Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

“You’re really worried about people hearing us,” Jeremy said.

“Just being careful. So Broadhurst finds you in the car.”

“Yeah, and he’s really pissed, especially since I’ve got the key in my hand and I’m trying to figure out how to start it. But the place where you put the key in wasn’t in the usual spot, in the steering column thingy. I’d just figured out where it was, over to the left of the wheel, when Broadhurst opens the door and tells me to get the fuck out.”

“So you never got the car started.”

“No.”

“And you found the key in the car?”

“Yeah. It was sitting in the tray between the seats.”

“That seems kind of dumb.”

“Yeah, well, he did that a lot because it was his own property, and the house is a long way from the road, and he said, like, when he testified, that he was always losing keys, so if he just left it in the car, he’d find it.”

“A car that nice.”

Jeremy shrugged. “They asked him about that, and he said if he was going someplace, he didn’t leave it. But out front of his house, yeah, sometimes.”

“So he finds you in the car, with the key in your hand — is that right?”

A nod.

“So what happens to the key?”

“He takes it from me.”

“And what does he do with it?”

Water rolled in, froze our ankles briefly, and slid back out.

“What’s he do with it?” Jeremy repeated.

“Yeah.”

“I guess he put it in his pocket.”

“So he didn’t put it back in that tray where you found it.”

“Well, not right then. Probably later.”

“Okay,” I said. “But you seem to remember that incident, that confrontation, quite clearly.”

“Pretty much,” he said. “I wasn’t so hammered then.”

“So now tell me about the second time you got in the car.”

“That’s a lot fuzzier,” he said quietly.

“Because?”

“Sian and I went back into the house and snuck out some more to drink. So we... well, I was pretty shitfaced the second time I got in the car. But that time, I would have known where to put the key.”

“If the key was there.”

“Well, I guess it fuckin’ had to be,” Jeremy said. He stopped. “Is there a reason why you’re goin’ on about this? And I still don’t get that other stuff you were asking me, about protecting someone?”

“I asked you to bear with me.”

“Fine,” he said, in a voice that suggested it was not fine at all.

“Do you remember Broadhurst reaching over you, before you got out of the car, to put the keys back where you found them?”

“No. But he must have done it after.”

“So between the time that you and Sian got kicked out of the car, and the time you got in it again, what did you do?”

“Like I said, we went in, scored two nearly full bottles of wine that had been opened, and went back outside.”

“Outside where?”

“Uh, like, outside.”

“Front of the house? Back of the house?”

“We wandered up the driveway, toward the main road. There’s kind of a hill there, you know?”

“I don’t. I’ve never been there.”

“Oh, right. So we were drinking straight out of the bottles. One was red, one was white, and we were sharing back and forth. We sat on the bench.”

“What bench?”

“There’s this fancy bench along the side of the driveway, just over the hill. We sat there and drank and looked at stars and shit.”

“When did you come back and get in the car?”

He had to think about that. “Around then, I guess. Sian must have stayed by the bench while I walked back to get the car.”

“You know that?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, that’s when it starts getting awful fuzzy. Somewhere along the line I think I blacked out or something.”

About a hundred yards ahead, a young man was standing with his feet firmly planted in the wet sand, facing out into the bay, looking contemplative. From where we were, his eyes appeared to be closed. Water rushed in around his legs and out again, but he never moved.

“So let’s say,” I said, “you go back to the car, start it up, then drive over the hill, and that’s when Sian must have gotten off the bench and stumbled into your path, or maybe you veered toward her. Something like that.”

“And hit the tree.”

“How did you do it?” I asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You mean, like, how could I do something so stupid? That’s kind of what everyone’s asked. And it’s because I didn’t understand the consequences of my actions.”

He said that last sentence like he was reading it off a teleprompter.

“That was the defense strategy,” I said. “But do you really believe that?”

A hesitation. “I guess.”

“It’s a load of shit and you know it, but it worked,” I said.

“Whatever.”

“But that’s not what I’m asking you. How did you do it?”

“Do what?” he asked impatiently.

“Drive the car.”

“Lots of people are able to drive cars when they’re drunk. They just do a shitty job of it.”

I put out a hand to stop him. I turned and looked at him. “The car’s a stick.”

“What?”

“Galen Broadhurst’s car is a stick shift.”

“No, it couldn’t be,” Jeremy said. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m not. I made some calls to confirm it.”

“But... that doesn’t make any sense. Maybe the shift in your car is harder to use or something.”

“I don’t think so. I can’t see you managing a manual transmission in any make of car. No offense, but you were pretty terrible at it. A few more lessons and I think you’ll be fine, but today? Not so great.”

“But how... Maybe it’s one of those shifters that can go back and forth. Like, you can shift it if you want, but you don’t have to.”

I put a hand on his shoulder to steer him forward, and resumed walking. “No, it’s not like that. I don’t get how someone who’d never driven a stick before could not only hop into that Porsche and drive it, but could do it drunk.”

Jeremy didn’t say anything. He kept looking down at the millions of grains of sand, as if one of them contained the answer and all we had to do was find it.

“But...”

“But what?” I asked.

“But that seems like a kind of obvious thing. I mean, I guess somehow I must have driven it, although I don’t see how. But if the whole stick thing could raise, whaddya call it, some sort of reasonable doubt, I think Mr. Finch would have brought that up.”

“You’d think so. It was never part of the defense strategy discussions?”

“I wasn’t really part of those,” he said.

“I talked to Grant Finch. He said if it had been an issue, you should have raised it.”

“How could I raise it? I didn’t know.”

“How familiar were you with the car?”

Jeremy thought. “The first time I saw that car was when I got in it. When I was shitfaced. The second time I saw it was yesterday, parked out front of Madeline’s house.”

I’d been there. Jeremy didn’t go anywhere near it, so he couldn’t have looked inside it, wouldn’t have noticed what was between the front seats.

“Look, Mr. Weaver, Mom and Bob and Mr. Finch and Madeline and even Mr. Broadhurst all talked about the best way to get me off, and they came up with, you know, the whole Big Baby thing. And even though I hated it, at least I’m not in jail now.”

“True enough,” I said. “But is it possible, Jeremy, that you didn’t want the stick-shift thing to come up?” I was diving down for that theory, seeing if it could be brought back to the surface, given mouth-to-mouth.

“Huh?”

“Is it possible it did come up, and you shot it down?”