Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

I figured I would head in about midday, maybe take a run out to the Walcott Hotel, on the west side of town, where Finley’s campaign strategists had hired a hall and were decorating the place with streamers and signs and laying out booze and snacks.

So I was able to do something I rarely do around the house, which was putter about, drink some coffee, take my time reading the paper. But of course, whenever such an opportunity presents itself, something usually comes along to ruin it.

This time, it was Barry’s unmarked car coming down the lane. It wasn’t possible to view Barry Duckworth’s arrival without feeling apprehensive. I was walking across the grass as he was getting out of his car. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied.

“Is this going to be bad news?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Just in the neighborhood.”

“You’re never just in the neighborhood.”

“How you doin’ today?”

“It’s been a long week, Barry. For you, too, I suppose.”

“That was quite something last night,” he said. He had to be referring, of course, to Ellen’s failure to identify Lester Tiffin at the lineup. “I figured, once she saw that tattoo, we’d have that thing nailed.”

I just shrugged. Maybe Ellen was going to change her story, but it needed to come from her, not from me.

He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know, Jim. I think something’s going on. I think if the two of you aren’t covering up for somebody, then at least Ellen is. And that’s not very helpful to me.”

“Sorry, Barry. Some of the things you did to us in the last week weren’t very helpful, either.”

He let out a long sigh. “I don’t want to get into a pissing match with you, Jim. I just want to figure out what the fuck is going on. Three people get killed up the lane here, you and Ellen get terrorized by a couple of thugs, your old buddy Lance ends up dead. That’s a lotta shit, and I can’t help but think it’s all connected.”

“What about the gun?” I asked him. “The one that was found just up there.”

“Yeah, it was used to kill the Langleys.”

“Did it have Lester Tiffin’s fingerprints on it?”

Barry just looked at me. It was as good as saying no.

“Is it possible,” I said, “that that gun had been out there all this time, that somehow your guys missed finding it when they were searching the property after the Langleys were killed?”

“Not possible,” Barry said.

“I remember reading about this case,” I said, “up in Canada, they were searching the house of this serial killer. They sent in a team and tore the house apart looking for evidence, pulled up the floorboards, took off drywall, didn’t find a thing. Then, the killer’s lawyer waltzes in after the search is done and, based on a tip from his client, pulls out a videotape from behind an overhead light fixture. The guy videotaped his killings.”

“You’re making a point?” Barry said.

“I’m just saying, even the best cops sometimes miss stuff.”

Barry was still shaking his head. “If that’s true, and that gun had been sitting there since the Langleys got killed, tell me how it managed to get itself over to Lance’s place and shoot him.”

I said, “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Same weapon. Pretty neat trick, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m not done with this thing, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it whether you and your wife want to cooperate or not.”

“I got it,” I said.

“And despite the fact I think you’re holding out on me, I’ve done you another favor.”

“What?”

“You asked me to check out that name. That girl. Sherry Underwood.”

“Right,” I said. “You did that?”

“I did. She’s dead. She died about a month ago. In the hospital.”

“What happened to her?”

Barry shrugged. “Sick. Drug abuse, HIV, malnutrition, the whole shooting match. Died of heart failure.”

I felt my shoulders sagging. “Oh,” I said. “She was just a kid.”

“Welcome to my world,” Barry said. He got back into his car, put down the window, and said, “Don’t jerk me around, Jim.”

I drove the mayor’s Grand Marquis into town around one. There was a boxful of pamphlets and press kits that needed to go out to the Walcott, so I volunteered to do that. Not because I wanted to help with his campaign, but because I needed something to do. And I was still getting paid by the hour. Randy didn’t need to be taken anyplace until late afternoon, when he was going to pop into a Rotary Club dinner and say a few words before going to his press conference.

I opened up a press kit and glanced through a copy of the mayor’s prepared speech. It was a cobbling together of every platitude, cliche, and empty promise ever uttered by an aspiring politician. Finley would probably do well with it. There were a few shots at special interest groups, unions in particular, which would play well to Randall Finley’s constituency, but they were a bit held back compared to things he’d said about Promise Falls’s municipal workers over the years, whom he had often characterized as, basically, dog fuckers. But now that he was running for Congress, Randy must have felt he couldn’t totally alienate organized labor. You could say a few negative things about a working guy’s union, but still count on his support so long as you made your opponent look like a Commie-loving pansy.

There were half a dozen people out at the Walcott getting things ready, and they tried to rope me into putting up streamers, but I begged off, saying the mayor wanted me downtown, ready to take him anywhere at a moment’s notice. Taping up streamers demanded a level of enthusiasm I could not bring to bear.

I took the Grand Marquis to the car wash, then headed back to city hall and parked out front. I read the paper till around five, when Randy got into the backseat so I could drive him to the Rotary event.

“So, Randy,” I said, “you nervous about tonight?”

“What do I have to be nervous about?” he asked. “They’re going to eat me up.”

As I was pulling up to the Holiday Inn, and Randy was waiting for me to run around and open the door for him, my cell rang. “I’ll see you in there in a minute,” I said, forcing him to open the door on his own. He could use the exercise, I figured.

“Hi,” Ellen said. “You heard from Derek?”

“No,” I said, glancing at the clock on the dash. It was 5:05 p.m. “Why would I hear from Derek?”

“No reason,” she said. “He’s just usually back here before five. I wondered if he was running late or anything. He didn’t leave a message, so I thought maybe he’d been in touch with you.”

“Nope,” I said, feeling only slightly uneasy. “Didn’t you call him?”

“I tried his cell but it went straight to message.”

“Maybe he’s in a bad area, or forgot to charge it up,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry. Look, we honored our side of the deal with Illeana’s people. I’m sure everything’s okay. I’ve gotta go into the Holiday Inn. Randy’s doing the Rotary before his other thing.”

“Okay, talk to you later.”

Randy wasn’t having dinner with the Rotarians, but offering some greetings before they sat down to theirs. It was a kind of pre-announcement announcement. A few jokes, a bit of electioneering, and when he took questions from the audience he dodged the ones about his political intentions with “I think you’ll have the answer to that question in a couple of hours.”

He got a nice round of applause. Not quite as enthusiastic as he was hoping for, though. “The fuck was their problem?” he said, walking down the hall with me back to the car. “I thought I killed in there.”

“Tough room,” I said, and this time, feeling generous, I opened the car door for him.