Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

“But no matter what you’ve done, what mistakes you may have made, I will represent you. I will be there for you, just as I’ve always been there for you in the past. And I’m going to be there for you in the future, because my name is Randall Finley, and if you make the decision not to give up on me, I swear to God I will never give up on you!”

Real applause this time, slowly spreading across the room.

“I thank you!” he said, waving his arms. “God bless you all!” Now nearly everyone was applauding, and about half the room was on its feet. Someone shouted, “Give ’em hell, Randy!”

Maxine looked like she’d swallowed a frog.

“Thank you!” Randy said over the applause. “Good night!”

They were still applauding as he strode off the stage, pausing long enough to whisper in my ear, “Put that in your cock and smoke it.”

"So whaddya think?” the mayor said, getting into the back of the Grand Marquis. “You know what I think? I think I’ve still got it.”

I got behind the wheel, turned the ignition, kept quiet.

“What?” he said from the backseat. “You got nothing to say?”

“You’re something else, Randy.”

He settled back into his seat. “Take me home, Cutter,” he said.

“We’re not quite done, Randy,” I said.

“What are you talking about? I said the thing. You got a picture of me saying it, right? On your phone? Isn’t that what this psycho wants? Can’t you just send that from your phone to his phone or something? You don’t even have to go out to your place. Guy sees that, he lets them go, he goes home, this whole thing is over.”

I feared it wasn’t going to be that simple. And given that Randy’s admission had not exactly resulted in his total humiliation, I wasn’t sure how Drew was going to react to his speech once he saw it.

“He wants to meet with you,” I said. “Face-to-face.”

“No fucking way,” Randy said, and I thought, when I caught a look at him in the mirror, that I saw some fear there.

“He still has my family, Randy,” I said.

“Look, Cutter, I’m not unsympathetic.” I glanced at him again in the mirror. “But I really think this is a matter between you and him, you know? Did I or did I not do my thing? Didn’t I do what you asked? And even though I did my best to spin this thing in my direction, you think my little speech isn’t going to end up on CNN? Those lefty bastards, that son of a bitch Wolf Blitzer, you wait, they’ll only see the negative in what I said.”

Within the hour, I figured.

“No, I think I’ll just have you take me home,” he said. “I’m going to have to talk to Jane. I figured it was best, let Maxine take her home, give her some time to cool off, you know. I’ve caused her a lot of shit but nothing quite like this, nothing this public. All my other stunts, as long as they weren’t happening under her nose, she could more or less deal with them. But this. .”

“Randy, I know you think this is one hundred percent about you, but maybe I haven’t made myself clear enough about-”

Randy’s cell phone rang. He had the phone out and to his ear in a second. “Yeah, honey, hi,” he said. Mrs. Finley, evidently. “Whoa, whoa, hang on a second. . There’s a lot more to this than meets the eye. . No, I haven’t lost my mind. . It’s a long story, I’ll explain it all later, but Jesus Christ, honey, this is actually a kind of life-and-death situation here and when you know the whole story you’ll understand. . Was it true? Okay, some of what I said, I embellished a bit, but the God’s honest truth is I was coerced, honey. Like I said, it’s complicated. You go home, take a couple of those pills the doctor gave you to settle your nerves. . That’s right. I’ll see you soon.” He flipped the phone shut. “I hope you’re happy,” he said. “The sooner I get home, the better, get this all sorted out.”

“Not yet, Randy. We’re going back to my place. This guy wants to talk to you. He wants to give you a piece of his mind. Maybe, considering that he lost a daughter, you could give him that much.”

“No thanks,” he said. I could see, in my mirror, he still had the phone in his hand. “Time to bring the cops into this. Let them sort it out. I already confessed my sins, so I don’t see what the fuck there is to lose now, you know? What’s Barry’s number? He can bring in a SWAT team or whatever it is they do, get a sniper, aim through a window, take him out, stupid bastard’ll finally get what’s coming to him.”

I thought about what Drew had said, that if he saw any police moving in on the house, he’d kill Ellen and Derek.

When I saw Randy flip his phone open, I hit the brakes and nosed the car into the curb. I was out the door in a second, had Randy’s open, leaned in across the empty seat and grabbed for the phone in his hand.

“Jesus, Cutter, knock it off!” he shouted as we wrestled.

Once I had the phone, I withdrew from the backseat, slammed the door, and pitched the gadget as far as I could into an empty lot.

“Goddamn it, Cutter!” Randy shouted, opening his door. “I can’t do it! I can’t face that guy! The son of a bitch’ll kill me! You know he will!”

I shoved him back into the car and was ready to slam the door but he kicked it back open again. I dove into the backseat, on top of him, grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket.

I dragged him across the seat, Randy flailing at me the whole way, and when I had him on the other side of the car I lifted him up and slammed him up against the window. The back of his head hit the glass hard and all of a sudden he stopped squirming and struggling. His eyelids fluttered.

Christ, I thought, I’ve killed him.

But he was doing some low-level moaning, and was at least conscious enough to reach a hand to the back of his head to feel his wound as he slid down into the upholstery.

Confident that Randy was not going to make a run for it in the next minute or so, I got out of the backseat and settled in again behind the wheel.

As I put the town car in drive, a very bad feeling washed over me. I knew that not only was it very likely I was delivering Randall Finley into the hands of his executioner, I was delivering myself as well.

But I’d sensed that Drew was being straight when he told me he’d spare Ellen and Derek if I did what he asked.

If I had to sacrifice Randy’s life, and my own, to save my wife and son, then that was what I was going to have to do.

I was pulling into my own driveway when Randy fully realized where he was. He sat bolt upright in the back, looked out the window, saw the Langley house.

“Goddamn it, Cutter,” he said.

My pickup and trailer were parked in the lane only a short ways down from the road, so we were going to have to walk in. Maybe that had been Drew’s plan, to have Derek block the driveway to allow Drew plenty of time to see anyone, cops in particular, approaching the place.

“How’s your head?” I asked, stopping the car and turning around in the seat.

Randy rubbed it. “You goddamn son of a bitch, you attacked me,” he said.

“You’re able to form complete sentences,” I said, “so it doesn’t sound like you sustained any brain damage.”

“I can’t go in there,” he said.

“You’re going in there,” I told him.

“Okay, okay,” Randy said, doing what he did best, which was try to put a good spin on the situation. “Okay, let me just think for a minute.”

I waited.

“Let’s say I meet with this guy, I talk to him, I persuade him to give himself up. That’ll look good, right? Congressional candidate gets killer to surrender. That would work.”

“That sounds good, Randy,” I said.