Parting Shot

by Linwood Barclay

  “Oh yeah. She did mention them. Asked me what I thought.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t actually thought a whole lot about them, except to say that people usually got what was coming to them, sooner or later.”

  “But she did mention them.”

  Mike nodded.

  “What about Carol Beakman? You ever heard that name?”

  “Never. That doesn’t ring any bells at all. You know, there was one really funny thing she asked me one day.”

  “What was that?”

  “She wondered if the court system was easier on women than men. Like, if a man forced a woman to do a bad thing, would they punish her for it?”

  “Dolly actually asked you that.”

  “Yeah. I thought it was weird, but didn’t make much of it. Why would she ask that?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “She said there was some case in Canada she read about, where this couple kidnapped and killed some girls but the woman pretty much got off because she said she was abused and forced to participate.”

  “I know the case,” Duckworth said. “Twenty years ago or more.”

  “Dolly said something like, women sometimes get a pass when they don’t deserve to.”

  “Interesting.” Duckworth nodded his head in gratitude. “Thanks for all your help.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You said your name’s Duckworth, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You any relation to Trevor, by any chance?”

  Duckworth felt caught off guard. “Uh, yeah. He’s my son.”

  Mike smiled. “I wondered, because, you know, it’s not the most common name in the world.”

  “You know Trevor?”

  The man shook his head. “No, no. It’s just, I did a tatt for him not long ago.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. Nice guy.”

  “When was this exactly?”

  Mike thought. “Two weeks, maybe? I don’t know. Around the time my tattoo gun was stolen, I think. Listen, say hi to him for me, will you?”

  “Yeah,” Duckworth said. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  CAL

  IT dawned on me that in all the morning chaos, Jeremy and I had missed breakfast. By the time we’d finished with the hospital and been chewed out by Charlene Wilson’s mother, it was pushing eleven in the morning.

  “You hungry?” I asked as we drove back to the hotel. We still had to grab our stuff and settle up with the front desk.

  “I don’t know,” Jeremy said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  In the twenty-four hours that I’d known this kid, this was the worst I’d seen him. The morning’s events had left him shaken. Up to now, my feelings about him had been mixed. A troubled young man, for sure, but also a pain in the ass. For the first time, I actually felt worried for him.

  It was seeing him pound his own leg hard enough to hurt himself that had sparked my concern. I wondered if that was a one-off, or if I needed to be worried about Jeremy doing anything else to cause himself harm.

  “We’ll hit the hotel and grab our bags, then figure out what to do next,” I said.

  Nothing.

  Whatever the police had decided to do about those two clowns who’d run into the back of Charlene’s car, they were no longer at the hotel. The cops, and the couple who wanted a picture of Jeremy, were gone. So was their car. But Charlene’s little Miata was there, waiting to be picked up.

  I didn’t want to leave Jeremy alone, so I had him come back to the room with me. We quickly packed—we hardly had anything anyway—and headed back down to the lobby, where I paid our bill.

  The man at the front desk said, “That sure was something.”

  “Huh?”

  “Out front this morning,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah. Do you know what the cops did with those two?”

  He shook his head. “Took some statements then let them go on their way, far as I could tell.”

  I grunted. Then I thought of something.

  “Did you have anyone staying here last night with a black van?”

  The man grinned. “Is that a serious question?”

  “I saw one driving out of the lot about the time of the accident. I thought it might be someone I know.”

  “Sir, we take down car makes and license plate info, but I couldn’t tell you if we had a guest with a black van.”

  “Sure, of course,” I said. “Dumb question.”

  I thought about asking if they had video surveillance, and if they did, whether they would let me have a look at it. But, assuming they even allowed it, what was the point? So maybe someone else, someone with a black van, wanted to catch a picture of Jeremy out in the wild. What of it? Whoever it was, he was one of many. I couldn’t be chasing them all down.

  Walking to my Honda, Jeremy said, “What black van?’

  “Probably nothing,” I said.

  We tossed our bags in the trunk and got settled in up front. “I think I saw a diner a couple of blocks from here. Sound good?”

  Another whisper. “Sure.”

  We’d passed a Bette’s Grill on the way to the hospital. I found it again and pulled into the lot. The place wasn’t slammed. The breakfast crowd was done, and the lunch hour was still thirty minutes away. We were about to be shown to a table when Jeremy stopped dead in his tracks. Head down, arms hanging straight at his sides.

  “Jeremy?”

  His eyes were sealed shut, his lips pressed together.

  “Jeremy, talk to me.”

  His shoulders were trembling. The kid, I believed, was on the verge of some kind of meltdown.

  “Never mind,” I said to the waitress.

  I put an arm around Jeremy’s shoulders and directed him back out of the restaurant to the parking lot. I got him as far as the car before his legs began to weaken. It was like the boy was melting. He went down to his knees, almost in slow motion. I knelt down with him, turned him so that I could rest his back against the car.

  A woman walking by said, “You okay?”

  I smiled and raised my hand. “We’re good.”

  I settled down beside him. I still had my arm around his shoulders and pulled him in to me. I don’t know whether that caused what happened next, or just allowed it to happen sooner.

  He sobbed. He sobbed so hard his body shook.

  I didn’t know what else to do but hold onto him. I could have told him everything was going to be okay, but he probably wouldn’t have believed it any more than I did. His life was a mess. Where to begin? He was responsible for a young woman’s death, his home life was chaotic, and the entire world hated him. Even his father didn’t want to spend any real time with him. The boy had been reduced online to a caricature. A whining, pampered infant.

  But he was more than that.

  All I could think to say was “Let it out.”

  He let it out.

  A few more people walked by, giving us curious glances, but I waved them away with my eyes before any of them asked questions or offered help.

  Jeremy mumbled something I couldn’t make out.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  This time, I heard it, although only barely. He said, “I want to die.”

  I squeezed his shoulder a little harder. “No. I mean, yeah, I believe you. But no.”

  He cried for another couple of minutes. The front of my shirt was wet with tears and snot. He slipped from my grasp, dug into his pocket, and brought out some ragged tissues.

  “I got more in the car,” I said.

  “It’s okay.”

  He dabbed his eyes and blew his nose. Then he just sat there, staring straight ahead, trying to regain his composure.

  “Feel good to let it out?” I asked.

  “Maybe a little.”

  There was a muffled rumbling sound. Jeremy looked at me and said, “What was that?”

  “That was my stomach,” I said. “I am
, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking starving.”

  He actually laughed, briefly. “Yeah, I guess I could eat something too. But I can’t go back in there.” He was looking at Bette’s. “Everybody in there has seen me losing it. They’ll all be staring at me. Can we go someplace else?”

  “Sure.”

  He got up first. I extended a hand and he helped me up. He might have been the one with the emotional breakdown, but I was the one with old knees.

  I unlocked the car and we got back in.

  “I don’t care about going to New York,” he said as I keyed the ignition.

  “Yeah, well, there may be a change of plan anyway,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “I’m waiting on a call from your great-aunt. I’ll let you know after she gets back to me.”

  He nodded complacently.

  “Jeremy,” I said gently, as we left the diner parking lot, “during the trial, and since—ever since all this first happened—have they gotten any help for you?”

  “Help?”

  “You know. A counselor? Someone you could talk to about all the shit that’s happened?”

  He shook his head. “Like a shrink?”

  “Yeah, like a shrink, but not necessarily.”

  “My mom said what I needed more than anything was love.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s nice, no doubt about it. But when you say something like what you said a few minutes ago, that tells me maybe you need somebody to talk to about those, you know, kinds of feelings.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I like talking to you.”

  “I’m not a professional,” I told him.

  “Maybe I don’t need a professional,” he said. “I just need someone who gives a shit.”

  Did I give a shit? I guessed I did, to a point.

  My eyes were looking about half a mile ahead. “I think that’s another diner.”

  “Okay. Do I have to get breakfast stuff?”

  “You can get whatever you want.”

  My cell phone rang. I fumbled for it in my jacket, put it to my ear.

  “Weaver,” I said.

  “It’s Madeline Plimpton.”

  “Hi.”

  “The beach house is available.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me give you the name of the real-estate agent who manages it for me.”

  “I’m driving. But can you tell me where the house is, roughly?” She told me, and to be sure I had it right, I repeated the house number. “And you said North Shore Boulevard in East Sandwich?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can you send me all the other details in an email?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Does anyone else know that we’re going there?”

  “Just the real-estate person,” she replied.

  “Let’s keep it that way,” I said, glancing occasionally in my rear-view mirror. I kept wondering if I’d see that black van again.

  “Fine,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “How are things there?” I asked.

  “What a joy to spend time with family,” she said. “Keep us posted of any developments, please, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Sure.”

  She ended the call.

  “What’s going on?” Jeremy said.

  “I don’t suppose you packed a bathing suit,” I said. “I know I didn’t. Although, this time of year, water’s probably still too cold to swim in.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re going to Cape Cod.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  I turned in to the second restaurant, switched off the engine, and pulled up on the emergency brake, as was my habit.

  A thought suddenly occurred to me. I whipped my head to the side, looked at Jeremy and snapped, “What was that you said before?”

  I’d startled him. He recoiled. “What?” He was wide-eyed. “All I said was ‘Oh.’”

  “No, not then. Before. When we were leaving the hospital.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “As we were leaving the hospital, you said something. Around the time I had to make a call on my cell. I sent you to the car.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  It didn’t matter. I didn’t need him to remember. I knew what it was.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I studied him for another moment, then said, “Let’s get something to eat.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  DOLORES Guntner’s 27 Eastern Avenue address might have sounded like a place in a residential section of Promise Falls, but it was outside the town. Eastern, as the name implied, led east out of town, and the numbers started a couple of miles outside the town limits. Out there, the houses, many of them attached to farms, were spaced far apart and back from the road.

  This far out of Promise Falls, people had mailboxes erected at the end of their driveways. As Barry Duckworth drove slowly, he was looking for a mailbox name as well as a number.

  He spotted a mailbox with GUNTNER written on the side in slanted peel-and-stick letters, the type you could get at Home Depot. The house was white with a black roof, a porch wrapped around two sides of the structure. About twenty yards beyond the house was a barn that, while not about to collapse, had seen better days. The once red sideboards were mostly gray, and the roof was sagging in the middle. Duckworth wondered whether it would survive a winter of heavy snow.

  He parked the car close to the porch steps and mounted them to the front door. Mike had said he believed Dolores lived in the house alone, now that her parents were in a nursing home. But that didn’t mean someone might not be here.

  Duckworth rang the bell. When no one came after ten seconds, he leaned on the button a second time. Again, no response.

  He tried the door and found it locked. He peered through the window, saw what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary living room. Couch, comfy chairs, a television. He went down the porch steps and slowly walked down the side of the house, rounded the corner, and went up two steps to a back door. He peered through the window into a kitchen that didn’t look as though it had been updated since JFK was in short pants.

  He turned the doorknob, and while the place was locked, there was some play in it. He tried again, this time putting his shoulder into it, and the door swung open.

  There were no beeps, so no security system.

  “Hello!” he called out. “Anyone home?”

  He waited a moment. Then, “This is the police! Detective Barry Duckworth with the Promise Falls Police!”

  Nothing.

  He went through the house slowly, starting with the first floor. He wanted to check recent incoming and outgoing calls, but while there were wall jacks, there were no phones to be found. Duckworth guessed that after her parents went into the home, Dolores Guntner, like so many of her generation, canceled the service and relied strictly on a cell phone.

  The kitchen, dining and living rooms didn’t turn up anything that caught his immediate attention. He went into the basement first, but like many farmhouses along this stretch of road, it was a far cry from a rec room with a pool table and a minibar. The floor was dirt, the ceiling exposed beams that he had to be careful not to bump his head on. Light was by way of a couple of exposed bulbs.

  Duckworth peered behind old boxes and piles of junk and failed to spot anything that raised any alarms. He had his doubts anyone had been down here in a long time, except possibly to service the furnace.

  He came back up to the first floor, then went up the stairs to the second.

  There were three bedrooms, but only one that appeared to have been used for sleeping. One had been turned into a spillover room to hold boxes of files and old clothing and shoeboxes of photographs. He riffled through one of them, guessing them to be pictures Dolores’ parents had collected over the last half-century or more.

  The second bedroom was clearly where Dolores spent her nights. The bed was unmade and a woman’s clothes were scattered on the floo
r.

  The third bedroom also contained a bed, a single that was pushed up against the wall to allow room for a desk, a computer chair, and some bookshelves. An open laptop sat on the desk, its recharging cord attached and leading to a wall outlet off to one side. Next to the laptop was a framed picture of Dolores, looking pretty much as Duckworth remembered her from the tattoo parlor, standing between a much older couple he assumed were her mother and father.

  He tapped the spacebar and the screen came to life. The background pic featured a dragon and a woman with very blonde, almost white hair. Duckworth wasn’t sure, but he thought this was a scene from that Game of Thrones TV show.

  He was worried the computer might be password-protected, but it wasn’t. He pulled back the computer chair, dropped himself into it, and clicked onto the web browser. Once it had filled the screen, he clicked on the search history, crossing mental fingers that it had not been cleared.

  It had not.

  Dolores had traveled far and wide on the World Wide Web. Facebook pages, Twitter, local weather, celebrity gossip.

  One of the sites she had been on in the last twenty-four hours had been Just Deserts. When Duckworth clicked on it, the headline that immediately popped up was “Where is the Big Baby?”

  He scanned the most recent sightings of Jeremy Pilford in the Promise Falls area. Plus one out-of-focus shot in front of a hotel that was identified as being in Kingston, New York, south of Albany. That one had supposedly been taken just a few hours ago.

  Duckworth said, “Hmm.”

  He decided to let the computer experts examine the laptop more closely. He wanted to complete his walkabout.

  When he had finished his tour of the top floor, he went back down to the kitchen and exited the house the same way he’d entered it. Standing in the fresh air, his eyes settled on the barn. As he walked toward it, he didn’t see anything to suggest this was still a working farm. No cows or pigs or chickens, and none of the deposits they left behind. Nor did he see any farm equipment. No tractor, not even a pickup truck. Maybe he’d find a vehicle in the barn.

  There was a wood door built into the concrete foundation, which rose out of the ground a good five feet before the sideboards soared up toward the roof. Duckworth tried the door and found it unlocked.