Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

“Honey,” I said.

Cynthia’s eyes were bloodshot, her cheeks streaked with dried tears. Grace, on the other hand, was still crying. Damp lines ran down her cheek.

“He said he was Todd,” Cynthia told me. “He’s not Todd.”

“I know,” I said. “I know. But that is your father.”

Cynthia looked to her right at the man sitting in the front of the Impala, then back to me.

“No,” she said. “He might look like him, but he’s not my father. Not anymore.”

Clayton, who had heard the exchange, let his head fall toward his chest in shame. Without looking at Cynthia, he said, “You’re entitled to feel that way. I know I would, if I was you. All I can tell you is how sorry I am, but I’m not so old and foolish as to think you’ll forgive. I’m not even sure you should.”

“You get away from the car,” Jeremy warned me, coming around the front of Cynthia’s Corolla, the gun pointed my way. “You stand back over there.”

“How could you do it?” Enid said to Clayton. “How could you leave everything to that bitch?”

“I’d told the lawyer you weren’t to see it before I died,” Clayton said. He nearly smiled, and said, “Guess I’m going to have to look for a new lawyer.”

“It was his secretary,” Enid said. “He was on vacation, I dropped by, said you wanted to take another look at it, up in the hospital. So she shows it to me. You ungrateful son of a bitch. I give up my whole life for you and this is the thanks I get.”

“Should we do it, Mom?” Jeremy asked. He was standing by Cynthia’s door, preparing, I figured, to lean in through the window, turn the ignition, slap it into drive or neutral, pull himself back through the window, and watch the car roll over the edge.

“Hey, Mom,” Jeremy said, more slowly this time, “shouldn’t they be untied? Won’t it look funny if they’re tied up in the car? Doesn’t it have to look like my…you know…like she did it on her own?”

“What are you blathering on about?” Enid shouted.

“Should I knock them out first?” Jeremy asked.

I couldn’t think of much else to do but rush him. Try to grab his gun, turn it on him. I might end up getting shot myself, would probably end up dead, but if that meant saving my wife and my daughter, it didn’t seem like that bad a deal. Once Jeremy was out of the way, there wouldn’t be anything Enid could do, not without the use of her legs. Eventually, Cynthia and Grace would be able to free themselves, get away.

“You know what?” Enid said, ignoring Jeremy and turning her attention to Clayton. “You never appreciated anything I did for you. You were an ungrateful bastard from the moment I first met you. A miserable, useless good-for-nothing. And on top of that, unfaithful.” Enid shook her head disapprovingly. “That’s the worst sin of all.”

“Mom?” Jeremy said again. He had one hand on Cynthia’s door, the other still pointing the gun at me.

Maybe when he leaned in, I thought. He’d have to turn his back to me, at least for a second. But what if he managed to knock Cynthia and Grace out, put the car into gear before I got to him? I might get the drop on him but not in time to stop the car from rolling off the edge.

It had to be now. I had to rush him-

And then I heard a car starting.

It was the Impala.

“What the hell are you doing?” Enid screamed at Clayton, sitting in the driver’s seat. “Turn that off!”

But Clayton wasn’t paying any attention to her. He turned, calmly, to his left. He had a small smile on his face. He looked almost serene. The Impala was right alongside Cynthia’s Toyota, and he nodded at his daughter and said, “I never, ever stopped loving you, or ever stopped thinking about you and your mother and Todd.”

“Clayton!” Enid screamed.

And then Clayton looked at Grace, her eyes just visible above the door. “I wish I could have gotten to know you, Grace, but I know without a doubt that with a mother like Cynthia, you are very, very special.”

Then Clayton gave his attention to Enid. “So long, you miserable old cunt,” he said, and dropped the car into gear and hit the gas.

The engine roared. The Impala bolted forward toward the edge.

“Momma!” Jeremy screamed, and ran around the front of Cynthia’s car and into the path of the Impala, as if he thought he could stop it with his own body. Maybe Jeremy thought at first that the car was only rolling, as if Clayton had shoved it by accident into neutral.

But that wasn’t the case at all. Clayton was trying to see how fast he could go from zero to sixty in the thirty feet he had between himself and the quarry’s edge.

The car threw Jeremy up onto the hood, and that’s where he was when the Impala, with Clayton at the wheel and Enid screaming in the seat next to him, shot out over the edge.

It was about two seconds before we heard the splash.

I had to move Clayton’swindshield-shattered Honda out of the way to make room to get out of there in Cynthia’s Toyota. She got in the back so she could sit with her arms around Grace for the long drive back south to Milford.

I knew we should probably have called the police, waited there at the top of the quarry for them to arrive, but we thought the most important thing was to get Grace home, where she would feel the most safe, as quickly as possible. Clayton and Enid and Jeremy weren’t going anywhere. They’d still be at the bottom of that lake when we gave Rona Wedmore a call.

Cynthia wanted me to get to a hospital, and there was no doubt in my mind that I needed one. Both my sides were in intense pain, but it was mitigated by an overwhelming sense of relief. Once I had Cynthia and Grace home, I’d head over to Milford Hospital.

We didn’t talk a lot on the drive back. I think Cynthia and I were on the same page-that we didn’t want to go over what had happened, not just today but twenty-five years ago-in front of Grace. Grace had been through enough. She just needed to get home.

But I did manage to get the rough details of what had happened. Cynthia and Grace had driven to Winsted, met Jeremy at the McDonald’s lot. He had a surprise, he told them. He had brought along his mother. The inference being, of course, that he had brought along Patricia Bigge.

Cynthia, dumbstruck, was taken over to the Impala, and once she and Grace were in the car, Enid held her gun on Grace. Told Cynthia to drive the car to the quarry or she’d kill Grace. Jeremy followed in Cynthia’s car.

Once on the precipice, Cynthia and Grace were tied into the front seats in preparation for their trip over the side.

Then Clayton and I arrived.

Almost as briefly, I told Cynthia what I’d learned. About my trip to Youngstown. Finding her father in the hospital. The story of what happened the night her family disappeared.

Vince Fleming getting shot.

I would call, the moment I got home, to see how he was doing. I didn’t want to have to go into school and face Jane Scavullo, tell her that the only man in years who’d been decent to her was dead.

As far as the police were concerned, I hoped to Christ Wedmore believed everything I was going to tell her. I don’t know that I would have, if it hadn’t actually happened to me.

Something still wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t shake the memory of Jeremy standing over me, gun in hand, unable to pull the trigger. He certainly hadn’t shown that kind of hesitation where Tess Berman was concerned. Or Denton Abagnall.

They’d both been murdered in, well, “cold blood” I guess the phrase is.

What was it that Jeremy had said to his mother? While he stood over me? “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

Yeah, that was it.