Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

“Thanks,” Weaver said. “Listen, you’re working the Rosemary Gaynor murder.”

“I am.”

“Neponset Insurance has asked me to look into it. Bill Gaynor works for them, and all their insurance is with them as well.”

“Okay,” Duckworth said.

“There was a million-dollar policy on Ms. Gaynor. Before there’s a payout to Mr. Gaynor, there’s the usual due diligence.”

“Of course,” Duckworth said.

“But from what I understand, this one may be a bit of a slam dunk,” Weaver said.

“I’m in the middle of my investigation, Cal. No charges yet.”

“But this Marla Pickens is looking good for it.”

“She’s a suspect.”

“She had their baby,” Weaver said. “And it wasn’t the first time she pulled a stunt like that. Am I right?”

“You are.”

“Look, I don’t want to get in your way on this, and I’m not doing an active investigation of my own, not at this stage. I’m hanging back, monitoring developments, waiting to see if there’s an arrest. I wanted to give you a heads-up, is all.”

“Appreciate it,” Duckworth said. “Listen, we should have a beer sometime, get caught up.”

“Sure,” Weaver said noncommittally, and ended the call.

Duckworth was thinking he should have reached out to his old friend before now, but even more than that, he was thinking Bill Gaynor wasn’t going to have any trouble paying for a new nanny to look after Matthew.

A million bucks.

When Duckworth bumped into David Harwood coming out of Derek Cutter’s place, he asked him what he was doing there. “Trying to find out what happened, same as you,” the former reporter said on his way to an old Taurus parked on the street.

Duckworth found Derek waiting for him at the door to his apartment.

“Hey, Derek,” Duckworth said. “How you been?”

“Okay.”

“How’s your dad?”

“Okay.”

Once upstairs, Duckworth asked about Marla Pickens. Derek said, “I’ll tell you what I just told the other guy.”

Which he did.

Then Duckworth turned to Mason Helt. “I hear you guys were friends.”

“They fuckin’ executed him; that’s what I hear,” Derek said.

“Did you know Mason was stalking women on campus, attacking them?”

“You think if I knew something like that I wouldn’t say something about it?”

“So you had no idea.”

“No. I still don’t believe it. I’ve got some experience with being accused of something I didn’t do.”

Duckworth felt he’d apologized enough years ago for all of that. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

“Maybe two weeks ago? We ran into each other and he invited me to his place for a couple of beers.” Derek moved his lips in an out. “He said he got this weird kind of job. Sort of an acting thing. We’d been taking some theater classes together.”

“What kind of acting thing?”

“I asked him. I said, ‘Like in amateur theater? Something on campus or off?’ I even wondered if he’d tried out for some kind of commercial or something like that.”

“Which was it?”

“Well, none of those. Mason said it was a private thing. I thought, Maybe it’s got to do with sex, you know? Like maybe some old guy’d hired him to come to his house and dance or strip or do some kinky kind of role-play.”

“Why would something like that come to mind?” Duckworth asked. “Have you ever been asked to do something like that?”

“Geez, no. It’s just because he was so secretive about it, it made me wonder. But I kept asking him about it, and what he would say was, it was kind of like, you know when they hire actors to pretend they’re sick and medical students have to figure out what they’ve got?”

“I’ve heard of that.”

“Like what he was doing was part of a study or something. But he also implied it was a bit risky.” He shook his head. “He sure turned out to be right about that.”

“Did Mason say who hired him?”

“No, but he said he’d be able to buy me a few rounds for the next few weeks on what he was getting paid.”

It fit with what Joyce Pilgrim had told him. Mason, just before Clive Duncomb shot him, had said he wouldn’t hurt her. That the attack was some kind of gig.

“Mason was wearing a hoodie when he was shot,” Duckworth said. “With the number twenty-three on it. You ever see him wearing that?”

“That’s weird that you should bring that up,” Derek said.

“Why?”

“That time I ran into him, he’d been to some sports store in Promise Falls. Where you can buy stitch-on letters for varsity jackets, that kind of thing. He had this white plastic bag, and I asked him what was in it, and he said it was for the gig, but he wouldn’t show it to me. But he had to leave the room for a second to take a leak, and I peeked inside, and it was two numbers. The way they were in the bag, they made a thirty-two, but yeah, could just as easy be twenty-three.”

“So whoever hired him, for whatever it was he was supposed to do, he had to be wearing that number.”

“I guess,” Derek said. “Why would someone do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the significance of twenty-three?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s a reference to Psalm Twenty-three,” Derek offered.

“You’re going to have to help me there,” the detective said. “I sleep in on Sunday mornings if I’m not on duty.”

“Well, I haven’t been to church in years either, but my parents used to send me to Sunday school when I was really little. Psalm Twenty-three is the one that goes ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ And there’s that part that talks about walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but not fearing any evil. You know?”

“It rings a bell,” Duckworth said.

Trevor Duckworth had rarely driven a van with so few windows. There was the front windshield, of course, and the roll-down ones on the driver and passenger doors. But that was it. The cargo area was totally closed in. There wasn’t even any glass on the two rear floor-to-ceiling doors.

Visibility was a bitch.

A couple of times over the years, he’d found himself behind the wheel of a rental, helping someone move, and he hated having to back the damn thing up. Couldn’t see where you were going. He’d adopted a style of backing up very slowly and hoping that if and when he hit something — or somebody — he’d hear it and stop before he did too much damage.

But after a few days of working for Finley Springs Water, he was getting the hang of it. He could back this sucker up pretty nicely using only the mirrors that were bolted to the two doors. He’d dropped off about a hundred cases of water at several convenience stores around Promise Falls, and had now returned to the plant with an empty truck. He drove up in front of the loading docks, put the column shift into reverse, spun the wheel around, and guided the truck right up to the platform. Stopped an inch short, never touched the bumper.

Hot damn.

He grabbed a clipboard from the other seat that listed the places he’d been and how much had been delivered, and headed to the office with the paperwork.

God, his dad could be such a dick sometimes.

Giving him a hard time about working for Randall Finley. Who cared? A job was a job, and Trevor’d been out of work too long. How long had his parents been at him about getting a weekly paycheck? And then he finally gets one, and his dad’s not happy about it. At least his mother seemed pleased. It was funny about her. She could be such a huge worrier. Like when he was going around Europe with Trish, and was out of touch with his parents for days or weeks at a time. It drove his mother crazy. And yet now that he was back in Promise Falls, she was okay. She was the one he could go to when he had a problem. His dad was another story. Maybe it was the whole thing about being a cop. You got all hard-ass about everything.