Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

“Stop!” I yelled. “We’re trying to help!”

Although, as I said it, I had to wonder at the truth of my words. Maybe I was trying to help, in the sense that I was trying to figure out what had happened here.

But Marla was another story.

Marla had Bill Gaynor’s child, and I was not yet in a position to explain how that had come to pass.

And in that instant, in that millisecond, in the midst of all this chaos, I recalled the bloody smudge on Marla’s door.

Oh, no.

“Give him to me!” he shouted at Marla, who was still hitting any part of him she could catch. She landed a couple of blows on his head.

“Marla! Stop it! Stop it!”

While I struggled with Gaynor, managing to drag him almost all the way out of the car, Marla tucked Matthew under one arm like a football, threw open the back door on the other side, got out, and started to run.

Gaynor managed to turn around — he was younger and in better shape than I was — so that he could push me up against the inside of the driver’s door and drive a fist into my stomach. I let go of him and my knees hit the pavement.

The wind was gone from me. I gasped for air as Gaynor tore around the back of the car and caught up to Marla as she ran across the lawn. As I struggled to my feet, I saw him grab Marla by one arm.

“Go away!” she screamed, twisting her body, shielding the baby from the baby’s father.

Again I yelled, “Wait!”

Gaynor kept his focus on Marla, and his hand on her arm. He was digging his fingers into her flesh, and she was screaming in pain.

“I’ll drop him!”

That did it. Gaynor released his grip on her, took half a step back. For several seconds, everything froze. All you could hear was breathing. Shallow and rapid from Gaynor, his tie askew, hair tousled, arms down at his sides. Marla, jaw dropped, inhaling huge gulps of air. And then there was me, still struggling to get my breathing back to normal after that punch to the gut.

Half doubled over, I came around the car, one arm raised, palm out, in some weak kind of conciliatory gesture.

Gaynor’s wild eyes went from Marla to me and back to Marla. There were tears running down her face, and Matthew was starting to cry, too.

“Please,” Bill Gaynor said to her. “Don’t hurt him.”

Marla shook her head, stunned by the request. “Hurt him? You’re the one who’s trying to hurt him.”

“No, no, please,” he said.

I managed to stand fully upright as I stepped over the curb and walked onto the lawn.

“Marla,” I said. “What matters now, more than anything, is that nothing happen to Matthew. Right?”

She studied me warily. “Okay.”

“He’s our number one concern, agreed?”

“That’s my son,” Gaynor said. “Tell her to give me my—”

I raised a hand in his direction and nodded. “We all want the same thing, and that’s for Matthew to be safe.”

In the distance, for the first time, sirens.

“Of course,” she said.

“Marla, something’s happened in the house, and the police are coming, and it’s all going to get very busy here in a few minutes, and the cops are going to want to ask all of us lots of questions, and we don’t want to subject Matthew to that, do we? Some people are going to believe one thing and some people are going to believe something else, but the bottom line is, Matthew needs to be safe.”

She said nothing, but tightened her grip on the baby.

“Do you trust me, Marla?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“We’re cousins. We’re family. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. I want to help you, and I want to help you through this. You have to trust me.”

Gaynor’s eyes continued to bounce between us.

“I guess I do,” she said. I could see her grip on Matthew, who was continuing to cry through all of this, relax ever so slightly.

The sirens grew louder. I took my eyes off Marla for half a second, saw a Promise Falls cruiser turn the corner a long block away, lights flashing.

“Give him to me,” I said. I looked at Gaynor. “Is that okay with you, if she gives him to me?”

He searched my eyes. “Okay,” he said slowly.

Marla stood frozen. She’d taken a quick look up the street, too, and the imminent arrival of the police had prompted a more frightened look in her eyes.

“If I can’t have him...”

“Marla.”

“If I can’t have him, then maybe no one...”

“Don’t talk that way, Marla.” Jesus, what might she do? Run into the street, throw herself in the path of the police car, baby in her arms?

The cruiser — only the one so far — screeched to a halt and two male officers, one black and one white, jumped out. I was pretty sure I recognized both of them from my time reporting for the Standard . The black officer was Gilchrist, the white guy Humboldt.

“Give him to me!” Gaynor yelled at Marla, and advanced threateningly toward her.

Gilchrist drew his weapon, but kept it pointing toward the ground. “Sir!” he barked, his sharp voice a thunderclap. “Back away from the woman!”

Gaynor looked at the cop, pointed to Marla. “That’s my son! She has my son!”

Christ on a cracker, this very bad situation was milliseconds away from getting a fuck of a lot worse. The cops had no idea what they’d walked into. They probably thought it was some kind of custody dispute. A full-scale domestic disturbance.

“Officer Gilchrist?” I said.

The man’s head snapped my way. “I know you?”

“David Harwood. Used to work for the Standard . This is my cousin, Marla. She’s under a lot of... stress right now, and she was just about to hand the baby to me. And I think that’s okay with Mr. Gaynor here, right?”

“Everyone just stay right where they are,” Gilchrist said as his partner came alongside. “Would you like to bring us up to speed, Harwood?”

“It’d be easier to explain once Marla hands me the baby.”

“That work for you?” Humboldt, speaking for the first time, asked Bill Gaynor.

Gaynor nodded.

“How about you, Marla?” Gilchrist asked.

Marla took four slow steps in my direction. Carefully she handed the crying child to me. I supported him against my chest with one arm, wrapped the other around him. Felt his warmth. The stirring of his small limbs.

Gilchrist holstered his weapon.

“In the house,” I said, my voice feeling as though it might break. “You have to go... into the house.”

“What’s in the house, sir?” Humboldt asked.

It was Gaynor who spoke. “My... wife.” The way he said it, the way the two words came out so brittle, neither of the cops seemed to feel the need to ask what her situation was.

Humboldt drew a weapon and slowly approached the open front door. The house swallowed him up as he entered the foyer.

Gilchrist spoke into the radio attached to his shoulder, said he was going to need more units on Breckonwood. Probably a detective and a crime-scene unit.

Marla’s red eyes looked my way. I wondered whether she would ask me what was in the house, but she didn’t.

Instead, she slowly melted to the grass. Once she was on her knees, she put her hands over her eyes and began to weep so hard her body shook.

My phone rang. Tucked into my inside jacket pocket, against my chest, it felt like I’d been hit by one of those paddles paramedics use. With a wailing Matthew pressed against me, I worked my free hand into my jacket to retrieve the phone. I saw who it was before I put the phone to my ear.

“Agnes,” I said.

“I’m at Marla’s and there’s no one here. What the hell is going on?”

Matthew cried. “We’re not there,” I said.

“Who is... Oh, dear God, is that the baby?”