Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“I saw Peter run after him when he left. I think he was asking about Georgina, whether to file a missing persons report. I told him I’d look after this, but he doesn’t listen.”

Liz touched a finger to Duncomb’s chest, worked it between the buttons of his shirt, and made tiny circles on his chest. “I like Peter.”

“You like his tongue — that’s what you like.”

She withdrew the finger. “Maybe. But I feel terrible about Adam. There was a man who had it all.”

Duncomb didn’t respond.

“Don’t take that the wrong way. I don’t even mean sexually, necessarily. You know I love you , Clive. More than anyone else. I’m just saying he was an interesting man. And I can’t get over the irony of it. Here was a guy who loved the movies, and he dies when a movie screen falls on him. It’s like some sort of cosmic joke, you know? Like that jogger guy, years ago? You know, who wrote the book about it? And how does he die? He has a heart attack while out for a run. It’s like that.”

“I guess,” Duncomb said.

“You sound hurt. You can’t be jealous of a dead man.”

“I’m not.”

“And you have to be missing Miriam.” She smiled. “Be honest. She was very creative. I’d never seen anyone with that kind of imagination who wasn’t in the business.”

“I love you ,” he said.

“Of course you do. That’s the way it’s always been. We love each other, and make love with others. But Miriam was very special. And totally bi. The rest of us basically swapped partners, but Miriam had as much fun with me or Georgina as she did with you or Peter.”

“It feels kind of strange, talking about Adam and Miriam like this. Now.”

“But, you see, what’ll help us through this is, we’ve always been good at separating the physical from the emotional. Otherwise, right now, we’d be devastated. Losing Adam and Miriam would, under different circumstances, be very hard for us. But I’m okay. Aren’t you?”

Duncomb hesitated. “Sure.”

“And you never had any reason to be jealous of Adam. The fact is, you were much alike. You’ve done things you don’t like to talk about, and so had he. Back to his days when he was in that gang. Those weren’t weekend bikers he hung out with. Those were bad, bad people. Some of them were never heard from again after Adam left that life behind.”

“I know.”

“I’ve always had this theory that he must have ripped them off before he left. I don’t think he ever made enough writing books to have a nice house like that, or that antique Jag. I think he did okay for himself. He talked about it some with me. He managed girls — I managed girls. We had that in common. But there were drugs, too. I think that’s where he got his money.”

“Maybe,” Duncomb said. “I’ve been thinking, with what’s happened, it’s time to put a stop to this kind of stuff.”

“Just because Adam’s playroom’s no longer available doesn’t mean things have to be over.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore with Peter and Georgina. He’s getting too skittish about things, and her, I don’t know how to read her anymore. I don’t trust her.”

“I get that. You get tired of people. We’ll find new friends.”

She stopped eating and slipped her finger into his shirt again, started to unbutton it. She pushed Duncomb up against the counter and pressed herself into him, felt his hardness grow against her. She wrapped her arms around herself, gripped the bottom of the tank top, and slipped it off over her head. She was wearing nothing underneath.

“Touch me,” she said.

Clive Duncomb did as he was instructed.

Liz, moving herself slowly against him, said, “Tell me again... starting from the beginning... and tell me very, very slowly... about when you shot that kid in the head.”

When it got to be dusk, George Lydecker was itching to do it again. Actually, he’d been itching to do it all day, but daylight break-ins were not the smartest thing in the world.

He wanted to break into another garage. In a weird way, he needed to do it to calm his nerves. George hadn’t been to sleep in a day and a half.

He’d been pretty freaked-out the night before when he and his friends Derek and Canton and Tyler had tried to sneak into the Constellation, only to see the whole goddamn thing come crashing down. They were about to get busted by the manager for trying to smuggle Derek in by hiding him in the trunk of the car. George had even gotten out to try to argue that the guy didn’t have the constitutional right to search the vehicle.

But then none of that mattered. Not when a bunch of bombs went off and the people started screaming.

Derek, the dumb bastard, had actually run toward the disaster, but George and his buddies figured the smartest thing to do was get the hell out of there. Especially since George had brought a gun along — and yes, he had actually found it in somebody’s garage and stolen it, just as Tyler had suggested — and the police would be showing up any minute.

They’d raced back into town. George got dropped off at his parents’ place, but he was too wound up to go in and go to bed. He’d wandered around his neighborhood, even then, checking for garages that had been left unlocked. A lot of people actually went to bed with their garage doors wide open. They’d be doing something out there, go inside for dinner, decide to watch some TV, and go to bed without ever remembering to close the damn thing.

You went strolling in, used your phone as a flashlight, and helped yourself to whatever you wanted.

He’d looked around two garages in the hours after the drive-in bombing, hadn’t seen much that he liked. So he was out again tonight, scratching that itch, wondering what he might find before he went to Canada the following morning.

The whole damn family, or fam damily , as he liked to think of it, was off to Vancouver to spend time with his father’s stupid relatives. And the taxi was coming at — get this! — five in the fucking morning. That was when George was usually crawling under the covers. So he’d promised his mother he’d be home in good time, which would allow him at least a couple of hours’ sleep before he had to get up.

George was easily bored. The doctors said it was more than just simple attention deficit disorder. George’s brain just wasn’t wired right. He’d always shown signs of being a smart little bugger. All he had to do was apply himself, his teachers — from every single grade — repeatedly told his parents.

That always made George think of that line, from a comic book or something: “If only he’d used his powers for good instead of evil.”

Not that George was evil. He definitely did not see himself as evil. He just couldn’t sit still.

And he liked to steal shit.

His parents, determined that he make something of himself, had insisted he go to Thackeray, and what a disaster that had turned out to be. He’d just finished two years there, and had successfully completed only four classes in all that time. He was not going back in the fall. There was absolutely no point. That professor whose Smart car he’d turned upside down had been pushing for him to be permanently expelled anyway. Plus, admin was still holding a grudge for his putting a baby alligator in the pond.

If you couldn’t have a bit of fun when you were in college, when could you?

Oh well, fuck ’em. Time to concentrate on the task at hand.

There was a garage he’d spotted one night the week before that had looked promising.

The first thing it had going for it was that it was separate from the house. So anyone at home was a lot less likely to hear anything. The other thing was, it had a side door, as well as two big car-sized doors at the front. So someone was going to have to remember to lock not one door but three.