Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

She brought her hands down, thought a moment. “Sometimes,” she said quietly. “But I never really looked at them. I didn’t bring in the mail or anything. I just helped with the house and the baby. Ms. Gaynor, she was so upset. She thought having a baby would make her happy, but it just made it worse.”

“Yeah, well, raising kids is no joke,” Marshall said. “I think I’d get pretty depressed if I had to look after a baby.”

Sarita shot him a look.

“Unless it was with you,” he said quickly.

“I think her husband knew all along what was going on, but when Ms. Gaynor found out...”

“You have to stop thinking about it,” Marshall said. “You just have to move on, you know?”

“It’s my fault,” Sarita said. “If it hadn’t been for me she never would have started putting it together.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean it has anything to do with what happened to her,” Marshall said. “Unless you think it was him. The husband.”

She shook her head. “He loved her. I mean, he was away a lot, and he hardly ever talked to me, but I think he loved her.”

“Yeah, but sometimes, even people who were in love once, they do bad shit to each other. All the more reason to give him a call, tell him what you know. He’ll come across; I guarantee it. You’ll have enough money to get settled in someplace else, and have some left over to send to your folks.”

“No,” she said firmly. “No.”

He put up his hands. “Okay. You say no, then it’s no.”

“All I ever wanted to do,” she whispered, “was the right thing. I’m not a bad person, you know?”

“Of course not.”

“I’ve always tried to be good. But sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s wrong.”

Marshall gave her a kiss on the forehead. “You wait here while I get you some money. And I’ll pick up something to eat, too. Maybe an Egg McMuffin and some coffee.”

Sarita said nothing as Marshall finished getting dressed. Before he left, he double-checked that the slip of paper where he’d written Bill Gaynor’s phone number was still in his pocket.

Barry Duckworth was up at six.

He hadn’t gotten in until nearly midnight. As he’d pulled into the drive he’d noticed a white van parked at the curb opposite his house, but didn’t give it much thought. He hadn’t noticed the writing on the side.

He struggled up the stairs, stripped down to his boxers, and collapsed into bed next to Maureen. She mumbled, “Hmmm,” and went back to sleep.

He was worried he’d lie awake all night. Haunted by the sight of that student with half his head blown off. Rosemary Gaynor on the autopsy table, the ghoulish smile cut across her abdomen. Those three mannequins on the Ferris wheel.

Even those goddamned squirrels.

But he didn’t dream about any of those things. He went into a six-hour coma. He’d set his mental alarm for six thirty a.m., but his eyes opened at five fifty-nine. He glanced over at the clock, decided it wasn’t worth trying to get back to sleep when he’d be getting up so soon. He swung his thick legs from under the covers, planted his feet on the carpeted bedroom floor.

Maureen rolled over. “That was late last night.”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his eyes, then reaching for his phone to see whether he had any messages. There was nothing that needed his immediate attention.

“I tried to wait up for you,” she said.

“Why?”

“To celebrate.”

“Huh?”

“Twenty years. On the job. I didn’t forget.”

Now, with light coming through the window, he saw two tall fluted glasses on the dresser. An ice bucket, a bottle of champagne. By now, the bucket would be full of water.

“I didn’t see that when I came in,” he said.

“My detective,” Maureen said. “Nothing gets past you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Shh,” she said. “I should have said something. But we can have a little celebration now.”

She reached down under the covers, found him.

When they were finished, he said, “I have to get moving.”

Maureen threw back the rumpled sheets. “Go. I’ll put on the coffee.”

He padded down the hallway to the bathroom, reached into the shower and turned on the water, stuck in his hand to test whether the hot water had traveled two floors up from the old heater yet. He caught a brief glimpse of himself in the mirror before stepping in.

It always depressed Duckworth to see himself naked. What the hell happened? How could Maureen enjoy making love with someone who looked the way he did? He hadn’t been this heavy when he was in college, and he was certainly in better shape when he joined the Promise Falls police. He blamed, in part, all those hours he sat in a cruiser as a uniformed officer. He hated that the cliché, at least where he was concerned, was true: Barry Duckworth liked to stop at doughnut shops. It wasn’t just that he liked doughnuts, which he did, very much. It was a way of breaking the boredom. You went in, you had a coffee, you ate a doughnut, you talked to the people behind the counter, took a seat and shot the breeze with a few of the customers.

He liked to think of it at the time as public relations.

And when he made detective, well, it wasn’t like the movies, where you were running down alleys and jumping over fences. You spent your time talking to witnesses and making notes and sitting at a desk and writing reports and phoning people.

Every year, he got just a little bit heavier.

And now, he figured, he was at least eighty pounds over what he should be. All these thoughts ran through his head in the seconds before he stepped under the hot water. That, and one other thing.

The number 23.

Three times in one day that number had reared its head. Twenty-three dead squirrels. The number on the Ferris wheel carriage holding the three painted mannequins. That student’s hoodie.

Maybe it was nothing, he thought, as he soaped his considerable belly. There were numbers surrounding us all the time. There were probably numerical coincidences everywhere if you knew where to look. License plates, dates of birth, home addresses, Social Security numbers.

And yet...

He’d keep his eyes open. Have that number in the back of his mind as he continued with his investigation. Make that investigations .

Now that Angus Carlson was going to be assisting, Duckworth hoped he could hand off some of his workload. Assuming Carlson would be starting in the detective division today, Duckworth was going to give him a list of things to look into. Those strung-up squirrels for starters. See if he thought they were so funny then. And Duckworth still wanted the other Thackeray College students, the three who’d been attacked before last night, interviewed. Maybe Joyce wasn’t the only one who’d heard some very strange comments from Mason Helt. Finally, he wanted Carlson to go back out to Five Mountains and find out who fired up the Ferris wheel.

Duckworth could concentrate his efforts on the Rosemary Gaynor investigation, and finding the missing nanny, Sarita Gomez. The old guy who lived next door said she worked shifts at a nursing home, but didn’t know which one. There were several in the Promise Falls area, so it might be better to go to the station and work the phones than drive from facility to facility.

He cranked the taps shut, reached for the towel, stepped out onto the mat. He was holding the towel around his waist — there wasn’t quite enough material to allow him to tuck it into place — and glanced out the bathroom window, which looked out onto the street.

That white van from the night before was still there. Even though the sun wasn’t quite up yet, Barry could make out the words written on the side.