Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“Yes!” He nodded furiously. “How could Miriam be dead?”

“Why did Clive Duncomb do this to you?”

Blackmore was trembling, his eyes darting, as though searching for an escape. “He thinks I’ll talk. But not about Miriam.”

“About what, then?”

The professor kept shaking his head.

“Tell me!” Duckworth shouted. “What’s he worried about? What’s on those videos?”

Blackmore mumbled something.

“What?”

“—via,” he said.

“What did you say?”

“Olivia,” the professor said.

Now it was Barry Duckworth’s turn to be stunned into silence. At least for a couple of seconds.

“Olivia?”

“That’s right.”

“Olivia who?”

“Olivia Fisher,” the professor said. “She was the one who—”

“I know who she was. What the hell does Olivia Fisher have to do with the rest of this?”

“Sometimes, Clive... Clive invited Thackeray girls out to Adam and Miriam’s. There’d be something in their wine — you know, what do you call them—”

“Roofies,” Duckworth said. “Rohypnol. The date rape drug.”

Peter Blackmore nodded. “That’s right. And then they’d join in... with the fun. Except Olivia. She got into it. She didn’t have to be drugged. But that also meant she’d remember everything that happened.”

“Everyone went along with this?”

Blackmore nodded ashamedly. “But it was Clive, and his wife, Liz, who wanted to bring in the girls. We went along.” He shook his head. “All of us.”

“Georgina, too.”

He nodded. “She was torn. She didn’t feel right about what we were doing, but at the same time, I think she was infatuated with Adam. I don’t know if the drive-in was the first time she’d been out alone with him. Maybe she thought something like that, that it was innocent enough, especially considering she’d already had sex with him.”

Duckworth wasn’t interested in that part of the story, at least not right now. “When did you involve Olivia Fisher in your games?”

“It was a few years ago. I mean, obviously before she was murdered. Maybe a month or so before.”

“You were trying to find the discs featuring her?”

He nodded. “When we — when Clive — heard that Adam and Miriam had been killed at the drive-in, he knew someone would be through the house, find those discs. But it turned out we didn’t have to worry. When it turned out Miriam was alive, and Clive was talking to her, he told her we had the discs, that we were trying to find the one with Olivia, and she said it had already been destroyed. Adam got rid of it. He got rid of any of the videos with Thackeray girls. Olivia, Lorraine—”

“Lorraine?”

“I don’t remember her last name. It was a huge relief, because Clive was so worried that if someone else had found the discs, eventually, they’d see us, with Olivia, and they’d think...”

“You killed her.”

“We knew how bad it would look, her being in the videos. That it would link us to her, that someone might think we had something to do with her murder.”

“Did you?”

“I didn’t. I swear.”

“What about Clive?”

Blackmore met Duckworth’s look. “I don’t know.”

“You said he threatened you, if you started to talk. Did he kill Olivia because he was afraid she would?”

Blackmore put his hands on top of his head, as if trying to keep his skull from exploding. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on in that man’s head. Maybe that’s what he’s doing. He’s getting rid of everyone who’s a possible threat. He blew that kid’s head off, you know.”

“Mason Helt,” Duckworth said.

“Yeah! Him! I get why he did it, but... I think he enjoyed it. You know what I’m saying? He liked shooting that kid. He liked that he was able to do that and get away with it.”

“Professor Blackmore, I’m gonna need you to come in with me and make a formal statement.”

“No, I can’t do that.”

“You need to. You need to do it for yourself. You need to make a clean breast of this. You’ll feel better. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Clive... he’ll go nuts.”

“We can take care of Mr. Duncomb. Don’t worry about that.”

“He’ll kill me.”

“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

The professor appeared unconvinced. “I have to deal with this,” he said.

“You are. By coming in and making a statement.”

“No,” he said. “Some other way.”

“And what way would that—”

Blackmore lunged at him. Hit Duckworth in the chest with both palms, hard, knocking the detective off his feet. Duckworth stumbled backward, landed on the road inches away from Blackmore’s vomit, and hit the back of his head on the edge of the curb.

Briefly saw stars.

Blackmore jumped into his car, turned the ignition.

“Stop!” Duckworth said, rising to a sitting position. “Goddamn it, stop!”

The professor threw the car into drive and took off.

The first thing Sam did was call the school and tell the office to get Carl out of class, keep him in the office, and not let him out of their sight for one second.

A pair of uniformed cops arrived before anyone else. Turned out they were already on their way even before I’d made a call. People passing by the Laundromat had heard shots and someone had dialed 911.

When I called in, I made clear that the gunfire was over, but I also knew that when the police arrived, they’d be on high alert, so I made sure neither Sam nor I was waving a gun around when they came through the front door. But we were both standing over Ed Noble, ready to pounce on him if he tried to get away.

Once the cops had a look at Noble, sprawled on the floor, whimpering as blood streamed from his nose, they put in a call for the paramedics. Before they arrived, a detective by the name of Angus Carlson arrived.

I explained, as quickly as I could, what had gone down, although a survey of the Laundromat offered more than a few clues. Bullet holes in the ceiling and a washer, a shattered dryer window, blood on the floor. I still had several washers chugging away, dealing with my smoky clothes.

I managed to work in, during my initial chat with Carlson, that I was a former Promise Falls cop, and that if he needed to check me out, he could call Barry Duckworth.

“That’s my partner,” Carlson said. “Or my supervisor. Kind of.”

“He says he was put up to it,” I told Carlson, pulling him to one side. “Ms. Worthington’s former in-laws want custody of her son. Sounds like the mother of her ex-husband — he’s in jail right now — figured the best way to achieve that was to kill Ms. Worthington.”

“Some mothers are just pure evil,” Carlson said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think she’s still in town somewhere.”

The paramedics arrived, but Carlson held up a hand to them. He wanted a few words with Noble before they took him to the hospital.

“Mr. Noble,” he said.

“That fucking bitch broke my nose!” he wept. “That’s the second time in two days.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “I wish I’d done it both times.”

Carlson turned around, raised a finger to her.

“I’ll be quiet,” she said.

“Mr. Noble, you’re being placed under arrest. You have—”

“I can give you somebody!” he said. “I can give you who put me up to this!”

“The mother of this woman’s ex?”

“Yeah! Yolanda. It’s all her, man. I’ll testify against her. I will. You cut me a deal, and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Like where she is right now?”

“Yeah.”