Linwood Barclay - Far From True

Duckworth frowned. “Off by one.”

“Sorry?”

He filled her in on the incidents that were linked by that one number. He’d thought, briefly, maybe it had something to do with the Fisher case, but the number twenty-two hadn’t popped up anywhere.

“What about some buttered noodles?” he asked his wife. “How long would it take to cook some noodles?”

“What about the Twenty-third Psalm?” she asked.

“That’s the first thing everyone thinks of. I wish I’d been here when the Olivia thing happened. I’d have a better handle on it. I was away around that time three years ago. You remember? I was in Canada. Opening of pickerel season.”

“Oh yeah. You didn’t catch a thing.”

“Rhonda Finderman was the primary on that. Before she was promoted to chief,” Barry said, picking at the asparagus. “What happened to the chicken skin?”

“Please stop.”

“Anyway, the thing that’s really been bugging me, and there’s not really anything I can do about it, is that I kind of feel like Rhonda dropped the ball here. She couldn’t have been paying very much attention to the Gaynor murder, or she’d have made a connection right away at how similar it was to the Fisher case. If we’d known that from the beginning, we might have gone at this another way. We’ve lost time on this thing.”

“What should she have done?”

“She can’t be reading the reports. She’s too caught up in the bureaucratic stuff, I guess. Maybe I’m being too hard on her. Maybe it’s not a big deal.”

“It seems to be to you.”

“You already eaten?” he asked his wife.

“I’m sorry. This is my book club night. I’m supposed to be at Shirley’s in twenty minutes. I ate a while ago.”

“I forgot it was tonight. What’s the book?”

“You’d hate it. It’s about feelings .”

“Say no more.”

Trevor walked into the kitchen.

“I didn’t even hear you come down the stairs,” Maureen said. “Say hello to your father.”

“Hey,” he said.

Duckworth got up. “Trev. How’s it going?”

“Okay.” He waved a handful of CDs at his mother. “I found what I was looking for.”

“You have to go?” Barry asked.

“I gotta get the truck back.”

“Job going good?”

“It’s a job,” Trevor said.

“You want to come by after? Your mother’s got her book club thing. I’m just hanging out here. Probably watching a game or something.”

The young man hesitated. “I don’t know. Probably not. Kind of beat.”

“It’d be fun,” Barry said.

Trevor shrugged. “I gotta go.” He gave his mother a hug, half a wave to his father, and then he was gone.

“Shit,” Barry said.

“You tried,” his wife said. “I think he was right on the edge there. Maybe if you’d asked once more.”

“I’m not going to beg my son to hang out with me,” he said, moving the vegetables around with his fork.

“You hate your dinner.”

He looked at his wife. “I don’t have the energy anymore.”

“What?”

“I don’t have the energy I once did. This drive-in thing, I figure by tomorrow the feds will be all over it — maybe Homeland Security will want it to justify their existence. Part of me wants to tell the feds to go jump in the lake if they try to take this away, and part of me would be relieved if they did take it. I may be in over my head.”

“That’s not true,” Maureen said.

Then, out of the blue, Duckworth said, “Victor Rooney.”

“What?”

“I dropped by Walden Fisher’s house today, asked him a few things about his daughter’s death. He brought up Victor Rooney.”

“Who’s that?”

“I just thought of him again because he and Trevor, they’d be about the same age. Rooney and Olivia were going to get married. Walden said Victor’s never gotten over it, that he’s been acting weird lately, what with the third anniversary of Olivia’s murder coming up.”

“Have you talked to him? To this Rooney person?”

Duckworth shook his head. “That’s what I’ve been thinking I should do.” He pushed the beer away. He’d had about a third of the bottle. “If I’m gonna go back out, I can’t have that.”

Maureen smiled. “I’m going to hate myself for this.”

“What?”

“There’s a cupcake in the fridge. One. Chocolate, with chocolate icing.”

He wondered whether he should tell her about the pain he’d had when he was at the Burger King. But not only would it get Maureen to worrying; it would mean admitting that he’d had lunch at Burger King.

“I love you,” he said.

Before Duckworth left the house, he put in a call to Clark Andover, the lawyer Bill Gaynor’d hired to defend him against a slew of charges, including the murder of Marshall Kemper.

“I’m going to drop by and see your client tonight,” Duckworth said, “and I figured you’d want to be there.”

“Tonight?” Andover said. “You can’t be serious.”

“In about an hour,” Duckworth said.

“I can’t just drop everything and—”

“I’ll bring the coffee.”

It was dark by the time the detective tracked Victor Rooney to a house in an older part of downtown. These were mostly postwar — World War II — homes. Modest, but built to last. Rooney rented a room from a retired schoolteacher named Emily Townsend, whose husband had died several years ago. Hers was a small white two-story house with black shutters. There was a rusty old van in the driveway, parked next to a shiny blue Toyota.

“I’m pretty sure Victor’s in,” she said after Duckworth showed up at the door and told her who he was. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“No,” he said. “I’m just hoping he can help me with something.”

“He’s a good boy,” she said. “Well, he’s not a boy, of course. He’s a man. He’s a great help to me. Most days.”

“What do you mean, most days?”

“Oh—” She waved a hand. “Nothing, really. He just has his ups and downs. He’s looking for a job. Do you have any openings at the police department?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It wouldn’t have to be as a policeman. I know you have to get special training for that. But maybe something looking after the police cars? Victor’s very handy with machinery. He’s got a real knack for it. That’s one of the reasons I like to have him around, as a boarder. Ever since my husband, Virgil, died, he’s looked after things around here. Cuts the grass, replaces the furnace filter, changes the batteries in the smoke detectors. Even knows how to fix electrical stuff. All the things Virgil looked after. I give him a real break on the rent because of that, and just as well, because some months he can’t pay it at all.”

“Sounds as though you’re very good to him.”

“And vice versa. Let me get him for you.” She called up the stairs. “Vick! Vick! There’s someone here to see you!”

A door could be heard opening, and Victor Rooney appeared at the top of the stairs. He was wearing a T-shirt, running shorts, and sneakers. He was glassy-eyed, and Duckworth wasn’t sure if he was heading out for a run or had just come back.

“What’s that?” he said.

“This man wants to talk to you,” Emily Townsend said. “He’s from the police!”

Slowly, Victor descended the stairs, not taking his eyes off Duckworth. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” the detective said.

“What do you want?” he asked, reaching the step one from the bottom, so he could look down at Duckworth.

“Why don’t we step outside and talk for a minute. Mrs. Townsend, thank you for everything.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said.

Duckworth led Rooney outside, ambled over toward the driveway, near the rusted van. A nearby streetlight and a light on Emily Townsend’s front porch were more than enough for the two men to see each other.