Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

Derek had his door open before I had the truck in park and was hoofing it back to the scene. I grabbed my keys and was out the door, running to catch up with my son, who hadn’t said a word the whole way back.

I caught up to him as we reached the end of the drive. A cop raised his hand to us and said, “I’m sorry, you can’t come onto this property.”

I pointed down to the end of the lane, where you could just make out part of our house. “I live down there,” I said. “I just got a call from my wife that-”

“Jim!”

I looked around the cop and could see Ellen, who’d been standing with a couple of officers, running my way. The cop who’d been blocking my path stepped back and let Derek and me pass. Ellen, in a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, her hair slightly askew, looked as though she’d had to face the world sooner than she’d planned, and if she’d had a chance to do her makeup, the tears running down her cheeks now would surely have made a mess of it.

She ran up, threw her arms around me, then reached out to grab Derek by the arm and pull him toward us.

“Ellen, what the hell’s going on?” I asked.

She sniffed, looked at me first, then our son, her eyes lingering on Derek, as though the news she had to tell was going to be harder on him than me.

“The Langleys,” she said. “Last night, someone, they came in, and. .” Tears were welling up in her eyes again.

“Ellen,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “Just get ahold of yourself.”

She took a couple breaths, sniffed again, felt with both hands in her pockets for a tissue. Finding none, she ran her index finger across the bottom of her nose.

“They’re all dead,” she said. “Albert, Donna.” She squeezed Derek’s arm. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Adam too.”

I thought he would say something. Maybe a “What?” or an “Are you kidding?” or even a simple “No.”

I know that I was about to ask, “What happened?”

But Derek said none of these things. Instead, his lip began to tremble, and almost instantly, tears welled up in both his eyes. He fell into his mother’s arms and began to sob. The emotions overwhelmed him so quickly, it was like he’d been holding them in all morning.

“Hey, Cutter!”

I glanced away from my wife and son holding each other to see Barry Duckworth, a detective with the Promise Falls Police Department, heading my way. Early forties, like me, we’d often crossed paths during the time that I’d worked for the mayor’s office. I liked to think I was, at least in the last couple of years, in a little better shape than Barry, whose paunch was slightly visible where his white dress shirt pulled apart just above his belt, letting us in on a small triangle of hairy belly. There was more hair there than on his head, which was mostly bald save for a pitiful comb-over near his crown. He had his tie pulled down and his collar open, and his jacket must have been left behind in his car. It was too hot to wear one, but even without it, there were sweat stains under the pits.

I’d always thought he was an okay guy. A straight shooter. And while I couldn’t claim he was a close friend, we’d spent more than a few nights sitting in a bar together, and that tends to count for something around these parts.

“Barry,” I said solemnly. He extended his hand. We shook, both our palms sweaty. “What’s going on, Barry?”

He ran his hand over his head, like he was squeegeeing off the perspiration. “You mind if I ask you a few questions first, Jim, before I fill you in?”

So we were going to be professional, at least at first. I could accept that. “Sure,” I said as Ellen and Derek released their hold on each other and turned to see what they might learn.

“I’ve already asked Ellen some questions, but I’d like to go over some things with you,” Barry Duckworth said. “You were home last night?”

“Yeah. Came home from work, never went out again. I was beat.”

“Did you see the Langleys at all last night?”

“I didn’t.” I was about to say that Derek had, but I figured Barry would get to him.

“Hear anything at all last night, after ten o’clock or so?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “We had the house closed up pretty tight, the air on.”

“See anything? Car headlights maybe?”

I shook my head again. “Sorry.” I pointed to our place. “We’re quite a ways down.”

“How about you?” Barry said, turning to Derek.

“Huh?” he said. There was a small trail of clear snot running down to his upper lip. Derek turned and wiped his nose into the shoulder of his T-shirt, still flecked with grass clippings from our morning tour.

“Did you see or hear anything last night?”

“No,” he said.

“But you saw the Langleys last night, right? Before they left? Your mother was saying you went over there to say goodbye to Adam, before he and his parents went away for a week to some lodge?”

Derek nodded.

“What time was that?” Barry asked.

Derek half shrugged. “I think around eight? Maybe a little after? I left just before they got in the car and took off.”

Eight? We hadn’t seen Derek at all that evening. He must have done something else after leaving the Langleys. Hung out with Penny, probably.

I decided it was time to press for some information. “Barry,” I said. “Come on. Tell us what’s happened.”

His cheeks puffed out as he blew out some air.

I persisted. “This place will be swarming with news crews in a minute. You’re going to have to tell them something. You can practice on us.”

He paused another moment, then said, “It was like an execution in there. Somebody, maybe two people, we don’t know yet, came in last night and shot them. All three.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

Ellen gripped my arm. “Dear God,” she said.

I looked up at the house, cops still going in and out, talking quietly, shaking their heads.

Barry continued, “Mr. Langley, he’s by the front door, looks like his wife was shot coming down the stairs to see what was going on, and the boy-Adam?” He looked at Derek for confirmation, and my son nodded. “Adam, he was shot going down the stairs by the back door. Looks like he was trying to make a run for it, took a bullet right about here.” Barry touched himself at the back of the neck, just under his left ear.

I was numb. And despite the kind of weather we were having, I felt chilled.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought they’d gone away. They were taking a vacation or something.” To Derek, I said, “Weren’t they going away for a week?”

“Yeah,” he said, his face still wet with tears.

“Wife got sick,” Barry said. “They were well on their way, but she was having stomach pains or something, it’s a bit sketchy. But on the way back, around ten, Langley phoned one of the secretaries from his law firm, phoned her at home. Said his wife was sick, they were postponing their trip and coming back home, that if she got better by the morning they’d try heading off again, but in the meantime, there was a case he’d been thinking about, wanted her to bring a file out to him this morning so he could work on it, maybe take it with him if they managed to get away again.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So she drives in here about nine this morning to drop it off, knocks on the door, nobody answers. She tries a couple times, figures maybe they’re sleeping in or something, so she phones the house from her cell, can hear the phone ringing in the house, but nobody’s picking up, which seems pretty weird to her, right?”

We were all listening.

“So she happens to peer in through a window by the door.” He pointed over to the house, the vertical windows flanking the door. “She can see Mr. Langley lying there, can just barely make out the wife on the stairs. That’s when she called 911.”