Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

“The two of you work together a lot?” I asked.

“We’ve done a few deals,” Broadhurst said, smiling. He laid a hand on Bob’s shoulder. “Just doing what I can to make Bob here a rich man. Isn’t that right, Bob?”

Bob offered up a smile that looked as genuine as a spray-on tan. He said, “Last year Galen bought several blocks in downtown Albany. It’s part of a proposal for some new state government offices.”

“Well,” I said. “I’m sure it’s all over my head.”

“I would imagine so,” Broadhurst said. He reached out a hand to Bob for a farewell shake, but did not bother with me.

He got in behind the wheel of the Porsche, fired it up, then eased it into first and pulled away from the curb. We listened to the car work its way through the gears until it reached the end of the street, turned, and disappeared.

Bob said, “He’s kind of an asshole.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said.

Duckworth did not need to look up Craig Pierce’s address.

He knew where he was living, and it wasn’t at his own apartment. He’d given that up after the incident, and now — like Trevor — was back living with his parents. Thank God that was the only thing about their situations that was similar.

He didn’t see any point in calling ahead to ask whether this was a good time to drop by and talk to Pierce. There’d never be a good time.

Pierce’s parents lived in the west end of Promise Falls on an older, tree-lined street. It was a two-story home that, while not run down, needed attention. The grass was overgrown, the shrubs crying out for a trim. The woodwork around the doors and windows could have used a coat of paint.

Duckworth parked at the curb, walked up to the door and rang the bell. It took Pierce’s mother — Duckworth remembered her name was Ruth — nearly a minute to come to the door. She peered through the window first, then opened the door a crack.

“Ms. Pierce, it’s Detective Duckworth.”

“Oh, yes, hello,” said Ruth Pierce. She opened the door far enough to admit him, as though opening it wider would allow unseen forces to invade the house. “Forgive me. You wouldn’t believe the people that show up. Awful, awful people. Not quite as many as there used to be, but they still come.”

“I’m sorry,” Duckworth said.

“People can be so cruel. The ones that want to make fun of him, to laugh at his misfortune. They’re no better than whoever did this to him.”

“They can be pretty awful, it’s true.”

As he stepped into the house, he sniffed the air.

“That’s scones,” Ruth Pierce said. “They just came out of the oven. Craig loves my scones and I try to do whatever I can to make him happy. Would you like one? With some jam?”

Duckworth felt his resolve weakening, not unlike that time, on another investigation, when he arrived to question a woman just as she’d finished baking banana bread. There were some things one could not say no to.

“That sounds wonderful,” he said.

“It would give us a chance to chat before you go upstairs to talk to Craig,” she said. “That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Talk to Craig.”

“I do, yes.”

“He probably knows you’re here. He sits and looks out the window a lot of the day.”

Her eyes drifted northward. If Craig kept an eye on the street, his bedroom had to be right above their heads. It occurred to Duckworth that there wasn’t a sound coming from up there.

As if reading his mind, his mother said, “I’ve got the TV hooked up in there but he almost never turns it on. Mostly he’s on his computer. Come to the kitchen.”

Duckworth followed her, and the scent of scones. He took a seat at the kitchen table as Ruth transferred the scones from a cooking sheet to a plate. “I love them when they’re still warm,” she said.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“You look like you’ve lost some weight.”

“A little.”

“Isn’t your wife looking after you?”

Duckworth chuckled. “It’s because she is looking after me that I’ve managed to lose it.”

She shook her head. “That’s no way to live, denying yourself the pleasures of life.” She briefly froze, and then her chin began to quiver. “Oh my poor, poor boy.” Her body shook with one brief sob. “There are so many pleasures he’ll never know.”

Duckworth contemplated whether to get up and comfort her, but she saved him the trouble, suddenly standing up straight and saying, “We have to move forward. That’s all we can do.”

She brought a plate with half a dozen scones to the table. “Coffee?”

“Uh—”

“You have to have some coffee. You can’t have a scone without coffee. I already have some going here.” She put a hand to her mouth, as though she’d just realized she’d made a terrible mistake. “I suppose what really goes with scones is tea. Would you prefer tea?”

“Coffee’s perfect.”

“That’s good. I don’t know if I even have any tea. If there are any tea bags in the back of that cupboard, they’re probably ten years old. Does tea go bad?”

“I don’t know.” Duckworth cleared his throat, hoping to steer the conversation away from hot beverages. “How’s Mr. Pierce?” he asked, meaning her husband, not her son.

Her face fell. “Oh, I guess you didn’t hear.”

Duckworth felt the air going out of him. “What happened, Mrs. Pierce?”

“I think it all just became too much for him. First, those horrible accusations against Craig. Brendan found that terribly difficult to deal with. Well, so did I, but he took it badly. Then the outrage that followed when the charges were dropped.”

Duckworth was well aware.

It was alleged that Craig Pierce had sexually molested an eleven-year-old girl he’d encountered in a Promise Falls park. That would have been serious enough, but it was worse than that. The girl was mentally disabled, and her intellectual handicap made it easy for Craig’s defense lawyer to challenge her ability to accurately identify the man who had dragged her into the bushes. The prosecutors had no DNA sample to tie Craig to the assault, and ultimately had to dismiss the charges.

Some might actually have been inclined to give Pierce the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it had been someone else. Perhaps the girl’s confusion over identifying Pierce meant she had it wrong. But Pierce’s behavior after the incident suggested guilt. He’d had hair nearly down to his shoulders, but immediately after the incident had it all cut off. When the girl was asked to pick him out of a lineup, she was looking at someone with a buzz cut.

But the clincher was what Pierce was heard to have said after the charges had been dropped. With news cameras rolling nearby, he’d been caught whispering to a buddy, “Let this be a lesson. Always pick the dumb ones.”

The comment wasn’t enough to re-lay the charges, but it was enough to persuade everyone Pierce was guilty, and not just folks in the Promise Falls area. The soundbite went viral. Craig Pierce became the world’s most despised man on the Internet for several days. There were emailed death threats, harassing phone calls. He’d had to go into hiding until things blew over, which took the better part of a month.

Turned out not everyone had forgotten about him.

Duckworth let Ruth Pierce continue with her story.

“My husband was devastated by all of it. He was so... ashamed. He wanted to believe Craig was innocent, but he knew... we both knew he’d done what they’d said he’d done. But he had a sickness, you know? Something was wrong in his head. We were going to get treatment for him.”

“About your husband,” Duckworth said, steering her back.