Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“I want to see her,” he said.

Duckworth said, “I’ll take you.” He put in a call to the morgue so that they knew they were on their way.

On the drive over, Duckworth felt the need to warn Miriam Chalmers’s brother that identification might prove difficult.

“Why?”

“Your sister sustained... the screen came down right on top of the car. A Jaguar convertible, with the top down. She wasn’t afforded much in the way of protection.”

“You telling me her face is all smashed in?” Kilmer asked bluntly.

“Yes.” Sometimes, trying to be sensitive was a wasted effort.

“Then how the hell do I identify her?” the man asked.

“Maybe other distinguishing features. A birthmark? A scar?”

“Christ, it’s not like I saw my sister naked a lot. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t married that son of a bitch.”

“You didn’t like Adam Chalmers?”

“No. He was too old for her, first of all. And there was his past.”

“His biker days.”

“I know they were long ago, but they go to character.”

“What do you do, Mr. Kilmer?”

“Stocks,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Duckworth’s cell rang. “Yeah,” he said.

“Yeah, hey, Barry, it’s Garth.”

Garth worked in the police garage. Actually, a wing attached to the police garage, where vehicles damaged in accidents were towed and inspected.

“Hey, Garth.”

“You know that old Jag from the drive-in?”

Duckworth glanced at his passenger, who had used this opportunity to take out his own phone. He was looking down at the screen, sweeping his finger in an upward direction. It didn’t look like e-mails. More likely an app for stocks.

The detective pressed the phone more tightly to his ear. “Yeah.”

“Okay, so, it was crushed pretty bad. They managed to get the bodies out, but we’ve been going through the car, and it took some doing, but we finally got the trunk open, which wasn’t easy since the whole back end of the car kind of got all smooshed together. We were kind of anxious to get in there so we could stop the ringing.”

“Ringing?”

“Like a cell phone. We could hear it in the trunk. Figured one of the two deceased — well, most likely the woman — must have left her purse back there since the interior of one of those cars is so damn tiny. There was another phone, up by the driver, but it was all smashed to pieces.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So why I was calling is, we pried open the trunk, and it was a purse, and we figured you’d want to return it to the family or something like that.”

Duckworth said, “Okay, I’ll get back to you.”

He ended the call, put the phone into his pocket, and said to Kilmer, “Sorry.”

“Hmm?” Kilmer said, glancing over.

“I’m done.”

Kilmer put his own phone away. “How far away is this place?”

“We’re here,” Duckworth said.

Duckworth’s favorite coroner, Wanda Therrieult, wasn’t on duty. They were met by a young, pasty-looking woman Duckworth thought was a student picking up some part-time hours. She wasn’t qualified to perform an autopsy, but she could run the office alone until one needed to be done, at which point Wanda would be called.

She consulted her computer, then said, “Okay, um, Miriam Chalmers... okay, I know where she is. Hang on. If the two of you could wait here.”

The body, Duckworth explained to Kilmer, had to be moved to a viewing area. While they waited, Kilmer went back to studying his phone.

“Were you and your sister close?” Duckworth asked.

“Not particularly,” he said, not looking up.

“Were you in touch?”

Kilmer glanced up. “Christmas, sometimes. Weddings. Things like that.”

“Did you come for her wedding to Adam?”

“No. I wasn’t invited. No one was. They got married in Hawaii.”

“Oh,” Duckworth said.

A door opened. “We’re ready,” the young woman said. “She’s just in here.”

The two men moved toward the door, Duckworth in the lead. He caught a glimpse of a pair of naked feet on the table when his phone rang yet again.

“Damn,” he muttered. “I’m really sorry about this.” He took out his phone, wanting to check the caller’s name, figuring that whatever it was, it could wait.

It was Garth again.

“Hang on,” Duckworth said to Kilmer, turning and blocking him from going into the viewing room. Into the phone, he said, “What is it, Garth?”

“Okay, don’t be pissed. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but I did it, so sue me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The phone started ringing again, so I figured, shit, maybe I should just answer it, so I opened up the purse, found the phone, and answered it. I said hi, and it was some guy, and he said, ‘Who’s this?’ And I said, ‘Garth Duhl.’ Which, I guess if he’d never heard of me, would seem kind of odd.”

“What did he say, Garth?”

“He says, ‘Where’s Georgina?’ And I say, ‘What?’ And he says, ‘Where’s Georgina? Where’s my wife?’ And I say, ‘Who is this?’ And he says, ‘This is Peter Blackmore. Why are you answering my wife’s phone?’ So I tell him that somebody would get back to him, and I hang up, and I look through the purse, and I find a driver’s license, and you’re not going to believe this.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Duckworth said, ending the call. He looked at Kilmer and said, “We’re not going to do this now.”

Miriam Chalmers looked at me fiercely and said, “I’m calling the police.” She was reaching into her purse, presumably, for a cell phone.

“Okay,” I said evenly.

I was happy for her to call the Promise Falls cops, or Lucy Brighton. Then I could be spared the task of giving her the news about her husband.

Assuming, of course, that the police had that right. Lucy had identified his body, after all. I realized now everyone had just assumed the body next to him had been his wife’s.

It was possible, I supposed, that Miriam already knew her husband was dead, that coming into the house and shouting his name was an act. But it didn’t strike me that way. If she really did not know about what had happened at the drive-in, I had to marvel at the fact that Adam Chalmers had found two women — Miriam and Felicia — with an apparent disinterest in current events. In Felicia’s defense, I’d found her much earlier in the day. But it was well into the evening now, nearly twenty-four hours since the drive-in bombing.

My lack of concern about Miriam calling the police seemed to have lessened the urgency on her part to do it. She still had the phone in her hand, poised to make the call, but she had stopped.

“Is Adam here?” she asked.

“No.”

“Where is he? I called here earlier today and left a message, and he hasn’t answered his cell.”

The voice mail I’d heard. It had been from her. “I don’t think I can carry on this way.” I was betting that number I’d made note of was her cell.

“You should talk to the police,” I said. “Make the call. But not 911. Call one of their nonemergency lines. Or better yet, I could drive you down to the station.”

She let the phone fall into her bag, then dropped the purse onto the nearest chair. She reached a tentative hand out to the wall. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Who did you say you are?”

“Cal Weaver.” I took out one of my business cards and handed it to her. She barely glanced at it before dropping it onto the chair. “When did you go away?”

“What?”

I nodded in the direction of the overnight bag on the floor. “Have you been out of town?”