Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“It’s the same thing he told the Plummer woman.”

Another shrug. “Let me ask you this — what’d you say your name was again?”

“Carlson. Angus Carlson.”

“Angus? What kind of name is that? Isn’t that a kind of cow?”

Carlson felt his neck getting hot.

“How long have you been a detective, Angus Carlson?” Putting emphasis on the first name.

He hesitated. “It’s a recent appointment. But I’ve been with the Promise Falls police for a few years. Came here from Ohio. Lorraine Plummer told me she was going to call the police, but you talked her out of it. That it wouldn’t be necessary, because you were going to do that yourself.”

Duncomb said nothing.

“Which you never did,” Carlson added. “Lorraine Plummer was assured, by you, her concerns would be relayed to the proper authorities. They weren’t. I wonder if Mason Helt’s family, which I hear is suing the college for one shitload of money, is aware of that. If the police had been brought in from the beginning, they might have arrested Helt peacefully before you found it necessary to shoot him.”

Duncomb’s cheek twitched.

“One other thing,” Carlson said. “When I mentioned Lorraine Plummer’s name, you seemed to have a hard time calling it up.”

“I can’t remember the name of every single student who attends Thackeray. Not even the ones who come to my attention.”

“Sure. Except she said she kind of knew you. That you introduced her to some writer friend, that you all had dinner together.” Carlson smiled. “I’m sure we’ll be talking again.”

He let himself out.

Duncomb stayed at his desk, turned to his computer, typed in a name. A student’s profile filled the screen. A head shot of Lorraine Plummer, phone number, e-mail address, a list of the courses she’d just completed, and those she’d signed up to take during the summer.

“Stupid little bitch,” he said.

Detective Duckworth wished major crimes could be more conveniently scheduled.

He really did not need a drive-in bombing right now. If someone wanted to blow up the Constellation, he thought to himself, why couldn’t they have done it back in March? Or put it off until the fall? Why didn’t the bad guys of upstate New York check in with him first before they did these things?

He sat wearily at his desk after Angus Carlson struck off for Thackeray College. And why, Duckworth asked himself, did he have to be saddled with a new guy to look after? Who did Carlson think he was, acting like he was too good to go out to Thackeray to ask about Mason Helt’s mini reign of terror?

Up until the moment the night before when Duckworth got the call about the screen coming down, his head had been someplace else.

He’d been preoccupied with the murders of Olivia Fisher and Rosemary Gaynor. The former three years ago, the latter this month.

He’d been thinking he had the Gaynor case figured out. Maybe not nailed down completely, but he had a suspect. Dr. Jack Sturgess, who had engineered stealing Marla Pickens’s infant child and placing it with Bill and Rosemary Gaynor, and who was also responsible for the murders of a blackmailer and an elderly woman, sure looked good for it. There was motive. Rosemary Gaynor had figured out the adoption was far from legal. It wasn’t a stretch to think Sturgess killed her to keep her quiet. If she’d spoken out, he’d have been ruined.

Bill Gaynor, currently in jail awaiting trial for assisting in the murder of that blackmailer, had acknowledged it was possible the doctor had killed his wife.

What had troubled Duckworth was that Rosemary’s death was so savage compared with the killings he knew, with certainty, Sturgess had committed. That blackmailer, Marshall Kemper, had been killed with a lethal injection. Kemper’s elderly neighbor, Doris Stemple, had been suffocated with a pillow. But Rosemary Gaynor had been sliced wide open.

That horrific, jagged smile from hip to hip.

It didn’t seem like the doc’s style.

Duckworth wanted to believe Sturgess had varied his routine, just so he could wrap this one up. It wasn’t as though Duckworth had to prove Sturgess guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Sturgess was dead.

Then came that meeting with Wanda Therrieult, where she displayed autopsy photos of Rosemary Gaynor alongside those of Olivia Fisher. The manner in which they’d been killed was identical. That downward curving slice across the abdomen. Similar marks on the neck from where their assailant had grabbed them from behind.

If Sturgess had killed Gaynor, then he must have killed Fisher. But, so far, Duckworth had found no connection between the doctor and Olivia.

Maybe Sturgess hadn’t killed either of them.

And if that was the case, then whoever had was still out there.

It had been all Barry had been able to think about until the Constellation came crashing down.

Okay, that wasn’t quite true.

There was the number twenty-three.

There had been twenty-three dead squirrels hanging from that fence. It was the number on Mason Helt’s hoodie. Those three mannequins painted with the words “YOU’LL BE SORRY” were in carriage twenty-three of that decommissioned Ferris wheel at Five Mountains.

Maybe — maybe it was coincidence.

But figuring out the significance of that number took a backseat to finding the killer of those two women.

Duckworth still wondered about Bill Gaynor. Not so much where Olivia Fisher’s death was concerned, but with regard to his wife. Husbands and boyfriends always topped the suspect list when a woman was murdered.

There was a motive. There was a million-dollar life insurance policy on Rosemary.

The problem was opportunity. Bill Gaynor had been at a weekend conference in Boston when his wife was killed. His car hadn’t left the hotel until he drove back home Monday morning.

Duckworth was going to take another look at that alibi. He was also going to take a much closer look at Bill Gaynor. What kind of man was he? While it was true he’d helped Sturgess murder Marshall Kemper, he wasn’t the one who’d shoved that syringe into his neck. Up until then, Gaynor’d never been in trouble with the law.

Then again, neither had Jack Sturgess.

There was a lot more legwork to do on this one.

His cell phone rang.

“Yes?”

“This Barry Duckworth?”

“Yes.”

“This is Michelle Watkins. They call me the Bomb Lady. I’m here at the drive-in. Where the hell are you?”

He’d get to that legwork whenever he could.

I saw no obvious signs of a break-in at the home of Adam and Miriam Chalmers, but clearly, if Lucy heard someone running out the back door as she was coming in, someone had been here.

I did a walk around the house, Lucy Brighton trailing behind me. The place was built onto the side of a gentle hill, with just enough of a slope at the back to allow for a basement walkout to a thirty-foot-long kidney-shaped pool. The sliding glass doors were locked, but only, Lucy explained, because she had secured the place after the incident.

A wooded area came to within about fifty feet of the house. It was a narrow strip of forest. On the other side were the backyards of houses from the next street over. Whoever’d been in Adam Chalmers’s house had probably parked over there.

There were no scratches on the front door lock. Lucy, using her own set of keys, let me in. There was the immediate beeping of an alarm system. Lucy entered a four-digit code into a keypad and the noise ceased.

“Did you get a call from the alarm company?” I asked. If someone had broken in and the security company was alerted, they’d probably have called Lucy when the Chalmerses could not be reached. People usually listed close relatives as backup contacts — or at least someone who lived nearby — in case there was trouble at home while they were away.