Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

“Helt. Mason Helt. He was a really good guy. He was in the drama program with me. He was really good. They say he was attacking one of the security guards, who was, like, bait or something, and then he got shot. It’s nuts.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said. “That’s why you called your dad?”

Derek nodded. “Yeah, just because, you know, I kind of freaked out and I just needed to talk. I was surprised when Patsy said it was my dad at the door, because I didn’t tell him to come out or anything.” He fixed his eyes on me more closely. “You look familiar to me.”

I had a feeling why that might be, but I didn’t want to lead the witness. No sense in Derek’s taking a dislike to me if it didn’t have to happen.

“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” I said honestly.

“You were one of the pack,” he said. “One of the ones who made my life hell. I recognize you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d have been one of them.”

It was a long time ago. Seven, eight years? The Langley murders. Father, mother, son, all killed in their home one night. Derek and his parents lived next door, and for a period of a day or two, Derek was a prime suspect. The real killer was found and Derek completely exonerated, but it had to be a scarring experience.

“Every once in a while,” he said, “people still look at me funny. Like they think, Maybe it wasn’t that other guy. Maybe it really was him. Thanks for being a part of that. For putting my picture in the paper. For writing stuff that wasn’t true.”

I could have told him I’d been doing my job. That it wasn’t the press that arrested him, but the police. That the media didn’t just decide one day to pick on him, but that we were following the story where it led. That the Standard wouldn’t have been doing its duty if it had decided not to be part of the media frenzy, no matter how short-lived it was. That sometimes innocent people get caught up in current events, and they get hurt, and that’s just the way it is.

I didn’t think he’d be interested in hearing any of that.

“It’s why my parents split up,” Derek said.

“I didn’t know about that,” I said, although Marla had mentioned something about it.

“Yeah, like, for a while, it looked like maybe they could ride it out. But that didn’t happen. My parents, they couldn’t patch it all together. So my mom moved away, and they had to sell the house, and everything pretty much went to complete shit, thanks very much. If I could have gone to college someplace other than Promise Falls, I would have, but I couldn’t afford it.”

For what it was worth, I said, “I’m not here as a reporter. I don’t even work as one anymore. And the Standard doesn’t even exist.”

“So, what then? Why are you here? What’s going on with Marla?”

I told him.

“Jesus,” he said. “That’s totally fucked-up. So they think she killed this woman and ran off with her kid?”

“That’s not what Marla says happened, but I’d bet it’s what the police think.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Trying to help. Asking around. Hoping I’ll find out something that makes it clear she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Derek shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve talked maybe half a dozen times since she lost the baby, ran into her a couple of times, but that’s it.”

“Did you know about the earlier incident, when she tried to smuggle a baby out of the hospital?”

He nodded. “She told me about it. She said she just kind of lost her mind for a second. But that was pretty crazy of her.”

“How’d you meet?”

His story matched Marla’s. They’d struck up a conversation in a Promise Falls bar, hooked up. Saw each other pretty seriously for a while.

“She was one of the weirdest girls I ever went out with,” he said.

“How so?”

“Well, first of all, she has this thing? Where she doesn’t exactly recognize you?”

“Face blindness,” I said.

“Yeah. I thought she was making it up at first, but then I Googled it and found out it was a real thing. And then I saw an episode of 60 Minutes where they talked all about it. More people have it than you might think. Brad Pitt even says he thinks he’s got it. Every time I’d meet Marla, I’d walk up to her, and she’d be looking at me, like she thought it was me but she wasn’t quite sure, and then I’d say, ‘Hey, it’s me,’ and she’d hear my voice, and then she’d be sure. It was really strange. She told me to always wear my hair the same way. Like, hanging like this, you know? That if I combed it back or something, which I would never do, because I don’t really do anything at all with my hair, she’d have a harder time recognizing me. Or, like, wear a plaid shirt. I wear a lot of plaid shirts. She said those kinds of visual cues really worked for her.”

“I know,” I said. “The family started noticing it when she was a teenager. Tell me about when you found out she was pregnant.”

“She told me she’d missed her period. It was like a bombshell, you know?”

“How’d you take the news?”

“Honestly? I got off the phone — she didn’t tell me in person — and I barfed my guts out. I used, you know, protection and everything, almost every time.”

“Almost,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

“How’d your parents take it?”

“I didn’t tell my mom. Just my dad. He’s kind of a traditional guy. He said I had to accept responsibility, and do whatever I had to do, and he’d be there to support me. And once we kind of knew where this was all going, he’d bring my mom into the loop. So, you know, I told Marla I would stand by her, help her any way I could. That it was her decision to make, whatever she did.”

“And she decided to have the baby.”

“Yeah, which, if I’m telling the truth, was not exactly what I was hoping she would do. But like my dad said, it was her call. She said she wanted to have the kid; she really wanted to have a baby, said it would give her a focus, that it would really help her get her life together, right? And she said it was up to me how involved I wanted to be, but I was never sure whether she meant that, or if she was trying to guilt-trip me into stepping up and asking her to marry me or something like that, which I did not want to do. Marry her. I just wasn’t ready for anything like that.”

“Sure,” I said. “You’re still in school and all.”

“This is my last year. I graduate later this month. I didn’t even realize for a long time how much older than me she was. I thought she was maybe a year or two, but she was, like, seven or something. It’s like I’ve got this thing for older women.”

“What?” I said.

“Mrs. Langley?”

Right. The neighbor who’d been murdered years ago. Derek had been rumored to have had a sexual relationship with her. It was one of the things that had made him, briefly, a suspect.

He shook his head. “We don’t have to get into that, do we?”

“No.”

“Anyway, I started thinking maybe it wasn’t a guilt trip, that Marla really didn’t want me that involved, and part of that may be that her mom didn’t like me.”

“You met Agnes?”

“I never actually did, but Marla told me she wasn’t pleased. She runs the hospital, right? I mean, you’d know, if Marla’s your cousin. Her mom would be your aunt, right? She’s a bigwig around town. And I’m the son of a guy who runs a landscaping company. You could just guess how much she loved that.”

I felt as though I’d been dipped into a bucket of shame. Derek had my aunt pretty much nailed.

“And then,” I said, “Marla had the baby.”