Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

“I see your point, Drew.”

“But I don’t think you were one of them, even though your name was in the book. I did at first. Then, after I got to know you, I figured you wrote down your number so Sherry could call you for help, right? And that was a nice gesture, but it turned out to be kind of meaningless, didn’t it? An empty gesture. You should have done more, Jim. You were there, weren’t you, when the mayor was doing it to her. And yet you didn’t get her help right then and there, like you should have. You should have done something to that man, called the police, had him arrested, helped my little girl. I mean, you’re a decent person, and even you did nothing. I’ll bet Sherry never got closer to getting help than she got when she ran into you.”

“What about you, Drew? What were you doing?”

“What?” For the first time, he sounded angry. “Where was I? I was in fucking jail! That’s where I was! Counting every fucking day till I got out, so I could help my little girl! Her mother, she was nothing but a useless bitch, you know that? She never did anything to help Sherry, never gave her a goddamn thing but a last name because she wouldn’t marry me. She was a drunk, she was a drug addict. She could be dead now for all I know and I hope she is. I did my best by Sherry. I tried, I swear to God I tried, even went so far as to rob a fucking bank to try to get some money to raise her right. And you know what happened then. I got sent away, and there was nobody to look after her. No one to guide her, no one to point her in the right direction. All I could hope for was that there’d be some people out there, some people with some sense of fucking decency, who’d help her until I could get out and do it myself. And maybe you came the closest of anybody, but you didn’t do enough.”

“But you came to kill me because you thought I was a customer,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice softer now. “But then, when I screwed up and got the wrong house, I decided to take it a little slower, to watch you first, and then you offered me a job, and I got to know you a bit, right? And decided, maybe I wouldn’t kill you. At least I’d think about it first, you know? But the others in that book, Sherry’s customers, they all had it coming.”

“Like Lance,” I said. “And there were two others, a few weeks ago.”

“And there are more in the book I haven’t got to,” he said. “I might not get to all of them.” I could hear the regret and resignation, the tiredness, in his voice. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

“You should turn yourself in,” I said. “Get yourself a lawyer. You’ve got a good case, Drew. These men, they all did terrible things to your little girl.”

“What little girl?” the mayor asked. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The one I want,” Drew said, “is the man you’re with. But I don’t think I want to kill him. I think I want to do something to him that’s even worse than that.”

“What, Drew? What is it you want?”

“This is the night, right?”

“What night?”

“The night where he tells everyone he’s going to run for something, not be the mayor anymore. Something big. Derek was telling me all about it.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And it’s soon, right?”

“Pretty soon.”

“You tell the mayor that when he goes onto the stage, he has to tell everyone that he had sex with a girl. An innocent, underage girl. A girl who was selling herself to get by, and that he took advantage of that fact. He has to tell everyone what he did.”

“That’s going to be a tall order, Drew,” I said. “I don’t know that he’s going to go along with that.”

“You’ve got one of those phones, right? That can take little movies?”

“Yeah. It can do that. In short doses.”

“You take a picture of him, making that speech, with all the people there. He has to tell them that he hired a little girl, she was only a child, that he hired a girl to have sex with him. If he doesn’t do that, I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill your boy, Jim. I’m going to kill your boy, and I’m going to kill your wife. I really hate to, honest I do, but I will, if the mayor doesn’t do what I say, and the two of you don’t come here after. You do that, and I won’t hurt your family. But don’t go thinking about calling the police. I see any police show up around here, I hear anybody coming close to this house, and I’ll kill them right away, whether the mayor does what he’s supposed to do or not. Do you get what I’m saying, Jim?”

“I hear you, Drew.”

“You talk it over with him and give me a call back.” And then Drew hung up the phone.

I closed mine.

“Jesus Christ on skates, you were on there for a fucking hour,” the mayor said. “You’re going to make me late to my own announcement. What was that all about, anyway?”

I turned to Randy and said, “You’re going to have to make some changes to your speech.”

Mayor Randall Finley said: “You. Are out. Of your fucking. Mind.”

“That’s what he wants,” I told him, both of us standing outside the town car, the engine still running. “He says if you don’t do it, he’s going to kill Ellen and Derek.”

“Oh, come on, Cutter!” the mayor said. “Has it occurred to you that he’s probably going to do that anyway? And that my saying a bunch of lies isn’t going to make any difference? Jesus, Cutter, I’ve got a reputation to think about here.”

I grabbed him by the lapels of his thousand-dollar suit and threw him up against the side of the car. “Randy, I don’t think you’ve fully grasped the seriousness of the situation. And if it’s any comfort, you won’t have to tell any lies at all. You’ll be telling the truth.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, shaking his head like a little boy. “I swear I didn’t know.”

“Don’t give me this shit,” I said. “The minute I walked in there, I could tell she was a child.”

“I didn’t force her to do anything,” the mayor protested. “I didn’t force her to choose that line of work.”

“That’s right,” I said, moving my face an inch away from his. “You’re totally blameless. You’re just an innocent consumer.”

“It was Lance,” he said, spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. “It was his fault. He’s the one set it up. He said he knew this girl, she was great, so I let him handle it. You see what I mean? How I was always better off with you handling everything? You’d never have booked her for me. You should never have let Lance do that.”

“It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it?” I said, still holding him, my nose up to his. “Because you don’t know how to control your impulses, and the rest of us should realize that, so if we don’t stop you, we’re the ones who’re to blame.”

“I’m just saying, that’s all,” he squeaked.

“Because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants, because you thought nothing of fucking around with teenage hookers, I’m in one fuck of a situation right now. There’s a guy with a gun holding my wife and my son hostage. Things have a way of coming back and biting you in the ass, Randy, and now they’re biting me, too. That girl’s father, you know how many people he’s killed so far, by my count? Six. Not counting the guy he killed in front of me a couple of nights ago. If you don’t go into that hall tonight and tell everybody what he wants you to tell them, he’s not just going to kill my family. He’s going to kill you, too. The only thing is, Randy, he’ll have to beat me to it.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Randy said. “Let me think, let me think.” He glanced at his watch. He was due at his own function in fifteen minutes. “Maybe there’s a way I can make this work. . You know, the whole Jimmy Swaggart thing, confess my sins. . Shit, it’ll never work.”