Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

I felt my own eyebrows go up.

“Where’d you find it?” Barry asked the cop.

“Alongside the lane, just by the grass. We’ve marked the spot.”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “You saying this is the gun that killed the Langleys?”

Barry shook his head. “Nobody’s saying that. Not yet. If it’s the same gun, it’s made an amazing reappearance. Every square inch around here was searched after the Langleys were killed.” He told the cop to keep the recovered gun out of sight, and called Drew in.

“Yeah?” he said.

“You said you followed the second guy?”

“Yeah, but he had a head start, I couldn’t catch him. I’m strong, but I’m not a good runner.”

“You notice anything funny when he got to the car, whether he dropped anything?”

Drew thought. “He was just getting in and the door was closing, then he went to open it again, but I was getting close, and he closed it and backed up like crazy, kicking up gravel and everything.”

“Come show me exactly where the car was,” Barry said.

We all walked up the lane together, Barry and Drew and the cop who’d brought in the gun in the lead, me and Ellen following.

“Okay,” Drew said. “It was dark, like now, but the car was parked just up here, about three car lengths in from the road, you know?”

Barry was nodding. The cop had a big flashlight and was shining it ahead. Drew pointed out to the highway. “I had to leave my car up there because I couldn’t get past it.”

I squinted into the darkness where Drew was pointing, saw a car up there, looked like an older Ford Taurus, maybe a Mercury Sable.

Drew stopped walking. “I think it was right about here.”

“And the car,” Barry said. “It was nose in?”

“That’s right.”

“So when our dead guy’s buddy got in, it would have been over here, on the right side of the lane.” The cop shone his light in that area.

“Yup,” said Drew. The cop’s light had picked up a small flag that I was guessing had been used to mark where the gun was found. “What’s that?” Drew asked.

Barry said, “That’s where our friend dropped his gun. Son of a bitch.”

The police weren’t done with us until nearly one in the morning, and ordinarily I might consider that a bit late to call someone, but when Ellen suggested getting in touch with Natalie Bondurant to tell her about what had happened, and how these recent events might help Derek, I said, “Do it.”

If Natalie was upset at our having disturbed her, she gave no indication. “I want to know what evidence they get out of that gun,” she said. “Pronto.”

Despite what we’d been through, we slept better that night than we might have expected. I think we were able to sleep because we felt, for the first time since Derek’s arrest, that there was hope.

“I’m all over this today,” Ellen said at breakfast. “I’m going down to see Natalie, I’m going to see if I can get in to talk to Derek.”

I felt comforted, seeing Drew standing at the curb outside his mother’s house when I turned down his street. Clearly, Barry had not changed his mind through the night, and Drew had not been taken into custody.

“Hey,” I said as he climbed into the truck.

“Morning,” he said.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Tired,” he said. “Later, that detective? I was getting in my car to go and he asked all his questions all over again. A couple of times.”

“Things okay?”

“I think he was finally satisfied that we were all telling the truth.”

“You okay otherwise?” It seemed a somewhat foolish question. He’d killed someone the night before. Even though his actions had been justified, taking the life of another person, it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing I’d be able to shake off.

“I wondered if you’d actually come this morning,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because of my record,” Drew said. “Because you found out I’d been in prison.”

“I’d be a real asshole, after what you did for me and Ellen last night, to bail on you.”

He nodded, stared straight ahead beyond the windshield. “How about you?” he asked. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. I felt a need to try to connect with Drew, to draw him out more. I sensed this sadness in him. “It can’t be easy, coming out of jail, starting over again.”

Drew nodded. “It’s kind of like being born. You’re thrown into the world, not really ready. No job, no money, no way to get around.”

“At least there’s your mom.”

Another nod. “Yeah. And I ran into an old buddy, guy named Lyle, he’s letting me borrow a car. You can’t manage without a car.”

I said, “You mentioned last night that you’d had a kid. That you needed money.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“But not anymore? Was it a custody thing?”

“No,” he said. “Died.”

What do you say? “That’s rough” was the best I could think to come up with. “I can’t imagine, losing a child. When did it happen?”

“Not that long ago. Another few weeks she’d have been eighteen. It’s with me all the time. I figure it always will be.”

“What about her mother?”

Drew shook his head. “Not on the scene. Not for a long time. She was a flake. She fucked off years ago.”

“So when you were in prison, who looked after her? Your mother?”

He glanced at me. “Yeah. My mother. That’s why now, with her getting older, I feel I owe it to her to help her out.”

“Sure,” I said. I waited a beat. “What happened?”

“Huh?”

“To your daughter?”

Drew pushed his tongue around inside his cheek. Finally, he said, “She got sick. She didn’t get help from people when she needed it.”

“Doctors,” I said. “They missed something?” He shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it. I guessed that it was too painful to do so, and that my questions had become too personal. “Sorry, man,” I said, and dropped it.

Our first house of the day belonged to Walter Burgess, Brett Stockwell’s retired high school English teacher. It was my first time here since he’d asked me to take on his property.

He came out to greet me, while his companion, Trey Watson, watched us through the screen door.

“Hello,” Burgess said. “Anything you need to know from me before you get started?”

“Not really,” I said. “Just if you have any requests.”

“Just watch out for the tomato plants up against the house around back. Trey’ll have a fit if something happens to them.”

“Don’t worry.”

He cleared his throat, like he was working up to something. “A lot’s happened to your family since you dropped by the other day.”

“Yeah,” I said. Certainly Derek’s situation was well known. The incident at our house the night before hadn’t quite become common knowledge yet.

“I’m sorry for your troubles,” he said. “When you were here before, you were asking about Brett. You said there was a book. On an old computer of his.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you sort that all out?”

“Not really.”

Burgess nodded. “That was pretty much it, though? What was on the computer?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “I never actually saw it. What makes you ask?”

He shook his head like it didn’t really matter. “Trey, he was just curious, that’s all. So I thought I would ask. But it’s nothing.”

Something twigged in the back of my mind. Something Derek had said in passing when he first told me that he’d noticed the computer was missing from Adam’s room, and what was on it. He’d said there’d been letters to some teacher Brett had had back in high school.