Parting Shot

by Linwood Barclay

  The first place Duckworth instructed the uniformed officers to start looking was the Dumpster that sat right next to the silver Corolla. But it was nearly empty, and it didn’t take much of an examination to determine there was no body in it. There might, however, be something in there the killer, or killers, had discarded.

  Everything had to be gone over with the proverbial fine-toothed comb.

  Now Duckworth had to decide where to focus his attention. He had a homicide and a missing person case.

  And those two events tied back, it appeared, to Brian Gaffney.

  Brian Gaffney was abducted just after leaving Knight’s.

  Carol saw someone she knew as she and Trevor were leaving.

  Carol told Trevor she was going to talk to that woman and suggest she get in touch with Duckworth if she saw anything.

  Carol disappeared.

  Dolores, who worked at a tattoo parlor where a tattoo gun was supposedly stolen, turned up dead in Carol’s car.

  And speaking of tattoos, Duckworth now thought there was a strong likelihood that Gaffney was not the intended target. He had more than a passing resemblance to someone else in that bar who Duckworth was now sure was the kid from that court case that had garnered national attention, the one who got off with probation after running a girl down with a car because he’d never been taught to appreciate the consequences of his actions.

  God, what a world.

  There were plenty of people, Duckworth now realized from the Craig Pierce incident, who’d like to teach that young man—Jeremy Pilford was his name—a lesson or two.

  The night before, after he and Maureen returned from their dinner at Knight’s—the best meal Duckworth had had in months, by the way—he went online to refresh his memory on some of the details of the Pilford case.

  When he saw the name of the girl Jeremy Pilford had run down with that businessman’s Porsche—Sian McFadden—it all came together for him. It was very possible that whoever had written that tattoo on Brian Gaffney’s back had made a spelling error. “Sean,” he was betting, was supposed to be “Sian.”

  As theories went, it wasn’t a bad one.

  It had been Duckworth’s plan, until Trevor showed up a couple of hours earlier, hovering over his bed, to start looking into the possible Pilford angle.

  In fact, that wasn’t the only thing he wanted to look into. Something, he thought, was fishy across the street from the Gaffney household. Mrs. Beecham’s tale of learning that her caregiver was actually her niece beggared belief. And finding out that the name Norma Lastman had given Mrs. Beecham was different from her van registration also bothered Duckworth.

  But those things would have to wait. Right now, Duckworth needed to find out everything he could about Dolores, and that meant a visit to her boss, Mike.

  Trevor, who’d finally done as he was told and was waiting by his car, ran toward his father when he appeared.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “We don’t do anything,” Duckworth said.

  “What do you mean? We have to keep looking for Carol.”

  “I know. You got a picture of her?”

  Trevor nodded.

  “Email it to me.”

  Trevor got out his phone, opened up the photos, and turned the device around to show his father. “How about this?”

  It was a shot of Carol seated at a restaurant table, presumably across from Trevor. The lighting was poor and half her face was in shadow.

  “Any others?”

  Trevor swiped his finger across the screen several times, stopping on a selfie shot of Carol and him sitting on a bench with the falls in the background. Trevor had his arm around her, his face pressed up close to hers.

  “It’s a good shot of Carol,” Duckworth said, but his voice lacked enthusiasm.

  “What?”

  “Do you have another one?”

  Trevor shook his head. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  Duckworth hesitated, then said, “No, it’s fine. Email that to me.”

  “There’s a problem. Tell me.”

  “It’s the fact that you’re in the picture.”

  “I can be cropped out.”

  “I know.” Another hesitation. “Here’s the thing, Trevor. I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this any more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way. But this is now a homicide investigation, as well as a missing person case. You have an involvement, and I am, at least right now, the lead investigator. And you’re my son. That may taint this investigation. My judgment might be called into question at a later date.”

  “Yeah, but that would only matter,” Trevor said, “if I was guilty of something. But I didn’t have anything to do with that woman in the trunk of Carol’s car. And I don’t have any idea what’s happened to Carol.”

  “I know.”

  “You do, right?” Trevor pressed. “You do know I don’t have anything to do with any of this?”

  “Of course. But that doesn’t matter. Look, just let me do what I have to do. If you hear from Carol, if you get any new ideas about where she might be, you call me. But you can’t tag along. That just won’t fly.”

  Trevor made his hands into fists, then opened them. “It’s not right.”

  “Yes, it’s right,” Duckworth said. “One thing.”

  “What?”

  “That woman in the trunk. Is she the one Carol saw outside Knight’s?”

  Trevor shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t get a look at her then, and I sure didn’t get a look at her just now.”

  “Do you remember if Carol said her name was Dolores, or Dolly?”

  Trevor blinked. “Maybe. Not Dolores, but she might have said Dolly. I never really picked up on it.”

  Duckworth laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Okay. I have to go.”

  There was an awkward hesitation between them, then Trevor reached out and grasped his father’s arm.

  “I’m scared to death,” he said. “I’m scared to death about what’s happened to Carol.”

  “Me too,” Duckworth said.

  He parked out front of Mike’s tattoo business, but before he got out of the car he had other matters to deal with. The first was to start distributing that picture of Carol Beakman Trevor had sent him. He forwarded it to the station, then got on the phone to provide further details. He wanted every Promise Falls police officer to be on the lookout for her. Then he asked for Shirley in communications and ordered up an immediate news release on Carol Beakman. Tweet it, post it on the department’s Facebook page, get it to all the local TV news programs.

  “And crop that picture,” Duckworth said, “so it only shows the woman’s face.”

  “You don’t want this guy in the picture?” Shirley asked.

  “No.”

  “He might end up being a suspect or something,” she said.

  “Just take him out of the shot.”

  “Got it. Only trying to help. He actually looks a bit like you. Only, you know, a lot younger.”

  “Thanks for that, Shirley.”

  “Call ’em as I see ’em.”

  “There’s something else I need.”

  “Fire away, boss.”

  “You know that Big Baby case?”

  Shirley made a snorting noise. “Who doesn’t?”

  “The kid’s name was Jeremy Pilford. Can you google him? See if there’s anything that connects him to Promise Falls? I think he might be in our neck of the woods.”

  “Seriously?” Shirley said.

  “Yeah. I think I saw him on some surveillance video at Knight’s. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “You haven’t listened to the news this morning?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There was a protest last night. They had to send a couple of cars out.”

  Duckworth pressed the phone closer to his ear. “A protest where?”

  “You know Madeline Plimpton? U
sed to be publisher of the Standard?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Her place.”

  “Her place? Why her place?”

  “The kid’s been staying there. Kind of hiding out, but not very well. About a dozen or more people wandering on the street out front, waving signs, the usual.”

  “What’s the connection? Why here?”

  “Plimpton’s the little bastard’s great-aunt or something. Her niece Gloria is the kid’s mother. What I hear is, the kid’s been getting all kinds of harassment in Albany, so they came up here. But there’s a contest or game on some website inviting people to report sightings. Remember the Craig Pierce thing?”

  “I do.”

  “Kind of like that.”

  “It’s a strange world we live in now, Shirley.”

  “Hey, tell me something I don’t know. You need anything else?”

  “No. Catch ya later.”

  Duckworth ended the call. The mention of Craig Pierce prompted him to make another call.

  “Chief Finderman’s office,” a woman said.

  “It’s Barry Duckworth. Chief in?”

  “Hang on.”

  A pause, then, “Barry?”

  “Rhonda,” Duckworth said. The detective’s working relationship with Promise Falls police chief Rhonda Finderman had had its ups and downs over the last year or two, but things had been reasonably amicable lately. “The Craig Pierce thing.”

  Duckworth could almost hear her wince on the other end of the line.

  “Jesus, yeah,” she said. “What about it?”

  “Where are we on legal challenges with that?”

  “Still trying to get that site—Just Deserts, I think it is?—to reveal details of the video posting that could lead us to whoever took the picture and put it up there, but it’s with the lawyers. Could take forever, and we might never get the answer we want. Even though they’re not, by any standard, a legitimate news organization, they’re saying they have an obligation to protect their sources, that it’s a freedom-of-the-press thing. It’s total bullshit, is what it is.”

  “There might be another approach.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, I’m not the expert. But I was talking to Pierce today, and—”

  “God, how’s he doing?” Finderman asked. “I mean, he’s a loathsome character, but what happened to him, no one deserves that.”

  “You might change your mind if you met him. Anyway, he suggested that if we were doing our job properly, we’d be going at this another way.”

  Finderman hesitated, then said, “Victims often feel that way.”

  “Thing is, I think he might be onto something. Have we got any computer experts in the department?”

  “If we don’t, I’ll find somebody. What’s the idea?”

  “You look at all the postings, look for I guess you’d call them signatures. Turns of phrase, misspellings. Search the Internet for those signatures. That kind of thing.”

  “Sounds like it might be worth a try,” Rhonda said.

  “Okay. Talk later.”

  Duckworth slipped the phone back into his jacket and got out of the car. Mike’s Tattoos was open, and he went straight inside. Mike was sitting at the main desk.

  “Hey, you again,” he said. “You catch who stole my tattoo gun?”

  Duckworth shook his head. “Sorry.”

  Mike smiled. “Just kidding. I knew the police wouldn’t give a shit about that. As you can see by the fact that I’m sitting here, I am a little short-handed today. Which is just as well, since I don’t have any appointments in the book until later this afternoon. Unless, of course, you’re here to get a tattoo of Columbo tattooed on your chest.”

  “No.” Duckworth cocked his head to one side. “Anybody ever actually get one of those? A Columbo tattoo?”

  “Nope, although one time I was in this really cool bookstore in Belfast that had a painting of him on the ceiling. Only crime fighter I’ve ever inked onto anybody is Batman. Done his face on a couple people, but the logo, you know, the bat with the circle around it, is more popular. Also, the big S from Superman. Had a few of those over the years. So if you haven’t found my stolen equipment, what brings you back?”

  “I noticed Dolores isn’t here.”

  Mike raised his arms in a hopeless gesture. “A no-show today. Didn’t even have the courtesy to phone in.”

  “What’s Dolores’s last name?”

  “Guntner.”

  “Do you have an address for her?”

  “There a problem?”

  “An address would be helpful.”

  Mike opened a drawer in the desk and rifled through some papers. “Here we go.” He grabbed a scrap of paper, scribbled on it, and handed it to Duckworth. “It’s actually a farmhouse that belonged to her parents. They’re in a nursing home now, I think, and she lives there by herself.”

  “A nursing home? In Promise Falls?”

  “Yeah. Davidson House, I think.”

  “I know it.” Duckworth glanced at the piece of paper Mike had handed him. Dolores had lived at 27 Eastern Avenue. He pocketed the paper. “Thanks.”

  “If you want to talk to her here, she might show up later. It’s not like it’s the first time she’s been late. She might have partied a little too hard last night. Try after lunch. She might be in then.”

  “I don’t think so,” Duckworth said.

  Mike’s face darkened. “What do you mean?”

  “A woman tentatively identified as Dolores was found dead this morning.”

  “Fuck, no,” he said, standing. “What are you talking about? Dolly’s dead?”

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about her.”

  “Hold on,” Mike blustered. “What happened to her?” His mouth open, he put his hand to his forehead. “Jesus, did she kill herself?”

  “Would that not surprise you?” Duckworth asked.

  “Well, I mean, she’s kind of a flake. Was kind of a flake. God, I can’t believe it.”

  “What do you mean, a flake?”

  “Just, I don’t know, just different. Man, I can’t believe this. First of all, the kind of people who work in a tattoo shop”—and he touched his fingers to his chest—“myself included, are not your usual type who go to work in a bank every day. I’m not saying we’re all nuts and suicidal, only that we’re different.”

  “How was Dolores different?”

  “She got worked up about things. Like, she was pretty plugged into current events and shit, which I don’t care anything about. She talked about all the injustice in the world, stuff like that, people who got away with doing bad things. I mean, she was pretty funny, too, not serious all the time about it, but there were things that upset her, like global warming and those fuckers on Wall Street.”

  “Was she always like that?”

  Mike thought. “No, actually. She’s been, you know, kind of radicalized in the last year, I guess. I mean, not radicalized like all that Islam ISIS stuff, but just more fired up about shit.”

  “How long had she worked here?”

  He had to think again. “Four years?”

  “Did you know her before that?”

  He shook his head.

  “So what happened a year ago that got her more plugged in to what was happening in the world?”

  “All the shit that went down right here, for one thing,” Mike said.

  “The mass poisoning?”

  “Yeah. She said it never would have happened if we all just cared more for our fellow man. Remember the Olivia Fisher case? When she was being murdered and screaming and nobody came? What am I saying, of course you know all about that.”

  Duckworth asked, “Anything else that might have had an impact on her, say, more recently? The last three or four months?”

  “Maybe that guy she’s been seeing.”

  “What guy?”

  “Cory.”

  Duckworth recalled the young man in the khakis who was sitting on the d
esk the first time he was here. “I met him,” he said. “You have a last name for him?”

  “Calder. Cory Calder.”

  “An address?”

  Mike frowned. “How would I know where he lives? He doesn’t work for me.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Why are you asking? Did Dolly off herself, or did something else happen to her?”

  “I don’t think Dolly killed herself.”

  “Then what—was it a car accident or something?”

  “No.”

  Mike pondered what must have seemed like the only other possibility. “Wait, somebody killed her?”

  “Yes,” Duckworth said evenly. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you want to know more, but right now the most important thing you can do is help me by answering my questions. Did you notice anything about her in the last few weeks or months? Anything different?”

  “Uh, okay, well, I guess the answer would be yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “She was more anxious. And quieter, too. She seemed to have a lot on her mind. I mean, she could put on a good front for people walking in the door, but she seemed pretty agitated a lot of the time.”

  “Did she talk about what might be troubling her?”

  “Not much, but I had a sense it was about Cory.”

  “What’s your take on him?”

  “I don’t know. Kind of a weirdo, really.”

  “You ever hang out?”

  Mike shook his head. “No. But I’ll say this about him. He’s a guy who talks himself up a lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, he could have been Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. In his head, he’s a lot more important than he really is. Does that make sense?”

  “I think so. Anything else?”

  “He liked to watch, sometimes.”

  “Liked to watch what?”

  “When I worked. How I did it.”

  “He watched you do tattoos?”

  “Yeah. But only if it was okay with the customer.”

  Duckworth made some mental notes. “Back to Dolly. Did she ever talk about Craig Pierce? Or Jeremy Pilford?”

  “Who the hell are they?”

  “Pierce was the guy who basically admitted he molested a mentally disabled girl, but got away with it, and Pilford was the one they called the Big Baby.”