Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

“I don’t understand.”

“Trish is kind of like a niece to me. I’m her unofficial uncle.”

“You talked to Trish?”

“I told you, we lived next door to the Vandenburgs for years. When you punched her in the face—”

“I didn’t punch her; I—”

“When you punched her in the face, she came to me. She was afraid to go to Duffy and Mildred — you know, her parents — for fear Duffy would grab a gun and blow your fucking head off. She said to me, ‘No man will ever hit me twice.’ Trish is a strong woman. She was done with you at that moment, and there was never a snowball’s chance in hell she’d ever go back with you. Her question was whether to file a complaint.”

Trevor tried to find his voice. “It was all so stupid. It was a dumb argument; that’s all it was. I wanted to go back to Germany, maybe find a job there, and she said it was time to settle down here and do something with our lives, you know? And she started attacking me, criticizing me, saying I couldn’t figure out what to do with my life, and she was waving her hands at me, and I thought she was actually going to swat me or something, and I came at her backhanded, but I ended up hitting her in the side of the head. It was a fucking accident. I swear to God.”

“Trish told me she stayed in her apartment for three days till the bruising went down,” Finley said.

Trevor could think of nothing to say to that.

“So, she asked me what I thought she should do. I told her she was fully within her rights to charge you. That you had assaulted her. I even offered to go to the Promise Falls police with her. They got a woman chief now, as you’d well know, and I can’t imagine she’d have liked the sounds of what you did. But I also spelled out for her the pitfalls. That, first of all, your father is a detective with the force, and there would be a lot of attention surrounding the case because of that. Her parents would learn details about her life she might rather they not know. There was no telling what might come out about her own background. Not that there was anything that salacious, but in a trial, the most innocent things can be made to sound sordid. No one knows better than me about that.”

He patted the tops of his thighs and pushed himself off the desk. “So there you have it.”

“Why’d you hire me?” Trevor asked.

“Why?” Finley’s face was a mask of innocence. “Because you’re a decent young man in need of employment. And you’re doing a very good job. What other possible motive could I have?”

“What about my dad?”

“What about him?”

“He said... he said you might have hired me to get at him somehow.”

Finley shook his head. “Nothing could be farther from the truth. I don’t have it in for your father. He’s a good man. Quite the contrary. I don’t want to get at him, as you say. In fact, just yesterday I offered to help him. You see, I’m going to be running for mayor again, and I think your dad would make a good chief. All I might ever want from him is to keep his ears open. About things in the department. Issues I might want to address in my campaign.”

“What did he say?”

Finley smiled. “Not a lot. But maybe one day you’ll want to tell your father about our little chat here today, and maybe he’d be more inclined to be in my corner. What do you think? Or failing that, I’m guessing that when you go home for Sunday dinner, you hear things. About your dad’s work. Stuff that maybe isn’t part of the public discussion. If you’re ever interested in sharing anything like that, I can tell you right now, I would be an attentive listener.”

Trevor Duckworth swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. He needed a drink, but the last thing he wanted was a mouthful of Finley Springs Water.

“I think,” he said, “I’d better do my run to Syracuse.”

“Good lad,” Finley said. “I like your work ethic.”

Someone was knocking lightly on the door of Marshall Kemper’s apartment.

Sarita Gomez was standing in front of the bathroom sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror, when she heard it.

She froze.

The police had found her. They must have discovered where she worked. Maybe someone had told them she’d been seeing Kemper. So now they were here. She knew she was stupid to think she could hide out for long. She had to get out of Promise Falls. She had to get as far away from here as she could, as quickly as possible.

Sarita stepped out of the bathroom and approached the apartment door in bare feet, trying to step lightly so as not to make any of the floorboards creak. She stood three feet from the door, held her breath.

Another knock.

Then, “Babe! It’s me!” An urgent whisper.

She went to the door, unlocked it, removed the chain. Marshall entered the room with a McDonald’s bag.

“I got breakfast,” he said, setting the bag on the counter of the kitchen nook. He pulled out two coffees, five breakfast sandwiches, and five hash browns. “I was starving and figured you would be, too.”

He unwrapped a sandwich and bit into it, stuffing nearly a third of it into his mouth at once.

Sarita said, “Did you get some cash?”

Marshall said, “Mmphh nth.”

“I don’t feel safe here. I want to get a train to New York.”

Marshall got enough food down his throat to talk. “I didn’t go to the cash machine. I did something else. Somethin’ that’ll give you way more money. Both of us.”

He held out a sandwich to her, but she didn’t take it.

“What did you do?”

“You gotta listen to me, babe. I know you were worried about this, but I’ve got the ball rolling. This is going to work. This is going to set us up good.”

“Tell me you didn’t call Mr. Gaynor.”

“Look, just hear me out.”

“You idiot!”

“No, listen!” He reached out to her with the hand that wasn’t holding a breakfast sandwich, but Sarita stepped back. He took a quick bite of biscuit, egg, and sausage. “This is going to work out. He’s going to give us fifty thousand dollars.”

“Oh, my God. You mentioned me? You told him I was part of this?”

“No, no. I’m not an idiot. When I say us, I mean we get the money. But as far as Gaynor knows, he’s just dealing with one guy, and he has no idea who that guy is.”

“I told you not to do this.”

“Come on, you’re not thinking straight because you’re so directly involved. I’m taking a step back. I can see the whole picture. You have to trust me on this.” He glanced at his watch. “Guy’s going to be calling me very soon. If I haven’t heard from him by ten thirty, so far as he knows, I go to the cops with everything I know. Everything you’ve told me.”

“You can’t do that. You can’t go to the police.”

Marshall rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m not going to the cops! But he doesn’t know that! That’s the beauty of it. That’s why he’s going to come up with fifty thou. A guy like that, he won’t even miss that kind of money. But for us, it’s a chance to start our lives over.”

“You’re making things worse. Things are already bad and you’re making them worse.”

“Come on, babe. How is this worse? This is a solution . This is a way out of the mess.”

“You told me you wouldn’t do this,” Sarita said. “I have to go. I have to get out of here.”

“Hold on. Just for a little while. Maybe another hour? Gaynor’s gonna call me any second. I go get the money; I come back; we go. Anything we need, we can buy it on the way.”

She walked to the window, looked out at the street, walked back. She paced.

“All I ever wanted was to do the right thing,” she said. “When I saw her there in the kitchen, I had to do something and—”