Parting Shot

by Linwood Barclay

  “With Sean?” Her face brightened.

  “Yes. With Sean.”

  Mrs. Beecham’s face appeared to melt. “He was the nicest dog. Smart, too.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh, yeah. My husband could say to him, go find my slippers, and Sean would run up the stairs and fetch them. He was a good dog. Licked himself a lot. My husband used to say he envied his flexibility.”

  “You remember what happened to Sean?”

  “The dumb bastard squashed him,” she said.

  “The dumb bastard being Brian.”

  She pointed in the general direction of the house across the street. Even though she was in a windowless basement, she got it more or less right. “They’re a bunch of bastards, them Gaffneys.”

  “You don’t get along?”

  The old woman shrugged. “They’re not so bad lately, but he’s a dumbass and his wife’s a bitch.”

  “Albert and Constance,” Duckworth said.

  “And they got a slut daughter, too. Forget her name.”

  “Monica,” he said.

  “That’s it.” She glanced back at the TV. “I forgot he was dead. He would have made a great president. Better than Reagan.”

  “You must have been very upset when Brian ran over your dog.”

  “Yup. Got back at them right away.”

  “What did you do?”

  She smiled slyly. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You might arrest me.”

  “Why don’t you tell me anyway?” he said.

  “If you arrest me, I’ll deny that I told you. Do we have a deal?”

  “Sure.”

  “I went over there late one night and slashed a few tires.” She smiled proudly, showing off teeth the color of caramel.

  “Well,” Duckworth said. “Did the Gaffneys accuse you?”

  She shook her head. “They never said nothin’ to me. They wouldn’t have been able to prove it, so what’s the point?”

  “You might be right.” Duckworth leaned in a little closer. “How about more recently? Sometimes there are things that are hard to forgive, or forget, even after several years have gone by.”

  “That’s for sure,” Mrs. Beecham said.

  One thing Duckworth knew for sure was that this old woman couldn’t have abducted Brian Gaffney and held him captive for two days while she carved a message into his back. But that didn’t mean someone couldn’t have done it for her.

  “Mrs. Beecham, do you have any children? Anyone else who might have been very angry with Brian about what happened to the dog?”

  “Never had children.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Mr. Beecham—that’d be Lyall—was shootin’ blanks, if you get my drift.”

  “I see. So there was no one else who’d have been deeply troubled by what happened to Sean.”

  “Well, Sean wasn’t too fucking happy about it,” she said, and Duckworth got another look at those stained teeth as she grinned.

  “Why Sean?” he asked. “It seems like an unusual name for a dog.”

  “We named him after my brother.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yeah. Sean Samuel Lastman, rest his soul. Kind of a dumb way to remember him, but what the hell. You do what you can.”

  “What happened to your brother?”

  “He died nearly thirty years ago. Fell off a roof he was shingling.”

  Duckworth thought of the woman upstairs. “I just met Norma. Is there a family connection?”

  Her eyes briefly sparkled. “Here’s something pretty amazing. Norma came to work for me a couple of years ago. And we get talking, and I was telling her about my brother, and turns out Sean was her daddy.”

  “Norma’s your niece?”

  Mrs. Beecham nodded. “Small world, right? She didn’t even know for years that he was her dad. Sean got some girl knocked up, never married her, and Norma was only about four years old when he died. Before Norma’s mom died, she told her who her real daddy was.”

  “Amazing,” Duckworth said. “And what about Harvey?”

  Mrs. Beecham’s nose wrinkled. “He’s her boyfriend. He doesn’t amount to much, but he helps out, too.” She patted the checkbook next to her thigh. “He’s getting the house all fixed up for me case I decide to put it on the market. The plumbing’s got to be redone and he found something wrong with the furnace. Whatcha asking me all these questions for anyway?”

  “Brian ran into some trouble,” he said.

  “I don’t doubt it. He always was kind of a simple kid. Not downright stupid, but kinda simple.” She looked back at the TV. “You about done? I’d like to see the end of this.”

  “Sure,” Duckworth said. “Thank you for your time.”

  He went quietly back up the stairs. When he opened the door, he found Harvey and Norma had been huddled close to it.

  “Did you catch everything?” Duckworth asked them.

  “I just wanted to be sure she’s okay,” Norma said, wringing her hands. “What were you asking her?”

  “Just a few things.”

  “She says a lot of crazy stuff,” Norma said.

  “She’s pretty nuts,” Harvey added.

  Duckworth studied the two of them. “Either of you know Brian Gaffney?” he asked.

  “Never heard of him,” Harvey said.

  “Nope,” said Norma.

  Duckworth looked at her. “Your aunt’s lived here a long time. You never heard of the Gaffneys? They’re right across the street.”

  Norma blinked. “Nope,” she said. “Never.”

  “How about Sean?” he asked. “You know anyone by that name?”

  Norma and Harvey both shook their heads.

  “That’s funny,” Duckworth said.

  “Why’s it funny?” the woman asked him.

  “Because that was your father’s name, wasn’t it?” the detective said.

  Her mouth made a perfect circle. “Oh!” she said. “Yes, that’s right. But I thought you meant someone we knew now.”

  Duckworth studied the pair for several seconds, saying nothing.

  Finally, he nodded and said, “You folks have a nice day.”

  On the way to his car, he took a quick photo of the plate on the back bumper of the van.

  SEVEN

  CAL

  Gloria Pilford, refilling her wine glass in the kitchen, said, “You’ll help us? Really?”

  “I’ll have a look at your situation,” I said, and then told them what it was going to cost them, per day.

  Gloria looked helplessly at Bob and Madeline, no doubt wondering which of them would step up.

  “It’s fine,” her aunt said. “I’ll write you out a check for five days.”

  Bob said, “Madeline, I can look after this.”

  “No,” she said in a voice that did not invite argument. “You’ve done enough already. Mr. Finch must have cost you a fortune.”

  Bob didn’t disagree. Ms. Plimpton opened a drawer, found her checkbook, scribbled on one, tore it off, and handed it to me. I tucked it into my wallet without so much as a glance.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s start by figuring out just what the situation is.”

  Madeline Plimpton got back on one of the island stools, next to Bob Butler. Gloria maintained her station near the fridge.

  “How many people would know Jeremy’s here and not at your place in Albany?”

  “I haven’t told a soul,” Ms. Plimpton said. “Except for you.”

  “Neither have I,” said Butler.

  Gloria had busied herself putting the almost-empty wine bottle back into the fridge, her back to us.

  “Ms. Pilford?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry?” she said.

  “Gloria, answer the man’s question,” Ms. Plimpton said.

  Gloria closed the fridge and turned around slowly. “I haven’t told anyone,” she said. “Not specifically.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  He
r eyes looked down, like a child who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I might have posted something.”

  “Like?” I said.

  “I said how good it felt to get out of Albany, to find some peace and quiet.”

  I nodded toward her aunt, who was closest to the laptop. I wiggled my fingers, air-typing, and she got the message, reaching for the computer and reopening it. “Could you find the page?” I asked her.

  “I’ll do it,” Gloria said, crossing the kitchen and taking the laptop from her aunt. She made a few keystrokes. “There, I didn’t really say anything.”

  I took the laptop from her and studied her most recent posts.

  “Tell me again when you got here?”

  Ms. Plimpton said, “Four nights they’ve been here.” She made no attempt to disguise the weariness in her voice.

  I scrolled down to see what Gloria had been telling the world earlier in the week. Last Friday, she’d posted: The world is full of so many haters. People need to stop hating and start understanding.

  That morsel of wisdom had produced more than three hundred likes, and about sixty comments. Some supportive, others not so much. As I scanned through them, I guessed that about eighty per cent of them were negative. One typical reply: And some mothers need to start teaching their kids not to run people down.

  The next day, Gloria had written: It’ll be good to get out of town. It’ll be good to go where they always have to let you in.

  I was no English major, but I recognized a version of the Robert Frost line about going home.

  “This one,” I said, pointing, “is basically telling everyone you’re going back to your home town.”

  Gloria became defensive. “But I don’t say where it is.”

  I went up to search field and typed in, “Where is Gloria Pilford, the Big Baby mother, from?”

  Hit Enter.

  Up came dozens of news stories. It didn’t take long to find one that mentioned that Gloria had been raised by her aunt Madeline, who lived in Promise Falls. Going back a hundred or more years, this one story went on to say, the Plimptons were among the town’s founders, at one time running a tannery, and in later years starting up the town’s first newspaper. Madeline Plimpton, the story said, often attended Jeremy’s trial.

  “There,” I said. “You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out where you probably are. And no doubt Ms. Plimpton’s address is easily found on the Internet.”

  “Oh Gloria,” said Bob derisively. “You might as well have hired a skywriter to draw a big arrow pointing to the house.”

  Madeline Plimpton had put her head into her hands.

  I said, “You’re banned.”

  “I’m what?” Gloria said.

  “If you can’t stop yourself from posting, you need to stay off the computer, your phone, whatever other device you may have, altogether. You’re exposing yourself. You’re putting yourself in danger.”

  Gloria bit her lip again and turned away. “You don’t understand,” she said, putting both hands on the counter’s edge, supporting herself. “You don’t know what they’ve put me through.”

  None of us said anything.

  Without turning around, she said, “I let you all make a national laughing stock out of me. I’m mocked and ridiculed. The coddling, smothering mother who kept her child from learning right from wrong. Okay, it worked. Jeremy didn’t go to jail. And that’s good.”

  Slowly, she turned around. Tears had traveled halfway down her cheeks.

  “But I paid a price, too,” she said. “And now you want to keep me from telling the world I’m not the person they think I am.”

  An unmoved Ms. Plimpton walked across the room, picked up the laptop and held it tightly under her arm.

  Bob said, “Give me your phone, honey.”

  Gloria looked as though Bob had just asked for a kidney.

  “This is humiliating,” she said. “You have no right.”

  I said, “I can’t protect Jeremy if there are leaks coming out of this very household as to his whereabouts.”

  “You think I’d do anything to hurt my son?” Gloria asked me.

  “Not intentionally,” I said. “But those postings are dangerous. Even if you don’t say anything specific, people can tell where you are when you write them.”

  Bob said, “Come on, Gloria. Give me your phone.”

  Gloria wasn’t ready to surrender. “I need a phone in case there’s an emergency. You get to have your phone, Bob, so you can do all your deals.”

  “That’s different,” Bob said. “If I’m not making deals, then I’m not bringing in any money, and if I wasn’t bringing in money, how the hell would I have paid for your son’s defense?”

  “I like the way you toss that in,” she said. “My son.”

  “Well, he is your son. I think it shows how much you mean to me that I was willing to help him out despite that fact that he’s not mine.”

  “I know, you’re a hero.” It was an out-and-out sneer. “You care so much about him.”

  “Your phone?” Bob said.

  “I don’t know where it is,” Gloria said, with little conviction.

  Bob reached behind a decorative bowl on the island. “For Christ’s sake, it’s right here.”

  She lunged for it, but she was too slow. Bob had snatched up the phone, which was in a pale pink cover with tiny white polka dots, and dropped it into the inside pocket of his sport jacket.

  “That’s a start,” I said, although I’d have rather held onto it myself. “Now there’s the business of Jeremy’s phone,” I said. “I’m guessing when he isn’t playing games he’s texting with his friends. He may also be telling people more than he should.”

  Gloria laughed scornfully. “Good luck taking his phone away.”

  She reopened the fridge and brought out the wine bottle.

  Ms. Plimpton said, “Gloria, take it easy.”

  “I’m fine, Madeline.” Gloria held up the bottle. “The only comfort I get around here is from this. None of you give a shit what I’ve—”

  That was when we heard the crash. The sound of breaking glass.

  Gloria and Ms. Plimpton let out short screams. Bob and I exchanged quick glances. The sound had come from the front of the house. I ran to the hall. Shards of glass were scattered across the marble floor, and in the midst of them, a fist-sized rock. There were narrow floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the main door, and the rock had gone through the one on the left.

  I flung open the door and saw a long-haired man—late teens, I was guessing—running flat-out to a vehicle idling at the curb. It was a blue van, the side door open.

  Before the man leapt in, he glanced back and shouted, “Take that, ya fuckin’ big baby!”

  Then he was in the van, hauling the door shut as the tires squealed and the vehicle lurched forward.

  I started to run, but there wasn’t a hope of catching a look at the plate. The van was up the street and around a corner in seconds. It looked like one of those older GM vans, of which there are only about a hundred thousand in every town. And the rock-thrower was white, brown shoulder-length hair, maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. Jeans and a blue T-shirt. Not much help when it came to offering police a description.

  I walked back into the house, where I found mother, aunt, and Bob Butler standing.

  “Who was it?” Ms. Plimpton asked. “Did you see them?”

  “A quick look is all,” I said.

  What struck me as alarming was not what had just happened, but that all the commotion had not drawn Jeremy from the porch. Even if he’d tucked some buds into his ears, he still should have heard what had happened.

  Without another word, I made my way to the back of the house again, marching straight out onto the porch. The screen door to the backyard was half open.

  Jeremy was not there.

  EIGHT

  BARRY Duckworth got back into his own vehicle and pointed it in the direction of Knight’s, which was on
ly five minutes away.

  Along the way, he got stuck behind an out-of-state car that was being driven hesitantly. Brake lights coming on, then off, turn signal on, then off. The person behind the wheel of this blue Ford Explorer with Maine plates gave every indication of being lost.

  When the Explorer stopped at a light, Duckworth pulled up alongside and powered down the passenger window. The driver, a man in his forties, put down his own window and looked over.

  “You folks lost?” Duckworth asked.

  “You know how to get to the park where the falls is?” the man asked. “Wife and I are looking for the spot where Olivia Fisher was killed.”

  A woman in the passenger seat leaned forward and held up what looked like a newspaper clipping. “We’re checking all the spots related to the town’s mass killing last year.”

  The man smiled. “We’re true crime nuts. You know the way?”

  Duckworth said, “Hang a right here, then the next right, and just keep on going.”

  The driver looked puzzled. “Won’t that put us on the road back to Albany?”

  “Yup,” Duckworth said. He put the passenger window back up, took his foot off the brake, and drove off.

  He parked half a block down from Knight’s. Before entering the premises, he inspected the alley next to the building. Brian Gaffney’s last memory before his two-day blackout was of this location. It was no more than six feet wide, which allowed room to step around a line of trash cans. At the back end it opened out onto a small parking lot.

  Duckworth walked the length of it, glancing down at the cracked and broken asphalt. Nothing caught his eye, and he didn’t know what he was expecting to find. Then he cast his eyes skyward, hoping he might see a security camera mounted to the wall of the bar, or the building next to it, which was a dry-cleaning operation. No such luck.

  He came back out onto the street. It was early May—nearly a year since the catastrophic events that had taken so many lives in Promise Falls—and each day seemed just a little longer than the last. The town was planning a special event later in the month to commemorate those who’d lost their lives, and Duckworth had been asked to be a guest of honor.

  He wanted nothing to do with it.