Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

“Oh.”

“She started scrapping with me by the car, and I guess I shoved back, a little too hard, and she tripped and her head came down right on the bumper, and that was it.”

“She was dead,” I said.

Rolly swallowed. “People had seen us, right? In the bar? They might remember me and Clayton. I figured, if she got hit by a car instead, the police would think it was some sort of accident, that she’d gone walking, that she was drunk, they wouldn’t be looking for some guy she picked up in the bar.”

I was shaking my head.

“Terry,” he said, “if you’d been in that situation, you’d have been panicking, too. I got Clayton, told him what I’d done, and there was something in his face, like he felt he was as trapped by the situation as I was, he didn’t want to be talking to any cops. I didn’t know then, about the kind of life he was living, that he wasn’t who he claimed to be, that he was living a double life. So we put her in the car, took her down the highway, then Clayton held her up at the side of the road, tossed her in front of the car as I drove past. Then we put her in the ditch.”

“My God,” I said.

“Isn’t a night goes by I don’t think about it, Terry. It was a horrible thing. But sometimes, you have to be in a situation to appreciate what has to be done.” He shook his head again. “Clayton swore he’d never tell. The son of a bitch.”

“He didn’t,” I said. “I tried to get him to, but he didn’t give you up. But let me see if I can guess how the rest of this goes. One night, Clayton and Patricia and Todd, they disappear off the face of the earth, nobody knows what happened to them, not even you. Then one day, a year later, maybe a few years later, you get a call. It’s Clayton. Quid pro quo time. He covered up for you, for killing Connie Gormley, now he wanted you to do something for him. Be a courier, basically. Deliver money. He’d send it to you, maybe to a postal box or something. And then you’d slip it to Tess, drop it in her car, hide it in her newspaper, whatever.”

Rolly stared at me.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s more or less what happened.”

“And then, like an idiot,” I said, “I told you what Tess had revealed to me. When we had lunch. About getting the money. About how she still had the envelopes and the letter, the one warning her never to try to find out where the money came from, to never tell anyone about it. How, after all these years, she’d saved them.”

Now Rolly had nothing to say.

I came at him from another direction. “Do you think a man who was prepared to murder two people to please his mother would lie to her about whether he’d ever killed anyone before?”

“What? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m kind of thinking out loud here. I don’t think he would. I think a man who was about to kill for his mother, I don’t think he’d mind admitting to her if he’d already killed before.” I paused. “And the thing is, up until the moment the man said it, I was convinced that he’d already killed two people.”

“I have no idea what you’re driving at,” Rolly said.

“I’m talking about Jeremy Sloan. Clayton’s son, from the other marriage, with the other woman, Enid. But I suspect you know about them. Clayton would have probably explained it when he started sending you money to deliver to Tess. I figured Jeremy had killed Tess. And I figured he’d killed Abagnall. But now, I’m not so sure about that anymore.”

Rolly swallowed.

“Did you go see Tess after I told you what she had told me?” I asked. “Were you afraid that maybe she’d figured it out? Were you worried that maybe the letter she still had, the envelopes, that maybe they might still carry some forensic evidence linking them to you? And that if that happened, then you’d be linked to Clayton, and he wouldn’t be obliged to keep your secret any longer?”

“I didn’t want to kill her,” Rolly said.

“You did a pretty good job of it, though,” I said.

“But I thought she was dying anyway. It wasn’t like I’d be stealing that much time from her. And then, later, after I’d done it, you told me about the new tests. About how she wasn’t dying after all.”

“Rolly…”

“She’d given the letter and the envelopes to the detective,” he said.

“And you took his business card from the bulletin board,” I said.

“I called him, arranged a meeting, in the parking garage.”

“You killed him and took his briefcase with the papers inside,” I said.

Rolly cocked his head a bit to the left. “What do you think? Do you think my fingerprints would still have been on those envelopes after all these years? Saliva traces, maybe, when I sealed them?”

I shrugged. “Who knows,” I said. “I’m just an English teacher.”

“I got rid of them just the same,” Rolly said.

I looked down at the floor. I wasn’t just in pain. I felt a tremendous sadness. “Rolly,” I said, “you’ve been such a good friend for so many years. I don’t know, maybe even I’d be willing to keep my mouth shut about a horrible lapse in judgment more than twenty-five years ago. You probably never meant to kill Connie Gormley, it was just one of those things. It’d be hard to live with, covering that up for you, but for a friend, maybe.”

He eyed me warily.

“But Tess. You killed my wife’s aunt. Wonderful, sweet Tess. And you didn’t stop with her. There’s no way I can let that go.”

He reached into the pocket of the long coat and pulled out a gun. I wondered if it could be the one he’d found in the schoolyard, among the beer bottles and crack pipes.

“For crying out loud, Rolly.”

“Go upstairs, Terry,” he said.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“I’ve already bought my trailer,” he said. “It’s all set. I’ve picked out a boat. I’ve only got a few weeks to go. I deserve a decent retirement.”

He motioned me toward the stairs, followed me up them. Halfway up, I turned suddenly, tried to kick at him, but I was too slow. He jumped back a step, kept the gun trained on me.

“What’s going on?” Cynthia called from Grace’s room.

I stepped into the room, followed by Rolly. Cynthia, over by Grace’s desk, opened her mouth when she saw the gun, but no words came out.

“It was Rolly,” I said to Cynthia. “He killed Tess.”

“What?”

“And Abagnall.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Ask him.”

“Shut up,” Rolly said.

“What are you going to do, Rolly?” I asked him, turning around slowly by Grace’s bed. “Kill both of us, and Grace, too? You think you can kill that many people, and the police won’t figure it out?”

“I have to do something,” he said.

“Does Millicent know? Does she know she’s living with a monster?”

“I’m not a monster. I made a mistake. I had a bit too much to drink, that woman provoked me, demanding money that way. It just happened.”

Cynthia was flushed, her eyes wide. She must not have been able to believe what she was hearing. Too many shocks for one day. She lost it, not unlike she did when the phony psychic had dropped by. She screamed and charged at him, but Rolly was ready, swinging the gun into her face, catching her across the cheek, knocking her to the floor by Grace’s desk.

“I’m sorry, Cynthia,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

I thought I could take him at that moment, but he had the gun back on me. “God, Terry, I hate to have to do this. I really do. Sit down. Sit on the bed there.”

He took a step forward, and I moved back a foot, sat down on the edge of Grace’s bed. Cynthia was still on the floor, blood running down toward her neck from the gash in her cheek.