Linwood Barclay - Far From True

It meant something to the person who’d hung up those squirrels, and fired up that Ferris wheel. If Mason Helt, who’d been wearing a hoodie with that number, were alive, Duckworth would be taking a serious look at him. But the drive-in bombing had come after his death. But Duckworth believed there was a connection.

The question now was whether to release this information, speculative as it was. Maybe it was time to enlist the public’s help. Someone out there might know something. A troubled family member, perhaps, with an inexplicable fixation on that number. If it had something to do with the Twenty-third Psalm — “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil” — maybe some kind of religious zealot was at work here.

He needed to talk to his boss, Chief Rhonda Finderman, about this. Soon.

But “23” was not the only thing on his mind. There was Olivia Fisher.

He wanted to determine if there might, in fact, be a link between Jack Sturgess and Olivia Fisher. One person he thought might be able to tell him was Olivia’s father, Walden.

If there was a connection — if Sturgess, for example, turned out to be the Fishers’ family physician — Duckworth might be less reluctant to write him off as the killer of both women.

He was always looking for connections.

It would certainly make Rhonda happy if he found a way to hang everything on Sturgess. She saw an opportunity to close two cases. And why wouldn’t she, considering that the Olivia Fisher murder had been her case, back when she was a detective? Finderman, who hadn’t kept herself up to speed on the Gaynor case in its early days, would have seen the similarities to the Fisher murder. Duckworth wished the chief had been a little more on the ball, but he kept that opinion to himself.

Duckworth parked his car out front of Walden Fisher’s house, a white two-story wood-frame structure with a separate two-car garage at the back of the lot. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

“Yes?” said Fisher as he opened the door six inches and eyed Duckworth.

The detective showed him his ID. “Barry Duckworth, with the Promise Falls police.”

Fisher squinted at the ID. “Duckworth?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s this about, Detective?”

“I had a couple of questions, sir, about your daughter. About Olivia. I wonder if I could speak to you and Mrs. Fisher.”

“She passed away,” he said, finally opening the door.

Duckworth winced inwardly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I appreciate that it must be painful to answer questions about Olivia, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

“Of course, yes, come in.”

He led the detective to the kitchen and invited him to sit. There was a copy of the Albany paper on the table and a metal nail file with a plastic handle. Maybe Walden had been giving himself a manicure.

“I just made some coffee. Would you like some?”

“That’d be great.”

“Have you been up at the drive-in?” Walden asked. “It’s all over the news.”

Duckworth nodded. “Yes. I’m on my way back from there. But I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“What a terrible thing,” Walden said, taking two mugs down from the cupboard. “Just unimaginable. To be going to a movie, and have the screen come down and kill you.”

He filled the two mugs, brought them over to the table. He moved the paper out of the way, and tucked the nail file into his shirt pocket. He rubbed his index finger over the tip of his thumb. “I bite my nails,” he said. “Bad habit. Never used to do it before Olivia passed. And then after I lost my wife, I got even worse. It’s the stress.”

Duckworth took a mug, felt its warmth in his hands, and took a sip. It was strong, and he did his best not to make a face.

“What did you want to ask me?” Walden Fisher said. “Have you found out something? Have you found out who killed Olivia?”

Duckworth sidestepped the question. “Have you ever heard of a doctor by the name of Jack Sturgess?”

Fisher took a sip of his own coffee. “Sturgess? Didn’t I see something on the news about him?”

“You probably did.”

“About that woman and her baby? He stole a baby and gave it to somebody else?”

“Yes. That’s the one.”

“He’s dead, right? That woman who ran the hospital. She killed him, and then she killed herself.”

“You’re pretty up to speed on this,” Duckworth said.

“It’s not as easy as it used to be, with the Standard gone. But I listen to radio and watch the TV news out of Albany.” He tipped his head toward the paper. “Once the Standard went under, I started getting the Albany one, but there’s not much news from around here in it.”

“I guess you know, then, that Dr. Sturgess is being looked at in Rosemary Gaynor’s death.”

Walden nodded.

“Do you know if Olivia ever went to Dr. Sturgess? Whether she was ever a patient of his? Or whether she even knew him at all?”

The murdered woman’s father shook his head slowly. “Not that I know of. We had a family doctor, Dr. Silverman. Ruth Silverman. She was my wife’s doctor, and I think Olivia saw her. I still see her. I got all kinds of things going wrong with me. Sciatic pain, indigestion, you name it — every day you wake up with something different bothering you. And yet, in my head, I’m still sixteen years old. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of this Sturgess character until he was splashed all over the news.” He leaned in over the table. “Are you saying you think he had something to do with what happened to Olivia?”

“I’m not saying that. But I was looking for any possible connection.”

“What kind of connection could there be?”

Duckworth smiled weakly. “There might not be any at all. I’m just looking at everything.”

“So you’re not going to tell me.”

“I don’t want to raise things that might turn out to be nothing.”

Walden Fisher nodded slowly. “What if it is this doctor? What if he’s the one who killed our Olivia?”

“I’m not saying it was him.”

“But if it was, he’ll never pay for it, will he? He won’t be punished.”

“I don’t know how to answer that, Mr. Fisher. I know you would have gone over this a million times with Detective Finderman three years ago.”

“She’s the chief now,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Too busy, I guess, to keep investigating my daughter’s murder.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Just because she’s moved up doesn’t mean the department isn’t actively investigating. But what I wanted to ask is, was there anyone you could think of who might have wanted to hurt Olivia? Any kind of personal problems she might have been having with anyone?”

“No, nothing.”

“How about with the law? Had she ever been in any kind of trouble?”

Walden frowned, offended by the question. “Olivia never got in any kind of trouble. I mean, she’d got a ticket for speeding a while before she died, and you’d have thought she’d robbed a bank — she felt so bad about it. She was worried about her insurance going up, too.”

Walden Fisher’s eyes moistened. He moved his coffee cup to one side and made two fists. “It’s with me every day, you know.”

“Yes.”

“I think, ultimately, it’s what killed Beth.”

“Your wife.”

Walden nodded. “I mean, officially, it was the cancer, but it was the grief that was eating her up inside. That, and no justice.”

Duckworth didn’t say anything.

“Every day, for three years, I’ve been hoping someone would answer for Olivia being taken from us. To find out it was someone already dead, I don’t know how I’d handle that. What do you do? Go piss on a man’s grave? Is that any way to get revenge?”