Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

“Fuck, no,” he said, standing. “What are you talking about? Dolly’s dead?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions about her.”

“Hold on,” Mike blustered. “What happened to her?” His mouth open, he put his hand to his forehead. “Jesus, did she kill herself?”

“Would that not surprise you?” Duckworth asked.

“Well, I mean, she’s kind of a flake. Was kind of a flake. God, I can’t believe it.”

“What do you mean, a flake?”

“Just, I don’t know, just different. Man, I can’t believe this. First of all, the kind of people who work in a tattoo shop” — and he touched his fingers to his chest — “myself included, are not your usual type who go to work in a bank every day. I’m not saying we’re all nuts and suicidal, only that we’re different.”

“How was Dolores different?”

“She got worked up about things. Like, she was pretty plugged into current events and shit, which I don’t care anything about. She talked about all the injustice in the world, stuff like that, people who got away with doing bad things. I mean, she was pretty funny, too, not serious all the time about it, but there were things that upset her, like global warming and those fuckers on Wall Street.”

“Was she always like that?”

Mike thought. “No, actually. She’s been, you know, kind of radicalized in the last year, I guess. I mean, not radicalized like all that Islam ISIS stuff, but just more fired up about shit.”

“How long had she worked here?”

He had to think again. “Four years?”

“Did you know her before that?”

He shook his head.

“So what happened a year ago that got her more plugged in to what was happening in the world?”

“All the shit that went down right here, for one thing,” Mike said.

“The mass poisoning?”

“Yeah. She said it never would have happened if we all just cared more for our fellow man. Remember the Olivia Fisher case? When she was being murdered and screaming and nobody came? What am I saying, of course you know all about that.”

Duckworth asked, “Anything else that might have had an impact on her, say, more recently? The last three or four months?”

“Maybe that guy she’s been seeing.”

“What guy?”

“Cory.”

Duckworth recalled the young man in the khakis who was sitting on the desk the first time he was here. “I met him,” he said. “You have a last name for him?”

“Calder. Cory Calder.”

“An address?”

Mike frowned. “How would I know where he lives? He doesn’t work for me.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Why are you asking? Did Dolly off herself, or did something else happen to her?”

“I don’t think Dolly killed herself.”

“Then what — was it a car accident or something?”

“No.”

Mike pondered what must have seemed like the only other possibility. “Wait, somebody killed her?”

“Yes,” Duckworth said evenly. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you want to know more, but right now the most important thing you can do is help me by answering my questions. Did you notice anything about her in the last few weeks or months? Anything different?”

“Uh, okay, well, I guess the answer would be yes.”

“Tell me.”

“She was more anxious. And quieter, too. She seemed to have a lot on her mind. I mean, she could put on a good front for people walking in the door, but she seemed pretty agitated a lot of the time.”

“Did she talk about what might be troubling her?”

“Not much, but I had a sense it was about Cory.”

“What’s your take on him?”

“I don’t know. Kind of a weirdo, really.”

“You ever hang out?”

Mike shook his head. “No. But I’ll say this about him. He’s a guy who talks himself up a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, he could have been Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. In his head, he’s a lot more important than he really is. Does that make sense?”

“I think so. Anything else?”

“He liked to watch, sometimes.”

“Liked to watch what?”

“When I worked. How I did it.”

“He watched you do tattoos?”

“Yeah. But only if it was okay with the customer.”

Duckworth made some mental notes. “Back to Dolly. Did she ever talk about Craig Pierce? Or Jeremy Pilford?”

“Who the hell are they?”

“Pierce was the guy who basically admitted he molested a mentally disabled girl, but got away with it, and Pilford was the one they called the Big Baby.”

“Oh yeah. She did mention them. Asked me what I thought.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t actually thought a whole lot about them, except to say that people usually got what was coming to them, sooner or later.”

“But she did mention them.”

Mike nodded.

“What about Carol Beakman? You ever heard that name?”

“Never. That doesn’t ring any bells at all. You know, there was one really funny thing she asked me one day.”

“What was that?”

“She wondered if the court system was easier on women than men. Like, if a man forced a woman to do a bad thing, would they punish her for it?”

“Dolly actually asked you that.”

“Yeah. I thought it was weird, but didn’t make much of it. Why would she ask that?”

“Hard to say.”

“She said there was some case in Canada she read about, where this couple kidnapped and killed some girls but the woman pretty much got off because she said she was abused and forced to participate.”

“I know the case,” Duckworth said. “Twenty years ago or more.”

“Dolly said something like, women sometimes get a pass when they don’t deserve to.”

“Interesting.” Duckworth nodded his head in gratitude. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You said your name’s Duckworth, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You any relation to Trevor, by any chance?”

Duckworth felt caught off guard. “Uh, yeah. He’s my son.”

Mike smiled. “I wondered, because, you know, it’s not the most common name in the world.”

“You know Trevor?”

The man shook his head. “No, no. It’s just, I did a tatt for him not long ago.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Nice guy.”

“When was this exactly?”

Mike thought. “Two weeks, maybe? I don’t know. Around the time my tattoo gun was stolen, I think. Listen, say hi to him for me, will you?”

“Yeah,” Duckworth said. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

It dawned on me that in all the morning chaos, Jeremy and I had missed breakfast. By the time we’d finished with the hospital and been chewed out by Charlene Wilson’s mother, it was pushing eleven in the morning.

“You hungry?” I asked as we drove back to the hotel. We still had to grab our stuff and settle up with the front desk.

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said, his voice barely above a whisper.

In the twenty-four hours that I’d known this kid, this was the worst I’d seen him. The morning’s events had left him shaken. Up to now, my feelings about him had been mixed. A troubled young man, for sure, but also a pain in the ass. For the first time, I actually felt worried for him.

It was seeing him pound his own leg hard enough to hurt himself that had sparked my concern. I wondered if that was a one-off, or if I needed to be worried about Jeremy doing anything else to cause himself harm.

“We’ll hit the hotel and grab our bags, then figure out what to do next,” I said.

Nothing.

Whatever the police had decided to do about those two clowns who’d run into the back of Charlene’s car, they were no longer at the hotel. The cops, and the couple who wanted a picture of Jeremy, were gone. So was their car. But Charlene’s little Miata was there, waiting to be picked up.