Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

The young man nodded, and then began to tear up. “It was so weird. I was really sorry I got her pregnant, and didn’t want her to have the kid, and didn’t want to have the responsibility, right? But when I found out the baby — it was a little girl, but you probably know that — died when it was, like, coming out, it kind of hit me. I never expected that to happen. But it hit me real hard.”

He sniffed, used the back of his hand to wipe away a tear. “All of a sudden I was thinking about what she might have grown up to be, what she’d have been like, whether she’d have looked like me and all that kind of shit, and I was so shook up about it that I kind of, you know, went to pieces.”

“What happened?”

“I moved back in with my dad. We’re pretty close. It was a good thing we hadn’t told Mom anything. I mean, it would have killed her to think she had a granddaughter, and that she died right away.” He swallowed. “Marla told me about holding her. Holding the baby when she was dead. She said she was in kind of a daze, but she looked at all her little fingers and her nose and all and said she was really beautiful, even though she wasn’t breathing. She even had a name chosen for her. Agatha Beatrice Pickens. Agatha sounded sort of like her mother’s name, but was different, she said.”

He wiped his eyes again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “These things can affect you in ways you never expect.”

Derek Cutter nodded. “I guess.”

We both heard the sound of a car door closing. Derek got off the table and looked out the window.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “I know that guy.”

I joined him at the window. I knew that guy, too.

“Detective Duckworth,” I said.

“Yeah. He was the one who thought I’d done it when our neighbors got killed. What’s he doing here?”

I could think of two possible reasons: Duckworth wanted to talk to him about Marla Pickens for the same reasons I had. Or maybe he wanted to ask him about his dead friend Mason Helt.

“I hate that guy,” Derek said. “Can you tell him I’m not here?”

“I can’t do that, Derek.”

“Great.”

“I want to ask you one last quick question.”

“Fine, whatever.”

“I want your gut feeling about Marla.”

“Gut feeling?”

“Can you imagine her killing Rosemary Gaynor?”

He thought a moment. “My gut?”

“Yeah.”

“One night we were at this thing at the college — this was before she got pregnant, I think. And there’s a whole bunch of kids around, and this guy was really giving shit to this girl about her talking to some other guy or some shit like that, and you could see she was really intimidated, looking real scared, and he went to raise his hand to her — I don’t know if he’d have actually hit her, but you never know — and Marla, who’s been watching all of this, grabs this beer bottle and throws it right at this asshole’s head. We were only like six feet away, so even if her aim hadn’t been great, she had a good chance of hitting him. And she does, right on his fucking nose. Lucky thing the bottle didn’t break or the guy might have lost an eye, but his nose started bleeding like crazy. And the guy looks at Marla, like maybe he’s going to come at her, and she shouts, ‘Yeah, I’m right here!’ Like she was just daring him to try something. Swear to God, you had to see it to believe it.”

“Jesus,” I said.

Downstairs, the doorbell rang.

“So when you ask me what my gut thinks about Marla, I don’t know if there’s anything she could do that would surprise me,” he said.

Duckworth thought, I’m an idiot.

He’d just pulled up in front of the house where he’d been told by the Thackeray College registration office that he could find Derek Cutter, when he realized what he should have asked Sarita Gomez’s landlord, Mrs. Selfridge, she of the magnificent banana bread.

When Duckworth had left the station that morning he’d dragooned a female officer and put her on the phones to call nursing homes in and around Promise Falls to try to find where Sarita worked. It had occurred to him that, even if they were to call the right place, someone might deny employing a person here illegally.

It was on the way to interview Derek that it hit him.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said to himself.

He pulled right over to the curb, a couple of blocks away from Derek’s address, and got out his notebook and phone. He found Mrs. Selfridge’s number and dialed.

She answered on the third ring. He identified himself.

“Oh, hello, Detective,” she said. “If you’re wondering if Sarita’s come back, she hasn’t. She’s paid up to the end of the month, but I’m thinking I should start looking for a new tenant. I got a feeling she’s flown the coop for good.”

“You might be right,” Duckworth said. “I wanted to thank you again for that banana bread. I was wondering, would you be willing to part with the recipe? And if you say no, I’m pretty sure I can get a subpoena.”

That made her laugh. “I don’t even have it written down. I just do it out of my head. But I guess I could come up with something.”

“And there’s another thing,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this yesterday. Your phone, that Sarita used?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like you to go through the call history. Calls in and out.”

“I could do that,” she said. “You want me to do that before or after I get you the recipe?”

“Before,” Duckworth said, with some regret. “Sarita probably made, and received, calls from the nursing home where she worked. Once we have that number, we’ll know her employer. And there may be other numbers, too, that might help me find her.” He paused. “And when I do, I can ask her whether she’s going to keep the room.”

“Oh, I’d really appreciate that.”

“You have the card I left with you?” he asked. She said yes. “Okay, if you’d take down those numbers and e-mail them to me, I sure would appreciate it.”

Mrs. Selfridge said she would get right on it, and Duckworth said good-bye.

Idiot , he thought again. He wanted to plead overwork. Juggling too many cases at once. A murder, a fatal shooting at Thackeray, strange goings-on in the night at Five Mountains. Dead squirrels, for God’s sake.

And then there was the home front. How the hell did his son end up working for that asshole Randall Finley? That son of a bitch couldn’t be trusted. There had to be a reason he’d hired his son. Sure, Trevor would be a good hire for any company, but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to drive a truck. Finley could have hired anyone for a job like that. Why Trevor?

While he waited for Sarita’s landlady to get those numbers, he’d continue on to Derek Cutter’s residence. The young man’s name had surfaced twice in the last day, in two separate investigations. Not only had he been identified as the man who’d gotten Marla Pickens pregnant, he was also reported to be a friend of Mason Helt, the student Clive Duncomb had shot in the head.

Duckworth had much to discuss with Derek.

He was about to put the car in drive when his cell rang.

“Duckworth.”

“Hey, Barry. Cal Weaver.”

There was a voice from the past.

“Son of a bitch. I knew you were back. I’ve been meaning to call.”

“Everyone’s busy,” Weaver said.

“Where you living?”

“You know that used bookstore downtown? Naman’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Above it.”

“Okay.”

“I was living at my sister’s for a while,” Weaver said. “But that was temporary till I got my own place.”

“I knew you’d moved back from Griffon,” Duckworth said. “I heard about what happened there. I’m sorry.”