Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

Wanda pressed herself up against his backside, then, with her left hand, reached over his left shoulder and grabbed his neck, pressing her thumb onto the left side, her fingers digging into the right.

“Once he was holding her tight up against himself,” she said, “he reached around like this....”

And she brought her right arm around his right side, reaching as far as she could, and made the motion of driving a knife into the left side of his abdomen, then moved her arm across to his right.

“The knife was in, and while he held her firmly, he just sawed right across.”

“Got it,” he said.

“I’m gonna let you go now before I lose control,” Wanda said flatly. She went around the examination table, across from Duckworth.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Yeah. This guy’s a nasty piece of work.”

Duckworth couldn’t take his eyes off the wound. “You know what it looks like?” he said.

Wanda nodded. “Yeah.”

“A smile. It looks like a smile.”

Ethan had already returned the watch to his grandfather, even before he and Carl had disappeared into the basement to see the trains. Once Samantha Worthington and her son had left, I went back into the house and found Dad in the kitchen holding the item that had once belonged to his own father.

He looked at me and said, “I’m confused. Was that woman Sam?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Best-looking Sam I ever saw.”

I went up to my room, closed the door, and took out my cell phone. I called up Randall Finley’s number in my list of “recents,” and dialed.

“Yeah?” he said.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

“Good to hear,” Finley said.

“But I can’t get to it just yet. I’ve got a family matter to deal with.”

“Well, deal with it as fast as you can,” Finley said. “We got lots to do.”

“And there’s something I want to make clear.”

“Go right ahead, David.”

“I won’t do dirty. I won’t do underhanded. I see you pulling stunts like you got in trouble for seven years ago, I’m out. That clear?”

“Crystal,” Randall Finley said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“I’ll be in touch tomorrow,” I said, and ended the call.

Now it was time to go to the hospital.

Mom and Dad made noises about coming with me, but I suggested it would be better if I went on my own to talk to Marla.

I found her on the third floor of Promise Falls General. I checked in at the nurses’ station to confirm which room she was in.

“Who are you?” a nurse asked, almost accusingly.

“I’m her cousin,” I said. “I’m Agnes Pickens’s nephew.”

“Oh,” she said, her tone changing instantly. Being a relative of the hospital administrator had bought me some instant respectability. “Ms. Pickens and her husband were just here. I think they’ve gone to the cafeteria for coffee. If you’d like to wait—”

“No, that’s okay, I can head straight down. It’s three-oh-nine, right?”

“Yes, but—”

I gave her a friendly wave as I continued on down the hallway. I entered Marla’s room — a private one, no surprise there — tentatively, in case she might be sleeping. I peered around the corner, and there she was, eyes shut, wrist bandaged, the bed propped up at a forty-five-degree angle.

I bumped a chair, which set off the smallest squeak, but it was enough to make Marla open her eyes. She looked at me blankly for a second, so I said, “Hi, it’s David,” remembering her problem with faces, even those you’d figure she would know best.

“Hey,” she said groggily.

I came up alongside the bed and took hold of her hand, the one not connected to the bandaged wrist.

“I heard,” I said.

“I guess I kind of lost it for a second,” she said, glancing at the bandages. “Mom wants them to keep me overnight.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m worried they’re going to move me to the psych ward. I do not need to go to the psych ward.”

“Well, what you did, it’s got everyone worried.”

“I’m fine. Really.” She looked at me. “The policeman was very mean to me.”

“What policeman?”

“The one asking all the questions. Duck something.”

“Duckworth.”

“He made a big deal out of what I do. Like just because I make up reviews I’d lie about what’s going on with that woman who died.”

“He has to ask tough questions,” I said. “It’s his job.”

“Mom says she’s going to try and get him fired.”

“I’m sure she’d like to,” I said, giving her hand a little squeeze. “My mom gave me a little history lesson today.”

“About what?”

“About when I hit my head on the raft. How if it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been a goner.”

The corners of her mouth went up a fraction of an inch. “No problem.”

“I want to help, Marla. You’re in a jam. The baby thing, your having Matthew—”

“I told you, someone came to the door and—”

“I know. What I was going to say was, Matthew being with you, it doesn’t look good in connection with what happened to Mrs. Gaynor. You get that, right?”

She nodded.

“So I’m going to start asking around. Find out how Matthew could have ended up with you. Find your angel.”

She smiled. “You believe me.”

What I had come to believe was that Marla believed it. “Yes,” I said. “I want you to answer a few questions so I can get started. You up to that?”

A weary nod.

“I know your face blindness makes it hard to describe people, but the woman who came to the door with Matthew, is there anything you can tell me about her? Hair color?”

“Uh, black?” she said, as if she was asking me.

“I wasn’t there,” I said. “But you think it was black?”

She nodded. Rosemary Gaynor had black hair, but if it had been her at the door it would have meant she’d handed off her own baby to Marla. That didn’t make a lot of sense.

And plenty of women had black hair.

“I know the smaller details are tough, but how about skin color? Black, white?”

“Kind of... in between.”

“Okay. Anything else? Eye color?”

She shook her head.

“Moles or scars, anything like that?”

Another shake.

“How about her voice? What did she say to you and what was her voice like?”

“It was pretty. She said, ‘I want you to look after this little man. His name is Matthew. I know you’ll do a good job.’ That was about all. Her voice was kind of singsong? You know what I mean?”

“I think so,” I said.

“And she left me the stroller. She said she was sorry she didn’t have anything else for me. And then she was gone.”

“Did she leave in a car?”

Marla concentrated. “Yeah, there was a car.” She sighed. “I’m even worse with those than faces. It was black, I think.”

“A pickup truck? An SUV? A van? A convertible?”

She bit her lip. “Well, it wasn’t a convertible. A van, maybe. But I wasn’t paying much attention because I had Matthew to look after.”

“Didn’t you think it was kind of strange? Someone just doing that?”

“Sure,” she said, looking at me like I was an idiot. “But it was such a wonderful thing, I didn’t want to question it. I thought, Maybe this is how the universe is supposed to unfold. I lose a child, but then I’m given one to make up for that.”

I thought there was more — or less — to this than the universe trying to make things right.

Knowing a reasonable explanation was unlikely to come from Marla, I tried to figure it out myself. If what Marla believed was really what happened, how did one make sense of it?