Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

“Um, let me see what I can find.”

Alastair went into a room off the kitchen that featured a large television, tucked into an entertainment unit, a long, cushy couch and two reclining chairs. He opened a door on the unit and brought out a large photo album.

“I have some in here,” he said. He sat on the couch and placed the album on the coffee table, then opened the binder and pointed to a shot of a woman and three children sitting on the floor in front of a Christmas tree.

“This is from the early nineties, I think,” he said. “This was my wife, and this is Cory, and this is his brother and his sister.”

“He looks about nine or ten years old there,” Duckworth said.

“Yes, I believe so.”

Duckworth said gently, “I need something more recent.”

“Oh, of course, what was I thinking?” But Alastair had become fixated on the photo. He could not stop looking at it.

“Mr. Calder,” Duckworth said.

Alastair turned and looked at him. “You never know what’s coming. You see them when they’re just children, and the world seems so open to them, so full of promise. Those are the days when you are allowed to dream.” He grimaced. “And then as they get older, you see the potential they have. At times, it just seems limitless, that they can do anything. A little older yet and reality begins to set in. You see, instead of limitless potential, the limitations. That maybe they won’t make of their lives what you might have hoped. I was lucky, I think. Two out of three isn’t bad, right? But even with Cory, with a child that won’t be reaching for the top rung of the ladder, you hope that while he might not make the world a better place, he won’t make it worse.”

“It’s all a crap shoot,” Duckworth said.

“We think we have this ability to control things,” Alastair went on. “It’s when we try to direct our children’s lives that we realize how powerless we really are.”

“A picture?” Duckworth reminded him.

Alastair sighed. “Let me see if I have anything on my phone. I can’t remember the last time I printed out a picture or had one developed.”

Duckworth followed him to the kitchen, where Alastair found his cell sitting next to the landline. He picked it up. “Give me a second.”

He opened up the photo app and thumbed through some shots. “Here’s one,” he said. “I took Cory out for his birthday. We went to the Clover, the steak house. Cory likes beef. There he is.”

He handed the phone to Duckworth. The picture showed Cory sitting, presumably across from his father, smiling at the camera, a waiter lingering in the background. But there was something odd about the shot. The smile seemed somehow empty, as though the facial muscles needed to make it were operating independently of any messages from the brain, or the heart. But it was a good enough picture for identification purposes.

“I’m going to email this to myself,” Duckworth said.

Alastair nodded wearily. “I’ll keep trying to reach him,” he said.

“I can’t expect you to do what I’m going to ask, but I’d rather you didn’t tell him the police are looking for him. Just ask him to come home. And let me know if he does. I’d like the opportunity to speak with him before things get out of hand.”

“I feel... as though I’m betraying him. But,” and the man appeared to be struggling for the right words, “I feel he’s betrayed all the love and commitment my wife and I showed him over the years.”

“A couple of final things,” Duckworth said.

Alastair gave him a look that suggested he wasn’t sure he could take anything else.

“Yes?”

“What’s Cory driving?”

“He has a van. A Sienna. It’s black.”

“Registered in your name or his?”

“Mine. It... it makes the insurance cheaper if it’s under my name. Part of the family fleet, if you will.”

“I can have it looked up, but do you know the license plate off hand?”

Alastair nodded and told him. Duckworth wrote it down in his notebook.

“Last thing, sir,” Duckworth said. “Does Cory possess any firearms?”

“What? No, I’m not aware that he does.”

“How about yourself?”

“I’m not a collector or anything like that. I don’t care much for this country’s obsession with guns. It’s nothing short of madness.”

Duckworth noted that the man had not said he didn’t have one. “But?” he prompted.

Alastair sighed. “A few years ago, when my wife and I were advocating on behalf of an abortion clinic, we received some death threats. The police didn’t believe they would be acted on, but they took them seriously just the same. It was a woman from the Promise Falls police. I think her name was Rhonda.”

“Rhonda Finderman,” Duckworth said. “She’s the chief now.”

“That’s right. I saw her on TV — you, too — last year when all those people got poisoned. Thank God Cory and I were out of town at the time.”

“What did Rhonda tell you?”

“She suggested I might want to get myself some protection.”

“A gun.”

He nodded solemnly. “I was reluctant at first, but one night there was a phone call, from an unknown number, and this man said that when they found me, what they would do to me would be slow and painful. It was very frightening. So I decided to take Rhonda’s advice. I bought a gun. A revolver.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“Locked up in my bedroom,” he said. “At the time of the threats, I kept it next to my bed, by the lamp, so I could get it quickly if I needed it. But as time passed, and the threats stopped, I kept it locked up at all times. Still in the bedroom, but not immediately accessible.”

“Can you show me?” Duckworth asked.

Alastair nodded and led the detective to the stairs, grabbing a set of keys from a decorative bowl on a table near the door along the way. When they got to the second floor, this time they went left instead of right.

“I hope I’m following rules regarding storage,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to get in any trouble.”

“Don’t worry,” Duckworth said.

The bedside nightstand had a drawer across the top, and a cabinet door below. Alastair went down on one knee and, using one of the keys, unlocked the door.

“Here we go,” he said, and Duckworth could hear the relief in his voice. He brought out a small case made of hard plastic and set it on the bed.

“This needs a key, too,” he said. The key for the gun case was not on his chain, but tucked under some papers in the nightstand drawer. He lifted the case up onto its side, inserted the second key, and opened it.

The inside of the case was lined with soft gray foam. There was the slight impression of a gun in the foam, but no actual weapon.

“Oh no,” Alastair said.

Cory Calder looked at Carol Beakman, sleeping so peacefully — well, okay, drugged to the eyeballs was more accurate, but no need to nitpick — and wondered whether bringing her along was such a brilliant plan.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

It wasn’t that he’d spared her life because she’d somehow touched his heart. It wasn’t because she didn’t deserve to die, although she certainly didn’t.

Cory had seen her as insurance. And insurance was very much what he was going to need.

Thing were starting to fall apart, and fall apart very quickly. Cory saw Carol Beakman as leverage. A future ace in the hole, as it were. Something to trade if things went south. Well, not so much if they went south, as when .

Cory knew the clock was probably running out on him.

But despite that, he hadn’t lost sight of his goal. That was what this had all been about from the very beginning. Making a difference. And he was goddamn well going to do that.