Linwood Barclay - Far From True

Detective Duckworth said to Duncomb, “You need to keep an eye on him. He needs to make some calls, get in touch with family, and in the morning, he needs to come in and make a positive ID, as best he can, of his wife’s remains.”

“Of course,” Duncomb said.

“He came to you, didn’t he?”

“What do you mean?”

“He came to you when his wife went missing.”

“Peter’s my friend. Of course he did.”

“And once again, you took matters into your own hands, just like you did with the Mason Helt business. You could have brought us in from the beginning. Told Professor Blackmore to make a formal report with us.”

Duncomb bristled. “And what difference would that have made? Would that have kept that movie screen from falling down on her? What was done was done. You’re a small man in a small pond, Duckworth.”

Duckworth put his face up close to Duncomb’s. “What happened in Boston?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why does a cop walk away from a good job like that? Kiss his pension good-bye? Come to a place like Promise Falls? Because he couldn’t take the heat? Or maybe because his bosses had something on him and quitting was his only way out? I’m from here. I grew up around here. But you’re the one who came here, who chose the small pond because you couldn’t handle the rough water anymore.”

Before Duncomb could come back with anything, the detective was out the door.

“Asshole,” he said to the professor.

Blackmore whimpered.

“Come on, get a grip,” Duncomb said.

The man’s head shot up. “Get a grip?”

“Okay, okay, I get it. This has been a terrible shock for you. I get that. Look, you go do what you have to do about Georgina. Start making arrangements. I can scan through the rest of the discs. I gotta find her. And not just her. Any of the other girls we brought in.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yeah, well, you better care. You ever want to be in the position of having to explain that we just happened to be having that kind of fun with that girl a few weeks before she was murdered?”

“I didn’t kill that girl.”

Duncomb put his face up close to the professor’s. “Do you really think that matters?”

“She wasn’t even drugged,” Blackmore said. “Not like the others. Not like Lorraine. If anyone ever saw it, they’d see that Olivia knew what she was doing. She consented. She did.”

“It amazes me someone can rise to the level you have, teaching at a place like Thackeray, and be so astonishingly stupid,” Duncomb said. “All that girl ever had to do was threaten to tell anyone what we’d been doing, and we’d have all been finished. If all we did was lose our jobs, we’d have been lucky. We should have made sure she was drugged. She’d have forgotten the whole thing. The truth is, we got lucky when someone killed her. We’ve never had to worry she’d talk about that night.”

Blackmore eyed Duncomb fearfully.

“I’ve always wondered if it was actually you,” Blackmore said. “That you made it look like the work of some random maniac. I don’t think there’s much you’re not capable of.”

“You don’t know anything,” Duncomb said.

“I know getting mixed up in all of this... that it was a mistake. The fucking lifestyle , it was enough for Georgina and me, for Adam and Miriam. But for you and Liz, it wasn’t. You had to up the ante. Bring in some young stuff. College girls. Invite them to dinner with some famous cult writer, slip a little something in their drink, make them part of the show. We should have fought you on it, but at the time... I won’t lie. I liked it. It made me feel... omnipotent. That we were capable of anything, that rules didn’t apply to us. That other people existed for our pleasure. That’s what you and Liz did to us. That’s the kind of people you made us. You made us depraved.”

“Oh, please.”

“Maybe that’s why that screen came down on Adam and Georgina. Some kind of divine retribution. They got what was coming to them, and we’re next.”

“You’re losing it, Peter.”

“I’m seeing clearly for the first time in years,” he countered. “I see what you and Liz have done to us. You’ve poisoned us. You connecting with Liz, what are the odds two people that twisted would end up together?”

Duncomb gripped Blackmore by the shoulders. “Peter,” he said firmly, “you need to stop talking about this. Especially to anyone else. Because I swear, I’ll put a bullet in your head just as fast as I did to Mason Helt.”

Blackmore blinked several times. He swallowed, hard. “I need a drink.”

“Sure, get yourself one. I have to call Miriam back.”

“Miriam,” Blackmore said under his breath. “She didn’t keep Adam interested enough. If she had, he wouldn’t have been with Georgina. It’s her fault.”

“Jesus, just get a drink.” Duncomb got out his phone while Blackmore slunk off to the kitchen. He tapped the screen, put the phone to his ear.

“Christ,” Miriam said. “I’ve been waiting.”

“The cop left, and then I had to calm Peter down.”

“I was trying to tell you, before you cut me off.”

“Trying to tell me what?”

“The disc isn’t missing,” she said.

“What?”

“The Fisher one, and any of the others with special guests. Adam got rid of them.”

Duncomb felt an almost euphoric wave building up inside him. “He did?”

“He hated parting with them, but he knew it was a risk to keep them. He destroyed them months ago.”

“God, Miriam, that’s the first bit of good news in some time.”

“So me being alive, that’s not?”

“We’ve been going out of our minds here looking for that one disc and—”

“All right, fine. I hear you.”

“I’m sorry about Adam, Miriam. It’s horrible.”

“Enough,” Miriam said. “I have... I have things to do.”

She ended the call.

Duncomb slipped the phone into his pocket, made two fists, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “Yes!”

When Duncomb went into the kitchen to share the good news, Peter Blackmore was gone.

Miriam, sitting on the edge of the bed in the playroom, set down her phone on the satin sheet. She pulled herself up onto the mattress, drew the slippery covers around herself, making them into an icy cocoon. She brought her knees up to her chest and gave herself permission to cry.

Except the tears would not come.

She knew she should feel something. Anger? Sorrow? Outrage? Grief? And yet she wasn’t sure that she felt any of these things. The only emotion she could identify at that moment was relief.

It seemed so strange to her, of all the things she could feel.

But that was what she felt. Relief. And maybe... freedom? Was that it? She was free of Adam and all his bullshit. Free of that ex-wife of his who could never keep her nose out of their affairs. Who was always e-mailing or calling Adam on the phone. She’d never really let go, that one.

Free also of Lucy, and her disapproval. Miriam knew Adam’s daughter had never liked her. And she’d be free of that weird kid of hers. Crystal. All the time drawing her little comic books. But Adam liked — God, even loved — his granddaughter, so what could Miriam do? Let the little kid come over whenever Lucy needed a babysitter, that’s what. Adam would always make sure the sliding bookcase was locked into position before Crystal came over. She was already a strange kid — imagine how much weirder she’d have been if she’d found her way into the playroom.

With her husband dead, Miriam could sever all ties to Lucy and Crystal. She’d sell this house, sort out Adam’s estate, move the hell out of Promise Falls. Someplace warmer. The winters here were a bitch. Four feet of snow last year. Who needed that? She was thinking she’d relocate to San Diego or Los Angeles with whatever money the estate left her.