A Tap on the Window

by Linwood Barclay

  Not an easy thing to live with.

  But this changed everything. What Claire had just told me suggested Scott didn’t die by misadventure. What Claire had just told me suggested Scott had been deliberately killed.

  “Mr. Weaver, you okay?” Claire asked.

  We were rounding Buffalo to the north on the 290 bypass, almost to the bridge to Grand Island. A mixture of rage and anxiety was clouding my vision, like someone had misted the inside of the Subaru’s windows with blood red spray paint. I had to shake my head to clear things. My hands were wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel, my arms were starting to ache.

  That son of a bitch. That goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch.

  He threw my kid off the roof.

  No, I told myself. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that at all. I didn’t have any evidence of that.

  But a feeling in my gut that felt like a cancer was telling me otherwise.

  Haines could have seen Scott as a serious threat. Sure, the Griffon cops took a lot of liberties and the locals didn’t mind turning a blind eye to them. But this was different. A cop who took a vandal out by the water tower and busted a few of his teeth was one thing, but a cop who went around touching young girls? Feeling them up? That was something else altogether.

  And Haines had to know that Scott’s uncle was the chief. What if he told Augie? How many other times, that Claire didn’t know about, had Scott crossed paths with Haines? How many times had he taunted him?

  A tattletale.

  That’s how Haines must have seen him. A tattletale who could derail his career, have him brought up on charges.

  I imagined various scenarios.

  Did Haines see Scott walking down the street, maybe get out of his car and chase after him? Did Scott, using the key he had, let himself into Ravelson Furniture and run up to the roof, thinking he could get away? Did Haines chase him all the way up there, then pitch him off the side?

  Or was Scott already up there, making noise, causing a disturbance? Did Haines drive by and see something suspicious on the roof? And when he got up there, and discovered it was Scott, did he see an opportunity?

  “Really, Mr. Weaver, talk to me.”

  I looked over at Claire suddenly, as though she was a hypnotist who’d snapped her fingers to bring me out of a trance.

  “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “After I mentioned Scott, you went all kind of weird.”

  “It was nothing,” I said. “Just . . . when you mentioned him, it brought back some memories.”

  “God, I’m sorry. I only wanted to say something nice.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m glad you said it. I really am.” I tried to focus. “Did Scott ever say anything to the effect that he was scared of Haines? That he thought Haines might do something to him?”

  Claire shook her head. “No. I mean, everybody my age in Griffon figures the cops are going to do something to us eventually. We’re teenagers, so we must be guilty of something, right?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was still fighting the red mist, determined to deliver Claire to her father without running off the road before I could get to the hospital.

  As if reading my mind, Claire said, “I feel okay, you know. I mean, I feel horrible, but I don’t think I have anything wrong with me.”

  “You and your father can decide what to do.”

  I was worried I’d sounded as though I didn’t care anymore. That now that I’d found Claire, that I’d dealt with the burden of responsibility I’d felt since she’d hopped into my car, she was no longer my concern. That once I handed her off to her father, I could walk away from this.

  That wasn’t how I felt. Not really. But a big arm had just swept everything off my very cluttered desk and thrown it to the floor.

  There was nothing on it now but Scott.

  We crossed Grand Island saying nothing to each other. As we were passing the discount outlet malls in Niagara Falls on our right, Claire asked, “Who’s going to tell Dennis’ dad?”

  Another father about to experience unimaginable grief. I felt as though we were all being sucked into a black hole of never-ending emptiness.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Probably the state police. Once they figure out what’s happened at the cottage.”

  “Shouldn’t you be helping them with that?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be the one to go see Dennis’ dad?”

  As long as I live, I’ll be sorry for what I said next.

  I turned and snapped, “Haven’t I done enough? If it hadn’t been for you knocking on my goddamn window I wouldn’t have been dragged into any of this.”

  Her face fell like a stone and her eyes welled with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nobody asked you to come looking for me!” she said. “We’d have figured out what to do! We didn’t need you! Dennis wouldn’t even be dead if it wasn’t for you!”

  “Claire—”

  “Leave me alone,” she said. “Just get me to my dad. I want to see my dad.”

  I saw the blue “H” on the horizon. Four minutes later, I was wheeling into the Emergency entrance. Bert Sanders was standing there, not knowing what car to look for, but when he saw Claire in the passenger seat he started waving and ran up to meet us.

  He had Claire’s door open before she could get to the handle, and he scooped her into his arms, the two of them crying.

  Sanders, looking over his daughter’s shoulder at me, smiled and said, “Thank you so much, Mr. Wea—”

  I reached over to pull the passenger door shut. “Later,” I said, and stomped on the accelerator.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Augie was waiting for me on the corner, a few hundred yards down the street from the Pearce house, sitting high in his white Suburban. I pulled up alongside him and powered down the passenger window. Augie, who probably remembers what everyone in Griffon drives, looked at the Subaru and said, “With all the shit that’s going on, you had time to get a new car?”

  “Noticed whether anyone’s home?” I asked, pointing down the street.

  “No one’s come or gone, but there’s no car there, so I’d say nobody’s at the house.” He paused. “Except, of course, Harry in the basement.” Augie looked at me skeptically, and who could blame him, really?

  “There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” I said. “About Scott.”

  “This got anything to do with what you think is going on in that house?”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  Augie’s expression turned slightly sympathetic. “Nobody cares more about Scott than me, Cal, but could we tackle one thing at a time?”

  I was churning inside about Ricky Haines, but I took his point. We were here to find Harry Pearce.

  Instead of answering him, I drove the hundred yards up the street and parked in front of Phyllis Pearce’s house. Augie followed and pulled into the driveway, coming to a stop close to the front porch. Walking up to join him, I noticed again how long the grass was. After Dennis quit, Hooper’s hadn’t had enough staff to meet all their customers’ needs.

  We mounted the porch steps together. Given that Augie was the chief of police, I let him go first and be the one to ring the bell.

  “You said no one was here,” I said.

  “Just in case,” he replied.

  Twenty seconds passed with no one opening the door. Augie tried it, but it was locked. I wasn’t naive enough to ask Augie whether he needed a warrant. I wouldn’t have wanted to wait around for one, anyway.

  “Let’s take a walk around,” he said. “Before I go busting down a door I might as well see if one’s been left open.”

  We went around to the back and tried that door, but it was locked, too. Nor did we find any reachabl
e windows that could be forced open. There were several basement windows at ground level, but Augie had no interest in smashing any of them. “I’m too old to get into a house that way.”

  So we went back to the front door.

  “Here goes,” Augie said, reared back, and drove the heel of his boot into the door just below the knob. The door didn’t open.

  “Shit,” he said. “Nearly broke my knee.”

  “Let me give it a shot.” I hit the door hard enough for the jamb to start splitting. Then Augie took another turn, and the door swung open.

  “Probably going to get a bill from Phyllis for that,” he said.

  We entered the house. Augie called out, “Hello? Police! Anyone home?” We heard nothing back.

  We opened several doors. A couple opened onto closets, another onto a bathroom. The fourth door, just as you stepped inside the kitchen, opened onto a set of stairs that led down.

  “After you,” Augie said.

  I flicked on a light. The basement was low-ceilinged and unfinished. Bare bulbs instead of light fixtures. Cement-block walls instead of paneling. There were half a dozen rooms. One was a workshop, with tools hanging on the wall. A couple of them held old furniture. Another was jammed with metal filing cabinets. Augie opened the top drawer of one of them, glanced in.

  “Business stuff for Patchett’s,” he said.

  Another room contained a washer and dryer and rack. A shelf, grungy with spilled fabric softener and liquid detergent, was heavy with cleaners and chemicals.

  “This is where the fire started,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s what got Dennis down here. Smoke from the dryer. Lint catching on fire, probably. Look, there’s the fire extinguisher on the wall.” Off the other end of the laundry room was a short hallway, and a door at the end.

  “Augie,” I said.

  He looked at the door, then at me.

  “Guess we should have a look.”

  I got ahead of him. There was a lock hanging from the door. I banged on it.

  “Mr. Pearce? Are you in there? Mr. Pearce?”

  Augie joined in. “It’s Augustus Perry, Mr. Pearce. Chief of police. We’re going to get you out of there.”

  There was a shallow basement window by the door that came down a foot from the ceiling, and just as Claire had said, there was a key sitting on the sill. I grabbed it, fitted the key into the lock, twisted it, and the lock opened. I set it on the sill with the key.

  I made an effort to keep my hand from shaking.

  Augie placed his hand on the door and started to push.

  “Whew,” he said, as we both caught a whiff of something unpleasant that someone had tried to mask with Lysol. A mix of mustiness, dead mice, urine, and God knows what else.

  The door was wide open. I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to see. It wasn’t what I was expecting at all.

  The room was littered with odd bits of furniture, stacks of old magazines, a busted record player with no arm, a box of eight-track tapes. An old metal rollaway bed that was folded up at the middle, a soiled-looking mattress trapped within it, was tucked into a corner behind more cardboard boxes. A junk room, illuminated by a bare bulb in an exposed ceiling receptacle.

  That was it.

  No Harry Pearce.

  Augie turned and looked at me. “When Phyllis sends me the bill for her front door, I’m giving it to you.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  Phyllis unlocks the door and says to him, a broad smile on her face, “This is your lucky day.”

  Harry Pearce sits up in bed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ice cream,” she says. “We’re going out for ice cream.”

  Harry looks skeptical. “Don’t tease me.”

  “It’s true. We’re going to do it.”

  He’s a kid getting a new puppy. “This is the best day ever.”

  It amazes her sometimes how childlike he has become over time. Once so argumentative and abusive, now so compliant and captivated by the thought of the simplest pleasures.

  Phyllis nods. “It’s time,” she says. “It’s really time. But it’s going to take a bit of work to get you out. It’s not like we’ve installed ramps over the years.”

  “That’s okay,” he says, swinging his legs out of the bed and leaning forward to grab onto the arm of his wheelchair. “We’ll figure something out.”

  He pulls himself out of bed, twists, and drops into the chair. While his legs have withered away to sticks over the years, his arms are roped with muscle from lifting himself into and out of the wheelchair. Not that he’s had a lot of places to wheel himself around. The room he’s lived in for seven years is only ten by ten feet, and not the most hospitable environment. Cold cement floor, cinder-block walls. Every once in a while, she has let him wheel himself around the basement for exercise, past the washer and dryer, into the sewing room, or the workshop he once enjoyed, with his wrenches and other tools all arranged so perfectly.

  But even those short times outside the walls of his cell have made her nervous. If someone were to show up unexpectedly, she’d have to return him quickly, close the door, get the lock on in a hurry.

  She tried to tell herself the room was not a cell. For the longest time, it was Harry’s recovery room, where she and Richard treated him, looked after him, nursed him back to health. Sure, he was never the way he was before. Not even close. But what was done was done. One had to make the best of a bad situation, and hadn’t they done their best to do that for him? All this time?

  In retrospect, sure, there were things they could have done differently. Maybe, if they’d called for an ambulance right away, the moment he tumbled down those stairs, they might have been able to do something for him. But who knew he was paralyzed from the waist down and that his spine was in all likelihood broken? How were they supposed to know that? And there was more at stake, too. After all, Richard had just joined the Griffon police. He had his whole future ahead of him. Was it right for him to give up all that for a momentary lapse in judgment? Was that fair?

  In many ways, really, Harry only had himself to blame. He’d been a good man, most of the time. He’d been there for Phyllis when her husband died years earlier, had comforted her, helped her settle the estate, taken her to dinner, invited her, and her son, to join him on trips to California and Mexico. He’d treated Richard like he was his own son. Harry loved the boy, there was nothing fake about it, and Richard, who so desperately needed a father figure, loved him right back. If anything, it was the bond between them that persuaded Phyllis to let Harry move in with her, and eventually accept his proposal to let him be her second husband.

  She should have paid more attention to the signs. There was something not quite right about Harry. Before their marriage, his obsession with record-keeping, with saving every receipt—he had six-year-old receipts from donut shops, for crying out loud—seemed like nothing more than charming eccentricities. In fact, he’d be a real asset at the bar, making sure the books balanced. But there were other things. Those books where he recorded everything he ate, in that small, precise handwriting of his, always making note of the date. Didn’t matter how often folks at Patchett’s teased him about it. It hadn’t occurred to Phyllis back then that maybe Harry was obsessive-compulsive.

  Maybe, if that had been it, things would have been manageable. But there were the mood swings. One day he’d want to take her and Richard to the movies or the outlet mall to spend some cash, and then the next he’d be plunged into the depths of depression. And with the depression, there was often anger. And drinking. He refused to see a doctor—let alone a psychiatrist or psychologist—but Phyllis figured that in addition to his OCD tendencies, he might be bipolar, or manic-depressive. As time went on, he became a compendium of psychiatric tics.

  At his low points, nothing was too trivial to find fault with. Lights
needlessly left on, getting in the car after Phyllis or Richard had used it and finding less than a quarter tank of gas. Phyllis had to make sure the spoons stood up in the drying rack so water wasn’t trapped in them. Made Harry crazy when that happened. He believed Phyllis and her son discussed him behind his back, which, of course, was true.

  On rare occasions, there was violence.

  Like the time Phyllis lost the phone bill. Harry, who paid the bills every two weeks, couldn’t understand why it wasn’t with all the others. He searched the trash and determined that Phyllis had inadvertently pitched it with the junk mail. Harry was apoplectic. In a fit of rage, he grabbed her by the wrist, held her hand flat on the kitchen table, and slammed a mug down on it.

  No broken bones, but she couldn’t move her hand for a week. Harry was instantly remorseful. Became the world’s most attentive husband. Made all the meals for days. Bought Phyllis flowers. Took Richard to a Bills game to prove he was a solid stepfather.

  But he couldn’t hold it together indefinitely, especially if he’d had too much to drink. Sometimes it’d just be a slap. And there was that time, while behind the wheel, he punched her thigh when she thought she’d left an iron plugged in. (She hadn’t, which only further exasperated him.)

  And yet, in spite of everything, Phyllis and Richard did not hate the man. Phyllis made apologies for him, said they had to cut him some slack. He was a tormented person. He’d served in Vietnam, seen things no one should have to see, done things no one should have to do. Often, in the middle of the night, he’d wake up screaming, the mattress soaked with perspiration, as he relived some horror from over there in the late sixties.

  “Harry served his country,” Phyllis often said, “and it left him scarred.”

  Phyllis had her hands full with Richard, too. Maybe, when your real father dies and you’re just a boy, it messes up your head. Or when you get a new dad who’s got a slew of problems, you find a way to inherit them, even though there’s no genetic link. Who knew? But as Richard moved through his teens, he showed signs of not being able to control certain impulses. There were those two incidents—at least two that Phyllis knew about—where he inappropriately touched some girls at school. Okay, call it what it was: fondled. There were meetings with the principal, apologies, a suspension. Luckily, nothing more than that. And then there was his propensity to erupt in anger. Calm and serene on the surface, but simmering underneath, like lava bubbling in a dormant volcano. Then, boom. Phyllis wanted to take him to see someone, too, but Harry wouldn’t hear of it. “He’s just a boy,” he said. “He’s burning off steam.”