”

“Maybe it’s over.”

“Could be,” I said.

“They come to the man’s house, want to ask him about Albert, and then he kills himself?”

“What?” asked Derek. “So they think he must have killed Adam and his parents?”

“Police come to your door, want to ask you about these murders, you take your own life, looks kind of incriminating,” Ellen said. “He must have been so torn apart. Losing a son, then, if he did kill the Langleys, dealing with the guilt.”

I still didn’t know what to think. Ellen continued, “Bad enough you kill the lawyer for keeping the guy who killed your kid out of jail, but why his wife and son? Maybe that was part of the deal. He lost his son, he figured he’d take away Albert’s, and his wife, too.”

As tragic as the news was, it had the effect of a weight being lifted off our shoulders. If there was any truth to the conclusions we were jumping to, it meant maybe I’d be able to let this business of Conrad and the computer go.

Ellen shook her head sadly. Derek, looking very uncomfortable in his suit and tie on this very warm day, said, “I just want to go home.”

I did, too. We turned to head for the parking lot, and standing there in front of us were Conrad Chase, his wife, Illeana, and a woman I did not recognize. Thin, silver hair, early sixties, makeup that struck me as a bit overdone, understated but expensive-looking earrings and a large rock on one of her fingers. Her cream slacks and red silk blouse were casually elegant. A little too nice for everyday wear, but not quite subdued enough for a funeral service.