Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

But that didn’t nail it down for Duckworth. It was conceivable Gaynor could have left the hotel sometime during the previous forty-eight hours, driven home, killed his wife, then returned to Boston. His wife had clearly been dead at least a day when her body was discovered. Which meant whoever had killed her had done it more than twenty-four hours earlier. Duckworth was still waiting to hear back from the Mass Pike authorities to see whether Gaynor’s car’s license plate had been picked up entering or exiting the toll road in the two days before he’d officially returned home.

A round trip would have taken him the better part of five to six hours, but it could be done if he used the interstate highway. His attendance at the hotel conference could serve as his alibi.

Duckworth pressed on. “I’d asked you, I think, if you had anything else that would confirm Mr. Gaynor’s presence at the hotel for most of the weekend.”

“Yes,” said Bottsford, “you’d mentioned that. There were seminars most of Saturday and Sunday, and the conference dinner at five on Sunday, and he was seen at that. There was a charge from the bar at ten p.m., Sunday, and he’s visible on the security camera again, crossing the lobby at around eleven. Around midnight there was a call from his room down to the desk to ask for a wake-up call at five, which was done. The call was answered.”

That covered Sunday. But Rosemary Gaynor was already dead then.

“What about Saturday, and into Sunday morning?”

“The thing is, Detective, Mr. Gaynor is a regular here. He has stayed here for weeks, sometimes months at a time. Last year his wife was even with him for a very long stay. Everyone here knows the Gaynors. I asked around in the bar and the restaurant, and they saw him quite regularly all through the weekend. And his car did not leave the hotel. I talked to the valet, and he remembers bringing his car up for him at six, and it was the only time the car was asked for in the preceding forty-eight hours.”

Duckworth said, “Thanks very much for getting back to me.”

“Mr. Gaynor’s always been very kind and courteous to everyone here,” the manager added. “We feel very bad for his loss.”

“Of course. Good-bye.”

Duckworth hung up the phone. Just as well to scratch Gaynor from the list of suspects, he guessed, considering that they’d made an arrest. But he’d had to be sure.

He picked up the phone and called Wanda.

“How’s it going,” she said.

“I got your e-mail. What’s up?”

“I finished the autopsy on Rosemary Gaynor.”

“Okay.”

“Not that much to add about the cause of death. And there was no sign of sexual assault. Things are pretty much the way I laid them out for you yesterday. But there was one thing, and it may not be important, but I figured I should let you know. I mean, you’ll get the full report, but I wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“Go on.”

“I was thinking about her baby, what’s his name?”

“Matthew,” Duckworth said.

“I was thinking about how lucky it was whoever killed the Gaynor woman didn’t kill the kid, too. Not because he’d be a witness, but because people who do things like this are just out of their heads. Right?”

“Often.”

“Well,” Wanda continued, “that was on my mind when I stumbled upon some curious scar formation in the woman’s pelvis. These scars were whitish in color and had shrunk over time, which indicated to me that a procedure she underwent was more than a year ago, maybe a couple of years. It’s called maturing, when the scars go like that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just bear with me. Also, it struck me as kind of funny that there was no sign of fibrous bands in this woman’s breasts. Considering.”

“Considering what?”

“When a woman is pregnant, because of the hormonal enlargement that takes place in the breasts, you see these fibrous bands. So now I was even more curious, so I took a gander at the back side of the pubic ramus.”

“The who?”

“The bone in front of the pelvis near the urinary bladder. You’d expect to see scarring from the growth of the uterus, and—”

“Stop,” Duckworth said. “What are you telling me?”

“Rosemary Gaynor had a hysterectomy a few years ago. Everything I know tells me this woman has never been pregnant.”

“Say that again.”

“She’s never had a kid, Barry.”

Agnes Pickens had just finished talking to Natalie Bondurant on her home phone in the kitchen when her cell — definitely hers, not Gill’s — rang. She snatched it off the countertop, saw who it was, and took the call.

“What?” she said. “Wait, hang on a second.”

Gill had gone upstairs, but she didn’t want to take a chance he might hear any of this conversation, so she went over to the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard deck. Once outside, she closed the door behind her.

“Okay, what is it?”

“We have a problem,” Jack Sturgess said. There was road noise in the background.

“So do I. They just arrested Marla.”

“Well,” he said.

“Yeah. So I’ve got problems, too. Huge problems. I don’t need any more from you. You just called me with one. Are you telling me you didn’t solve it?”

“The old lady’s dealt with, but yeah, there’s a new problem. I’ve found Sarita.”

“That doesn’t sound like a problem. That sounds good.”

“She’s with your nephew,” Sturgess said. When Agnes said nothing for several seconds, he said, “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you. She’s with David? Where? Where are they?”

“They’re in a car ahead of us. Just driving around. We’re following them. Sarita was ready to hop a bus out of town. David must have found her there. We saw him driving away with her in the car.”

Agnes said, “I told him... I gave him my blessing to ask around on Marla’s behalf. What else could I say? I didn’t want him to think I didn’t want to know what might have happened... I just... I just didn’t expect him to make any real progress.” Panic was rising in her voice. “How the hell did he find her?”

“How the fuck should I know?” the doctor fired back. “Maybe you should talk to him.”

“Talk to him?”

“I don’t know. Call him; tell him to back off. Leave this alone. You’re his goddamn aunt, for Christ’s sake. Talk some kind of sense into him.”

“I’m thinking,” she said.

“Well, you’d better think fast, because it looks like they’re having a real gabfest.”

Another silence from Agnes.

“If you don’t want to give me any direction,” Sturgess said, “I’m just going to have to deal with this as best I can.”

“Don’t you see the problem here?” Agnes asked. “We know it had to be Sarita who took the baby to Marla’s house. So she had to have figured out what really happened. To save ourselves we’d have to... we’d have to keep Sarita from ever talking to anyone.”

“Yeah,” Sturgess said.

“But... I need Sarita.”

“What?”

“I need Sarita to save Marla. If they’ve got enough to arrest her, they may have enough to send her away. They’re going to send my girl to jail, Jack. Sarita can clear her. When they hear what she has to say, they’ll have to drop the charges against Marla.”

“Agnes,” Sturgess said slowly. “You need to think about what you’re saying.”

“That’s all I’m doing is thinking! My daughter’s not going to prison.”

“Would you like to go there?” the doctor asked. “I know I don’t want to go there. Because that’s where this conversation is going. Think about this, Agnes. Even if Marla were convicted, you could mount a pretty convincing insanity defense. Diminished capacity, something like that. Out of her head as a result of a traumatic incident. Odds are, if she went to jail, it wouldn’t be for long. They might even just commit her for psychiatric care until such time as they deemed her cured. But—”