Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

Cynthia looked dizzy.

“But not,” Wedmore pointed out, “your father. I’d like to ask you a few more questions about him, what he was like, what kind of person he was.”

“Why?” Cynthia asked. “What are you implying?”

“I think we have to consider the possibility he murdered both of them.”

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” he said.

“I was just thinking about you,” she said. “I haven’t heard from you for a while. I hope everything’s okay.”

“I wanted to wait to see what would happen,” he said. “How much they might find out. There’s been stuff on the news. They showed the car. On TV.”

“Oh my…”

“They had a picture of it being taken away from the quarry. And they had a story today, in the newspapers, about the DNA tests.”

“Oh, this is so exciting,” she said. “I wish I was there with you. What did it say?”

“Well, it said some stuff but not others, of course. I’ve got the paper right here. It said, ‘DNA tests indicate a genetic link between the two bodies in the car, that they are a mother and son.’”

“Interesting.”

“‘Forensic tests have yet to determine whether the bodies are genetically linked to Cynthia Archer. Police are operating on the assumption, however, that the recovered bodies are Patricia Bigge and Todd Bigge, missing for twenty-five years.’”

“So the story doesn’t actually say that’s who was in the car,” she said.

“Not quite.”

“You know what they say about ‘assume.’ It makes an ass out of you and-”

“I know, but-”

“But still, it’s amazing what they can do these days, isn’t it?” She sounded almost cheerful.

“Yeah.”

“I mean, back then, when your father and I got rid of that car, who’d even heard of DNA tests? It boggles the mind, that’s what it does. You still feeling nervous?”

“A little, maybe.” He did sound subdued to her.

“Even as a boy, you were a worrier, you know that? Me, I just take hold of a situation and deal with it.”

“Well, you’re the strong one, I guess.”

“I think you’ve done a wonderful job, lots to be proud of. Soon you’ll be home and you can take me back. I wouldn’t want to miss this for the world. When the moment comes, I can’t wait to see the expression on her face.”

“So how are you dealingwith this?” Dr. Kinzler asked Cynthia. “The apparent discovery of your mother and your brother.”

“I’m not sure,” Cynthia said. “It’s not relief.”

“No, I can see why it wouldn’t be.”

“And the fact that my father was not there with them. This detective, Wedmore, she thinks maybe he killed them.”

“If that turns out to be true,” Dr. Kinzler said, “are you going to be able to deal with that?”

Cynthia bit her lip, looked at the blinds, as though she had X-ray vision and could see out to the highway. This was our regular session, and I’d talked Cynthia into keeping it, even though she’d been talking about canceling. But now that Dr. Kinzler was asking such probing questions, that to my mind just opened wounds as opposed to healing them, I was second-guessing myself.

“I’m already having to come to terms with the idea that my father may have been something other than the man I knew,” Cynthia said. “The fact that there’s no record of him, no Social Security number, no driver’s license…” She paused. “But the idea that he could have killed them, that he could have killed my mother and Todd, I can’t believe it.”

“You think he left the hat,” Dr. Kinzler said.

“It’s a possibility,” Cynthia said.

“Why would your father break in to your house, leave you a message like that, write a letter on your own typewriter with a map leading you to the others?”

“Is he…is he trying to settle things?”

Dr. Kinzler shrugged. “I’m asking you what you think.”

Standard shrink procedure, I thought.

“I don’t know what to think,” Cynthia said. “If I thought he’d done it, then the notes, everything, it might be him trying to set the record straight, to confess. I mean, whoever left that note had to be involved somehow in their deaths. To know those kinds of details.”

“True,” Dr. Kinzler said.

“And Detective Wedmore, even though she talks like my father killed them years ago, I think she thinks I wrote the note,” Cynthia said.

“Maybe,” Dr. Kinzler speculated, “she thinks you and your father are in this together. Because his body wasn’t found. Because you weren’t in that car with your mother and your brother.”

Cynthia paused before nodding. “I know, years ago, the police must have wondered about me. I mean, when they weren’t able to turn up anything, or any of them, I guess they would have considered everything, wouldn’t they? They probably wondered whether I might have done it with Vince. Whether we’d done it together. Because of the fight I’d had that night with my parents.”

“You’ve told me you don’t remember a lot about that night,” Dr. Kinzler said. “Do you think it’s possible there are things you know that you’ve blocked out? I have occasionally referred people to someone I trust very much who does hypnosis therapy.”

“I’m not blocking things out. I blacked out. I came home drunk. I was a kid. I was stupid. I came home, I passed out. I woke up the next morning.” She raised her hands, dropped them in her lap. “I couldn’t have committed a crime if I’d wanted to. I was out of it.” She sighed. “Don’t you believe me?”

“Of course,” Dr. Kinzler said. Gently, she asked, “Tell me more about your relationship with your father.”

“Normal, I guess. I mean, we had fights, but we more or less got along. I think,” and she paused again, “that he loved me. I think he loved me very much.”

“More than the other members of your family?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if he was in a state of mind that led him to kill your mother and your brother, why wouldn’t he have killed you, too?”

“I don’t know. And I’ve told you, I don’t believe he did it. I…I can’t explain any of this, okay? But my father wouldn’t do something like that. He couldn’t have killed my mother. He’d never have killed his own son, my brother. You know why? Not just because he loved us. He wouldn’t have been able to do anything like that because he was too weak.”

That caught my attention.

“He was a sweet man, but-this is hard to say about a parent-but he just wouldn’t have had it in him to do something like that.”

I said, “I don’t see where any of this is getting us.”

“We know that your wife is deeply troubled by the questions raised by this discovery,” the psychiatrist said. Did she ever raise her voice? Did she ever get demonstrably pissed off? “I’m trying to help her with that.”

“What if they arrest me?” Cynthia said.

“Pardon?” said Dr. Kinzler.

“What?” I said.

“What if Detective Wedmore arrests me?” she asked. “What if she becomes convinced I had something to do with it? What if she thinks I’m the only person who could possibly have known what was in that quarry? If she arrests me, how will I explain this to Grace? Who’ll look after her if they take me away? She needs her mother.”

“Honey,” I said. I almost blurted out that I would look after Grace, but that would have suggested I believed that the scenario she was laying out for us was likely, and imminent.