Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

The woman nodded.

Vince opened the door wide, strode into the room. “You cannot go in there,” the maid called down to us. But even I was inclined to ignore her, and followed Vince in.

The bed was unmade, the bathroom a mess of damp towels, but there were no signs that anyone was still staying in the unit. Toiletries gone, no suitcase.

One of Vince’s henchmen, Baldy, appeared in the doorway. “Is he here?”

Vince whirled around, walked up to Baldy and threw him up against the wall. “How long ago did you guys find out he was here?”

“We called you soon as we knew.”

“Yeah? Then what? You sat in the fucking car and waited for me when you should have been keeping your eyes open? The guy’s left.”

“We didn’t know what he looked like! What were we supposed to do?”

Vince tossed Baldy aside, walked out of the room and nearly ran into the maid.

“You not supposed-” she started to say.

“How long ago?” Vince asked, taking a twenty out of his wallet and handing it to her.

She slipped it into the pocket of her uniform. “Ten minute?”

“What kind of car did he have?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just a car. Brown. Dark window.”

“Did he say anything to you, say if he was heading home, anything like that?” I asked.

“He didn’t say anything to me.”

“Thanks,” Vince said to her. He tipped his head in the direction of his pickup, and we both got back in.

“Shit,” Vince said. “Shit.”

“What now?” I said. I had no idea.

Vince sat there a moment. “You need to pack?” he asked.

“Pack?”

“I think you’re going to Youngstown. You can’t get there and back in a day.”

I considered what he’d said. “If he’s checked out,” I said, “it makes sense he’s going home.”

“And even if he isn’t, looks to me like that might be the only place at the moment where you might find some answers.”

Vince reached across the car in my direction, and I recoiled for a second, thinking he was going to grab me, but he was just opening the glove box. “Jesus,” he said, “fucking relax.” He grabbed a road map, unfolded it. “Okay, let’s have a look here.” He scanned the map, looking into the upper left corner, then said, “Here it is. North of Buffalo, just north of Lewiston. Youngstown. Tiny little place. Should take us eight hours maybe.”

“Us?”

Vince attempted, briefly, to fold the map back into its original form, then shoved it, a jagged-edged paper ball, at me. “That’ll be your job. You get that back together, I might even let you do some of the driving. But don’t even think of touching the radio. That’s fucking off-limits.”

Looking at the map, it appeared our fastest route was to head straight north, into Massachusetts as far north as Lee, head west from there into New York State, then catch the New York Thruway up to Albany and west to Buffalo.

Our route was going to take us through Otis, which would put us within a couple of miles of the quarry where Patricia Bigge’s car had been found.

I told Vince. “You want to see?” I asked.

We’d been averaging over eighty miles per hour. Vince had a radar detector engaged. “We’re making pretty good time,” he said. “Yeah, why not?”

Even though there were no police cars marking the entrance this time, I was able to find the narrow road in. The Dodge Ram, with its greater clearance, took them a lot better than my basic sedan, and when we crested the final hill, where the woods opened up at the edge of the cliff, I thought, sitting up high in the passenger seat, that we were going to plunge over the side.

But Vince gently braked, put the truck in park, and engaged the emergency brake, which I’d never observed him do before. He got out and walked to the cliff’s edge and looked down.

“They found the car right down there,” I said, coming up alongside him and pointing.

Vince nodded, impressed. “If I was going to dump a car with a couple people inside,” he said, “I could do a lot worse than a spot like this.”

I was riding with a cobra.

No, not a cobra. A scorpion. I thought of that old American Indian folktale about the frog and scorpion, the one where the frog agrees to help the scorpion across the river if it promises not to sting him with its poisonous venom. The scorpion agrees, then halfway across, even though it means he, too, will perish, he plunges his stinger into the frog. The frog, dying, asks, “Why did you do this?” And the scorpion replies, “Because I am a scorpion, and it is my nature.”

At what point, I wondered, might Vince sting me?

If he did, I couldn’t imagine it would be like with the frog and the scorpion. Vince struck me as much more of a survivor.

Once we neared the Mass Pike, and the little bars on my phone started reappearing, I tried Cynthia again. When there was no answer on her cell, I tried home, but without any real expectation that she would be there.

She was not.

Maybe it was just as well that I couldn’t reach her. I’d rather call her when I had real news, and maybe, after we’d reached Youngstown, I’d have some.

I was about to put the phone away when it rang in my hand. I jumped.

“Hello?” I said.

“Terry.” It was Rolly.

“Hi,” I said.

“Heard anything from Cynthia?”

“I spoke to her before I left, but she didn’t tell me where she was. But she and Grace sounded okay.”

“Before you left? Where are you?”

“We’re just about to get on the Mass Turnpike, at Lee. We’re on our way to Buffalo. Actually, a bit north of there.”

“We?”

“It’s a long story, Rolly. And it seems to be getting longer and longer.”

“Where are you going?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“Maybe on a wild-goose chase,” I said. “But there’s a chance I may have found Cynthia’s family.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“But Terry, honestly, they must be dead after all these years.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe someone survived. Maybe Clayton.”

“Clayton?”

“I don’t know. All I do know is, we’re on our way to an address where the phone’s listed under the name Clayton Sloan.”

“Terry, you shouldn’t even be attempting this. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“Maybe,” I said, then glanced over at Vince and added, “but I’m with someone who seems to know how to handle himself in tricky situations.”

Unless, of course, just being with Vince Fleming was the tricky situation.

Once we’d crossed over into New York State and had picked up our toll ticket at the booth, it wasn’t long before we were to Albany. We both needed something to eat, and to take a whiz, so we pulled off at one of those interstate service centers. I bought us some burgers and Cokes and brought them back out to the truck so we could eat and drive.

“Don’t spill anything,” said Vince, who kept the truck pretty tidy. It didn’t look as though he’d ever killed anyone in here, or would want to, and I chose to take that as a good sign.

The New York Thruway took us through the southern edge of the Adirondacks once we got a bit west of Albany, and if my mind had not already been occupied with my current situation, I might have appreciated the scenery. Once we were past Utica, the highway flattened out, along with the countryside around it. The odd time I’d done this drive, once heading up to Toronto years ago for an educational conference, this had always been the part that seemed to drag on forever.

We made another pit stop outside Syracuse, didn’t lose much more than ten minutes.