Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

Chances were good that someone was going to stop me at some point, but I figured if I could just make it to Clayton Sloan’s room, I’d be okay.

The elevator doors parted onto the third-floor nurses’ station. There was no one there. I stepped out, paused a moment, then turned left, looking for door numbers. I found 322, discovered the numbers got bigger as I moved on down the hallway. I stopped, went back in the other direction, which was going to take me past the nurses’ station again. A woman was standing with her back to me, reading a chart, and I walked past as noiselessly as possible.

I looked for numbers again. The hallway turned left, and the first door I came to was 309. The door was partly ajar, the room mostly in darkness except for a neon light mounted to the wall next to the bed.

It was a private room, one bed. A curtain obscured all but the foot of the bed, where a clipboard hung on a metal frame. I took a few steps in, beyond the curtain, and saw that there was a man in the bed, on his back, slightly raised, fast asleep. In his seventies, I guessed. Emaciated-looking, thinned hair. From chemo, maybe. His breathing was raspy. His arms lay at his sides, his fingers long and white and bony.

I moved around to the far side of the bed, where the curtain gave me cover from the hallway. There was a chair near the head of the bed, and when I sat down, I was able to make myself even more invisible to anyone passing by the room.

I studied Clayton Sloan’s face, searching for something there that I was unable to find when I looked at Enid Sloan’s. Something about his nose, perhaps, a trace of cleft in his chin. I reached out and gently touched the man’s exposed arm, and he made a slight snorting noise.

“Clayton,” I whispered.

He sniffed, wiggled his nose about unconsciously.

“Clayton,” I whispered again, rubbing his leathery skin softly back and forth. Inside his elbow a tube ran into his arm. An IV drip of some kind.

His eyes fluttered open, and he sniffed again. He saw me, blinked hard a couple of times, let his eyes adjust and focus.

“Wha…”

“Clayton Bigge?” I said.

That not only brought his eyes into focus, but made him turn his head more sharply. The fleshy folds of his neck bunched together. “Who are you?” he whispered.

“Your son-in-law,” I said.

As he swallowedI watched his Adam’s apple bob along the length of his throat. “My what?” he said.

“Your son-in-law,” I said. “I’m Cynthia’s husband.”

He opened his mouth to speak, and I could see how dry his mouth was. “Would you like a drink of water?” I asked quietly. He nodded. There was a pitcher and glass next to the bed, and I poured him some water. There was a straw on the table, and I put it to his lips, holding the glass for him.

“I can do it,” he said, grasping the glass and sipping from the straw. He took the glass with more strength than I expected. He licked his lips, handed the glass back to me.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“After ten,” I said. “I’m sorry to wake you. You were sleeping pretty good there.”

“No harm,” he said. “They’re always waking you up here anyway, all times of the day and night.”

He took a deep breath through his nostrils, let the air out slowly. “So,” he said. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

“I think you do,” I said. “You’re Clayton Bigge.”

Another deep breath. Then, “I’m Clayton Sloan.”

“I believe you are,” I said. “But I think you’re also Clayton Bigge, who was married to Patricia Bigge, who had a son named Todd and a daughter named Cynthia, and you lived in Milford, Connecticut, until one night in 1983, when something very terrible happened.”

He looked away from me and stared at the curtain. He made a fist with the hand lying at his side, opened his fingers, clenched again.

“I’m dying,” he said.

“Then maybe it’s time to get a few things off your chest,” I said.

Clayton turned his head on the pillow to look at me again. “Tell me your name.”

“Terry. Terry Archer.” I hesitated. “What’s your name?”

He swallowed again. “Clayton,” he said. “I’ve always been Clayton.” His eyes moved down. He stared at the folds in the hospital linen. “Clayton Sloan, Clayton Bigge.” He paused. “Depended where I was at the time.”

“Two families?” I said.

I was able to make out a nod. Remembered some of the things Cynthia told me about her father. On the road all the time. Back and forth across the country. Home for a few days, gone for a few, back for a few. Living half his life someplace else…

Suddenly he brightened as a thought occurred to him. “Cynthia,” he said to me. “Is she here? Is she with you?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t…I don’t know exactly where she is right now. She may be back home now, in Milford, for all I know. With our daughter. Grace.”

“Grace,” he said. “My granddaughter.”

“Yes,” I whispered as a shadow went by in the hall. “Your granddaughter.”

Clayton closed his eyes for a moment, as though in pain. But I didn’t think it was anything physical.

“My son,” he said. “Where is my son?”

“Todd?” I said.

“No no,” he said. “Not Todd. Jeremy.”

“I think he may be on the way back from Milford.”

“What?”

“He’s on his way back. At least that’s what I think.”

Clayton looked more alert, his eyes wide. “What was he doing in Milford? When did he go there? Is that why he hasn’t been here with his mother?” Then his eyes drifted shut and he started muttering, “No no no.”

“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

He raised a tired hand and tried to wave me off. “Leave me,” he said, his eyes still closed.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Aren’t Jeremy and Todd the same person?”

His eyelids rose slowly, like a curtain rising on a stage. “This can’t happen… I’m so tired.”

I leaned in closer. I hated pushing an old, sick man as much as I hated Vince keeping an old, disabled woman prisoner, but there were things I had to know.

“Tell me,” I said. “Are Jeremy and Todd the same person?”

Slowly his head turned on the pillow and he looked at me. “No.” He paused. “Todd is dead.”

“When? When did Todd die?”

“That night,” Clayton said resignedly. “With his mother.”

So it was them. In the car at the bottom of the quarry. When the results of the tests comparing Cynthia’s DNA to the samples taken from the bodies in the car came in, we’d be getting a connection.

Clayton raised his hand weakly, pointed back to the small table. “More water?” I said. He nodded. I handed him the glass and he took a long drink.

“I’m not quite as weak as I look,” he said, holding the glass as though it were a major accomplishment. “Sometimes, when Enid comes in, I make like I’m in a coma, so I won’t have to talk to her, she won’t complain so long. I still walk a little. I can get to the can. Sometimes I even get there in time.” He pointed to the closed door on the other side of the room.

“Patricia and Todd,” I said. “So they’re both dead.”

Clayton’s eyes closed again. “You have to tell me what Jeremy is doing in Milford.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think he’s been watching us. Watching our family. I think he’s been in our house. I can’t say for sure, but I think he may have killed Cynthia’s aunt Tess.”

“Oh my God,” Clayton said. “Patricia’s sister? She’s dead?”

“She was stabbed to death,” I said. “And a man we’d hired to try to find out some things, he’s dead, too.”