Too Close to Home

by Linwood Barclay

  We got into bed, and Ellen tried reading for a while but finally put her book aside. “I keep going through the same paragraph over and over again,” she said, “and haven’t the foggiest idea what I’ve just read.”

  I wanted to say something along the lines of “Rereading Conrad’s book, are you?” but managed to hold my tongue. “Not easy to focus at the moment, is it?” I said.

  She shook her head, placed the book by the base of her bedside lamp, reached up and twisted the knob to turn it off. I got under the covers and we both stared at the ceiling for a while. I don’t know for how long, but I must have finally fallen asleep, because I was having that dream, where I’m on the lawn tractor, climbing a hill that’s getting steeper and steeper, until the front end of the mower lifts off the ground and starts going over my head and—

  Ellen jabbed me in the side, sometime around midnight, and I awoke with a start.

  “What?” I said. “The smoke detector?”

  “No, not that!” she whispered urgently.

  “What?” I said, my heart instantly pounding.

  “I heard something.”

  “What? Where?”

  “A door. I heard a door downstairs.”

  “Maybe you dreamt it.”

  “No,” she said. “I was already awake. I haven’t been able to get to sleep yet.”

  I threw back the covers and, wearing only a pair of dark blue boxers, slipped out the bedroom door. “Be careful!” Ellen whispered.

  I whispered back, “Call the police.” If by some chance we were being visited by the same folks who’d gone to the Langleys’ the night before—my theories of the afternoon seemed pretty pitiful all of a sudden—the time to call for help was now, not later. I didn’t know what had happened to the cruiser up by the highway, whether it was still posted out there or not, and there was no way to tell, standing outside our bedroom door in the dark of night.

  As I went by Derek’s door I noticed it was closed, which suggested to me he was in there, asleep, although Derek didn’t exactly keep us posted as to his comings and goings. I went down the stairs, feeling naked not so much because I was in nothing but a pair of shorts, but because I had nothing in my hands. We don’t keep guns in the house, but right about then I’d have been happy for one. I’d have settled for a baseball bat, but we didn’t have one of those either, at least not anyplace handy. Down in the basement, maybe, tucked away behind the furnace. Perhaps, if I could make it to the kitchen without running into anyone first, I could arm myself with a cast-iron frying pan, or the fire extinguisher that hung on the wall right next to the stove. You wouldn’t want to get hit in the head with that sucker.

  As I reached the first floor I could hear Ellen on the phone upstairs, whispering urgently. Across the living room I spotted a poker hanging among the tools next to the fireplace. That would do.

  I crept over toward it, delicately slipping the pointed iron bar out of its holder. I liked the heft of it in my hand and felt, while not relieved, at least slightly better prepared.

  I moved through the darkness into the kitchen, and my eyes went to the deadbolt latch. It was in the vertical position, unlocked. There was no way Ellen had forgotten to lock that door. If she checked it once, she checked it three times.

  Was someone in the house? Or had someone already been here and gone back out?

  I froze, held my breath, listening for anything. I thought I could hear some murmuring, voices, but not inside the house.

  Outside, on the deck beyond the back kitchen door.

  I moved up to it, put my hand around the knob ever so carefully, twisted it silently to the left until I could turn it no more, confident now that the latch had cleared, then swung it open as swiftly as I could. I wanted the element of surprise on my side.

  And I had it.

  There was a scream, a woman’s scream, and that was followed by a man shouting, “Jesus!”

  Upstairs, Ellen screamed, “Jim! Jim!”

  My heart still pounding, I reached for the switch by the back door, casting light across Derek and his girlfriend, Penny Tucker. I’d met her enough times to recognize her, even in this limited light.

  Evidently they’d both been sitting on the deck steps that led in the direction of the shed, just talking, but when I’d made my entrance they’d both jumped to their feet and Derek had reached out to steady Penny, who’d nearly stumbled over.

  “Jesus, Dad, you scared us to fucking death!” Derek shouted at me.

  Penny, who had enough sense not to use profanity with her boyfriend’s father, caught her breath and said, “Mr. Cutter, hey. It’s, like, just us.”

  That was when we started hearing the sirens coming down the highway. And the car that had been parked up at the end of the lane was racing toward the house, then skidding on loose gravel as the driver hit the brakes.

  “Shit,” I said.

  SIX

  SO, THIS LITTLE MATTER of the mayor’s nose.

  I think it was the kind of thing employment consultants refer to as a “career-limiting” move. “Career-ending” would be more accurate, but the thing is, given the chance to do things over again, I can’t see what I might have done differently. Although it would have been nice to actually break the mayor’s nose, instead of just bloodying it.

  I got my job at the mayor’s office a little over six years ago and spent four with Randall Finley before starting my own business. Working for the mayor wasn’t all that bad a job. The money was reasonable enough. There wasn’t a whole lot of heavy lifting, unless you counted getting the mayor into the back of his car when he was tanked. And being a bodyguard for Randall Finley wasn’t exactly like a presidential assignment. You didn’t walk around with a wire in your ear, whispering things like “Blowhard is on the move” to fellow agents. Just as well, too, or I’d have had to get myself a two-hundred-dollar pair of sunglasses, and I’ve always been the kind of guy who buys them from Rite Aid.

  Sure, Finley had alienated most of the unions in town, mocked them, accused all of their members of sitting on their collective ass. Promise Falls, with a population of forty thousand, wasn’t the biggest city in New York State, but you still needed a fair number of people to keep the water running through the pipes, staff the fire department, and collect the trash, and Finley had managed to get under the skin of all of them at one time or another. And there weren’t many on the city council who’d piss on Finley’s head if it were on fire, but still, the guy was an unlikely target for an assassin. You had to get him through the odd picket line, the occasional protest outside city hall, but nobody was scoping him out with a rifle from the top of the observatory (if we’d had an observatory). I got plenty of free meals out of it, all the banquets the boss had to go to, and he rubbed shoulders with the mildly rich and famous when they came to town on official business. Once, when Promise Falls had been chosen for a movie shoot, I got within five feet of Nicole Kidman. The mayor shook her hand and, even though I was standing right next to him, he neglected to introduce me. I was the hired help.

  I’d known long before that my boss was a complete dick. I think that sunk in about an hour or so after he hired me to drive for him, when, while we were stopped at a light, a homeless man approached the mayor’s window for some change. Finley buzzed down the window and, instead of tossing the guy a quarter, said, “Here’s a tip, pal. Buy low, sell high.”

  The incident where he wandered into the unwed mothers’ home and threw up all over the front hall carpet was a little more spectacular than his usual stunts, but still very much within his range of talents. Yet it wasn’t that hard to account for his popularity. He had that “average guy” thing about him. He’d rather be duck hunting than attending the opera. One might have thought, in a town that supported a college and had its share of snooty intellectual and artsy-fartsy types, Finley would have limited appeal, but a majority of Promise Falls’ regular residents, the ones unaffiliated with the college, saw him as their guy, and voting for him was a way to stick
it to all those campus snobs who thought they were better than everybody else.

  Yet Finley was politically savvy enough to know how to play to the university crowd as well. Thackeray College, while small, was highly regarded across the country. Over the years, the annual literary festival Ellen organized had attracted the likes of Margaret Atwood, Richard Russo, and Dave Eggers and drew several thousand tourists to town, and Finley wasn’t about to mess with that. The local merchants—who’d managed to hold on in the face of Wal-Mart—depended too much on it. He was always there for the official opening, and it must have killed him to take second billing to Thackeray president Conrad Chase, whose ego gave Finley’s a run for its money. Chase considered himself right up there with the stars the festival managed to score, having had a bestseller eight years ago, a critically acclaimed one-hit wonder he’d been unable to repeat. The onetime English prof hadn’t simply failed to write another hit. He’d not written another book, at least not one for public consumption.

  But I’d never punched Conrad in the nose, although I’d been tempted over the years to do much more than that.

  So back to the mayor.

  He had asked me to drop him at the Holiday Inn on the north side of Promise Falls. It was far enough from downtown that it had an air of anonymity about it, but it was hardly Vegas. What happened at the Promise Falls Holiday Inn did not necessarily stay at the Promise Falls Holiday Inn.

  I learned early not to inquire too persistently about the mayor’s purpose in any of his trips. Most I knew without having to ask. I was privy to Finley’s meetings with his administrative assistant. I’d get a copy of his daily schedule, then hear him blathering away in the backseat into his cell phone.

  But occasionally there were meetings that did not show up on his agenda, and this was one of those.

  There was always a chance that these off-the-agenda meetings were arranged by Lance Garrick, the mayor’s backup driver and all-around gofer. Lance was known by plenty of folks around Promise Falls as the go-to guy if you wanted an after-hours card game, booze when the stores had all closed, a hot tip on a horse at Saratoga, or even a girl.

  I wasn’t much interested in gambling or booze or hookers, and I felt the mayor’s association with Lance was ill-advised and likely to bring him grief someday. But then, I was his driver, not his political strategist. He could do whatever the hell he wanted.

  When Finley said he wanted to go to the Holiday Inn one night after the end of a council session, I said nothing, even though I hadn’t seen any kind of hotel meeting listed on his itinerary. I put the Grand Marquis in drive and headed that way.

  Mayor Finley was particularly upbeat. “So, Cutter,” he said. “What’s this I hear about you being a painter?”

  I glanced in the mirror. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Just around. That true?”

  “I paint,” I said.

  “Whaddya paint?”

  “Landscapes, mostly. Some wildlife, portraits.”

  “Oh shit, that kind of painting,” Finley said. “I was thinking of having you do my kitchen. Let me ask you this. You a good edger? I hate it when the wall color bleeds into the ceiling.” He laughed. “But seriously, what are you doing driving my fat ass around if you’re a painter?”

  “Not all artists get to make a living from what they love,” I said. “There reaches a point when you have to accept that you’ve either got it or you don’t.”

  I’d never been inclined to open up to him, and this was as close as I’d ever gotten, and Finley must have realized it because he didn’t have a quick comeback. “Yeah, well,” he said, “seriously, you ever want to make a few extra bucks painting my kitchen, the offer’s on the table.”

  I looked at him in the mirror. “Sure,” I said.

  Before we reached the Holiday Inn, Randall Finley let me know he wanted me to park around back. He didn’t want the black Mercury seen up front. That gave me a hint about what sort of meeting he had planned.

  I said fine.

  “You talk to Lance today?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “You and him, you don’t get along so good,” the mayor observed. It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t say anything. “You could learn a thing or two from him, you know? He’s got terrific connections. Knows a lot of people. You need something, he can get it for you.”

  “He isn’t offering anything I need,” I said, putting on the blinker.

  “Need’s got nothing to do with it,” the mayor said. “It’s all about want.”

  It was ten o’clock, it had been a long day, and I wanted to go home and see Ellen before she fell asleep. I asked if he wanted me to wait or drive around awhile and come back in, say, an hour?

  Finley glanced at his watch. “Forty-five minutes,” he said. Then, hesitantly, “If you have to come and get me, should you happen to see Mrs. Finley drive into the parking lot, for example, I’m having a meeting in room 143. You might have to wait a bit after knocking. Or better yet, call my cell.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  It didn’t take Hercule Poirot to figure out what Finley was up to. What I didn’t know was whether this rendezvous was with someone he actually had something going on with, or someone he was paying by the hour. Or by three-quarters of an hour. Chances were she wasn’t some city hall employee. The mayor was mindful of sexual harassment suits. Maybe it was someone trying to get a contract with the city. Or, more likely, someone working on behalf of someone looking for a contract. There was no limit to what some of these consulting firms would do to get a multimillion-dollar deal, and few limits to what the mayor would accept in return.

  I drove down the highway a mile to get a decaf coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, then drove back, taking a spot behind the Holiday Inn, in view of a Dumpster.

  After about thirty minutes, my cell rang. I thought it might be Ellen calling to see whether I was ever going to get home. I wanted to talk to her, but at the same time was hoping it wasn’t her. I wasn’t proud to be cooling my heels while my boss got his ashes hauled, and I didn’t want to talk to her about it.

  I glanced at the number on the readout, saw that it was His Honor himself calling. “Yeah?” I said.

  “Get in here! I’m hurt!”

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Just get in here! I’m bleeding.”

  I was no paramedic, so I said, “You want me to get an ambulance?”

  “Jesus Christ no, just get the fuck in here!”

  I drove to the front of the hotel, parked on the apron by the main doors, and ran inside. Finley had said he was in room 143, so I took that to mean the first floor. I found a hallway beyond the lobby, ran down it until I got to 143.

  There was a girl leaning up against the wall a few feet down the hall. Mid to late teens, I guessed, frizzy blond hair, upturned nose, heavily rouged cheeks that failed to hide a pair of dimples. She was in a strapless top, short skirt, and heels, and gave me a once-over when I knocked on the door.

  “Someone’s in there,” she said.

  “That’s why I’m knocking,” I said.

  “She’s busy,” the girl said. “But I’m available. I’m Linda.”

  From the other side of the door came a familiar, if somewhat muffled, voice. “Who is it?” Mayor Finley.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  He opened the door just enough to let me in, keeping himself hidden as he did so. Once I was inside the room I could see that he was in nothing but polka-dotted boxers, and there was blood soaked into the front of them.

  “What the—”

  “It’s not my fault.” Another voice, young and female.

  The girl was on the floor beyond the foot of the bed, next to a toppled TV and stand. Short skirt, low-cut sweater, straight black hair down to her shoulders. Skinny legs, kind of gangly. Didn’t fill out the sweater. She was working her jaw around, like she was trying to get the feeling back in it.

  “I think I lost a tooth, you fucker,” she
said to Randall Finley.

  “Serves you right,” the mayor said. “You’re not supposed to bite the goddamn thing off, you know.”

  “You jumped,” she said, and sniffed. “It was an accident.”

  “I called Lance, too,” the mayor told me. “He’s coming.”

  “Terrific,” I said. “Let me guess. He set this up.”

  The mayor said nothing. I turned my attention to the girl. What had struck me from the moment I’d seen her was how young she looked.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  She was still rubbing her jaw, doing her best to ignore me.

  “I asked you a question,” I said.

  “Nineteen,” she snapped. I almost laughed. There was a purse on the bedside table and I grabbed it.

  “Hey!” the girl said. “That’s mine!”

  I unzipped it, started rooting around inside. There were lipsticks, other makeup, half a dozen condoms, a cell phone, a small coil-topped notepad, and a wallet.

  “Cutter, for Christ’s sake,” the mayor said, one hand pointed at the girl, the other pressed over his crotch. “Forget about her. You need to get me to a doctor or something.”

  The girl tried to grab her purse back but I swung it away. I looked in the wallet for a driver’s license. When the only ID I could find was a Social Security card and a high school ID, I figured she wasn’t yet old enough to drive. The name on the cards was Sherry Underwood.

  “According to this, Sherry,” I said, putting emphasis on her name, “you’re fifteen years old.”

  The same age as Derek at the time.

  “Okay, so?” Sherry Underwood said.

  The mayor had gone into the bathroom and was stuffing wads of toilet paper down the front of his shorts. He wasn’t in an absolute panic now, not like he’d been when he phoned me, so I was guessing he was suffering from more of a superficial wound, as opposed to anything approaching an amputation.

  I looked at him as he came back out of the bathroom. “You knew this?” I asked.