Linwood Barclay - Far From True

Of course, if Yolanda were here right now, there’d be no question. It was his job to follow Samantha. Ed knew that was where the money was. Yolanda wasn’t going to pay him a dime to off Harwood. She didn’t give a shit one way or another about him.

But it was a different story for Ed. He really wanted to take the guy out of the picture. As long as the two of them had been together, he’d thought he had a shot — no pun intended — at that. Now it was a lost opportunity.

He could wait until the next time they were together. Judging by how lovey-dovey they were, it would probably be later today. But Ed didn’t feel he had that long to get the job done. The police had to be looking for him, as well as Garnet and Yolanda. He had to get on with things.

So that meant following the woman.

Harwood’s car headed off in one direction, Sam’s in another. Harwood was headed toward Noble, so he scrunched down in the seat, trying to make himself invisible. It must have worked, because when he glanced in his mirror, he saw Harwood’s Mazda receding into the distance.

He sat up straight, started the engine. He kept a good hundred yards behind Sam. There was a chance, Ed figured, that she knew what kind of car her former in-laws drove, so he didn’t want to get close enough to spook her.

Just as he’d expected, Sam was heading for Clinton Public School. The last thing he wanted to do was get caught in that traffic clusterfuck of moms and vans, just in case someone recognized him in the car, so he held way back.

He could pretty much figure out where Sam was going to go next, anyway. It made some sense to get there before her.

So he drove to the Laundromat, parked down the street.

Sure enough, five minutes later, Sam showed up, drove to the lot behind the business, where he’d found the car the day before. She’d probably come in the back way. In another five minutes or so, the place would be open for business.

Ed figured, walk in and one pop to the head would do it.

The way he saw it, and for sure the way Yolanda saw it, if the police couldn’t prove she’d ordered it, what choice would the authorities have but to give the kid to her and Garnet? And when Brandon got out of jail, so long as he behaved himself, he’d probably get custody.

A boy should be with his father, Ed reasoned.

A boy needed a man to teach him the ways of the world. A mother, even a good one, just couldn’t do that. Ideally, a child needed two parents, one of each sex — none of this same-sex shit everyone was going on about — but if a boy could have only one, a father was the way to go, he reasoned. Ed supposed the opposite was true with a girl. If she had to be raised by one parent, better that it be the mother.

Ed Noble was something of a traditionalist in these matters.

Carl, years later, would probably look back at what was going to happen today as a good thing. A real turning point in his life.

Now that Ed knew Samantha was at work, he decided to park around back, too. When he came in, it would be through the back door. Walking in through the front, that hadn’t been a very good strategy last time. Sam had seen him out there on the sidewalk before he’d even come through the door. Gave her too much time to think. Or run. Plus, there was the chance there’d be people in there doing their laundry.

Like that dipshit who threw soap in his face.

Yeah, back door was the way to go.

He reached over for the gun on the seat next to him. Time to get this done.

Once my pie arrived, I couldn’t think of any good reason not to tell Barry Duckworth about Adam’s former wife Felicia being parked down the street from the Chalmers house.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “You talked to her?”

I told him of our short conversation. “If she had plans to kill Miriam, she didn’t get around to mentioning it,” I said.

“But when you saw her, she wouldn’t even have known Miriam was still alive.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s right. She said she’d been talking to a lawyer, about whether she might have any claims on Adam’s estate, what with Miriam being dead.” I paused. “She seems to think she has a claim, although what it might be, I don’t know. If she came back, she might have seen Miriam pull into the driveway. Just before Miriam came into the house and found me.”

“That would have been quite a shock,” Barry said.

“Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job,” I said, “but you might want to have a word with her.” I gave him her address.

He smiled. “You shouldn’t have quit.” A reference, I figured, to my leaving the Promise Falls police, moving to Griffon, north of Buffalo near the Canadian border, and going private. “You were a decent cop.”

I hadn’t had much choice. I’d nearly beaten to death a man who’d fled a fatal hit-and-run. It had all been caught on my dash cam. The chief at the time made the video disappear in return for my resignation.

Now, when I thought back to that lapse in judgment, I realized just how catastrophic it had been. If I hadn’t assaulted that driver, I wouldn’t have lost my job, we wouldn’t have moved to Griffon, and I wouldn’t have been drawn into an ugly mess that took the lives of my wife, Donna, and son, Scott.

I lose my cool for five seconds and everything changes.

“I was a lousy cop,” I said. “I was a stupid cop.”

“Not so stupid that I won’t bounce something off you. Something totally unrelated to all this other shit.”

“What?”

“This business with the number twenty-three.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Any ideas? Other than it being the age when you thought you’d finally lose your virginity.”

I shook my head. “The Twenty-third Psalm.”

“Jesus, that’s all anyone thinks of. And maybe that’s it, but even if it is, what the hell is the message this guy’s sending by referring to it?”

I finished my pie. “And that is why you get the big bucks. Thanks for the pie, Barry. I gotta go see if I still have a place to live.”

There was yellow tape strung across the burned-out front of Naman’s Books that also blocked the door to the stairs that led up to my apartment. I stood a moment on the sidewalk, surveying the damage. Naman was there with some kind of handyman, putting up sheets of plywood where the windows once had been.

“Naman,” I said.

He turned, saw me. No hint of a smile, but you could hardly blame him for that.

“Cal,” he said. He waved his arm toward the mess. “Look at this. Just look at it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all over for me.”

“Maybe not.”

“We’ll see. The insurance lady comes today. She already told me, all my books, because they are secondhand, because they are old, that they are probably worth nothing. I had thousands of dollars’ worth of books, Cal. Thousands. And they say they will give me nothing? What did I have insurance for? And hardly any of my books caught on fire. Most of them are soaked. All ruined by the stupid firemen.”

“They had to put out the fire,” I said. “If the books hadn’t gotten wet, they’d all have eventually burned anyway. The building is still standing. It can be fixed. And, Naman, I know this is maybe hard to appreciate, but you’re okay. You weren’t hurt. Those idiots who did this, they could have killed you.”

Me, too.

He gave me a look that felt like a knife going in. “You are no better than any of the rest of them. ‘ Be thankful. It could have been worse. Don’t make waves. Don’t rock the boat.’”

“That’s not what I said. I’m just glad you’re okay. I’ll help you. What can I do?”

“I don’t need your help,” Naman snapped. “Go find somewhere else to live. That’s what you’re going to do, right?”