Parting Shot

by Linwood Barclay

  Trevor looked away and shrugged. “I guess I’ll keep looking for Carol.”

  “Okay. And I’ve got places to check out. I’d like to stay here, but I can’t. Can I ask you one more question?”

  “What.”

  “You ever heard of a guy named Cory Calder?”

  “No. Who’s he supposed to be?”

  “Dolores Guntner’s boyfriend.”

  Another shrug. “Nope.”

  “Okay.”

  Trevor opened his car door. Clearly this was not going to be one of those goodbyes accompanied by a hug. He settled in behind the wheel, turned the car around, and aimed it for the main road. Duckworth watched him wait for a tractor-trailer to speed by, then turn onto Eastern and head for town. The tires squealed briefly as he hit the gas.

  Duckworth put the framed picture of Dolores on the front passenger seat of his car, then went to the trunk and took out a roll of yellow crime-scene tape, which he used on the two doors to the house and all accesses to the barn. Not that tape was going to keep anyone out who was intent on getting in, but it would warn anyone who might have entered innocently to stay the hell away. He then called for a patrol car to come and sit on the property until the forensic team showed up.

  He couldn’t spend any more time here.

  He got into his car and fired up the engine. He knew Promise Falls well enough that he didn’t have to look up Marshall Way. Maybe, he mused, he should quit police work and start up a taxi service. Become one of those Uber drivers. Uber was already in Promise Falls, although he’d never taken advantage of the service. And while the drivers no doubt faced the same risks as any other cab driver, Duckworth was betting none of them had been nearly beaten to death in the course of their duties, as he had.

  The Calder residence was a tasteful two-story red-brick house with simple white columns flanking the front door. The yard was meticulously maintained, not a single blade of grass out of alignment where lawn met sidewalk. One of those small Lincoln SUVs, in white, sat on the jet-black driveway, which shone as though wet. It looked to have been resurfaced very recently.

  Duckworth went to the door and rang the bell. Seconds later, it was opened by a slim, gray-haired man in his seventies wearing a plaid shirt with a buttoned-down collar, and perfectly creased slacks.

  “Yes?” he said.

  Duckworth got out his ID and allowed the man to examine it. “Detective Duckworth, Promise Falls Police.”

  The man’s nose wrinkled. “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for a Cory Calder.”

  “He’s not here,” the man said.

  “Who are you, sir?”

  “Alastair Calder. I’m Cory’s father. Is there some kind of problem?”

  “Where would I find Cory?” Duckworth asked.

  “I have no idea,” Alastair said.

  “Does he live here?”

  “He does. But I’m not his minder. He’s a grown man.”

  “May I come in, sir? Maybe you can help me clear up a few things.”

  Alastair Calder hesitated, then opened the door wider. Duckworth thought he might be offered a seat in the living room, but it looked like a living room no one ever sat in. Vacuum cleaner tracks remained visible in the broadloom.

  “This way,” Alastair said, leading Duckworth deeper into the house. He opened an oak door to a study. A desk dominated the room. Bookshelves, completely jammed, lined two walls. One wall was mostly window that looked out onto a treed backyard, and the final wall was reserved for framed photos and diplomas and various awards. There was one chair behind the desk, and another in front of it.

  “Have a seat,” Alastair said. Duckworth sat. “Now what’s your business with my son?”

  “When did you last see Cory?”

  “I asked you what your business was with him.”

  “And I asked you when you last saw him.”

  Alastair Calder pursed his lips and drew in air through his nose. “Some time yesterday, I believe. We don’t check in with each other.”

  “But you did say he lives here.”

  “Yes.

  “Who else lives here?”

  “No one.”

  “Just you and your son.”

  “That’s what I said.” He sighed. “My wife died three years ago. We had two other children. They’re both married. My son is in Tokyo, researching ways to turn ocean water into drinking water. My daughter is a doctor. She’s in Europe, assisting in the refugee crisis, which is never-ending.”

  “And Cory? What does he do?”

  “He lives here,” Alastair said, a hint of contempt in his voice. “What do you want with him?”

  “Do you know Dolores Guntner?”

  His eyes widened. “Dolly?”

  Duckworth smiled. “Yes.”

  “Yes, I know her,” he said with a disapproving shake of the head. “My son is old enough to choose his own girlfriends, I am afraid.”

  “So Dolores, she’s been seeing your son?”

  “For some time, yes. Is this about Dolores? What’s she done? It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she was up to no good. Do you know where she works?”

  “A tattoo parlor.”

  “Exactly. What else do I have to say? What’s she done?”

  “She got herself killed, Mr. Calder.”

  He sat upright in his chair. “She what?”

  “She’s dead, sir.”

  His face fell. “Dear God, what on earth happened?”

  “Her death is being treated as a homicide.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “So I’m speaking with anyone who knew her. I’m told your son was her boyfriend, so he’d be at the top of the list of people I need to talk to.”

  “You can’t think he’d have anything to do with this. He’s got his flaws, but he wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  “But he may know something that would help me in my investigation. So let me ask you again. Do you know where he is?”

  “I . . . don’t.”

  “Do you anticipate him coming back any time soon?”

  “I really have no idea.”

  “You seemed to suggest earlier he doesn’t have a job.”

  “Not . . . not currently.”

  “I need you to call him and find out where he is. He must have a cell phone.”

  “He does.”

  Duckworth sat and stared at the man. Alastair, growing increasingly uncomfortable, finally reached for the phone on his desk. He hit one button, put the phone to his ear and waited.

  He grimaced. “It’s gone straight to message.” He waited a second, then said sternly, “Cory, it’s your father. Call home immediately.” He replaced the receiver.

  “He’s turned his phone off,” Duckworth said.

  “Or he’s someplace he can’t get a signal. I’m sure that’s all it is. What happened to the girl? I demand to know.”

  “What do you do, Mr. Calder?” Duckworth asked.

  Alastair blinked, evidently offended that his demand was so quickly ignored. “I’m an advocate,” he said.

  “Uh, an advocate for what?” Duckworth asked. “Or should I ask whom?”

  “Both,” he said. “For decades, my wife Annette and I directed campaigns for countless individuals and agencies in areas of social justice, environmental protection, the wrongly accused and convicted, freedom-of-speech violations, the list goes on.”

  “I see. How would you advocate, exactly?”

  “Is this really important, Detective?”

  “Just getting a sense of things, Mr. Calder.”

  “Our company mapped out strategies, guided these organizations through courses of action. We got our start in advertising and public relations, so we were well grounded in the arts of persuasion and advocacy. We used those skills to make this a better world, rather than trying to sell things to people they probably didn’t need in the first place.”

  “And you did all this from Promise Falls?”

  “No,
” he said. “From New York. My wife had roots in this part of the state, and when we retired—although it’s never been a complete retirement—we moved up here. That was seven years ago. But as you can see,” and he waved his arm across the study, “I’m still engaged in things.” He leaned forward, his arms resting on the desk. “Tell me my son is not in some kind of trouble.”

  “I don’t know,” Duckworth said. “Why don’t you tell me about him.”

  Another sigh. “He lives in the shadow of his brother and sister,” he said. “They’ve gone on to do great things, to make a difference. Like their parents. Cory has struggled in that regard.”

  “How?”

  “He . . . he looks for shortcuts. He’s impatient. The road to success is not a superhighway. It has plenty of bends and detours, and sometimes the bridge gets taken out in a flood. Many of us find another route, even if it takes us hundreds of miles out of our way. Cory turns the car around and goes home.” His face saddened. “Annette said I couldn’t expect him to have the same drive as the others. We had to let him be who he was, whatever that turned out to be. And that’s turned out to be a kid—a young man—who spends a lot of time on the computer, arguing with the world.”

  “He doesn’t share the social conscience the rest of your family is known for?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Alastair Calder said, with what sounded like just a hint of pride. “He does care about injustice. He’s on the web all the time, debating it with people. I’ll hear that damn tapping at three in the morning, and go into his room and tell him enough is enough. And he’ll tell me he just has to make one more point with some stupid idiot in Oklahoma or Dublin or Cape Town. Like he’s trying to win the planet over to his point of view. It’s like that cartoon of the person on the computer saying he can’t come to bed because someone is wrong on the Internet.”

  “What sort of issues does he get fired up about?”

  Alastair frowned. “Who knows. Sometimes I think he’s just looking for something to get riled about. He sees others jumping on some bandwagon and he has to get on too. He says this whole social-network thing is a way to get back at people.”

  “Get back at people?”

  He shrugged. “To get revenge. To make sure people get what’s coming to them. That’s never what my wife and I were about. We weren’t about revenge. We were always about justice.”

  “Can you recall any specific instances?”

  Alastair had to think. “Well, take that son of a bitch who attacked that retarded—sorry, my apology, we don’t say that any more, terrible word—that mentally challenged woman. He pretty much admitted he did it, but he got off. Cory thought that was pretty disgusting.”

  “I guess you heard what happened to that person,” Duckworth said.

  “Oh yeah, terrible. Even considering everything.”

  “What about that kid who ran down the girl?” Duckworth asked. “His defense that his mother’s pampering sabotaged his ability to understand the consequences of his actions.”

  “The Big Baby,” Calder said.

  “That’s the one. So you know the case. Did Cory ever mention it?”

  The man’s face grew concerned. “Why are you asking?”

  “Did he?”

  “Just the other day. How could you have guessed that?”

  “Have you ever heard of a website called Just Deserts?”

  “What is that? Some cooking site or something?”

  “No,” Duckworth said. “It’s a site that encourages vigilantism. People become heroes on that site when they’ve taken action against a person deemed to have gotten away with something. Like the man who sexually molested that girl.”

  “What kind of vigilantism?” Alastair asked.

  “I guess that’s up to whoever is carrying it out.” Duckworth frowned.

  “So what the hell are you suggesting? That Cory is striving for recognition on this site?”

  Duckworth shrugged. “Maybe it’s the shortcut to achieving a social good like his brother and sister.” He paused. “Or his mother and father.”

  “This is . . . no, this is ridiculous. And what does that have to do with this Dolly girlfriend of his? She never did anything wrong like that.”

  “Certainly not that I know of,” Duckworth said. “But that’s why it would be helpful to speak with your son.”

  “Let me try him again.” Alastair snatched up the receiver and pressed that one button again. “It’s still going to message.”

  “Maybe he’s expecting you to call,” Duckworth said. “And he knows it’s not going to be good news.”

  Alastair cradled the receiver. “Jesus Christ,” he said. He ran his hand over his mouth nervously. “None of this makes any sense. I know what happened to that man you referenced. Craig Pierce. He was attacked by a dog. He was disfigured.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t think Cory had anything to do with that?”

  “Mr Calder, I’d like to have a look at Cory’s room. I can do it now, with your permission. Or I could see about getting a warrant.”

  Alastair Calder sat, Buddha-like, for several seconds, not blinking, not moving. Finally he said, “You’re not going to find anything.”

  “Maybe not,” Duckworth conceded. “But I’m guessing that right now, you’re as anxious as I am to find out whether I will.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  ALBERT Gaffney did not giggle for long.

  After a very brief, giddy celebration of Ron Frommer’s demise, he began to appreciate what he had actually done.

  “Oh God,” he said aloud. “Oh God oh God oh God.”

  He dropped the bloodied crowbar he’d used to crack Ron Frommer’s skull. Blood continued to leak from Ron’s temple as he lay there on the ground by the back of his pickup truck.

  Albert looked around, on the off chance that someone might have seen what he’d done. But the house Frommer had been working on, in his role as a renovator, was tucked into the woods off the main road. So long as squirrels could not be called to testify, Albert was probably going to be okay.

  But no, he thought. I have to call the police. I have to tell them what I did.

  That would be the moral thing to do, right? He’d tell the police what he’d done. Okay, he might shade things slightly. Tell them that Ron Frommer was threatening him when he grabbed the crowbar. It was self-defense.

  And even if Frommer hadn’t actually been threatening him at the moment Albert struck him, he was probably going to. The man had attacked his son. He had a history.

  “Yes,” Albert said under his breath. “I had to do this. I had no choice. He was attacking me. He’d attacked my son, and now he was attacking me.”

  The good thing was, Ron was not going to be able to contradict his story.

  They’d have to take Albert’s word for it. And let’s face it, he was the assistant manager of the Glens Falls Syracuse Savings and Loan. He was a respected member of the community. Ron Frommer, on the other hand, was—

  “Ohhhhh.”

  Albert’s head snapped around to look at Ron Frommer. The man’s eyelids were fluttering. He was trying to open his eyes.

  He was alive.

  “No no no no no,” Albert said.

  No, wait, he thought. This was good news, wasn’t it? He hadn’t killed the man. Frommer was alive. If Albert called 911 right now and got an ambulance out here, if they got Frommer to PFG fast enough, they might be able to save him.

  Yes. That was very true.

  It seemed clear what the right thing to do was.

  Except if Ron Frommer lived, he’d be able to tell the police that he hadn’t been threatening Albert Gaffney.

  “I was just standing there when he swung that pry bar into my fuckin’ head. Who’d have thunk it, a pussy like that?”

  But maybe, Albert thought, he’d hit Frommer hard enough that he wouldn’t remember what had actually happened. It was still going to be one man’s word against another’s.

  “Fuckin�
� hell, what happened?” Ron Frommer said. He reached a hand up to the side of his head, felt blood, murmured something.

  A voice in Albert’s head said, Finish him off.

  It would be easy enough. Ron Frommer might be alive, but he was dazed and seriously injured. All Albert had to do was pick up the crowbar and take another whack at him. One should do it. The man wouldn’t be able to offer any resistance.

  He took a step over to where he’d dropped the iron bar, picked it up. He stood over Ron Frommer.

  When he’d struck the man the first time, he’d been in a blind rage. He hadn’t thought about what he was doing. It was an impulse. He had acted instinctively.

  But this was different. He had to make a conscious decision to end this man’s life.

  He moved the crowbar from one hand to the other. When he’d hit him before, he had held it with one hand. The next time, he thought, if he used two, swung it almost like a golf club, he’d have more power behind it. He’d knock the bastard’s head clean off.

  Suddenly, he felt the urge to vomit.

  He turned, ran several feet to the edge of the woods, leaned over, and threw up. Three times.

  I can’t do it.

  He stood, took a few deep breaths, then went back to his car. He opened the trunk and dropped the crowbar in, slammed the lid. Then he went back to Frommer, got down on his knees and put his mouth up close to the man’s ear.

  “Just hang in there,” he said. “I’m going to take you to the hospital.”

  Frommer said, “Rmmrr.”

  “Do you think you can get up?”

  Frommer didn’t move.

  “I’m going to get you to the car,” Albert said. “Okay? I’m going to get you to the car.”

  He moved to behind Frommer’s head and got his hands under the man’s arms. Frommer was a slim build, but as a dead weight—well, almost dead—he was still a lot to carry. Albert did not have to do a lot of heavy lifting in his day job, but he managed to get a good, solid grip on the man. As he hoisted him higher, Frommer’s head almost level with his own, blood smeared his shirt and jacket and neck.

  He resisted the urge to vomit again.

  He dragged the man toward his car. Once he had him there, he managed to free one hand to open the back door on the driver’s side. Somehow he got Frommer inside, then had to push him onto his side and shove him across the seat so that he could get his legs in.