Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

“Okay, there is one thing I remember, from the actual incident,” he said, closing his eyes, seemingly concentrating. “Just before the dog bit down, it kind of tickled.” He opened his eyes and grinned.

“It did something to you, didn’t it?” Duckworth said.

“Is that a serious question?”

“I mean, you seem traumatized in a way I wouldn’t have expected.”

“Do you mean my cheerful demeanor?”

“I’m not sure that’s what I’d call it.”

Craig tipped his head. “Perhaps cheerful bordering on deranged? Did Mommy tell you my therapist is coming today? To talk to me? So I can share my feelings ?”

“Thanks for your help,” Duckworth said, and started to get up.

“Wait!” Craig Pierce said. “Don’t go just yet.”

Duckworth sat down again slowly.

“I never liked my father,” Craig said. “I was never good enough for him. And then all this shit happened to me. The charges, the humiliation, the shame I brought down upon the family. But you know what was absolutely worst of all?”

Duckworth waited.

“It was losing my manhood. Havin’ all my equipment bit clean off. That was why he couldn’t come up here and look at me. You believe that? He couldn’t even look at me.”

Duckworth could think of nothing to say.

“I’ve never told my mother what actually happened when my father brought me my tomato soup.” Craig smiled. “She thinks good ol’ Dad came up here and just got very sad, then went downstairs and had his heart attack.”

Duckworth heard himself asking, “So what did happen?”

Another mischievous grin. “This.”

Craig spread his legs further and flung back the robe to expose all that remained: ugly purple-blue bruising, jagged scars and mangled skin. Duckworth was put in mind of a blue cabbage that had been through a food processor.

“I said to Dad, ‘How about them apples, or lack thereof?’”

Duckworth got up and left the room.

I went back into the Plimpton house with Bob Butler trailing after me. Gloria was in the kitchen, pouring herself yet another glass of wine while her aunt watched disapprovingly.

“Where’s Jeremy?” I asked.

“He went upstairs,” Gloria said. “He was very upset. Can you blame him? That asshole Galen comes by here in that car?” She shook her head. “Honest to God, I am surrounded by people who really don’t have a clue. Jesus, Bob, how could you let him come up here at all, let alone in that goddamn car?”

Bob said, “I had no idea.”

“Unbelievable,” Gloria said to him, but now she was turning her sights on me. “Did you really throw Jeremy’s phone into a fryer?”

I nodded unapologetically.

“It might keep him from making further dates with his girlfriend.”

“The Wilson girl?” Gloria asked.

“Yes,” I said, “Charlene.”

“That little slut,” Gloria said.

“For God’s sake,” Madeline Plimpton said. “Pot, meet kettle.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gloria asked.

Ms. Plimpton just shook her head and left the room. Gloria sighed and took another drink.

“Aren’t you hitting that just a bit hard?” Bob asked her.

“With what I’ve been through, you’re lucky I don’t drink straight out of the bottle.” She put down her glass and waved a finger at him. “I’ve had an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“Hiring Mr. Weaver here is all well and good, but maybe what we really need is one of those PR consultants.”

“A what?” asked Bob.

“You know, a public relations person. Someone who could get out our side of the story. How Jeremy — and by extension, all of us — is a victim too. I mean, the judge made his ruling and that should be the end of it, but here we are being tortured on social media. Being threatened, having our reputations dragged through the mud.”

Bob actually appeared intrigued. “So what would a PR person actually do?”

“She — and I would want it to be a woman, because they’re much better at this sort of thing — would get in touch with the media and make sure some sympathetic stories are written. She’d know the right people to approach, who’d be on our side. Get them to sit down with Jeremy, interview him, see what a decent boy he actually is, not that cartoon big baby they made him out to be through the trial.”

“You know anyone like that?” Bob asked her.

Gloria shook her head. “Madeline might.”

I had my doubts Madeline Plimpton would be on board with this, but in the little time I had spent with these people, I supposed anything was possible.

Bob left the room, shaking his head.

Gloria put the question to me. “Do you know anyone like that, Mr. Weaver?”

“No.”

She frowned. I was becoming a disappointment to her. A fried phone and now this. Here I’d been trying to persuade Jeremy’s mother to stop all her interactions with the world, and now here she was trying to get her son on the Today show.

“Maybe it’s not such a great idea after all,” she said.

I decided to venture an opinion. “The more attention you bring to your situation, the longer the harassment will continue. Things’ll die down eventually.”

Gloria studied me. “Maybe you’re right. When you’re in the middle of something, you want to make it end as fast as you can, but everything you do may just prolong it.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“I’m sure my aunt had you all checked out, Mr. Weaver. But I don’t know much about you. Are you married? Do you have children?”

“I was,” I said. “And I had a son.”

A glint in her eye told me she’d caught onto the past-tense phrasing, certainly where my son was concerned. “Had?” she said.

“It’s a long story.”

She smiled. “Have you ever heard anyone say it’s a short story?”

I smiled back. “I guess not.”

“I’m guessing it’s not a long, happy story.”

“You’d be right about that,” I said.

“You think you’re the only one with troubles,” Gloria said, “and then you realize you’re surrounded by everybody else’s heartbreak.”

For the first time, I felt myself warming to her. “I think you may be onto—”

“What the hell is this about hiring a PR consultant?” Madeline Plimpton said, striding into the room. “Bob just told me about some cockamamie idea of yours to bring someone on board to get your side of the story out? Seriously?”

“Jesus,” Gloria whispered, taking another drink.

“Because a PR person is going to cost you a fortune,” Ms. Plimpton said. “And I don’t know where you’re going to find the money for that.”

“I was thinking out loud!” Gloria shot back. “Okay?”

“Doesn’t sound like any thinking was going on at all,” her aunt said.

I’d had enough.

As I left the kitchen, I grabbed Ms. Plimpton’s laptop and took it with me to the living room. I sat down in a comfy armchair, opened up the computer and a browser, and entered “Jeremy Pilford trial” into the search field. I didn’t really need a lot of background info to perform the duties I was being contracted for, but I wanted a better handle on the cast of characters, and the incident that had precipitated this shit storm.

A few hundred thousand results came back from my search, but I was quickly able to winnow those down to a handful of news accounts that summed things up pretty succinctly.

What I learned was this:

On the evening of June 15, a party was held at the Albany home of Galen Broadhurst. It was more an estate than a home. It sat on ten acres outside the city, about half of it untouched by development. Broadhurst, who had lived alone since the passing of his wife, had a seven-thousand-square-foot house to roam around in, and when he got bored with that, there was an outbuilding where he kept his stable of fancy cars. Three Porsches, one Lamborghini, an old MG, a 1969 American Motors AMX, and a new high-end Audi for daily driving.