Linwood Barclay - Far From True

Blackmore eyed Duncomb as though he were speaking in a foreign language. “Did I what?”

“Identify her! For Christ’s sake, snap out of it.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t get around to it.”

“There’s things you have to do,” the security chief said. “You’ve got to go to the cops, identify her. Then they send her to the funeral home. What about her family? Have you called anyone in her family to let them know?”

“I told you,” he said. “I was driving.”

“Where did you go?”

Blackmore blinked a few times. “I don’t remember, exactly.”

“What are you even doing here at work? You shouldn’t be here.”

“Have a class,” he said, shuffling some papers on his desk without really looking at them. “I think.”

“Go home,” Duncomb said, coming around the desk. “You’re a mess.” As he got closer, he said, “Jesus, you reek. Have you been drinking?”

“Maybe a little,” he admitted.

“You can’t drive home. I’ll call you a taxi.”

“I don’t want to go home. I don’t like it there. Keep thinking Georgina will walk in.”

Duncomb grabbed Blackmore under the shoulders, hauled him up on his feet. As he did, he got a look at the professor’s hands.

“What’s that?”

“Huh?”

“On your hands. What’s that?”

Blackmore examined his palms as though he’d never seen them before. “I think that’s blood.”

“What happened?”

“I fell,” he said absently. “I pulled over at one point. Thought I was going to be sick. And I was.” He smiled, as though proud of his ability to predict the near future. “I went down on my hands and knees. Think I cut my hand on the gravel.”

“Jesus, we have to get you out of here.”

“What good news?”

“Huh?”

“You said you had good news you wanted to tell me.”

“I can tell you later when you’re sober enough to remember it.”

“No, tell me now. I could use some cheering up.” He leaned in toward Duncomb, as though confiding a secret to him. “I’ve had a lot of tragedy in my life lately.”

“The discs,” Duncomb said. “The one we were looking for in particular, that we worried we couldn’t find?”

“The one with Olivia?” Blackmore said, his voice going up.

“Keep your damn voice down!” he whispered. “Yes, the one with Olivia.”

“What about it?”

“Adam had already disposed of it. It’s gone. It’s been gone for months.”

Blackmore’s eyes did another round of furious blinking, as though he were coming out of a deep sleep. “Wait, what? What did you say?”

“There’s no video with Olivia Fisher. Or any of the other girls. Adam got rid of them. He only kept the ones with us. Bad enough if anyone had ever seen them, but at least they wouldn’t have run the chance of seeing us dragged in for questioning.”

“So Miriam didn’t have them?” the professor asked.

“No. They’re gone.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, Peter. It’s one less thing for us to worry about.”

Blackmore dropped back into his chair. “I suppose,” he said.

“Suppose? Come on. We’re fine. Everything’s good now.”

Blackmore swiveled in the chair and looked up at Duncomb. “No, Clive, it’s not. We... did bad things...”

“Water under the bridge, my friend.”

“How do you live with her?” Blackmore asked.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Liz. How do you do it?”

“Peter, don’t go there.”

“How many men do you figure she’s been with? I mean, she was a whore, right? You told me that’s what she was.”

“I never called her that. She ran a business, she—”

“Yeah, a whore house. How do you... how do you live with someone that unclean?”

“You need to stop talking, Peter.”

“Don’t you feel that way? I know I feel that way. Unclean. The things I did with her. The things we all did with each other. Sometimes, at night, in bed, it’s like I can feel insects crawling around under my skin.”

Blackmore was as easy a target as Duncomb had ever encountered. Sitting there, right in front of him. Duncomb drove a fist straight into the man’s face. It knocked him, and the chair, over. Blackmore’s arm caught his keyboard on the way down. It landed on his head.

Duncomb pulled the chair out of the way and hovered over Blackmore.

“Don’t you ever talk that way about Liz again,” he said.

Blackmore put his fingers to his lip, pulled them away, looked at the blood, then looked back up at Duncomb.

“Did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Did you kill Olivia?”

“Jesus, Peter, I swear, you keep talking like this—” Duncomb raised his fist again.

“Go ahead,” the professor said. “Hit me again. Go on. I won’t try to stop you. But harder this time.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’ve never seen things more clearly. Hit me again!”

“Keep your voice down!”

“Go ahead! Beat the living shit out of me! I want to feel something! Come on!”

Duncomb crossed to the other side of the office, closed the door to reduce the likelihood anyone would hear what was going on. Blackmore was struggling to his feet, his head appearing above the desk. Once he could see his onetime friend, he smiled.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

Duncomb stared.

“You know why? Because I’m a man with nothing left to lose. A man with nothing left to lose has no reason to be afraid.”

Duncomb kept his eyes trained on Blackmore for another five seconds, then said, “You need to get your shit together, Peter. See to Georgina. Take care of things. We have nothing to be worried about. We’re going to get through all this.”

“Just because those discs are gone doesn’t mean those things never happened.”

Duncomb chose his words carefully.

“You think you’re beyond being afraid. Trust me when I tell you, you’re not.”

He left the office, not bothering to close the door.

Blackmore shouted after him, “I’m not your puppet anymore! You hear that, Clive? No more!”

Duncomb kept walking.

Ed Noble first followed David Harwood and Samantha Worthington back to what, he concluded, must be Harwood’s house. Parked at the curb was the woman’s car, the one Ed had slashed the tires on the previous afternoon.

Harwood pulled into the driveway and he and the woman got out. The woman was carrying a simple plastic bag.

Ed parked five houses back. He had to wait the better part of half an hour before there was any more action. Finally, however, Harwood and the woman came out with two boys. Of course, Ed recognized Carl — the little shit — but the other kid wasn’t familiar to him. Ed figured that was the Harwood guy’s brat.

The boys were decked out with backpacks. Carl stood next to his mother’s car; the other boy positioned himself by Harwood’s. But before either parent got into his or her vehicle, they conferred, face-to-face, almost head-to-head.

Ed tried to figure out what they might be saying. His best guess was that they were deciding they didn’t need to take the boys to school separately. One of them could drop both of them off.

As if on cue, Sam said something to the kids and they both jumped into the backseat of her car. But she was slow to follow. She and her fuck buddy — as if there were any doubt, Ed thought — were still talking.

Then they moved in for a quick hug, an equally fast kiss. Couldn’t exactly get down and dirty with the boys there, could they?

They each got into their own car.

At which point, Ed was presented with a choice. Follow the woman, or follow the man?