A Tap on the Window

by Linwood Barclay

  “I’m trying to locate her,” I said.

  “Why on earth would you be trying to do that?”

  “Because—isn’t she missing?”

  “Missing? Claire’s not missing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I was probably the one who looked startled now. “Is there someplace we could go to talk?”

  Sanders stuffed the last of his papers into his briefcase, snapped it shut, and cast his gaze tiredly across the room as the last of the people straggled out. “My office,” he said.

  I followed him out of the courtroom and up a flight of broad wooden steps that creaked underfoot. We entered a room with a twelve-foot tin ceiling and tall windows that looked as though they’d been painted shut since the Eisenhower administration. Behind his expansive desk hung a picture of him with the current president, overlooking Niagara Falls, taken when the commander in chief took a swing through this part of the state about a year back. Sanders managed to look not like some small-town mayor, but like the head of a multibillion-dollar corporation, with his perfect hair and suit that looked like it was worth more than that modest house of his I’d been to earlier.

  Sanders closed the door behind us and said, “What’s this about, Mr. Weaver?”

  “Is Claire home? Has she already turned up?”

  “You really have me at a loss here.”

  “The police came to see me,” I said. “Earlier this evening. They’re trying to find Claire. She hasn’t been seen since last night. Are you telling me you didn’t report her missing?”

  “Of course I didn’t.” But he did look concerned.

  “Then where is she?”

  “She’s gone away. I don’t see any reason to disclose her whereabouts to you. And what’s your connection to this, anyway?”

  “I saw your daughter last night,” I told him. “She used me to give someone the slip, to get away from someone she must have believed was following her.”

  “Used you? How?”

  “I gave her a ride. She—”

  “Whoa, stop right there,” he said. “Claire was in your car?”

  “She asked for a lift, out in front of Patchett’s. She recognized me. She knew my son. If she hadn’t mentioned that, I probably wouldn’t have given her a ride. She said she was worried about someone watching her. I didn’t see how I could say no.”

  Sanders seemed to be sizing me up as a possible predator. “Go on.”

  “She asked me to stop at Iggy’s. Said she wasn’t feeling well. She went in, but it was a different girl that got back into my car. Dressed to look like Claire, with a wig. Hanna Rodomski. The two of them pulled a fast one on someone who may have been watching them.”

  He did a slow walk to the other side of the desk, rested his hands on the back of the cushioned high-back chair. “Really.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “That’s quite a little stunt they pulled.” He forced a smile. “You sure they weren’t just having a little fun? Playing a trick on you?”

  “Whoever they were trying to fool, it wasn’t me,” I said. “There’s no way Claire could have known I was going to be coming along at that time.”

  Sanders shrugged. “Maybe it didn’t have to be you. It could have been whoever they got to pick Claire up. A practical joke.”

  “I don’t think so. If it’s all a joke, then why are the police involved?”

  Sanders’ tongue moved around the inside of his cheek like a lollipop. “It must just be some kind of misunderstanding.”

  I placed my hands on the desk and leaned forward. “Here’s what I’m having a hard time getting my head around. The police seem to think your daughter is missing. They want to find her. They’re either worried about her or think she’s mixed up in something they want to ask her about. But you, you don’t seem to be that worried at all. About your own daughter. Maybe you could clarify that for me.”

  Sanders hesitated. People usually did that for two reasons. They didn’t want to tell you the real story, or they were buying time while they thought up a good story.

  “You saw what went on tonight,” he said.

  “That meeting?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re telling me there’s a connection between your daughter and the fight you’ve got going with the Griffon cops?”

  He gave me a sly grin that showed off his perfect teeth. “Like you don’t know.”

  “You’re losing me,” I said.

  “I know your connection. I know what kind of game you’re working here.”

  “Connection? You talking about me and Chief Perry?”

  Sanders nodded smugly, like he was no fool. “I know he’s your brother-in-law.”

  “What of it?”

  “Didn’t think I knew, did you? Figured you might get that one past me.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether you know or not,” I said. “He’s my wife’s brother. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You think I’m stupid?” he asked. “You think I can’t figure out what’s going on here? Perry doesn’t like losing leverage, does he? Doesn’t like it that he’s got one less person to intimidate. You can tell him I know what he’s doing. You can tell him it’s not working. I don’t care how many cruisers he has watching me, or how many people he thinks he can turn against me. Because that’s what he’s doing, you know. He’s making this an ‘us against them’ kind of town, using fear to turn people to his side. If you’re not with the great Augustus Perry, you’re on the side of the criminals. Well, it’s not gonna work. I’m not backing down. He doesn’t run this town. He may think he does, but he doesn’t.”

  “Is the chief trying to scare you? Is he harassing you?”

  “Oh, please,” Sanders said. “What’d he think? That he could send you here, trick me into telling you where Claire is?”

  “So she is missing. Or hiding.”

  Sanders smiled. “She’s fine. There’s the door, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Has Claire been threatened? Because of what’s going on between you and Perry?”

  He just shook his head dismissively.

  “You’ve got it wrong,” I said. “My concern for Claire is genuine. I gave her a lift, and she disappeared on my watch. I have to know. I have to know that she’s okay.”

  “Get out.”

  “Call her. Just let me speak to her.”

  “Get out.”

  “All I’m asking is—”

  Sanders held his palm up in my face. A strong gesture, betrayed by a tremble.

  “Now,” he said.

  SIXTEEN

  When she gets home, she sees a sliver of light beneath his door, so she decides to check on him. He could have fallen asleep with the light on, and if that’s the case, she’ll turn it off. But maybe he’s sitting in his chair, reading. He does that sometimes when he can’t sleep.

  Once she has the door open, she finds he is, indeed, awake, but not in his chair. No book or magazine in his hands. Just looking at the ceiling, as though some movie is being projected there.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Just thinking,” he says.

  “About what?” she asks, although she has a good idea.

  “I thought about what we could say.”

  “Say about what?”

  “About why I’ve been away.”

  It’s never been this bad before, she thinks. Him harping on things like this. The events of the last few weeks—that boy’s unexpected visit—have agitated him. He’s not the only one.

  “Okay,” she says, since part of her is curious about what he’s come up with. “Why have you been away?”

  “I was in Africa.”

  “Africa,” she says.

  “On a safari. I got lost. In the jungle. In the rain forest.”
>
  “I think that’s in South America,” she says. “I think you’d have a hard time keeping your story straight.”

  “We could work on it together so I’d be sure to get it right.”

  “You should turn off the light and go to sleep,” she says.

  “No!” the man shouts, and the woman recoils. He is usually passive, manageable.

  “Don’t you raise your voice to me,” she says.

  “I went to the Arctic! I was on an Arctic expedition! And now I’m back!”

  “Stop it. You’re getting yourself all worked up. You’re talking nonsense.”

  “Or maybe I was in the desert. I was wandering the desert.”

  The woman sits on the edge of the bed and places her hand on his clammy forehead. She pats him gently.

  “You’ll never get to sleep if you get yourself all wound up,” she says soothingly. “You’re overtired.”

  He wraps his hands around her arm and pulls her to him so her face is inches from his. His breath smells like the inside of an old leather bag.

  “I don’t blame you,” he says. “I understand. But it has to end. It can’t go on forever like this.”

  She’s been thinking that herself for a while now.

  SEVENTEEN

  As I walked back to my car, I got out my phone, called up the number for my brother-in-law, Augustus Perry, and entered it.

  Something didn’t add up. The police were looking for Claire Sanders, but her father claimed she wasn’t missing. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out he was hiding something, lying to me. Claire had to be in some kind of trouble. She’d gone to a lot of effort to outwit someone who’d been following her.

  Was it the police? An ex-boyfriend?

  Her father?

  If I couldn’t get any satisfactory answers from him, best to go back to the police and learn what prompted them to start looking for her. But I didn’t want to talk to Haines or Brindle. It made more sense to go to the top. Not that Augie was naturally disposed to help his sister’s husband. He more or less considered me a horse’s ass.

  The feeling was mutual.

  We managed to be civil to one another through most family get-togethers, so long as discussions did not turn to politics, religion, or some of the really contentious topics, like the quickest route to Philadelphia, how much it rained last week, or who was getting better gas mileage.

  We’d really gotten into it summer before last, at a barbecue in our backyard, when Augie said that if we accepted that certain racial groups were more intellectually superior, from a genetic standpoint, than others, and that if we further accepted that intellectually inferior racial groups were more likely to break the law, then racial profiling wasn’t racism at all because it could be supported by scientific data.

  “I’d love to see that data,” I said.

  “Look it up,” he said. “It’s on the Internet.”

  “So if it’s on the Internet, it must be true.”

  “Well, if it’s scientific data, it is.”

  “If I saw something on the Internet that said a new study had determined that you’ve got the IQ of a bucket of bolts, would it be true? Because it’s going to be on there in about five minutes.”

  His wife, the long-suffering Beryl, had to hold him back.

  I had to concede that, attitude aside, Augie wasn’t all bad as a cop. He had good instincts. He was tireless. Before he was a chief, and not spending a large chunk of the day sitting on his butt behind a desk, he’d knock on doors all day and all night if that’s what it took to find someone who might be a potential witness to a neighborhood crime. When we had an eight-year-old boy go missing five years ago, Augie came out from behind his desk and participated in foot searches for six days, getting less than four hours of sleep a night, until he found that kid in the basement of an abandoned mattress factory. The kid had fallen through a hole in the floor and couldn’t get out. Augustus Perry was also skilled as an interrogator. He knew how to get information out of people.

  But I also knew Bert Sanders had his number. My brother-in-law was a great believer in expediting the justice system. Why go to all the trouble of a trial to encourage a troublesome out-of-towner to stay out of Griffon when a good swift kick in the nuts could accomplish the same thing in a lot less time?

  But the men and women under Augustus Perry’s command were careful. They covered each other’s asses. They didn’t teach someone a lesson in front of witnesses. And the corners they cut, they cut with their heads held high because they believed, in their hearts, that they were making Griffon a better place.

  I’d entered the number for Augie’s cell, not his home phone. He always carried his cell. It rang several times before it went to message.

  “Augie, it’s Cal. I need to talk. Call me when you get this.”

  I wasn’t going to spin my wheels waiting for him to call back. I was going to take another run at Sean Skilling. I wasn’t through with that kid.

  * * *

  I drove back to the Skilling place, an expansive two-story house with a triple garage and three different models of Fords out front, although none of them was the Ranger Sean had been driving. I parked around the corner, walked back, and pressed my thumb hard on the doorbell.

  It didn’t take ten seconds for someone to answer. A small woman with porcelain skin and light blond hair to match. Without makeup, she gave the appearance of having had all the blood drained out of her.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Skilling?”

  “Yes? I’m Sheila Skilling.”

  “I’m Calvin Weaver.” I flashed my license. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s about Sean.”

  Alarm consumed her face. “Sean? Is he okay?” She turned her head. “Adam! The police are here about Sean!”

  I didn’t see the need to correct her yet.

  “What’s happened?” a man shouted, his voice muffled. A moment later, a door swung open and Adam Skilling emerged from the basement. Running up the stairs had winded him, which wasn’t too surprising, given that he looked to be at least two hundred and fifty pounds. He had a round face, his cheeks currently crimson, a moustache, and a full head of brown hair.

  “What’s going on?” he asked between breaths.

  “Something about Sean,” Sheila said. Both sets of eyes were on me. “Has there been an accident or something?”

  I shook my head. “More like an incident.”

  “Good heavens, what?”

  I went authoritarian. “In the execution of my duties, I was attempting to elicit some information from your son, when one of his friends assaulted me. Then the two of them fled.”

  “Jesus,” said Adam. “Where the hell was this?”

  “At Patchett’s.”

  “You’re a cop? You don’t look like a cop.”

  “I’m an investigator. Private. My name’s Cal Weaver.” I did him the courtesy of showing my license again. “It’d be my preference not to involve the police in this, but that will depend largely on your cooperation. And Sean’s.” I was hoping they wouldn’t see through me as easily as Phyllis Pearce had. I peered beyond them into the house. “Is he home? I don’t see his truck in the drive.”

  “He’s—he’s out,” Sheila said. “I don’t know where he is.”

  Adam Skilling, no longer winded, dug into his pocket and withdrew a cell phone. “I’ll get him. I’ll get him over here right—”

  “No, not yet,” I said. “I have some questions for you first. Maybe we can iron a lot of this out before we bring your son into it.”

  “Who assaulted you?”

  “I don’t know. I was struck from behind.”

  “But Sean, he didn’t hit you,” Sheila said.

  “I think that fact may help mitigate thing
s,” I said. “May I come in?”

  They led me into the living room and motioned for me to take a seat on the couch. Sheila and her husband took chairs across from me.

  “Is Hanna here?” I asked.

  That one caught them both off guard. “Hanna Rodomski?” Sheila Skilling asked.

  “Is there another Hanna?” I asked.

  “No, of course not. And no, she’s not here. I mean, she’s probably with Sean. Is Hanna in some kind of trouble, too?”

  “I told you that girl was no good,” Adam Skilling said. “Didn’t I?”

  “Does she stay here?” I asked.

  Sean’s mother flushed. “Well, I know maybe it’s not proper, but yes, the odd night, she does stay here with—”

  “That girl sleeps here more than she does at her own house,” Adam said. “It’s not right. She’s a bad influence on the boy. Some days she parades around here in her underwear like she owns the joint.”

  His wife shot him a look. “She was just going into the bathroom. And you don’t have to look.”

  The man’s cheeks, which had settled down some since his run up the stairs from the basement, flushed again.

  “And anyway,” his wife continued, “she wasn’t here last night. I know that for sure. I think both of them might have . . . slept someplace else, because I don’t even think Sean was here last night.”

  “You never know where the hell they are,” Adam said, puffed up like a blowfish. “You can’t afford to take your eyes off them for a minute.”

  Sheila shot him another look, which this time he seemed to take to heart. Some of the air was let out of his chest, and he shrank a size. “All I’m saying is, they take years off your life.”

  I was troubled by Sheila’s comment that Hanna hadn’t stayed here last night, because I had the impression from her parents that she hadn’t slept in her own house in the last twenty-four hours.

  “When’s the last time you saw Hanna?” I asked.

  “Yesterday,” Sheila said. “Around dinnertime?” She looked at her husband, but he shrugged. “But I don’t understand. Are you here about Sean, or Hanna? Was Hanna the one who hit you?”