Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

“Like, in your dreams?”

I nodded.

Jeremy drank more Coke, ate a chip. “Where are those books you brought?” he asked.

“They’re in my case. Plus there’s about a thousand books on the shelves here.”

“There’s games, too. Do you like board games?”

“Some,” I said. “After I grill some steaks, you want to play Scrabble or something?”

Jeremy considered that. “I guess. But I’m not very good at it.”

“Well, neither am I. Look, I’ve got a call to make. I might walk down to the beach. You cool here?”

“Sure.”

I got up out of the chair. I already had my phone in my pocket, so I didn’t need to go back into the house. As I was heading for the stairs that led from the deck down to the beach, Jeremy said, “Mr. Weaver?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about your kid. You know, your son. And your wife. What was her name?”

“Donna.”

“Yeah, and her.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I descended the stairs, then took the level boardwalk that traversed the grassy area. Not wanting sand in my shoes, I kicked them off, left them on the boardwalk, and strolled out onto the beach.

I looked up a number, then dialed.

“Finch, Delray and Klein,” a woman said.

“Grant Finch, please.”

“One moment.”

A pause, and then another woman. “Grant Finch’s office.”

“Hi. Is Grant in?”

“Mr. Finch is in a meeting. May I help you?”

The whole world was in a fucking meeting. “My name is Cal Weaver. I’m a private investigator. It’s about Jeremy Pilford. He’s in my protection. I need to speak with Mr. Finch.”

“Just a moment.”

More dead air. Fifteen seconds later, a pickup.

“Mr. Weaver?”

“Mr. Finch, thanks for taking my call.”

“Is everything okay with Jeremy? Is he all right?”

“Jeremy’s fine.”

“Where are you?”

I hesitated. “We’re kind of on the move.”

“Sure, of course. I was speaking to Madeline Plimpton. She mentioned that. No sense making it easy for the crazies. What can I do for you?”

“I’m not sure how to begin,” I said. “I guess I need you to explain something for me.”

“What would that be?”

“I know I’ve come in at the tail end of this. I wasn’t around for the trial, I wasn’t part of the investigation, so the point I’m about to raise may have been addressed. This may be nothing, but right now, it seems like something.”

“Okay,” Grant Finch said slowly.

“I let Jeremy drive my car today.”

“Oh. I don’t know if that was such a good idea. Operation of a motor vehicle violates the provisions of his probation. His license is suspended.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I figured that. But we were on a pretty deserted road, no one around this early in the season.”

“Are you in some sort of vacation area?” he asked.

I’d made a slip. “Like I said, on the move.”

“Well, go on with your story, but I must caution you, Jeremy should not be driving.”

“I get it. The thing is, I wanted to give him a chance to try driving a standard.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“A stick. You know. I’ve got a Japanese car. It’s got a standard transmission.”

“I know what you mean by stick, Mr. Weaver. I’m just not getting the point yet.”

“He was pretty terrible at it.”

“That’s not at all surprising. Most cars these days are equipped with an automatic transmission. You and I may have learned that whole clutch and gas thing back in our youth, but it’s not something they teach in driver’s ed, far as I know. My daughter is twenty and she’s never driven a car with a stick shift.”

“Exactly,” I said.

There was a pause at the other end. “Tell me where you’re going with this.”

“Jeremy wasn’t just terrible at it. He stalled the car repeatedly. Just about shook my teeth loose, we did so much bucking. It was clear to me he’d never driven a stick in his life. Did this come up at all during the trial?”

“I can’t say that it did.”

“You know Galen Broadhurst’s Porsche is a stick?” I said.

There was a pause. “I can’t say that I know that one way or another.”

“You and Galen are friends, right? You’ve known each other a long time.”

“It’s true that we’ve known each other a long time. I’ve acted on his behalf for years. And yes, we are friends. But that friendship is related to our business relationship.”

“Had you ever had a ride in that Porsche, before the incident?”

“I... I can’t recall.”

“Well, take my word for it. The car is a stick. I saw Galen drive away in it, and I called him earlier today to confirm it.”

“Mr. Weaver.” Grant Finch took a deep breath. “Surely you’re not going to suggest that Jeremy did not drive that car.”

“I’m not quite sure what I’m suggesting. But it crossed my mind.”

“That’s preposterous,” Finch said.

Now there was a word you didn’t hear every day.

“Why is it preposterous?” I asked, watching a sailboat pass in the distance.

“As you said yourself, you haven’t been in on this from the beginning,” Finch said, starting to sound slightly patronizing. “Believe me, if I ever thought that was germane, this stick business, I would have raised it. But frankly, it was never even on our radar.”

“So you didn’t consider this in the boy’s defense, not for a second.”

“What did I just tell you? I formulated a defense, and it worked very well. Perhaps you’ve noticed that Jeremy is with you and not in prison.”

“Yeah, there’s that,” I said.

“And Jeremy never brought this issue to my attention. You’d think if anyone was going to do it, he would have.”

“I don’t think Jeremy even knew. The only time he ever got near the car, he was drunk, so he wouldn’t have remembered. He never took note of it. And it’s not something he would have intrinsically known. He’s not a car nut. Other people, people who are into cars, you just know an old 911 is likely going to be a stick shift.”

“Listen,” Grant Finch said, unable to keep his impatience with me out of his voice, “if you had been there, at the trial, you would have heard testimony from several witnesses who saw what happened.”

“What did they see, exactly?” I asked.

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Humor me.”

“At least five people from that party saw Jeremy get out from behind the wheel of that car. Blood from his forehead was on the steering wheel. There was a DNA match.”

I said nothing.

“And,” Finch continued, “earlier in the evening, he was seen in the Porsche, fumbling with the keys, trying to start it, before he was stopped.”

“I know. The keys were left in the ashtray.”

“Right.”

“And even after that, Galen Broadhurst left the keys in the car.”

“A decision he has to live with the rest of his life,” Grant Finch said. “Don’t think for a moment he isn’t haunted by that every single day.”

“Yeah, I met him yesterday,” I said. “He seems pretty tormented.”

Finch let that one go. “Despite that lapse in Galen’s judgment, the real responsibility, I’m afraid, rests ultimately with Jeremy.”

“You say at least five people saw him get out of the car after Sian McFadden had been run down.”

“That’s right.”

“How many people witnessed him getting into the car?”

Was that a sigh I heard? I was clearly trying the man’s patience. “It would seem self-evident that if he was getting out of the car, he had, at some earlier point, gotten into it,” he said. He made no effort not to be patronizing.