Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

“Marla?”

Gaynor nodded. “They’re picking her up right about now.”

“Must have happened after I spoke to Agnes,” the doctor said. “She’ll be devastated. Marla, too, of course.”

“Everything points to her,” Gaynor said.

“I suppose it does.”

“But we know she didn’t do it,” Gaynor said. “I mean, we know she didn’t take Matthew. Right?”

“There are things we know, and things we don’t know. But what we do know is where we’re vulnerable, and that’s where we have to act. Take this turn; it’ll get us there faster.”

Matthew’s shrieking began to subside.

“I think he’s crying himself to sleep,” Gaynor said.

“At last, something to be thankful for. Okay, it’s just up here. We go in; we split up; we try to find her. Any buses waiting to go, we poke our heads in, see if she’s on one of them.”

“I can’t leave Matthew in the car. Not here. It was okay in the woods, but not here.”

Sturgess closed his eyes briefly, let out a long breath. Maybe an injection was the way to go. For both of them. There might be enough in the other syringe.

“There’s no place to park.”

“For Christ’s sake, park anywhere. I’ll go into the terminal while you get the kid out.”

“Okay, but— Hey!”

“What?”

“They just went the other way!”

“What? In a car?”

“Sarita was in it!”

“What?”

“I’m sure of it. I caught a glimpse of her in the front seat. I’m sure it was her.”

Gaynor hit the brakes, looked for an opening in the traffic so he could do a U-turn. “An old Taurus. I’m sure it was her.”

“Who was driving?”

“I think it was that guy.”

“What guy?”

“Harwood. The one who was at the house with the woman and Matthew.”

“Shit,” Sturgess said. “Turn around. Go. Go.”

“There’s cars com—”

“Cut the fuck in!”

Matthew resumed crying.

Gaynor cut off someone in an Explorer, endured a blaring horn and an extended middle finger. He hit the gas. The Taurus was two cars ahead.

“If I catch up to them, then what?” Gaynor asked.

“Follow them for a while. It’s too busy here. Too many people.”

“Too many people for what?”

“Just stay on them, see where they go.”

“What if they’re headed to the police?” Gaynor asked.

The doctor didn’t have an immediate response to that. Instead he reached down toward the floor, where a small leather bag sat between his feet. He opened it, took out a syringe and a small glass vial.

“Jack,” Gaynor said warily.

“We’ll have to get very close to them, of course. Engage them in conversation. I need to bring him down first. Once he’s been done, it’ll be easier to do the nanny.”

“Christ, Jack, what’s happened to you? You already killed one man.”

The doctor shot him a look. “I seem to remember you were there. I seem to remember you digging a hole for his body. I seem to remember us putting him in there together and covering him up. Do you remember those events differently?”

“This is crazy. We’re not... we’re not these kinds of people.”

“Maybe we weren’t,” Sturgess said. “But we are now. If we want to survive.” He turned away, looked out the passenger window.

“This has to end,” the doctor said.

“Let’s go,” I said to Sarita, sitting next to me in the bus terminal. “The police might come looking for you here.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t we just drive. And talk.”

I wondered whether she would try to run. Hoping she wouldn’t want to take off without her luggage, I stood and grabbed the handle of her bag. “I’ll take this for you,” I said. “I’m just parked outside.”

Slowly, resignedly, she stood. We walked in measured paces toward the door. I didn’t want her to fall behind, didn’t want her out of my sight for a second. Once we were outside, I pointed to my mother’s car. “I’m just up here.”

I opened the front passenger door, got her settled in, watched her do up her seat belt, then dropped her bag into the trunk. I got in next to her, started the engine, and headed off.

“You said we would just drive, right?”

I nodded.

“No going to the police station.”

Another nod.

“I want you to tell me what happened. I want you to tell me why you’ve been on the run, why you’ve disappeared.”

Sarita said nothing.

I decided to start with the big question. “Did you kill Rosemary Gaynor?”

Her eyes went wide with shock. “Is that what people think? Is that what the police think?”

“They think Marla did it,” I said. “But I don’t. So I’m asking you if you did it.”

“No!” she said. “I did not kill Ms. Gaynor! I loved her! She was good to me. She was a very good lady. I loved working for her. It’s a horrible thing what happened to her.”

“Do you know who did kill her?”

Sarita hesitated. “I don’t.”

“But do you have an idea?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It was just... it was so awful.”

The way she said it told me something. “You found her. You were there.”

“I found her,” she said, nodding. “But I wasn’t there when it happened. I must have gotten there right after.”

“Tell me.”

“I got there in the afternoon. I had done an early morning shift at Davidson Place. I have two jobs. Many days I work a shift at one and a shift at the other, although at the Gaynors’, I do not call it a shift. A shift is when you work for a company, but they’re a family, so it is different. But I did my shift at Davidson, then took the bus to the Gaynors’. I have a key, but I always ring the bell. It is courtesy. You do not walk straight into a person’s house. But I rang the bell and no one answered. I thought maybe Ms. Gaynor was out. Maybe she was shopping or something like that. Or maybe she was in the bathroom, or changing Matthew’s diaper and could not come to the door right away. So in a case like that, I use my key to open the door.”

“So you went inside.”

“Yes, but it turns out the door was open. I come in, and I call for her. I figure she must be home because the door is not locked. I call a few times, and she does not answer, and then I go into...”

She turned her head down and toward the window. Her shoulders shook. While I waited, I took a left, followed by a right, taking a route that would lead us out of downtown.

Sarita lifted her head, but did not glance my way as she continued. “I go into the kitchen and she is there, and there is blood everywhere, and even though I am afraid to, I touch her, just in case maybe she is not dead, maybe she is breathing, maybe there is a pulse, but she is dead.”

“What did you do then?”

“I... I...”

“You did not call the police.”

She shook her head. “I did not. I could not do that. I am in this country illegally and no one knows about me. Not officially. Someone like me, the police don’t care what happens to me. They would find a way to charge me with something, maybe even think that I did it, that I killed Ms. Gaynor, because that is what they will do. But I called Marshall so he could come get me.”

She paused, caught her breath. “You asked me if I had any idea who did it.”

“That’s right.”

“I had to wonder... I had to wonder if it was Mr. Gaynor.”

“Why?”

“I wondered if he knew that his wife was starting to figure things out. That he’d never been honest with her about everything. I wondered if maybe she had confronted him and he’d gotten angry with her. But even so, I mean, I didn’t like him; I never liked him, but he didn’t seem like a man who would do something like that.”