Too Close to Home

by Linwood Barclay

  And maybe, once again, I was talking out of my ass. A man who didn’t care what happened could be doubly dangerous.

  I was looking for opportunities. Ways that I might be able to get the jump on Drew. Or distract him. There were, in the room now, four of us and one of him.

  Of course, he was the only one who was armed.

  But I was standing not far from the fireplace, where the poker I’d grabbed the night I’d found Derek and Penny on the back deck was hanging.

  Derek said, “There, got it.” And he handed the phone to Drew, who snatched it away from him.

  He was looking at the small screen, his eyes darting back and forth between what was on the phone and the rest of us in the room.

  “How do you turn this up?” he asked.

  “The little thing,” Derek said, “on the side there.”

  Drew couldn’t figure it out, so Derek, tentatively, approached and showed him how to do it, then stepped back. Now we could all hear Randy’s voice coming from the phone. “This looks like the middle of a speech,” Drew said.

  “It is,” I said. “I tried to catch the parts that mattered.”

  Drew looked very agitated, waiting for Randy’s confession, trying to keep an eye on us. Derek was looking very antsy, his eyes jumping, his fists opening and closing. He looked as though he was getting ready to spring. I tried to catch his eye, tell him to take it easy. The last thing I wanted was Derek getting shot, trying to be a hero.

  I shifted a little closer to the hanging poker.

  From my phone: “. . . I think, when you vote for me, when you trust me to make decisions on your behalf, you’re entitled to know what kind of a man I am. . . .” Drew nodded, didn’t take his eyes off the tiny screen. Then: “I also stand before you tonight to tell you about a period of darkness in my life. . . .”

  Drew’s eyes kept darting between us and the screen. He was worried we were going to try to jump him.

  “. . . I was unfaithful. But I was more than that. There was an occasion when I availed myself of the services of a sex worker, and as if that was not bad enough, I subsequently learned that this person was underage.”

  “Okay,” said Drew. “We’re getting to it.”

  “. . . I have done detestable things. I have hurt people. But what good is a man if he cannot learn from his misdeeds. . . .”

  And then Drew was watching the part where Randy started turning the oil tanker on a dime, making virtue out of peccadilloes. A few seconds later I could hear the applause coming out of the phone, and by the time someone shouted “Give ’em hell, Randy!” Drew was shaking his head very slowly. He looked at Randy. “They like you. You told them you’d had sex with a young girl and they applauded you.” He was dumbfounded.

  Randy did something I’d rarely seen him do. He went red with embarrassment.

  Drew looked back at the phone one last time, as though the gadget itself were the object of his contempt, flipped it shut, then, suddenly, flung it hard at the living room window, shattering it. Ellen jumped. Drew, turning on all of us, his voice full of exasperation, asked, “What’s wrong with those people? How could they . . . how could they cheer a man like that on after he admitted something like that?”

  None of us had an answer for that.

  To Drew, Randy said, “Look, pal, I did what you wanted. I said what you wanted me to say. I came here of my own free will to meet you face-to-face. I can’t help it if the crowd didn’t react the way you wanted them to.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Drew said, his gun hand trembling. While he glowered at Randy, I positioned myself in front of the fireplace poker.

  A line of sweat ran down Randy’s temple.

  “Drew,” I said softly, “the mayor here may have come out of this smelling like a rose right now, but that won’t last. His opponents will seize on that admission. Eventually, it’ll ruin him.”

  “Sure,” said Randy. “I’m toast.”

  “I don’t know,” Drew said. “This isn’t how I thought it would go.”

  “Yeah, well, this isn’t exactly how I expected to be spending my evening either,” Randy said, trying to smile. Here he was, trying to win some sympathy from Drew. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him this desperate.

  “What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” Drew asked.

  I reached behind me for the poker, and was wrong in thinking it was a move I could handle deftly. It clinked against the iron stand as I moved it, and Drew turned and trained his gun on me.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Show me what’s in your hand.”

  I displayed the poker and Drew clenched his teeth. “Drop that and go stand over there,” he said, motioning to the bookcase.

  “Sure,” I said, letting the poker clang to the floor. “No problem.” I caught the desperate, hopeless look in Ellen’s eyes at that moment. I shifted over and parked myself by the books.

  Turning his attention back to the mayor, Drew said, “I should feel sorry for you, you, a guy who screws teenage girls?”

  “Look, pal,” Randy said. “There’s a few things you need to understand. First of all, I had no idea your daughter was that young. She looked a lot older, you need to know that from the get-go. I would never have entered into any arrangement with her knowing she was as young as she was. I have certain lines that I won’t cross.”

  Drew stared at him.

  “Secondly, I never approached her directly. That was handled by an associate of mine, a Mr. Lance Garrick. I’m guessing maybe you already know him, right? He should never have set that up, and I want to say, listen, Lance deserved what he got. I can’t see where anyone would blame you for what you did there.” He forced a laugh. “More than once, I felt like shooting him myself.”

  Drew kept looking at him, wondering where he was going with this. I didn’t have any real idea either. I glanced at Ellen. When I looked over her way, something on the bookshelf caught my eye.

  Resting on top of a row of books, inches below the next shelf, was a lawn-cutting blade from the tractor. I’d set it there when I’d come back into the house the other day and found Ellen staring out the window at the Langley house.

  “The thing is,” Randy said, “there’s a lot of blame to go around here, and let’s face it, you own a bit of that yourself.” His tone wasn’t totally argumentative. He seemed to be trying to make a point with Drew, but I thought it was a risky one.

  “Randy,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t you agree?” the mayor persisted. “Huh, Drew?”

  Drew said, “All I know is, of all the men who took advantage of my daughter, who helped to put her into the ground, there wasn’t one who should have known better more than you.”

  Randy didn’t say anything.

  “I was with her when she died,” Drew said. “I got released just in time to be with her. I was there with her nearly every minute of her last week. She told me about all the mistakes she made, how much she wished I could have been there through the bad times. And I found her book, her little notebook. She wrote down everything. Phone numbers, names, license plates. Most men, they didn’t give their real names, but with the other information, I was able to piece things together. I’d call a number, get hold of a guy, tell him I wanted to hire him for a job, anything to get a face-to-face with him, you know? Then sound him out, maybe ask him if he knew where I could hire a girl for some fun. Gradually, I found out who some of the sick fucks who used her were. I told her, before she died, that I was going to make it all up to her. I promised her. But I didn’t track you down through that book. But I found your buddy Lance. He did your dirty work for you. He set things up for you. He told me everything before he died.”

  “Listen, pal—”

  Drew cut Randy off. “You killed her! You and all the others! You might as well have gotten a gun and shot her yourself. Maybe that would have been better. At least it would have been quicker, you bastard!”

  “Jesus,�
�� Randy said. “Look, I’ve done what you wanted. I told the people what you wanted me to say. I came out here so you could give me shit. So we’re good, right? You’re not going to kill me.”

  “Yes,” Drew said. “I am.”

  The mayor’s cheeks, so red earlier, were quickly draining of color. “Hey, come on. A deal’s a deal.”

  “And not just you,” Drew said. He looked over at me. “You too, Jim.”

  “No,” Ellen whispered.

  “Come on, man,” said Derek.

  I was just thinking about how I could reach up and grab the blade, but stopped when Drew turned his attention to me. “I know you don’t think I did enough where Sherry is concerned,” I said. “And I’m sorry about that. I really am. I’ll always regret it.”

  “Not for a whole lot longer,” Drew said.

  “What would you have done, Drew? Just tell me. Suppose the roles had been reversed. I’ve got a daughter, her life’s gone off the rails, and you happen to bump into her. She’s a total stranger to you. But you see she’s in trouble, she’s made some bad choices. So you give her your name and number, tell her if she wants help you’re available. And she doesn’t want that help. What would you do?”

  Drew’s eyes appeared to sparkle for a moment, and then I realized they were moist, that he was trying to hold back tears.

  “You were her only chance,” he whispered. “You were what I prayed for while I sat in prison. That someone would see the trouble she was in, and help her, until I got out and could do it myself. But it didn’t happen. And by the time I got out, it was too late.”

  I glanced again at Ellen, her eyes wide with fear. Then at Derek, wide-eyed as well, but not with fear exactly. Like he was looking for an opening, an opportunity. If someone in the room could provide some momentary distraction, anything, just engage him in conversation for a second, Drew would look away, and maybe that would give me just enough time to grab the tractor blade, attack him with it, use it like a machete or something.

  I might end up getting shot, but if I could manage to inflict a little damage, I might be able to save my wife and son.

  It was Randy who stepped in. “I’ll tell you this much,” he said, and Drew looked his way. “You’re right to think you could have expected more of him, but me, come on, everybody knows what I’m like, so—”

  Everything after that happened very fast.

  I swiveled around, wrapped my hand around the heavy steel blade. I’d yet to sharpen it out in the shed. The edges were blunt and rounded. But at a foot and a half in length, it would still do a lot of damage if I could hit Drew with it.

  Drew, even though he’d been distracted by the mayor, spotted that I was up to something, because he’d snapped his head around to look at me, coming at him with the blade, and now his gun was up, and there was a loud noise, like a cannon going off, and I felt something hit my shoulder and knock me back up against the bookcase.

  Ellen screamed. Derek yelled, “Dad!”

  The blade went flying out of my hand and hit the wall.

  With all this sudden commotion, no one, Drew in particular, heard the steps on the front porch, so it was a shock to everyone when the front door flew open and Conrad Chase, clutching a small, shallow box in his hands, came into the room.

  Drew, gun still extended, whirled around, bug-eyed.

  Conrad barely had a chance to say “Jesus! What the hell’s going—” before Drew shot him in the head.

  As Conrad was jerked backward, the box flew from his hands and opened in midair, hundreds of pages of manuscript spilling onto the floor.

  That was when Derek launched himself across the room, like he was jumping from one part of the high school roof to another, flying across the coffee table. He was completely off the ground when he collided with Drew, who seemed momentarily stunned not only by the two shots he’d just fired, but by the pages fluttering all over the place.

  Drew’s gun arm went high, and another shot went off. Bits of plaster fell from the ceiling.

  Derek was neither big enough nor strong enough to keep Drew down. He was a big man, and there was no way Derek was going to hold him down by himself. Even though my shoulder was searing with pain, I bolted four steps across the room and fell onto Drew, grabbing at the wrist that held the gun and slamming it to the floor. Derek had hold of his other arm, but Drew was still trying to use it to get at me, dragging Derek across his body.

  I kept both hands on Drew’s wrist while Derek tried to sneak in a punch to Drew’s gut, then his face, but he wasn’t having much impact. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the mayor on the far side of the room, watching what was transpiring like it was some cockfight for his entertainment.

  In that glance, I failed to spot Ellen. Where the hell was Ellen?

  And then there was a loud whack, and Drew stopped thrashing about. Very tentatively, I let go of his wrist, rolled over onto my knees, and saw Ellen with the poker in her hands. And Drew’s head covered in blood.

  Conrad lay, bloody and unmoving and undoubtedly dead, in the open front doorway.

  Trying to catch my breath, I got to my feet, reached over and gave my son a pat on the shoulder, then took a look at the blood seeping through my shirt over my left shoulder where Drew’s bullet had grazed me.

  Randy, filled with renewed confidence now that the threat in the room had been neutralized, stood over Drew Lockus and, pointing a finger accusingly, said, “Maybe if you’d been a better father in the first place, none of this shit ever would have happened!”

  This time, when I punched him in the nose, I broke the fucker.

  FORTY-FOUR

  WE WERE SITTING IN THE CAR, Ellen and I, parked across the street from a house where I did regular yard work.

  We’d only just pulled up to the curb, so I hadn’t turned the engine off yet, and we were still feeling the benefits of the airconditioning in Ellen’s little Mazda. I was in the passenger seat, taking a break from driving while my shoulder healed. Ellen, sitting behind the wheel, had one hand resting on the wheel, the other on the door handle.

  “So,” she said, looking straight ahead.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  A lot had happened in the last few days since Conrad Chase had died in our house. Famous writers turned college presidents tended to garner a lot of attention when their lives ended as violently as Conrad’s had.

  In the moments since then, when we weren’t answering Barry’s questions, or avoiding the six o’clock news team, Ellen and I had been doing a lot of talking. About small things, about big things. About where we’d been and where we were going.

  The time seemed to be right to make some changes.

  My job driving Mayor Randall Finley, had, not surprisingly, come to a rather abrupt end, once again. I hadn’t promised to work long for him anyway, so losing the gig prematurely wasn’t that big a deal. And I still had the lawn-cutting business. For now.

  The thing was, Randy’s job appeared to be in a bit of jeopardy, too. He’d managed to wow the crowd at the official announcement of his bid for Congress, and had the distinction of being the only politician in history known to have, in the same speech, outlined his ambitions while also admitting to sex with an underage hooker. As he’d predicted, his speech had not only made it to CNN and every other news network on the planet, it was a consistent favorite on YouTube.

  And the Promise Falls town council had lawyers working overtime, studying the town’s constitution, attempting to determine whether there was some way they could impeach Randy. Although the mayor had not yet abandoned his congressional bid—Randy was the eternal optimist—it appeared that even if he never made it to Washington, he was at least going to experience some of its procedures.

  He made some noise about charging me with assault for punching him in the nose a second time. When I had a moment to speak with him privately after what had happened at the house, I said, “Then our deal is off? I have your blessing to be indiscreet, and disclose all the details of your time with Sh
erry Underwood, how you not only screwed her, but hit her as well?”

  So we were back where we’d started from. As much trouble as he was in, he was grateful not to have an eyewitness to his evening with Sherry Underwood. He was right about one thing: ultimately, it came down to his version of the story versus a hearsay tale from Drew Lockus, a man who’d just been on a killing spree and who lacked a lot in the credibility department. As it turned out, Linda, the single mother who had been waiting in the hall for her friend Sherry the night she’d had her meeting with Randy, had never actually set eyes on the mayor.

  But even if all the details of the mayor’s bad behavior failed to come out, I had a feeling he was pretty much finished, at least politically. A guy could only be that reckless for so long before it finally caught up with him.

  When we’d had our brief chat about my oath of silence, I had asked him, should his political career go into the toilet, whether he was any good with a Weed Eater. I mentioned that, with my shoulder all bandaged up after getting shot, Derek and I could probably use another hand.

  Drew was charged in the murders of the Langleys and Lance Garrick, as well as Edgar Winsome and Peter Knight, the two other men Drew had been led to by piecing together the information in Sherry’s notebook. The police still had no interest in charging Drew in the death of Mortie, the man who’d come, along with Illeana’s brother Lester, to terrorize me and Ellen that night in the shed.

  For that act, we were, curiously, still in his debt.

  After the pages that had scattered across our living room had been collected, I actually read the first couple of chapters of Conrad’s book. It was about a news photographer whose most famous, Pulitzer Prize–winning shot, of a man’s execution in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban, turns out to be the work of another photographer who’d failed to get out of the country alive.